O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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Six Ground Rules for Introducing a New Girlfriend or Boyfriend to Your Kids

hiding from emotions is never a good strategy

When is it okay to introduce your kids to a date after divorce or separation?

This is a common question for newly separated or divorced parents. Like so many things involving children after divorce, the answer is “it all depends.” But there are a few ground rules that can help in the transition to dating.

In evaluating when to let children know about a new romantic partner, the goal is always to protect the child’s psychological best interests. Much depends on the child’s age and the quality of your relationship before and after your separation. As noted in a previous post, watching parents treat each other with disrespect and lack of affection harms kids even more than having to shuffle between two homes.

Everyone is different with regard to dating readiness. Some people will wait for months, some for years. Consider, though, that when a relationship has been unhappy, it’s important to give yourself time before jumping right into Match.com or eHarmony. Make use of this found time alone when you do not have the kids. Get to know yourself again. People are often surprised to discover that they can enjoy a kid-free weekend or weeknight without feeling guilty. Many have said it is an unsuspected silver lining in divorce. Time alone without kids is often a rarity in marriages where fathers and mothers both devote themselves to family life and the nurture and growth of their children.

Individual psychotherapy during this period can help you to reclaim the parts of yourself that have been lost or damaged. Taking this opportunity before dating again will help you, your kids, and your eventual romantic partner. No one wants to date someone on the rebound from a marriage. Dating to fill the void or to build your self-esteem will not work in the long term, bringing more harm than comfort.

Eventually, the time will come when you feel ready to explore relationships again. When the transition to living separately is established and custody has been worked out, agreed upon, and is going smoothly, parents will begin to think about dating.

Keep in mind the following suggestions to help you, your kids, and your ex ease into this new and often threatening territory.

Some Guidelines for Dating Post-Divorce

1. Children need to establish a routine with each parent. This is best done when the custodial parent is fully present, undistracted by a romantic interest.

2. Dating should be done during non-custodial times. The introduction of a new partner is often confusing to young children, especially during the first year after a divorce. In older kids, who may be exploring their own sexuality, seeing their parent with another partner can make them feel self-conscious and embarrassed.

3. It is important to not create a climate of anxiousness about where they belong in each parent’s lives. Children need to feel like they come first. If a romantic partner is introduced too soon, this sense of secure attachment will be compromised and can create anxiety.

4. Do not bring a partner home for the night on your evening with your child. Waking up in the morning and seeing that a parent’s boyfriend or girlfriend has slept over can be confusing and hurtful. Kids will feel an allegiance to their other parent and will feel protective of them, fearing they’d be hurt by knowing that there is someone else in the house.

5. When the time comes to date openly, it is a courtesy to inform the other parent. Letting your ex-partner know that you are dating and want to introduce a serious relationship to your children allows the non-dating partner to process this news without being blind-sided, for example by seeing you with another person at children’s events. Do not let your children be the ones to tell the other parent that mommy or daddy has a new love, and certainly don’t ask them to keep secrets from their other parent. They should not be put in this position. When children innocently expose this information, it can engender angry and painful reactions that can cause the children to feel guilty, sad, and embarrassed.

6. Always treat your ex-partner with respect whether their non-custodial parent is present or not. Kids learn from watching. When you begin to date, show respect to your ex-partner and to your children by not flaunting your new partner. Respect boundaries with regard to public displays of affection. For an ex-spouse to see their former partner kissing during a recreational event will most likely cause anger or hurt. It is common for one party to feel jealous or possessive when they realize that their former spouse is dating. This is a tender time for everyone. Remember to be kind and respectful to each other. This role-modeling will help your children to assimilate a new person into their lives in a healthy way.

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How Couples Counseling Can Guide a Divorce That’s Better for the Kids

Staying Together for the Kids: Why This Isn’t a Good Idea

In my work as a counselor, I approach every couple with the intention of helping them heal what isn’t working in their marriages. I know that even the most challenging issues are often repairable. But occasionally, it is in everyone’s best interest to separate.

Parents considering divorce often find the very idea of being without their kids part of each week is unthinkable. The reason so many people stay in unhappy marriages is to avoid losing their children and to spare the kids the pain of not having both parents always present.

Research by Dr. John Gottman has shown that couples wait an average of seven years after becoming aware of problems in their marriage to seek counseling. This period of time can be subtly or obviously harmful to your child’s mental health. During those years when your relationship is not working, your kids are being affected—despite your best intentions to protect them.

While statistics often cite the harm divorce causes children, many studies fail to factor in the harm caused by a bad relationship. When your marriage has deteriorated into loss of intimacy (loving gestures, emotional closeness) this may be internalized by children and can affect their ability to love and be loved in their adult relationships. Likewise, when parents are obviously hostile and negative toward each other, kids may show signs of distress such as anxiety or depression with symptoms of guilt, worry, and low self-esteem.

When is it time to leave an unhappy marriage? Some reasons to leave an unhappy relationship are obvious: verbal, physical, or sexual abuse; ongoing substance abuse; broken trust through unaddressed lying and cheating; and a myriad of other extreme reasons. But sometimes the reasons are less obvious: sexual desire discrepancy, loss of respect and love, and unresolvable communication problems.

Divorce and Good Communication

Children are harmed when they are used as pawns by hostile parents: for revenge, for example, or to increase support payments. If the primary wage-earner in the family is resentful of having to pay spousal support, and seeks to reduce payments by asking for more physical custody of the children, when it is not in their best interests –this battle once activated drains emotional and financial resources—creating tension for everyone.

Kids pick up the negativity, so how you show your respect and love for their parent is important. If you are showing verbal or non-verbal signs of irritation and disrespect when talking about or to your ex, you child will be harmed. Then there are more blatant reasons, such as use of child pornography, repeated DUIs, and other criminal behaviors.

Sure You’re Getting Divorced? Couples Counseling Can Still Help

Couples counseling can be useful in learning what went wrong, not to assign blame or fix resentments, but from a perspective of taking appropriate responsibility. Doing a post-mortem of your marriage serves several important functions.

1. It helps you help your children to cope with the changes brought about by divorce. When children of divorce see their parents bickering about money, possessions, or time with the kids, they feel bad. It’s common for kids to feel guilty or responsible for the breakup. Being able to talk with your partner, calmly and respectfully, models good communication. Children pick up behaviors from their parents. Little ones are like sponges, picking up not only the crumbs but the bacteria as well.
2. If you leave a marriage without understanding what lead to its demise, you are likely to make the same mistake in your next serious relationship. In the many years I have done couples’ therapy, I have often heard this refrain: “I married someone so much like my previous partner—why didn’t I just stay?” We can’t run away from a bad marriage and assume it will be perfect with someone else. Spending time with your spouse trying to understand the complex dynamic you wove will save you from making similar mistakes in the future. Plus, couples often will decide to stay together once they realize and repair what got them to the point of divorce in the first place.
3. And, lastly, you will be co-parenting for the rest of your life. Learning better communication will help you as you raise your children in separate households. There will be many times you will have to consult each other about issues, school, friends, and problems that come up over the years. You will both need to be present at graduations, weddings, or grandchildren’s birthdays. It is a lot better to be friends working together to provide the best post-divorce environment for your kids possible.

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Ways to Increase Fondness and Admiration

The Sound Relationship House Part 3: Ways to Increase Fondness and Admiration

We use many of these tools for increasing fondness and admiration in couples counseling, but you can use them to good effect without being in therapy. The most important thing to remember is that changing your relationship takes care and attention. Beginning to practice skills that increase the positive interactions and decrease the negative will not be a straight course. There will be zigs and zags because old habits take time to eliminate. But the beauty of making these changes a priority is that both partners are working together and taking responsibility for the quality of their marriage.

 Six Ways You Can Improve Your Relationship

The following list is adapted from Dr. John Gottman’s book, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last (1995).

 

  1. Show interest. Smartphones and tablets are as prevalent as TV used to be, claiming attention in the form of online news, games, email, or Facebook; some uses are work- or kid-related, but others are just distractions. All can serve to divert attention from each other. Make sure you have your partner’s attention before talking. Something as simple as eye contact goes a long way. I have worked with couples that rarely look at each other, maybe for days, yet are unaware that this is happening. Showing interest means looking, seeing, and listening with interest.
  2. Be affectionate. You don’t have to give each other a 30-minute back rub to increase affection. And daily affection should not be performed just as a means to get more sex. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is important to show non-sexual affection on a regular basis. Holding hands, walking arm in arm, or sitting side by side are all simple ways to increase affection. Hugs and kisses are obvious ways to show affection—but be creative. When a marriage runs into trouble, partners have often stopped physical touch. Bringing touch back will feel good to both the giver and the receiver.
  3. Show you care. During therapy, I have a couple look over a list of things they would like their partner to do for them. This list has examples of big and small activities that reinforce caring behavior. A small one might be calling during the afternoon and checking in, or stopping at the market and picking up something for dinner. If such activities have become routine, then think of other things you would like, but don’t be extravagant. These activities should be relatively easy to perform and repeat.
  4. Be empathic. One of the exercises we do in couple’s therapy is The Stress Reducing Conversation. This consists of letting your partner talk for a solid 10-minutes without interrupting, except to express interest, support, and show concern. Showing that you can understand what your partner is facing at work or with a family member helps them feel supported.
  5. Be accepting. Our instinct is to correct, criticize, and instruct. It is important to listen without jumping in too much. Dr. John Gottman’s term for the four most harmful communication styles that threaten a relationship is The Four Horsemen. One of the most destructive of these is Contempt. Signs of contempt are correcting your partner’s grammar during a heated discussion or rolling your eyes when they speak.
  6. Play together. Life involves many chores and tasks that are unavoidable. Find ways to play and joke around. It is important to have a date night or afternoon, but don’t always go to dinner and a movie; sometimes a movie is like parallel play, something you do alongside rather than together. Spend time in activities that make you both laugh. Think of things that were fun when your relationship was new. Playing together creates a bond that is unique to your relationship. We can have friends for many different activities, but with your partner, make sure you share joy and light-heartedness.

 

 

 

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The Sound Relationship House: Sharing Fondness and Admiration

Love is Nurtured by Expressing Fondness & Admiration 

Sharing Fondness and Admiration

In the previous post, I described the first foundation level of the Sound Relationship House: friendship and appreciation. Another important concept in developing and maintaining a strong friendship system  is sharing fondness and admiration.

The Magic Ratio

In Dr. John Gottman’s research, he found that couples don’t need to be perfect, having nothing but positive interactions, but there is an optimal level of positive interactions to negative ones. The magic ratio is 5 to 1. We need to have five times as much positive feeling and behavior with our partners as negative. This seems like an easy ratio to maintain, but we know from research that couples wait an average of seven years after they’re aware of a problem in their marriage before seeking counseling. That’s a lot of water under the bridge, and a lot of time to sway the magic ratio in the opposite direction.

Express What You Admire and Love

But there is a way to reverse this negative direction and rebuild the relationship’s emotional bank account. Remember what first attracted you to your partner and begin to nurture those thoughts, memories, and feelings. Express what you admire and love. As a couples’ therapist I frequently say, “It doesn’t count if it doesn’t come out of your mouth.” We can think that our mate looks great in his jeans, or that she is the most articulate person at the party, but if we don’t say it to her then it doesn’t build that bank account—so that when crisis comes, as it inevitably does in life, we have nothing to drawn upon. Our emotional resources are depleted and we fall more deeply into hopelessness about our relationship.

When couples have let their relationship go, it takes time and attention to make it healthy again. Just as eating well for a week will not change your stroke risk, sharing fondness and admiration for a short time will not immediately change your marriage. This is why in couples counseling we work on many levels of the relationship at a time. Each partner must look at what they bring to the table. The fault is never with just one partner.

 What Happens When You Neglect Your Relationship

Sam and Lara were both thinking of divorce when they made their first therapy appointment. Both felt unloved. They had stopped spending any time together other than eating dinner in front of the TV after their long days spent doing their daily activities in robot-like manner. Chauffeuring and supervising the kids’ activities; cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, and other household chores; paying bills—all got done with almost perfect results. As Lara said, “We run a well-oiled ship.”

So what went missing?  Sam and Laura had stopped expressing fondness and admiration for one another. They’d taken each other for granted and didn’t pay the kind of appreciative, close attention that had marked their courtship.  They’d fallen into bad habits.

Fortunately, Sam and Lara were able to use the tools of couples counseling to change their habits and enhance their relationship. Each started paying closer attention to the day-to-day things their partner did that had typically gone unnoticed. Sam began to tell Lara how much he enjoyed how she interacted with the kids and how she made their home a place of harmony for the whole family. Lara was able to listen to Sam’s concerns with his job and began to express the positive things she saw in him. This served to enhance self-esteem for both. The ratio of positive to negative interactions gradually shifted closer to the magic ratio.

In my next post, I’ll talk about some simple ways to increase fondness and admiration in your relationship.

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The Sound Relationship House: Friendship and Appreciation

The Sound Relationship: Part 1

 

A great marriage needs a strong foundation. Remember the story of the three little pigs? The first little pig built his house of straw and the second made his house with wood. The third pig built his house of brick while the first two pigs played, taunting him for working so hard.

When the big bad wolf came to blow their houses down, the first two pigs ran to the third pig’s home and sheltered there, safe and secure from the wolf.

Big bad wolves can come to marriage at any time, in lots of forms: an out-of-the-blue life crisis such as an affair, job loss, or death of a loved one, for example. Or it can come as a slow erosion of love. Whether suddenly or slowly, events such as these can strain a marriage to the point of dissolution. But if your house is strong, then these crises don’t have to end your relationship. In this post, I’ll present two techniques for shoring up the relationship house’s foundations.

  Love Maps: Knowing and Being Known

Based on his research, Dr. John Gottman has defined what makes a strong relationship, and he illustrates this concept by using the metaphor of a house with seven floors. The bottom floor is the Friendship System because partners must be friends to have a good marriage. That friendship can become damaged if partners don’t stay in touch with each other’s lives.

In the courtship stage of a relationship, we learn everything we can about our partners, like favorite TV shows or best friends. Gottman-style couples therapists call this kind of knowledge “love maps.” But as years go by, couples can forget to keep asking; staying in touch gets lost in the shuffle of life. In my previous post on love maps, I emphasized the importance of updating these maps as we age. What was significant to your partner five years ago may not be today. How well do you know your partner, and do you feel known? Are you updating your love maps throughout the years?

Examples of love map questions that I give couples on the first session include “What are your partner’s hobbies?” and “Who is your partner’s favorite relative?” There are sixty-two questions and in most cases, it’s a fun assignment. The ground rules are that if a person doesn’t know the correct answer, you tell them—you don’t ridicule or criticize them for not knowing. It’s an opportunity to update your love maps, not a test.

Expressing Appreciation is Essential

We enter into marriage with the blush of new love, assuming that life together will be easy and smooth. We know our partner and frequently express gratitude and admiration.

Life takes a toll on even the best relationships. Normal and expectable stressors such as children, aging parents, and job problems can consume the time a couple needs to stay close. When we are depleted by these normal stresses of living, we can forget to express our appreciation for what our partner does. Tasks such as making dinner, shopping for groceries, and picking the kids up from daycare become routine and therefore go unacknowledged.

But the happiest relationships liberally express appreciation for both the big and little things. Saying “thank you for going to the dry cleaners today” or “I appreciate that you called the sitter” seem like small things, but in saying them we help secure our foundation.

Knowing each other through updated love maps and expressing appreciation for one another strengthens a marriage against big bad wolves.