Dating After Divorce Isn't Just About You | What Every Parent Should Know

Dating after divorce reshapes far more than your love life, it affects your children, your co-parenting dynamic, and the emotional foundation of your next chapter.

In this continuation of the Family Disappeared conversation, Lawrence Joss and family systems practitioner Stephanie Sternes, LMFT, LCPC, NCC explore what it really takes to begin dating again with awareness of its impact on children and family systems. They unpack how children of different ages respond to new relationships, why loyalty conflicts can surface even in stable homes, and the importance of slow, intentional integration when new partners enter the picture. The discussion also touches on the role of step-parents, the value of communication, and when additional support like therapy can help families adjust in healthier ways.

This conversation offers grounded insight for anyone navigating dating after separation, blending families, or rebuilding life after divorce, where emotional awareness matters as much as new beginnings.

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

• Multiple household family systems
• Loyalty versus love in family relationships
• The role of therapy and outside resources
• Step-parenting best practices and challenges
• Impact of conflict and high tension on children
• Developmental stages and attachment in stepfamilies
• Wedding day and family transition challenges
• Long-term attachment and family cohesion

CHAPTERS

00:00 - Navigating Complex Family Dynamics
04:01 - Understanding Loyalty vs. Love in Families
08:43 - The Role of Step Parents in Co-Parenting
16:11 - The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Family Dynamics
22:10 - The Love Loyalty Paradox
28:04 - The Journey of Step Parenting and Building Relationships

Support & Community:

Parental Alienation Anonymous (PAA): Join our free 12-step support group with 16 online meetings weekly for parents, grandparents, family members, and previously alienated individuals seeking healing and recovery.

PA-A.org: Parental Alienation Advocates is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to fostering education, advocacy, and support for individuals grappling with the distressing impact of parental alienation, estrangement, erasure, and family disconnection.

All our services are free and sustained by grants and community donations. Your support helps us continue offering these vital resources.
Donate here: https://pa-a.mykajabi.com/donations-for-the-12-step-program

Connect with Us:
Email your questions or insights: familydisappeared@gmail.com
Like, share, and comment to help us reach more families in need.

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:
 
 Email - familydisappeared@gmail.com
 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss
(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

To learn more or connect with Stephanie, you can visit:
https://www.stephsternes.com

This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email-         familydisappeared@gmail.com

Transcript

Why Multi-Home Families Feel Hard

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's really complex to have two households when you're divorced or separated and there's like a two-family system and there's all this craziness going on. Do you have struggles when there's two households? How about when there's three households or when you bring in another person that brings all their history and their baggage good and some challenging stuff into the relationship? Now you have two households and possibly three households if they have kids too, and another step parent. Like, how do we navigate this stuff? How do we get through this? What does this conversation even look like? And whether you're single or in a relationship or have a new spouse, like what can we do to really hold this intentionally and really center the children and our development and their development and try to make the best possible recipe out of these new situations. That's what we're going to be talking about with Stephanie Stearns today is about multiple houses and how to navigate that, what the complexities are, what's a loyalty house versus a loving house, why that looks a particular way, why we get shocked sometimes when our kids all of a sudden cut off. And maybe you get shocked why your parents all of a sudden cut off if you happen to be a kid, and not really understanding this loyalty through this love, uh, I think is really poignant. And we touch on so much rich stuff. I can't even remember it all at this particular point. But thank you for coming out to the show today. My name's Lawrence Joss. This is a Family Disappeared Podcast. If you're new to the community, welcome. Over 140 podcasts have already taped on every subject. Check them out, find stuff that you like, listen to it, listen to it again as I do. We have a lot of resources in the show notes. All Stephanie's stuff is in there. We're also a 501c3 nonprofit. Please donate monthly, single-time, whatever. We need your resources to help the next person. It's not for you. You're already here. We really want to help the new person that hasn't found us yet, and we need resources in order to

Resources Community And Donations

SPEAKER_01 1:51

do that. We also have a free 12-step program. It's a support group. It's Save My Life. There's parents and grandparents and kids and different folks that are struggling with the same stuff. And uh what a joy it is not to be alone. And if you don't like the framework of those support groups, go find some support somewhere. It's uh it's power mount, it's necessary. This can't be done alone. At least in my experience, it can't be done alone. It can't be done just with professionals. We need community outside of that 50 minutes or that hour as well. So thanks for coming out today. That's a wonderful, rich, meaningful show around uh multifamilies. Oh gosh,

Host Story Moving In Too Fast

SPEAKER_01 2:34

so many years into parental alienation, I it's probably seven, eight, nine years into it. I moved uh my then girlfriend into the house and uh we started co-parenting to a certain degree together, and uh she was a a therapist. And I thought that this would make everything easier and different, but I didn't know. I didn't know that there was a bunch of work to do with people that are actually trained in family systems, even though therapists are trained in stuff, there's so much stuff that they're not trained in. So to be really specific and look for something that really fits what your needs are if you're in a high conflict situation is paramount, and we talk about that over and over and over in the show. And it's doing your work, and it's not necessarily the kid. Just get into therapy. So I think that was a big leap. Like I didn't realize there could have been a bunch of couple stuff that we could have done in relationship to parenting. So I just want to say I didn't do that. And uh it made it harder. It made it harder, and I I regret that. And uh this is a wonderful conversation and a bunch of incredible information, no matter where you are in it. Even if you regret it like I do, it just there's a relief in understanding how the mechanism is working and that I'm able to help other people so they don't necessarily have to go through it. And that's a lot out of me, so let's just get into the show and uh see what else Stephanie has to say.

Adult Decisions Still Wound Kids

SPEAKER_01 3:55

I feel a lot of sadness in that and also feel a lot of relief in actually being able to identify the break.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah, and I think that's a common thing. I mean, people really do think that these are adult decisions, especially when the kids are already adults, right? It doesn't really matter the age of the kiddos when we make therapists would call it an adult decision. But if you think about it, even if your kids are adults, you wouldn't completely change something so personal to the family. Oh, I'm gonna move to Barcelona and not tell them until after you did it. It's an easier thing to adjust to if you're talking to them and going, hey, I'm thinking about moving to Barcelona. I'm thinking about this and this is why, and what do you think? I mean, your opinion matters because you're an attachment for me, you're important to me, you matter to me. Um, what do you think about it? It doesn't matter the age of our kids, if we're not getting where they're at with a big decision like that, then it's not true. But what we're telling them is that their opinion doesn't matter, that they don't count, that your relationship with them is not as important as whatever it is that you want to do for yourself, even though it does impact them. And so modern day understanding of how we do families and relationships, we don't separate those. We want to bring all of that along and at least help work through where one kiddo, your daughter, is stuck with uh with a decision where maybe the other kids were fine with it. But if we don't have those earlier conversations before we actually take action, it feels like rejection, it feels like abandonment, it feels like I don't matter that he would tell me about something that's so important in his life. It's that conversation that draws us closer in that intimate relationship of, oh, my opinion matters to him in this case. And so we don't know that because nobody's taught us that. So how would we know that? It seems reasonable that this is an adult relationship and that you would just do it. I think it's just a sad story. I always go back to it's a sad story because we can do all the things like you're talking about. We can go to therapists, we can go to mentors, we can go and we can try to make the best decision. But in these families, in these situations, it's very often that what we think is actually the actual opposite of what we should do. It's the oddest thing. But in these families, whatever you think is probably the opposite. It's really interesting. And something else that you said earlier that I think is really interesting is that there isn't a lot of this step family or co-parenting counseling out there that that it's not advertised. You don't know, people don't know about it, that you could go and get it. But the coaching world knows more about it. There's lots of coaches out there for co-parenting and for stepfamily and for dating stepfamilies, and for step parents, there's a lot more coaching than there is counseling right now. My heart is to change that, that all counselors would have an awareness of that what you're giving them oftentimes is the opposite in these two home systems. But for right now, you're right, there's just not a lot out there.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yeah, no, it's definitely uh it's challenging out there, and like even with coaches and people that think that they are doing the best possible thing based on their experiences, if they don't really have the clinical background to identify some of these aspects that are happening, which is my experience, then you'd actually end up creating some harm from a really good place. You know, so it is heartbreaking, it is sad, just like you're saying.

Stepparenting Starts With Allyship

SPEAKER_01 7:37

And uh I do want to switch to step parenting. So now we've been dating someone, we've had a lot of these different challenges come up, we might have handled them well or not so well. And if you're out there and you're struggling, you haven't done something perfectly, that's great too. Just like me, I'm human, I made mistakes and I'm doing my work to mitigate them as best as I can. But I'm supposed to make mistakes. And the more information like we get out there, like this we get out there, the hopefully the more resourced people are gonna feel. But stepping into this thing, you've dated, now you're getting married, now you have a stepparent in the house. What do the dynamics look like? What are the challenges? And I really want to concentrate on the idea for the challenges when there is not a good co-parent in relationship with the other household, because that's what most of the people that are going to be listening to are struggling with. So, like, what does it look like once uh a step parent comes in? Like, what are the expectations as a step parent that you should be mindful of? And what should you be as the actual parent that's bringing someone in? Like, how how does this shift the dynamics with the kids and the family?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, and I'm I'm always gonna go back to for listeners that you can't take anything that's said and assume that it matches your family system because there's such opposites at play here. So if the co-parenting relationship has moderate to high tension, you're already talking about a higher level of care. So, best practice, so we'll talk about them separately. Best practice would be that a step parent would take on a role of current new new research coming out, 25, 26, says that the step parent should really take an ally, an allyship type of role for that child. So I'm your ally, you can get your needs met here, I will be helpful, but a very clear, I'm not your mom, I'm not your dad, I'm an ally to you. And a very slow growing relationship over time where that child learns that you're an ally. That's really the most important role that we can take as step parents in a good home where, not and good home's not the right term, in a home where the co-parents are at least, you know, low tension. The ally is a great place for that person to be. It means that they're not going to be doing the disciplinarian. It means that I would put this couple together and say, what are the household rules? What are the 10 household rules? I would have the kiddos in on it, a family meeting. These are the 10 household rules. The step parent is now backing up the rules that they made as a family. They're not the disciplinarian. It becomes a rule that we've all decided together. As soon as somebody takes the disciplinarian stance before the attachment is formed, it comes across as not well receiving because there's no attachment. And so the kiddo starts thinking some negative things. Well, that my you're not my mom, you're not my dad, I don't have to listen to you. That's normal. And so we want to slow that down, no disciplining until that attachment is formed. And that is in a in a home where the co-parents are low tension. As soon as it hits moderate tension, the co-parents aren't getting along, even the ally can cause fire, a fuel to that fire. Because if you're an ally with this kiddo and they're going back to the other home where there's moderate to high tension between the co-parents, they could be saying, you don't have to listen to her, you don't have to listen to him, they're not your parent. And so even as an ally, that's a really difficult position. There's no, I guess what I'm telling you is there's no one right answer for that question, except that if the the co-parenting relationship is moderate to heavy in the tension or conflict, it's a higher level of care, I would seek a specialist right away. Because what happens is that through the developmental stages, you might think over time that this dating and this this family that you're building has an attachment, but as soon as a developmental stage hits that they can counter back to the and it fits better over here, you get that resist and refuse or that cutoff where they don't want to talk to you anymore. So I guess to kind of summarize it cleanly, if you have low tension in the co-parenting, then be an ally. You're an ally, you're not taking sides with anybody, you're just an ally to the kids, the the child's needs, no matter what their age is. How can I help? Talk to your dad, talk to your mom, but how can I help? To not get caught where you're triangulating with mom or dad, you're just supporting the child, and behind the doors with this new relationship, you're having those conversations about how you're feeling as a step parent and what your what your values are and what you're seeing, and how do we negotiate that between us as the adults before we go back and have this this front of this is how we're doing it in this household. That's all great for low tension.

High Conflict Needs A Specialist

SPEAKER_00 12:48

At at moderate to high in co-parenting, research is showing that getting a specialist involved is really important. Not that we have to have a special specialist involved, a counseling for the kiddos all the way through their life, but having that safe third party that isn't mom's house, isn't dad's house, is really the key to help them develop through those stages because maybe we start out with this new couple that you're talking about. We start out doing a little bit of family counseling to make sure that, hey, nobody's replacing anybody. We're gonna pick 10 family rules that we're all gonna agree to and decide on, and this is how we're gonna run it. And this person is an ally to you, they're not going to be a person that's going to take over mom or dad's roles. Those are still gonna be intact. And so just in the beginning, this family therapy that gets that set, where going forward when the child hits 10 and now is thinking something and the behaviors come up, or he's isolating or shutting down or fighting, depending on them, they can go back to that same therapist that understands the developmental patterns and they can walk through that with them. And it's not going to pull mom or dad's house. It's really this place of surrounding that child with the developmental stages to help them so they aren't pulled, they can make those decisions and talking to the parents. So it's a lot, but it really is that teetering. Am I in a low co-parenting relationship or I'm in a high conflict? Because you can do all the right things, ally, but then at 14, um, you're no longer an ally because you have these rules and roles that keep you from the my friends. And this one over here, even though you were my ally and this was causing troubles, this one will let me hang out with my friends. So I'm not talking to you anymore. I'm gonna go hang out with my friends. I call that the love loyalty paradox that can happen in homes, and it's very dangerous around the age of that relational between 14 and 16. Resist and refuse, it can lead to that, and you would be sideswiped.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

That makes a lot of sense, and I hear in the low conflict that the ally is a great thing, and as soon as it moves to medium to moderate, it gets a lot more complex, and you're suggesting you know getting outside resources. And I just want to say for anyone out there that's listening, outside resources means someone that's actually trained in multifamily conflict or multifamily systems or anything like that, because just going to a standard therapist without advocating for yourself with asking, without asking for exactly what you're looking for from the therapist, you might find yourself in a worse position than you started. And that's been my experience by not knowing to ask, hey, how are you with multifamilies? How are you with tracking how kids are doing developmentally and incorporating them as we go through these stages? I think we've touched on that three or four times in the interview, and it sounds just so incredibly important. And so now we have this stepfamily, we have this idea of allyship and stuff like that. And when we're in high conflict, something that I'm seeing quite often is that the stepparent comes in and they become, in some places, completely rejected, you know, and vilified. And in other places, they they hold an incredible amount of influence with the parent and with the child, and they create this whole push to create distance, and this is a safe house, and these are the good things, and this is the place that you should be. But this actual third party is coming in and creating and amplifying this conflict to such a degree that there are complete breaks. And what do you have to say about that as coming as a step parent and maybe your experience and seeing some step parents coming in with this? And I presume it's their own trauma that's unresolved that they're just projecting into this family system. But I'm curious to see what you'd like to add to that.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah, I absolutely do think that that's the first thing that I would look at is is there a childhood trauma that makes you feel like this feels like rejection or abandonment, or it feels like I can't win, I'm always losing no matter what I do, I can't make everybody happy. Those are the two core wounds that would show up, so I always check for those first. But there's other this other element that is fascinating and just coming out, just trying to get my head around it and to try to get some research behind it. But there's this other this other kind of system that I would be looking at. I'd be looking at these family systems. I'd be in this example that you gave, where a step parent might be the one that is causing some of the you know pick sides.

Loyalty Language Versus Unconditional Love

SPEAKER_00 17:29

The language of that is not unconditional love. That's the language of loyalty. You have to be loyal to me and us because this is the best place, and when you pick our side, all will be well. That's the language of somebody who may have grown up in a family where loyalty was used in place of love. Loyalty becomes the glue for that house, which means that you have to think like me, you have to have my back, you have to see it the way that I see it, you have to pick my side, and that's how you will belong. Now, children pick that up somewhere around that relational stage, anywhere from 10 to 16, they start, it starts to understand that okay, I'm told that I'm loved in both these families, but this one says if I don't do it a certain way, then I won't belong there. So I might give up love because I know this person loves me, but I need to belong here, and so I might choose belonging. And so I call that a love loyalty paradox across two homes. And it doesn't matter where it's coming from, whether it's the step or the biological, when we and we don't even know it. When we feel like you have to have my back or you don't love me, I don't belong. If you don't have my back, if you don't pick my side, if it's not fair, those are all languages of a loyalty family, not unconditional love. See, unconditional love would say, look, you can love both places. You can adjust to this rule and that rule, and you can still have respect for this one and that one. That's unconditional love. That's a family across two homes where love is the glue for this house. It means that you can think differently. You can believe this way or you can believe that way. I'm still gonna love you. It doesn't matter. So I think not only could it be the childhood wounds that we're talking about coming forward that makes a stepparent want to, and by the way, it's not just a stepparent, the bios do it too. It's a human expression of how do we secure belonging and love. It could be those childhood wounds, but it could be that you were raised in a family where there were favorites, and we used favorites to make everybody do the thing that I want them to do, so that we have a system that you belong to. And if you don't fit, then you're out. We shun you until you do what we need you to do. Those are really tough systems to identify, even for counselors. But once you identify them, it's really taking that tough stance as well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. A child needs attachment to biological parents, or they won't be whole. They're going to wake up as an adult with part of themselves, their attachment missing. So if their dad attachment is missing and this was volatile, and that step parent, like you gave the example, was was pushing, pushing, pushing that it'd be this way, you're gonna wake up not trusting men, maybe. And if it was the other way, maybe you're gonna wake up and not trust women. This is long-term damage when we take a stance that we can't have love across two homes. The worst of the worst is when you've got two homes that are loyalty, and they're both fighting to make the kid pick it, even if they're not doing it on purpose, but their systems are both fighting to have the kid pick where it doesn't belong. That's the worst.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Ah, I didn't realize that could happen. That there'd be too loyalty.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Oh my gosh, they're terrible. And the at risk for those kiddos is so much higher because they look at them, fine, great, everyone loves me, but both my parents were were idiots. They were supposed to be protecting my childhood, and I'm just gonna hang out with my friends. And then the kiddos at risk, depending on what his friends are doing, because that is where he feels belonging. Those are gonna be the kiddos in my experience that end up in those kind of gang situations, those situations where look, you guys are gonna keep fighting, I'm not gonna pick, but these guys help me feel belonging, so I'm gonna join with them. Because we all need, it's not just attachment, it's a belonging. Where do I belong? I belong in a place that accepts accepts me. If I have to do it a certain way, whether it's coming from the step parent or the bio, Then I have to choose then. If I want to belong to this system, then I'm going to I think like they do against the other home. It's super sad. It doesn't have to be that way.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Yeah, and I'm hearing the loyalty over the conditional love. And if you see a a a really quick break in part of your family system, that it is a loyalty contract to some degree, and the kids are just getting some developmental needs of belonging and some other needs met. And uh and I and I'm curious in the arc of a step parent, and from your experience, what what's the trajectory of being a step parent? It's a struggle, it's a struggle. I start to build some kind of attachment, it gets better, it gets better, and now I'm fully incorporated. Is there kind of like a an arc of connectivity, sustainability, whatever you want to call it, or does it never get to that place where all this feels really good and integrated and healthy?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

I think again, we're talking about best practice, best hope. With low tension, that's the best outcome. Is that with low tension, that's more possible for that to happen? With moderate to high tension, the the chances go down that that would ever become a place where it would build like that in general. But it depends on the kiddos too. I mean, uh, I'm sure the audience can can look at their own lives. I can certainly look at mine and you can look at yours. When you have a family that goes through life, one kiddo may cut off from you and the other one may be very attached to you. It depends on the the developmental stages when the traumas were happening, um, when these attachment or belonging wounds were happening. It depends on whether they got help. That's why I think that getting knowledgeable help right away, as soon as you're dating, get in there and get some stuff worked out so you know what is yours and what isn't. Uh, somebody that is is knowledgeable with two home systems, they're gonna first of all look at your childhood and see where your wounds are. If you still have triggers for those, we've got to work on those. Because as soon as we put the kids kiddos in there, all those are gonna get high. And then it's really hard to see straight. You start thinking that things, oh, this kiddo is is not respectful. It doesn't follow, he doesn't follow the rules. And you want the bioparent to make them follow the rules so you can feel attached. But the reality is that this might just be harder for you because you have old wounds of feeling rejected. So getting help early, in my my opinion, it's a lot late by the time the kid's resisting. It like all that time that we could have been preventative is we're already here now, now we're in a a fire. It it's on fire. So the preventative is to get help as soon as possible. So that if you want to date, find a therapist that understands two home families, that understands step families, that understands developmental stages of kids and what they're gonna go through and what is normal. And so you could do your work, do your work on your old wounds so you don't get flagged every time something comes up and you know at triggers. I've spent most of my life learning about that and training for that, and I still have triggers that pop up. I just am aware of what it feels like, so I know, oh, that's old, so I can go back and do the work. Um, I think we're not taught that. So again, getting it early on, first step parents for couples is get help right away. There are things out there that you can listen to, but it amazes me how many times a couple will come in and we'll sit down and we'll go over the six challenges, we'll go over the loyalty and the normal for the kid to resist and go really slow. Your job as a step parent is to show up as a friend, show up as an ally, learn about this kiddo, have them learn about you, find things that you have in common and do those once a week. Um, make sure you give room for the bio parent, make sure that relationship is strong because then he'll have room for you as a step parent. So these things are all hand in hand. If he feels like he's not connected to his bio, he's not gonna have room for a step relationship. So we have to do that first, and then we sprinkle in a little bit of how do I get to know you. Doing that is really key, but I can work with a new couple and we know all of that, and we've done all the things. We've sat down and we talked to the kiddos. Hey, I'm gonna propose, we're gonna get married.

The Wedding Day Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 26:33

And then it's astonishing, and I tell them now, and they don't believe me, the wedding day changes everything. And they don't believe me because they've done all the work, right? So it seems like it'll be fine. But just about every time, nine out of ten times, the couple will come back and go, Oh my gosh, what happened? I know we talked about it. I said, Well, what happened is this solidified that my family is changing, there's no going back, and now I have to grieve it. I thought I was doing okay, but now this is real. The wedding day changes everything. And the wedding day, if we move too fast and we want them all to do the sand ceremony and all the kids to to partake in it, if we force that, there's resistance there, there's things that there's a bitterness that can form, there's just these things that are natural, and no matter how much work we do to prevent, it's really also this acceptance of the wedding day is gonna be hard for them. But teaching kiddos and adults that we can we can have grief and loss and still have happiness and excitement as humans we are able to to hold all of that, but we have to kind of be told that that's normal because it doesn't seem normal. It seems like, well, if I'm gonna be sad that my family's not ever gonna be what it was, then I can't really enjoy this. So the wedding day is really an interesting thing in these families. Whether you do the work or not, the wedding day is hard. So I don't know. It's a it's a tough road. In the end, I hear, because your question was kind of aimed at do we ever find this place of of homeostasis where it's peace and we're family. Often in these families, when the kids are gone, then we get to have a honeymoon. Because now it's just if we survive the that part of it, now we get to have this idea where a couple normally has a honeymoon phase before they have kids. In step families, we don't really get that because the phase automatically has this parenting and kiddo and all of that complexity. So when we get to this place of homeostasis and we have arrived, maybe when the kids are gone, we get to grow together like a honeymoon phase. Maybe when the grandkids come, the when I I got together with you, the kid was 14, I'm not really probably gonna grow an attachment. It takes, if he's 14, it might take 14 years. Well, he'll be an adult. If he's two, it might take two years. That attachment is about how many years that they've already attached to their world. It could take that many years. So if you're seven, it could be seven years. If it's fourteen, they may never. But what could happen, here's the bonus, this golden thing that you're looking for in your question, does it happen for us as stepfamilies?

Grandkids And Long-Term Stepfamily Hope

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Sometimes, even if I don't attach that way with kiddos, I just stay an ally with the 14-year-old that came in new to me in my life. When that 14-year-old gets 24 and starts having kids, 25, and now I've got this little step-grandbaby, and the and that adult stepchild looks at me and sees how much I love their child, that's where that happens. So a lot of times it happens with the grandkids. They're able to see that we are loving and kind humans and that we can love, and they get to re-experience us through the love that we have for their grand for their child. So that beautiful happy ending can be there, but it looks different. And to be honest with you, that's what we're looking for when we build a new family, when we're dating. We want to be able to look forward and go, what am I looking for up here? I'm looking for a relationship with these kiddos that they will feel safe to bring their the grandkids to meet. If that's what you want. You have to know what you want. Again, another important point right there. Does your person you're dating want to be a grandparent? Or do they want to get the kids out of the house so they can travel? That's going to be a point of conflictual problems forever in that relationship if you haven't understood what they want in retirement, what they want when the kids are grown. Because if I'm dating somebody that wants to travel the world, that's great if that's what I want to do. But if I'm a person that wants to have a home base and I want to have the kids over every weekend swimming in the pool and hanging out and being a grandparent, that is not going to be a good dating match for you. Because there'll always be this push-pull about what you want in the future. So I think for stepfamilies dating, it's really important to understand what this person wants. Are you dating somebody that never had kids and you want to be a grandparent? That's going to be a value stance that's going to be a problem in your relationship if you don't understand that up front and and are having those conversations. It's almost like we should have a dating guide that says, okay, ask your partner, what do you want to do when you retire? How do you see that? What do you want to do? You never had kids, how do you see kids? What was it like for your grandparents? What was it like for, I mean, really trying to understand, is this next partnership one that's going to carry you through life? I mean, I think that's if you're going to marry, then what purpose do we have in marrying unless we're looking at a long-term relationship? So unless when we're dating, we're not asking those questions, we're still not picking a great mate. Because if your values are tied to your kids and that future grandkids or whatever that is, this is forever, not just when they turn 18. And that that person that you're dating, you really have to understand is that what they want? Are they capable of that? Are they are they healthy enough without their own wounds to be able to realize that you want this forever? If that's what you want.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Some fantastic stuff uh around the relationships and loyalty and all the different combinations of what relationships can look like and what what the end goal looks like. And I love you adding in the part about the grandkids, and sometimes it's just getting there so they can recondition themselves and and rein, I guess, reinvent you, who you are in their head as they see you love their kids. They learn to love you again in a different kind of way. And uh I think that's super profound and great. And the information that you bring is is fantastic in talking about these subjects. I really appreciate that from you. And we are wrapping up now.

Final Takeaways And Ways To Help

SPEAKER_01 33:24

I'm gonna have all your information in the show notes. Is there any last thoughts that you have or anything different that you're working on that you want to let the community know about before we say goodbye?

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Yeah, I think I will always wrap up with low tension in the co-parenting relationship. Get help so it's normalized and you know what to do in these two home systems early on, way early. And if it's moderate to high, get specialized in co-parenting, high conflict. They're two different things, but if you're at least getting to a step family specialist, they should know who to refer you to for a high conflict system. Just get help, get it normalized because it feels wrong when it's not really wrong. It's normal, and we just have different interventions to get through it.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

That is awesome, Steph. And thank you for your time and the research that you're involved in and this technology that you bring to us and opening up this field of two parents and I mean two households and three households, and just the complexities of it. Like we need to be having more of these conversations and people need to be exposed to more of these conversations because this is such a huge miss in our community and creates so much additional heartbreak. And and as you were saying, there's interventions that are accessible and relatively quick, but the more we pile on top of it, the harder we're going to get to that actual intervention when we have the opportunity. So I I love this. I really appreciate you and the topics and uh and your expertise in this. So thank you very much for coming out today.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Thank you. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. What a what a what a great show. So much information, so much stuff. And again, for me, just going back and seeing how intentional I was about getting engaged and talking to people and professionals and really believing as a parent, like this is my decision to make, and the kids don't need to be involved in it, and thinking that I was doing the right thing, but not really understanding developmentally where they are, and that the age doesn't need to really matter, but they're going through all this conflict internally themselves. I could have done it differently. I really, really, really regret that. And sorry that I I hurt my daughters in that way in trying to do the right thing and resourcing myself and having all these professionals, but there was more to learn, and it wasn't available, it wasn't accessible and available as it is right now in this one video. So, God, I hope you get as much out of this as I did. And uh also just to pitch again, we are a 501c3 nonprofit, donate. Stephanie's stuff is in the show notes. Like, share. You can always email me at family disappeared at gmail.com. Love to hear questions, um, nice reflections, negative reflections. It's all welcome. We're just all growing and trying to learn the best that we can. In case no one's told you today, I love you. I'm tired, I'm feeling a little bit emotional, a little vulnerable, seen some of my stuff come up within the show, which happens often, and uh now I can really understand what's happening for me, even doing this piece of service work, and uh super grateful that I get to be here and represent podcast. And uh thanks for coming out and playing in the sandbox. I love you, and I hope to see you around the neighborhood or at a meeting somewhere. Take care.

unknown 36:35

Bye.