Dear Therapist:

How do I deal with my husband’s first family?

Both I and my husband are married for the second time after losing our first spouses.

My kids, who are all married, accept my new husband with open arms.

Half of his children, on the other hand, who are married with children and grandchildren, reject his remarriage and stopped talking with us and prevent his grandchildren, even those few who are already married, from having contact with us.

Our rav tried to intervene but they refused to mitigate.   Any thoughts on the matter?

Response:

Unfortunately, there are often conflicts when various close-knit groups, with their individual needs, insecurities and idiosyncrasies, are thrust into a new social situation.  When a couple marries, it is difficult for those two people to adjust to one another’s personality; it is all the more difficult for entire families to adjust to a changing dynamic. 

I obviously cannot offer specific advice without having significantly more information.  I don’t know why your husband’s children reject your marriage and are not speaking with you.  They may have realistic concerns, or they may feel threatened in some way.  Although you might feel entirely justified in your perspective, your husband’s children probably do as well.  As long as each side continues to focus only on the sense that they are in the right, the other side will tend to do the same.  This will continue to polarize the two sides, making it continually more difficult to repair fractured relationships. 

There is likely little to nothing that you can do to directly change their viewpoint.  You can only work on changing your side of the issue.  One way to begin defusing a contentious situation is to remove the righteousness, indignation and anger from your part of the equation.  I imagine that your husband’s children recognize that your marriage will not dissolve simply because they are not happy with it.  Their goal, therefore, is not to change the actual situation.  Perhaps they simply want their father (and possibly you) to validate their fears and insecurities.  For instance, if they’re afraid that you are trying to replace the memory of their mother, they may be looking for their father’s reassurance that this will not happen.  If they’re concerned that they will become less important to their father, they may require similar validation of these feelings.  If you can identify and address their emotions, you have a good chance of bringing the families closer.

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