In the blender – traps for second marriages with children
Have you seen the statistics for second marriage failures? Try these from the US National Center for Health Statistics (2002):
Second marriage failure rates for women in the US:
After 10 years of remarriage, the probability of that marriage ending is
- 32 percent for women with no children at remarriage
- 40% for women with children, but none of whom were reported as unwanted
- 44% for women with children, and any of whom were reported as unwanted (slightly higher, at 47 percent, among white women)
The presence of children from a previous marriage for either partner increases the chance of this second marriage failing. These statistics are replicated in most western cultures, with second marriage failure rates seemingly higher than first marriage stats, particularly where children are involved. Clearly, other factors contribute to second marriage breakdown, though most of this have similar hallmarks to the issue of children.
You see, our brains are good at spotting patterns, and applying assumptions. Further, our brains actively seek evidence for held assumptions and beliefs, preventing us from seeing the complete picture.
For ‘blended families’ – second marriages where children are present from the previous relationship of one or both of the partners – the assumptions, judgements and beliefs in play can erode the primary relationship. All the more so given that often these assumptions and beliefs are not obvious. Some of the traps here include:
- “Love me, love my kids”…I must love my partner’s children as much or in the same way as I love my own. Once you uncover this assumption and give each other permission to feel differently about own and step children, then the shackles of expectation are released. I would argue it a biological condition to love your own child at least in a different way, if not a more intense way.
- “Love availability” is limited, not abundant. Because attention is limited we sometimes assume our love is equally limited. In reality, we have, or can have limitless love for each member in a family, with that love being possibly quite diverse in nature and type. A key question for discussion or reflection: how can I distribute my attention so that love/respect is felt unconditionally.
- Conditional vs unconditional: particularly prevalent in the step-parent relationship is the limiting/undermining element of conditionality. “If you behave then…”, “If you respect me then …”. Strong setp-parent/step-child relationships are built on unconditionality: in spite of you not yet connecting with me (or doing what I want etc) I will listen to you, respect you and believe in you. Quite literally, children today live by “if you don’t listen to me, why should I listen to you?”. Listening is the key here. Listen, don’t judge or assume.
The secrets to building a lasting blended family sit with the following list:
- Accept ‘love diversity” – it’s OK to love biological and step kids differently.
- Start by unconditionally respecting your step-kids. Listen to them, believe in them. Most often, unconditional respect will grow into unconditional love.
- Know how to stay calm under pressure.
- Be aware of your attentional biases
- Have a consistent plan of behaviour expectation that you as co-parents talk about, agree upon and implement
- Accept conflict as it occurs – in spite of it being uncomfortable, when it is managed through a calm, listening and observational position, it is the indicator of growth. Conflict will occur, how you manage it is the key.
- Talk with your partner – ask yourselves what are we assuming, what are we not seeing, what are we judging?
Blended families are like a plane – some have both parents up the font as true co-pilots, some have one as the pilot and the other as passenger, and some even have the kids flying the plane. The only lasting option is the first – which one are you?
Ten ways to kill a conversation …
There are many ways that we can disengage another buy applying conversation-killing habits. Oftentimes we don’t even know that we have reduced the engagement. The secret element of connection with another person is attention. Not just any attention – authentic attention on them for them.
Each of the conversation killers listed below act in some way to drain your available attention, or allow you to use the available attention for yourself, not the other person.
Killer #1: Distraction: attention on your own thinking, activities or needs.
Killer #2: Assumption: assuming where the conversation is going, what they need or finishing sentences for them.
Killer #3: Judgement: making value judgements on them, their thinking or actions
Killer #4: Interruption: not allowing them to finish
Killer #5: Not listening to them: listening for your chance to say something, listening to yourself
Killer #6: I have the answer: a common form of assumption
Killer #7: You must be wrong: a common form of judgement
Killer #8: Total Control: you need to steer where the conversation goes
Killer #9: Dominate: you do more talking than listening
Killer #10: Focus on yourself: you are more concerned for your outcomes than theirs
Ways to combat these conversation killers can be found in the book “The Success Zone“.
The irony of influence…
Most people I know would like to think that they are influential. Anything from being able to influence the decisions of their children to wanting to influence whole populations. You may not want to be a President or Prime Minister, but what would being able to influence others more effectively be worth to you? How would it change your world?
The thing is, the more you try to influence, the less you actually influence. Influence is passive, not active. It emerges more from who you are and what you do (which stems from who you are) than what you say. Take, as an example, the person who has influenced me most this year. Matt Church is a Sydney based entrepreneur, author and public speaker. His message, his content is first class. His influence comes not from the quality of his content, but his attitudes and behaviours. Indeed, his content is validated by his authenticity. Through this combination of a powerful message and high integrity, I learn much more than his content. I learn from his generosity, from his family and community orientation, and I learn from his commitment to adding value to others.
Your most influential teacher will have had this dual ‘channel’ of connection: great content/content delivery and great people engagement skills. Like Matt, the clarity of integrity allows them to listen, believe in, unconditionally respect (or love) and challenge. One of the quickest and most effective ways to create ‘influence capital’ with others is to listen well. We use optimistic and observational listening as training models to help others re-learn their listening skills for greater influence.
Influence can only be achieved by consistency, integrity and unconditional respect. Trying to influence is really only coercion. Are you a coercer or an influencer?
The Success Zone publishing updates
The Success Zone
Our new book, “The Success Zone” is in its final processes of publishing and should be available for sale later this month (Oct 09).
Pre orders are available at http://www.gr8education.com/book/thesuccesszone.html
Some thoughts about insights and visions
I am writing this on a plane between England and Australia. I have been in England doing a mix of work and marketing, essentially talking with a lot of people about our work and testing new ways of both articulating what we do and delivering it. As this was happening I began to get an inkling of some major new insights stirring in my mind. I emailed my partners and said what was happening and that I was confident that on the flight home these insights would crystallise. I wrote this because my experience over at least 15 such flights in the last 3 years is that this always happens, insights crystallise on long haul trips. I am writing this now after some of the biggest insights of the last 5 years have appeared, fully formed in my mind.
Coincidentally, before this flight I went into my daughter’s bedroom looking for a book to read on the flight and my daughter, like me, is an avid and wide reader. I picked up Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception” which contains two essays, one about Huxley’s experimentation with the mind altering drug mescalin and the second about how we open our minds to new thoughts or visions. At the risk of simplifying too much, he argues that our minds are open to new thoughts (amongst other conditions e.g. low sugar through fasting) when the oxygen level falls or the carbon dioxide level rises in our brains. This occurs, for example, through singing or chanting such as achieved in churches (when chanting we tend to breathe out more than we breathe in thus depleting our oxygen levels) or, as many traditions do, through meditating at the top of a mountain … or in a plane.
As a trade off between hull strength and human survivability, planes are designed to have an internal atmospheric pressure equivalent to being at about 8,000 feet above sea level once they are sealed and up in the air.
So, unbeknownst to me I have been putting myself 20 odd hours at a time in the perfect state to have new thoughts, visions and insights, just after I have had a range of new inputs, ideas and experiences. The perfect conditions to crystallise new thinking. On this particular flight everything has been enhanced as it is an old 747 with no backseat screens and, in any case, my whole audio/visual display controls are not working, including the overhead light! So I am sitting in the dark half dozing, half thinking as insights form in my head.
I wonder if this works for other people as well!
Listening is the Key
Most of our listening hard-wiring is set to interact autobiographically. In other words, when we listen, we are listening for ourselves, not for the speaker. Our listening for ourselves could be still noble in intent – listening to detail to solve the problem and help the speaker by telling them what to do for instance. Or, it could be that our autobiographical listening is truly for ourselves: listening to the conversation to be able to trump the speaker. The thing is, we are not wired, taught or shown how to listen for the listener.
Think of a time that you were in the presence of a person that just listened to you. No judgement, not opinion, no solution. How did you feel? What did you notice about your thinking? Has this, indeed, ever happened to you?
Now think of a time when you needed time and space to think, and someone to listen, but your listener hurried your thinking, proffered solutions and answers and gave you their opinion. Does this happen often for you? How do you react to this circumstance? Most would say that, while this is the more common outcome, the effectiveness towards learning, growth and an eventual solution is reasonably low.
The secret, as outlined by David Rock in Quiet Leadership, is to listen with the generous expectation that the answer will emerge from the speaker. For many this is a quantum leap in listening purpose. The urge to give the solution is hard-wired and habitual. Yet, when one steps away from analysis and just quietly observes, without judgement and solution seeking, the speaker is far more enabled to engage with their own thinking, potential and future.
Listen deeply, to the words, the pitch, the language, the body, the face, the eyes and to the thinking.
Listen with a quiet mind.
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