When should I consider counseling for my family if I want to remarry?
Ideally, in the ideal world, you and your new partner would go to someone of who knows about step families to do some pre-step family counselling because you are going to be encountering dynamics and issues that you never encountered in a nuclear family. The movement of a step family is completely different and when you got married the first time, there were no children and so you had time to, have your time together as a couple and get to know each other and then children came. In the step-family the children are there so you do not have that honeymoon period at all. In fact you have more stress in the beginning and you need to understand that and how it is going to impact the dynamic in your household so that you will know what the issues are. So I would say for you and your partner sooner or rather than later “you know” understand the norms of the step-family, understand its own cycle is going to be very very different. When you know it then you have a place to have a dialogue from and it should stop some the arguing and help you to develop some more problem-solving skills. When you are in the step-family, again if you know the issues, and you could develop empathy for everybody in the system, then probably you can reduce a lot of this tension yourself. But when you are in the step-family and over time one of the children really starts acting out or becoming very very hostile or the fighting is erupting almost to divorce then it is absolutely the time. I would like to see you to get your symmetrisation before the, is it that would be much helpful to you so you do not go any blind.
