Preparing for Marriage: Why It's Important in a Remarriage with Children

Preparing for marriage, especially a remarriage with children, is one of the most important steps you can take to protect your remarriage from a re- divorce. I get asked a lot, "Why do we need to prepare for marriage this time?"

There are two main reasons why people incorrectly assume preparation isn't necessary when it's a remarriage with children. Let's look at both:

I'm already a parent so I'm sure my step kids and I will get along

• Parenting styles may be different. It's not fair to suddenly expect step children to accept your authority and get used to your way of parenting. They've never experienced it before. If your parenting styles are significantly different this may lead to stress in your marriage due to power struggles.
• This family is different. It's not a nuclear family (mom, dad and their biological children). Children in a step family may still be grieving over the loss of their previous family.

  Step children will almost always choose their biological family members over you. It's important for you to realize in a remarriage with children, your marrying their parent means you are removing the possibility of their nuclear family ever reconciling.

• Rivalry is more common. Relationships between biological members of the step family will naturally be stronger. This may cause resentment between the kids. If the kids aren't happy about the new union, they won't accept you with open arms like your own children do.

  This feeling of rejection is usually a big shock to new step parents. Just another reason why prepaing for marriage, especially a remarriage with children is such an essential action in having a successful step family.

I've already been married before

• There's baggage that needs to be dealt with. Both you and your partner have been in other relationships before. When we get hurt in relationships, we change in order to protect ourselves from getting hurt like that again.

  Paying attention to how we've changed is an important step in preparing for marriage, so that baggage doesn't become a stumbling block in your remarriage with children.

  An example of this is a woman I worked with whose first husband made her financially dependent on him and then left her. She was forced to find a job and become finacially independent. She later found a new partner who told her that when they marry he'd like her to stay home to parent all of their children. She became very uncomfortable and seriously thought about ending the relationship even though he'd never hurt her before.

• It's important to figure out why your previous marriage was not successful. A lot of people jump the gun here and just start blaming their ex spouse. They may have had a lot to do with why the marriage ended, but your ex is not 100% responsible! A marriage is made up of 2 people and it takes 2 people for a marriage to end.

These are just a sampling of the hundreds of reasons for making the choice to take part in preparing for marriage. If nothing else, listen to these statistics:

• 75% of divorced people remarry.
• Only 20% of remarrying couples participate in any type of preparation for marriage.
• At least 60% of remarriages end in re- divorce.

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