In Part 1 of our interview with Yvonne Kelly, Certified Stepfamily Counselor and co-founder (with her husband, Rick) of The Step and Blended Family Institute, Yvonne talked about “step-dating”–a term used to describe singles, single parents, and dating couples with children in the mix who are contemplating a serious commitment– the importance of casual dating before step-dating, and what to consider before introducing your children to someone new.  In Part 2, she discussed the challenges facing the “non-parent” half of a new dating couple, and she offered some advice for dealing with resistant exes.

Here in the third and final part of the interview, Yvonne talks about balancing children’s needs with parents’ needs, and she offers advice to those who desire successful remarriage:

Yvonne: We’ve got to take a long view [when it comes to relationships].  When I remind couples that the reality is there is a 60-70% divorce rate in the US in second marriages, they say, “You’re just trying to make us fearful.” I say, no, it’s just a fact. It’s not a scary irrational fear. It’s a fact that it happens, so give yourself the best chance.

I do have a real soft spot of course for all the single people who are dating with children.  The checklist [in the Institute's step-dating course] is really good because it really helps people to think about all those things that they probably need to start thinking about, to either decide whether they want this kind of relationship, how they are going to navigate through it, how are they going to talk about their own needs while recognizing that you are agreeing to go into a situation where the kids’ needs are going to be probably at the top of the list for a good long time.  Your needs are important, but you have to embrace that notion, and not think that once I’m involved then I’ll start to re-orchestrate this so it’s not so imbalanced. [You have to ask yourself,] “What am I willing to do with my partner to work this through, and am I willing to take the time to make it good?”

That’s really what we were trying to do–raise a lot of awareness about some of the things that people don’t think about, or some of the things that are on their minds, but they just have no idea where to start, and then what the next steps would be.

CoPa101: Also, it’s not just about a childless person entering a dating relationship with someone with children, but even the divorcing or separating couple themselves have to take a step back, and their need for revenge or their pain or whatever is weighing on them has to take somewhat of a backseat, so that they can put their kids first. How successful have you been in convincing parents to embrace that perspective?

Yvonne: I probably take a moderate, mild-of-the-road approach compared to what I hear out there in lots of other venues where people talk about this. I have colleagues who say absolutely, all the children’s needs must come first, and I’m kind of there, but I also know that that can be really manipulated and misconstrued and end up being the ruination of a lot of what could be good relationships.  Then, there are those who say “couple first.”  Actually, there are more and more people saying that: If the couple relationship doesn’t have a real high priority in the new family, then it won’t work anyway.

What we’re also talking about is there’s a difference between dating, and a serious relationship and a remarriage.  As you move along, the couple does have to take more of a priority in the relationship, otherwise you just have these two people on separate tracks, and one’s only worried about the children, and the other one is desperately wanting to have a relationship. It doesn’t seem like there’s any connection there. So, in a dating relationship, it’s a good testing time for singles just to get a chance to actually see what does this mean. It’s sounds like the right thing to say–”kids come first”–but it’s different to say that and say you agree with that, than to be in a relationship where on a daily, weekly, monthly basis the child’s need takes the precedence, and a lot of your needs don’t get met the way you would otherwise get them met.

So how successful am I? I get everybody agreeing with it at first, although some of the single people kind of go, “Well, wait a minute…what about me?” My answer is that the children’s needs and the children’s wants are two different things. So, there are certain things that we can all agree on, and [in the Institute's step-dating resources], I’ve made a list just so it’s very, very clear and not confusing for people.

There are certain things that we know that kids need. There are other things that they want and that their parents want to give them, but they are not essential to their health and well-being.  But, a lot of biological parents of divorce, have decided that they need to make up a lot of things to their children, so a lot of needs get kind of sequestered into one, or wants turn into needs.  So you have the biological parent saying, “Whatever the kid needs, comes first”–but really some of those needs aren’t really needs–at the expense of the couple.

That’s the conversation I have to work people through because the kids’ absolute needs are needing to be met, but we also have to have the couple’s relationship at the very center of this family where they get to determine together what is this going to look like,  and how do we get our needs met as well? Everybody has needs. No step-parent is going to stay in a situation where they are number five for the foreseeable future. The biggest reason people come to counseling is because the biological parent is tired of being caught in the middle, and the step-parent is tired of coming in third, fourth or fifth.

It’s kind of a convoluted answer, but I’m uncomfortable with when people say, “Oh, the kids need to come first. Nothing else matters.” Or the couple has to be first. I don’t think that the two are mutually exclusive. A couple who really agrees that, “Our relationship is an absolute priority, and we have to nurture that, and we have to be a team and we’re going to be setting the tone together”–that’s a more permanent kind of remarriage situation.

Because up until then, the biological parent’s priority responsibility is still to their children. When they’re dating, they still haven’t made that big leap to saying, “We’re going to be a family now.” So in those cases, we really are trying to say, “Guard the needs and rights of the children even more so as one person.” The other person can help, but when you make yourself a new family,  the parent has chosen someone else who they think they can actually work with and build this family and have shared mutual responsibility for what it’s going to look like.

That, to me, doesn’t have to preclude getting the children’s needs met. That’s the best way to get the children’s needs met.

CoPa101: By having a strong couple.

Yvonne: So many couples come to me and say, “The first three years, it was all about the kids, and we had no relationship. We’ll get to that when things are all sorted out.” Well, that doesn’t happen, so it really has to be the two things together.  I make a lot of effort to have a really clear conversation about that because I don’t want to say that the children’s needs come first all the time. It could be misconstrued such that a biological parent [can say,] “I get to make all the decisions cause I know what they need, and you’re just going to have to put up and suck up.”  Meanwhile, the other spouse’s position is “But that’s not even a need.”

Kids don’t need to go to dance four times a week. They don’t need to have everything they want at the exclusion of someone else having. You have to split that up in families anyway. Not everybody gets everything they think they need.

CoPa101: Teaching kids the difference between a need and a want–that’s important. A lot of adults don’t know the difference either.

Yvonne: I think we struggled with that too. Here I was just trying to be so accommodating, and I thought the best way for me to move into this is just to allow Rick to continue to do everything the way he wants to do it, so I didn’t say a whole lot, and for everything the girls need to be met because eventually that will be the best way to do it. By doing that, I set myself up for an unbelievably difficult kind of scenario to continue with it because, after four years, I’m thinking, “Wait a minute…my needs aren’t getting met.”

CoPa101: That can create a resentment that undermines everything. This is one of those full circles to what you said at the beginning of our conversation which is that these conversations need to happen during the step-dating phase because it lays the groundwork.

Yvonne: That’s hopefully what happens.  But I find a lot of dating couples just having so much issue already with, “I just don’t like the way she parents. I don’t like the way he parents, and I really don’t agree with it.” I say, “That’s good that you know that.  Let’s talk about that now because down the road, there will be some room for you to have some input, but at the end of the day, those are that person’s children, and if you’re really that uncomfortable now, and really completely incapable of having some tolerance and flexibility around how someone else raises their children, this could be a real red flag for you.  So maybe you want to find someone who doesn’t have children, or someone who has the same idea about how to raise children.”

Our values get reflected in out parenting style, and parenting styles are very much who we are. We can concede on rules and some chore things; I think we can make some concessions around some of those things.  But who we are as a person gets reflected in how we parent. That doesn’t change a whole lot, though sometimes people think it will get better.

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You can find more good advice about step-dating to successful remarriage, as well as a host of other resources, at the Step and Blended Family Institute website.