Coping With a Parent's New Marriage

First and foremost, I love my parents. Nothing will ever change or replace that. I am thrilled for their new relationships, partner(s), marriage, and now new families. The second thing is my feelings by no means reflect them as parents and their job in raising me.

My parents started seeing new people after their divorce. They entered new relationships and entered the dating scene. A part of me knows they stopped loving each other since I was just a little kid, but they forced themselves to stay together until we were all out of the house. To them, they stopped loving each other decades ago. So, now I'm almost 30 and my parents started new relationships and one my parents even got engaged and married. I now have a step parent, step siblings, step grandparents, and step families.

There's a certain sadness to second weddings that I can't quite explain. A part of it is me wishing the groom and bride were my own parents. Wishing they'd finally get over their problems, ego, miscommunications, and finally find a way to get along and renew their vows. But instead one parent is standing with another human being, their so called "love of my life." The sadness is like PTSD, flashbacks of the failed relationship of my parents, the arguments, the family issues, etc. And so as I walked my parent down the aisle, it was filled with flashbacks, emotions of anger and sadness, but also happiness that they are no longer in that place. That they can now officially put themselves first and choose love. What makes it harder is because it feels as though the happiness I see in my parent on their wedding day was never there in their previous marriage with my other birth parent. The talk of "happily ever after" or "one true love" never existed before as a family unit. And so seeing my parent walk own the aisle with another not only makes me sad but resentful, angry, confused, etc, all the above. It feels as though my childhood was ripped and torn apart, as if everything that happened now didn't matter. That's the resentment part.

I feel as though I've lost my parents, not necessarily to another person, but lost them because they are off finding their happiness. I know I'm happy for them, but deep down it's a sadness to see your family split apart, go their own ways, not just emotionally but physically away from each other too. A part of me is scared for my parents, questions of, "what if this is a mistake?" "what if they need me and I'm not there?" "What if they make a mistake they can't come back from?" All of these questions linger in my head. I fear for my parents, I fear for my younger siblings, I fear for the change in my family. All of this just anxiety filling up the space in my head.

After the wedding, one of which I was drunk for the entirety of it, I came back to an empty house. No mom, no dad, no siblings this time, nothing but the quietness and sadness of how my family got here. Both my parents and siblings in completely different states. I worry more for them then I do for myself. I find myself alone. I'm now starting a new job, still in grad school, still running a business, hoping to move to a new house, and for real this time closing this chapter in my family. After my dad moving and having to trash everything from my childhood, to seeing my mom remarry, my dad enter a new relationship, meeting step siblings, I now must learn to close this chapter in my life and move forward. Moving forward is important... Letting go is important.

A few things they don't teach you growing up is how to cope, as an adult child, to your parents' divorce. They don't teach you that the toxicity you experienced as a child can affect your adult life. They don't teach you that your trauma can hold you back from being at your happiest. They don't teach you how to cope with re-marriages. They don't teach you how to love another person when the only love you've seen growing up is a failed one. And as an adult child, we understand the complex dynamic that go into relationships, which sometimes make it hard to accept all that was, is, and will be. We know our parents deserve happiness, sometimes we feel like no one is good enough, and we've seen our parents at their worst, their best, and their most vulnerable. I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, even when in the moment we may not see it. And so, maybe my parent's new marriage will teach me the extent of love for another family. It will teach me the kindness I must show to my step parent, step family, step siblings, and the open mind I need to accept my parent's new marriage and life. It will teach me patience, to water two whole new families into one pot.

And so here's to adult children seeing their parent remarry... Give it time. They are unlearning everything from their past relationship and hoping to start anew for the second time. Like us, they too make mistakes. They too will continue to make mistakes. And it's ok that we are upset. It's ok that we feel angry or worried, or that we have to lecture our own parents into making better life choices. And to parents who have adult children, check up on them too. They are still your child no matter how old they are, remind them that you still think of them, that you still miss them, that you still care for them...

TFL HMONG SHAMAN