Family Disappeared
Have you lost contact with your child? What about your parent, or grandparent, sibling, or any other family member? You might be experiencing estrangement, alienation, or erasure. All of these terms speak to the trauma and dysfunction that so many families face.
A family is a complex living and breathing system. Each member plays a role in the family dynamic. When families carry generational trauma and/or experience new trauma, challenges, or dysfunction, this can result in a break in the family system.
These reaction strategies are habitual and very often interwoven into every aspect of how our family interacts.
Hi! I´m Lawrence Joss and I’ve learned that I need to cultivate a spiritual, emotional, and physical relationship with myself in order to have healthy relationships with others and everything in my life. It is my mission to help you create and nurture that relationship with yourself first and provide you with tools that might help you heal and strengthen family relationships.
This podcast is an opportunity to explore our healing journey together through the complexities of our families.
Welcome to the FAMILY DISAPPEARED podcast.
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Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com
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Family Disappeared
Bridging the Divide: Relationships in the Shadow of Parental Erasure PART 1 - Episode 34
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Have you ever wondered how the threads of a new family are woven together amidst the remnants of the past? On this heartfelt episode of Family Disappeared, we traverse the intricate path of remarriage and step-parenting. As your host, Lawrence Joss, I share a slice of my own life, revealing the profound impact of these transitions on children, and the power of inclusivity and understanding. Our panel of parents, including Steve and Alain, peel back the layers of their experiences to offer invaluable insights into the delicate process of fostering new bonds while nurturing existing ones.
Strap in for a raw look at the emotional upheaval that comes with reconnecting with children from whom you've become estranged. Steve and Alain open up about their steps toward healing the wounds of parental alienation, from the tentative beginnings of email communication to the poignant joy and sorrow of witnessing their children's life milestones from the sidelines. Their stories lay bare the tough reality of mending parent-child relationships, navigating financial discussions, and the often-unspoken struggles that come with these efforts.
But the journey doesn't end there; understanding parental alienation can be a transformative moment for many. Listen to Alain and Steve share their tales of confusion and guilt, and how a newfound awareness has guided them towards recovery. We examine the lifeline that is community support, and the integration of alienation awareness in counselling practices. This episode is a testament to the resilience of families, the compassion of new partners, and the profound journey towards healing and reconciliation.
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Navigating Remarriage and Parental Alienation
Speaker 1And for me personally , my relationship , like I heard the , this idea related to me a lot , that I wasn't fully present , that so much of my emotions were wrapped up in the kid and and my partner would be . When is it my turn ? When do I get all of you ? When do I get all of your presence , emotionally and spiritually ? And I was a really challenging part of our relationship . There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater . Those days are the inspiration for this podcast . This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us . Healing ourselves emotionally , spiritually and physically is paramount to this journey . From this place of grounding , we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships . We can engage people from an integrated and resource place . This is a journey of coming home to ourselves . In today's episode we'll start to explore some of these issues . Let's begin the healing journey today . Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast . Hi , my name is Lawrence Dawson . Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast . And today we have a great show , quen and we're actually going to have a panel of parents on the show today and we're going to be discussing some little different nuances in relationship , on being remarried , on having a step parent involved , what that looks like , what are the dynamics within the family . You know , these are things that we need to be discussing because they're really important and we've been talking about a lot of great stuff . But really digging into , what does it look like when you get remarried , what are the effects on your relationship with your partner and your spouse , whoever that person might be , and what's their relationship like with the kids or not like with the kids , and what kind of baggage does that bring in ? So I think this is going to be a provocative episode with some really really great insights and I hope you enjoyed it . And if you're new to the show , welcome . It's great to have you here and got a lot of great content out there already . If you haven't checked it out , please check it out and please , uh remember to like subscribe wherever you're watching and listening whatever , like that . We are a 501 C3 . There's a donate button . There's also a bunch of great resources in the show notes , so one of them is to the 12-SCP program . That's free and fantastic way to find some community . There's a family whole project and a plethora of other stuff . So that's enough out of me Like let's jump in and see what happens .
Speaker 1It's such a complex question when you're married and getting divorced and then people start dating and having relationships and possibly get married again . And one of the experiences that I don't know if I shared before if I talk about it very often is I was married and for me I was really intentional that I never introduced my kids to anyone that I dated and over a course of six years I introduced them for one person and had some really negative feedback and I landed up you know I'm partnering with that person and then I introduced them to what led it up to my second wife and for a while there it was okay . For a while there we had a really couple of great experiences with my two young and daughters not really my oldest daughter . This is before everything completely broke apart again and at a point I decided that you know I'm going to be married a second time would be a great idea and I spoke to professionals , I spoke to my sponsor with in the program and other mentors that I had and this whole discussion about me being an adult and this is an adult decision . I don't really get my kids to sign off on this and that's what I went into this proposal with .
Speaker 1And what happened for me is when I proposed to my second wife , my middle daughter at that time stopped talking to me . That was kind of like the impetus and my youngest daughter said , hey , I might need to take a break , but I was able to get her to come eat people coffee and you kind of like mended that hurdle and it didn't turn into full on alienation . But with my middle daughter I would say if I was to do it again , I would have sat down and have a conversation with her and not to get her permission , but just to make sure she understood what was happening in my life and decisions that I was making , the way that I was resourcing myself and include her nervous system on this transition . And I didn't take into account what a devastating effect that I would have on my child's nervous system Me getting me married . And from my perspective it looked like she had to absorb a lot of the energy within the family system , especially from my ex-wife , because I was getting remarried and at that point she had to pick a side .
Speaker 1And that might not be what happened . That's just just my perspective and either way I would say getting into a new marriage . Yeah , I would have liked to handle it differently and I had a tremendous amount of resources and I thought I was making a really phenomenal decision . And in retrospect and for folks out there , which might be a really wonderful thing to hear is like my intent was to be a really great father and to handle this in a really spiritual and emotionally useful way and I ended up creating a home . I didn't see the impact zone beyond my actions and I would change that .
Speaker 1And that's a rough segue into this conversation , which has a lot of great parts to it and I think you're going to find really interesting and it's also really really useful piece of information for anyone that's in that new relationship or possibly new partnership that they're going to venture on . So with that , I would say remember , like share , tell people about this great journey with these couple folks that are coming on and let's jump into it and see what they have to say . Gentlemen , thank you for coming out today to join a panel and talk about some of your experiences with parental alienation , estrangement , erasure , disconnection , whatever terminology you use and we're going to be jumping into some really cool topics today around what it's like to have a new partner , possibly a new family , and then how some of those interactions relate back and are affected by this pathology as well . So I'm going to ask each of you to just introduce yourself . So let's start with you . La , how would you like to introduce yourself to the community ?
Speaker 3Well , my name is Alain and well , I guess I can now consider myself as in the past I was and eliminated that because I'm the process of reunification with my son . Yeah , so with this is just has been going on for a couple of years and now things are looking up with my son and I .
Speaker 1That's wonderful to hear and welcome to the show . And just for clarification , how old is your son , la , and how was he ? He's 25 and this started when he was roughly the alienation process or the distance .
Speaker 3the distanciation started gradually over the years after I separated with his mom , so let's say a good 10 years or even more .
Speaker 1Fantastic . Thank you for that clarification and , steve , can you introduce yourself to the community please ?
Speaker 2Sure , this is Steve .
Reconnecting With Alienated Children
Speaker 2I am an alienated dad to a 24 year old daughter and an 18 year old son , and it's been ongoing limited communication with with both of my children , although there has been some change in recent months , with some communication with my son regarding college experiences and some communication with my daughter when I got an invitation to a recent wedding .
Speaker 1Wonderful , steven , and welcome to the show , and it sounds like stuff is moving and it also sounds like it's really challenging , and that's definitely going to be part of our conversation today . So we're going to get started on some questions here , and you both expressed in your introduction how you have been going through alienation , estrangement , you know this connection for quite a while and that there's some different things that are happening in your life . So I'm actually gonna start with you first , steve . You mentioned that you're just starting to connect with your son a little bit now , like what was the extremes and what does it kind of look like now ? If you can just give us like a quick overview of what that would look like with your son and then with your daughter as well , Sure .
Speaker 2So I had limited contact with my son starting in September of 2021 , and that there were a bunch of circumstances behind that , but it turned into no contact in March of 2022 , and that no contact continued for about I guess it was 15 or 16 months , until most recently in July , when my ex had asked to communicate about expenses for college and I requested that , or I told my ex that I would be communicating directly with my son about those issues , and so started up an email communication . It actually started out into reunification sessions with the counselor and then turned into back and forth email communication about college expenses , and then it's turned into an ongoing , every other week communication via email , maybe about just what he's experiencing , and trying to be as useful and helpful as I can in that regard . I only have communication through email . I don't have access . I do have his cell phone number , but I don't use it because I haven't been given permission to use that phone number yet . So the only way I have contact is through email at this point .
Speaker 1Wonderful Stephen , and just tell us a little bit about your daughter . And there's a lot of stuff you mentioned there about money , about consent , about telephone number and access and we'll get . We'll circle back to that and touch into that later in the show , but roughly you know what's your experience with your daughter , how long has it been and what does it look like today ?
Speaker 2So with my daughter .
Speaker 2When my ex and I separated at , my daughter was 13 , and we were initially in temporary orders we were it was a 50-50 custody arrangement but my daughter I was told by my ex that my daughter did not want to come to my house and so I made the decision at that point , rather than sort of getting the issue , I decided to allow she was 13 , almost 14 , I decided to allow her to make that decision and she chose really not to come to my house and so that was kind of I went to all her , you know , all her high school events and then even into college , went to all her college events , whether you know , for different activities , but I really had very limited contact .
Speaker 2It would occur mostly at events or on holidays or birthdays or that kind of thing , and that went on up until very recently , all the way through . I thought it would change after high school once she moved out and got on her own and was away from home , but unfortunately it didn't really change once she went to college and finished grad school , and so then recently I just had some communication where she let me know I guess I should go back in September of 2021 , I actually sent an email to my daughter saying that I wanted to change in our relationship and I actually wanted to have a deeper and more connected relationship . That letter was interpreted in a different way and then communication was cut off pretty completely until recently when she let me know where her wedding was and what time and place and said that if I wanted to attend I could , and so of course I went and attended my daughter's wedding , but more as a bystander than a participant .
Speaker 1Thank you for that , Steven , and then again , so many nuances there in going to a wedding and just being a participant and all the challenges that come along with that , which we will hopefully have time to dig into the show as well . And , Elaine , can you tell us a little bit about how long it was that you had disconnected from your son and what it looks like now ?
Speaker 3My story sounds a lot like Steve's , where after separation , we had 50-50 custody . He was supposed to come and live with me . I think it was , if I remember correctly , once one week with me or two weeks with me and then the equal part with his mom , but over time it gradually dwindled to weekends , and then one day on the weekend , or then after that one night , and ultimately nothing . And so with time there was just this distance that was installed between us , but I was always there , present for his activities . He was an avid athlete , a basketball player there all the time .
Speaker 1And how long was it that you didn't really have much contact and then you're going through this new phase of growth and reconnection . Just give us some a little bit of context for that so the audience can understand .
Speaker 3Well see , the contact dwindled and it took about 10 years , I guess , for it to really come to a point where there was little contact . For example , if I called him , he would respond a month later , a month and a half , two months later via text or call me back . I guess it got worse after I remarried with my new spouse and eventually it started to get better . For the last couple of months , like the last three , four months , it started to here , he started to opening up and wanted to reach out . So the whole process is on the span of 10 , 12 years easily .
Speaker 1Thank you . Thank you for that and we're going to get into some of the relationships and what it's like to be married and have a step parent involved in the process and how that affects everything . But before we do , you know , we're all part of the same community , which is parental alienation anonymous , which is a free 12 step group for any parents , grandparents or children or siblings , anyone else that's struggling with this pathology . And my question is , as you're going through this process where you had very little or no connection , and now you're starting to have connection , how has recovery influenced what's happening with your child and with your life in general ? And I'm going to start that question with you , la , first
Parental Alienation and Recovery Journey
Speaker 1, please .
Speaker 3Recovery for me really started when I found out about the phenomenon of parental alienation . Before that I really did not understand what was going on . I had my hypotheses , I had pieces of the puzzle that really didn't make sense . But it really started to make sense three years ago , before COVID , I by chance found an article on parental alienation . I live in Canada and here there's a university that is that has a program on this phenomenon , and that's how I started understanding what was going on .
Speaker 3For me , finding about the phenomenon of parental alienation was an eye opener . It just allowed me to finally understand and put the puzzle pieces that I had in my hand that I could not fit together into a coherent whole . And after I've started reading on the research and literature on the phenomenon , I started looking for a support group . And I found a support group which is PAAorg , and with that I connected with other parents that were in the same situation . And when that happened it just well for me . It just allowed me just to put away that heavy weight that I had for so many years to find that other people were in the same boat . That was so liberating . So for me that is what the support group of parental alienation brought to me .
Speaker 1Thank you . Thank you for that , ale and Steve . What has recovery looked like for you and the support group and has it been useful and what's changed with it in your life ?
Speaker 2Yeah , that's a great question , Lawrence and gosh . There's so many parts to that , you know . I think , like Ale , I was also confused about how things continued to a relationship where I was , you know , a dad that was very connected to both my children , how it sort of gradually was unraveling and there was more disconnection and I attributed it initially to all to my fault in the ending of the marriage relationship I had that this was just what happens to . I strayed from my marriage and my explanation to myself was that this is just what happens . This is sort of the penalty that comes with those kind of situations and those kind of decisions . And then that was my explanation and it was .
Speaker 2It was hard for me . I was in a kind of a place of guilt and shame mixed with how do I fix this ? How do I reconnect ? And I was working with a counselor and the counselor was talking to me and she said you know , it sounds to me like you're kind of in a cycle of thinking that's not not not leaving you in a particularly healthy place .
Speaker 2Might I offer this organization ? And she actually mentioned parental alienation , anonymous , and she is a very , very experienced trauma counselor , family of origin counselor , pm melody counselor , and and I got that resource and I literally just took it and the next day I looked up the organization and I immediately started going to gosh . For the first few weeks I think I went to I don't know 10 meetings , 12 meetings every week for three or four weeks , and I just was so desperate for support and was trying to rationally make sense of it and I realized that in these meetings there's people just like me and that the alienation was not a result of what anybody particularly did to end a marriage relationship . It is a . It is a disease and a condition just like any other difficulty , and it involves two people and it involves a family system . And all of that was revolutionary to me and it really took a huge weight off my shoulders .
Speaker 1Thank you for that . And how cool is that , like we reach out to all the professionals and let them know about services , but that they're actually having this , this new tool , in their tool belt to refer people out . I didn't realize that was part of your story , that you came directly from your therapist , which I think is just just a home run for people out there struggling . And I will say this for me it took like eight or nine years to even find the term parental alienation and I was like what LA had expressed was just kind of like struggling in like a glad bag where you're like all elbows and knees and you can't get out and you don't know what's going on . You know there's something and you know you're in a bag , you just don't know what the bag is . So finding the term has been really useful and the term sometime is divisive , but the actual research behind that's great and there's all this information for families and parents out there struggling so you don't have to go through this huge wave of time that we spent trying to figure out a lot of these things that are going on .
Speaker 1I know that you both are currently remarried and in new relationships and this isn't something we've really discussed on the show often . So I don't want to discount anything we've spoken about , because it's all really important , but I do want to tap into some different nuances so we can expand the conversation that the community is having . So I'm going to concentrate on that and I'm going to come back to some of the points we've already made , for for anyone out there that's listening , that might be a little bit confused by my direction . So , steve , I'm going to ask you first you're married and you're struggling with the kids , and what does that look like with your spouse and how does it affect A your interpersonal relationship directly with her ? And then , how does it affect the family system at large ? I'm going to go with you first , please .
Speaker 2So I've been remarried for four and a half years and was dating a year before that to my current spouse . So in my situation , thankfully , my new spouse also experienced alienation on her side with her ex and her children . So she fully understands actually probably understood it better than I did when I became aware of parental alienation anonymous and really did a deep dive into understanding this situation and all the parts to it . Like you said , it was all elbows and knees before that , but she really had been dealing with that for gosh eight or nine years before she even met me . So she had some really good tools to help me navigate the situation and she actually had a very good relationship with for a short time with my daughter and for a longer time with my son , actually a very close relationship which made the alienation actually very difficult for her as well .
Speaker 2I would say that as the alienation continued and it got worse , it occupied more of my thinking time and my emotions and my bandwidth , so that unfortunately , there were times where my absorption with this sort of all-consuming thing which alienation can kind of be that way or at least I found it to be it really started to affect my ability initially to show up in the relationship at times and I realized that was part of what brought me to coming to the meetings was I realized that it was affecting my relationship in a way that I didn't like , and I didn't like the way things were going and I knew I had to do something different , and that was getting support for myself and not relying on her to be 100% of that emotional and mental support for me as I was going through this .
Speaker 1Wonderful . Thank you for that . And just a follow-up question Now that you have additional support , do you feel like it's opening up that connection and that relationship with your partner , or do you feel like it puts a different kind of pressure because you're spending a lot of time in the community ?
Navigating Relationships During Crisis
Speaker 2You know , that's actually both those things . There are times when my need for support from the community is sometimes in conflict with I don't know how to say it Sometimes in conflict with other spending time together or connecting in certain ways , or maybe there's a different view of the need for it based on what I view my need for support as and maybe what her feeling is . But that's that . We've been able to navigate that and I think over time it has been a healthy thing for my relationship because I'm not putting all the weight of that mental and emotional support on my spouse .
Speaker 1Wonderful , wonderful and thank you for that and such an important point like this idea . We come in and we expect our spouse to be everything for us , our partner , our best friends , even our family , and they can't hold space for this , necessarily because it's so complex and it's so personal . So I think that's really great , because there are different sides of that coin . And LA , how is it with your spouse and what does that look like with the relationship ?
Speaker 3Since I found the literature and on the phenomenon of parental alienation . It allowed us to have a certain vocabulary , we were able to have the right words , the right concept to talk about what was happening , and it allowed me to not feel that guilt that I had for so long or that second guessing or is it really my fault ? I can't be my really my fault because of this , this , this , this , but at the same time I was in a whirlwind trying to understand . So , for me and for my spouse , learning about parental alienation allowed us to have the words to talk about what was going on and to take a certain distance from it also .
Speaker 1So just for clarification , la , did your partner actually do some of our own research ? Did you do research and just share it with her ? Like , what did that look like in context of the relationship ?
Speaker 3I know she did not do any research on her part , but I was doing the research and sharing it . So I was collating all of my research together and all the written information , all the video information , and I even started sharing it with my family and friends so that they could understand what was going on , and I would share it first with my spouse . So everything that I was learning on the subject , I was sharing it with my spouse because it was helpful not only for me , but it was helpful for her also to understand the dynamics with my son and to allow her not to take things personally and to support me also when I was having a bad day and taking things personally and forgetting that , to take that distance .
Speaker 1Thank you for that . And for me personally , my relationship , like I heard this idea relate to me a lot , that I wasn't fully present , that so much of my emotions were wrapped up in the kid and my part moved would be when is it my turn ? When do I get all of you , when do I get all of your presence , emotionally and spiritually ? And I was a really challenging part of our relationship and I'm curious , steve , do you have that challenge and does it kind of like move , like some days it's challenging and some days it's just like okay , you know , like I'm in this place and then my partner just accepts it .
Speaker 2Yeah , man , that that that has been at times definitely an issue .
Speaker 2And you know , the thing is that's even with somebody who really understands the situation from a personal , on a personal level , and I think , honestly , that's just . I think I think that's just part of this journey is navigating that , because you know , the loss , the feeling of loss of children is so deep that it can be all consuming emotionally . And then I found that if I , if I didn't now that I have support , I sort of have that I would say I don't know if this is the right word but sort of more contained so that it doesn't , it doesn't feel all encompassing where it's taking all my mental and emotional and you know bandwidth , so that I have nothing left to give to somebody in a primary relationship . So , yes , but I do think that that was definitely there and we had to work through how to compartmentalize things so that we have time for our relationship . But we all , you know I also could do the work that I needed to do to be , you know , sort of figure this out and support myself .
Speaker 1Thank you , and thank you for bringing the word contained in , and this is really important because this is really leaky and this can overwhelm so many different emotional systems and nervous systems . So as we work on recovery and as we practice our emotional and spiritual ecosystem , we get to contain this within our communities , within ourselves , so it doesn't knock everyone in our world sideways over and over again and you might experience your parents , your brothers , your sisters , your partner , where they just don't want to hear it anymore , and the containment and the recovery and the working in community and getting supported other ways gives us an opportunity to have a healthier and different kind of relationship with our families . So LA same question for you does your partner ever say , hey , like I want you , I want all of your attention , I want to be number one .
Speaker 3I'm tired of that not being Not in my case , I'm a person , that's my temperament . I've always been very compartmentalized and so the day to day I keep my issues for myself . So when something would happen with my son , I would talk about it that day or you know , for two days , and after that , you know it'd be pretty much in a drawer until you know the next issue . So I really felt like my spouse was always supportive about that , because my relationship with my son never took most of my waking hours , so me pretty much during the day things were contained , but not at night . So that's where things you know the my were harder for me . So my sleep was dreadful because of that . I could not contain the emotions and the thoughts and the ruminations at night time , so I had years of sleep issues .
Speaker 1But during the day things were good and what a great point for you to bring up , because some of us get really busy with our lives and stuff and we can distract ourselves , like LA is saying , during the day and then at night you're actually have to be with yourself and the ruminating thoughts , the sleepless nights , the running stuff over and over in your head trying to look for a solution . I think so many of us struggle with that and it ebbs and flows as that drawer gets open , stuff floods our systems and then we get fully , fully caught up into those things . And I will say , like my ex-partner was a therapist and even though she was a therapist and even though she had a tremendous amount of skills , like she still wanted my attention , she wanted me to be really present with her , she wanted her and it was incredibly challenging because my kids were always , I would say , they're number one and that's how it's always going to be . That's not negotiable . And I would say , with some recovery and looking backwards , it would have been useful for me to have a different set of coping strategies and a different set of , maybe emotional tools to be able to show up more presently in my life , and I know so many people struggle with this and I still struggle with this . Today I was on a call before this podcast and I was just saying I'm just , I'm feeling underwater and overwhelmed and have some transitions going on in my life and it's hard . And that's where the support community comes in . So if you're not part of the community or you don't even want to be part of our community , there's a bunch of communities out there and a bunch of resources that you can go out and support yourself .
Speaker 1And there was also something interesting that was mentioned a little bit earlier in the podcast .
Speaker 1I think Stephen had said for the first three or four Weeks , you know , attending 8 , 10 , 12 meetings a week and in in 12-step program , which 12-step program has been around for 75 Some odd years , you know they they call something and 90 and 90 , which is for newcomers . They suggest go to 90 meetings in 90 days . And for me , like , like Steve had said , like I need a lot of meetings and when I , when I'm in pain , I need more meetings and I need to be More of service and it takes a lot away from the family unit but it's kind of like being on an aeroplane and getting oxygen Right . So if you're saying like , hey , I don't want to commit that kind of time . I'm busy . I have this commitment . I have that commitment . This is going to the gym , this is working out , this is just working out a different muscle and meeting different people that are as important as the food we eat , as important as the exercise we take . And yeah , I just wanted to retouch on that because it's really important .
Speaker 2I was just gonna say Lawrence , connect comment on that , because that's that's , you know , the reason I , I , I was in that place of wanting to do that much support was because I got to a place where I could see the handwriting on the wall of Really great things in my life , like a great second marriage and a great relationship with my oldest son and my two-step daughters . I could see that this thing , this challenge of alienation , was was gonna wreck the great things I had in my life and I was like I'm not gonna let that happen . And so I just realized I had to do something and and that was creating support , you know , for myself and becoming part of a community that gets what's going on here and and that's why I did and it was really more like self-preservation , honestly .
Speaker 1Totally no . No , survival definitely kicks up a bunch of stuff one more thing , lawrence and Steve .
Speaker 3One thing I instilled is to put certain limit also to to the recovery and support group , because I did not . It's it's a blessing to be part of this support group , but at the same time I wanted to Protect myself and to protect my relationship with my news , with my spouse also . So for me it's really important to , to be be present in in the in PAA and To be of service to the group , but also to a certain limit and not overwhelm Myself and overwhelm my relationship . So it's finding that balance , that sweet spot , I find . I feel that it's very important .
Speaker 1Yeah , and LA , thank you so much for bringing that into the conversation , because there's we're all different and we have different needs and I and I love that you're prioritizing your relationship and taking care of yourself . It's not an either or it's both and and you're finding a balance that that suits your lifestyle and anyone out there . We're just sharing our opinions . You find what feels good for you and try it and if it doesn't work , try something different . And I think this is all an experiment , like we're just trying to take the best care of ourselves we can , and balance , like LA said is is incredibly important and and welcomed . I love that you're taking care of yourself that way . So the question that I have is , as this alienation , estrangement , reconnection , whatever is happening is going on , do you find your spouse Disconnecting from the idea of the kids , like basically like shutting down and and pulling away and not really wanting to engage in the idea Of a thought of them , kind of like they're protecting themselves and and closing down and don't want to necessarily continue to be part of those conversations ? Huh , I go with the huh some really good information there . It's a really interesting thing when we start to talk about the different dynamics within families and how people Navigate those within these spouses , and then new families and if the new spouses have relationships with the kids and stuff . Yeah , wow , it's just so complex , you know , and there's no one answer for everything . But this is just a nice conversation to expand the view of what can happen , what can happen and help people kind of navigate , usually on challenging situations .
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