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This reply is addressed to "Ashamed in the South”:

How great that you reached out. My own foster parents did not and as such I only experienced love once, for a few minutes when I was 24, and not again until age 35 when I discovered how to create it at will.

Your stepchildren have given you an awesome gift. It’s your integrity that prompted you to write. You are simply not whole and complete. It’s called being out-integrity. Your integrity is supporting you in discovering that there is another whole domain to communication, another communication model, so not like what you have been using/doing that it will take the rest of your life and considerable coaching to master this other model. The model you have been taught, by parents, teachers, and clergy is what’s referred to as the adversarial communication model. One of it’s by-products is us-and-them such as you have been experiencing with your stepchildren. There is another communication model, a way of relating, of communicating, it’s called intentional communication. It’s not taught in schools.

The problem is, no matter what you believe or others may say, you have not been in communication with your stepchildren. You have in fact mastered talking which produces more of the same less-than-desirable results. We know this to be true because when communication takes place there is an experience of mutual satisfaction and love. For most the experience of love is created accidentally, we know this to be true because they cannot recreate it at will through a single sit-down conversation, especially during a messy divorce.  Feuding couples may resolve an argument but seldom do either experience the joy and bliss that once was. Such arguments are typically stored as an incomplete, adding one more reason for a divorce.

With intentional communication all parties agree to communicate openly, honestly, and spontaneously, zero withholds (there are a few more agreements having to do with integrity). Any thought withheld serves as a barrier to the experience of love. This accounts for the millions of married couples who haven’t experienced the experience of love for a long time, they’ve simply accumulated hundreds of withholds. Instead they live from the concept of love formulated from their last experience.

One truth we know you’ve withheld from your stepchildren is the thought that you have not been experiencing love in your relationship with them. This might seem like a hurtful thing to say, however, communicated from a context of intending to experience love it absolutely works. I assure you they are totally capable of hearing any truth that would come from your mind. Your thoughts (worries/concerns/considerations) have been serving as barriers to the experience of love.

For example: If one has the courage to tell the person they are dating that they (the date) are not their number ten, the relationship transforms itself immediately; assuming all other withholds have been delivered there is in fact an experience of love. What we want most is someone with whom we can tell the truth.

Here’s the kicker: Your stepchildren too have been withholding thoughts from you. They’ve emulated your communication model and have had no choice but to withhold their thoughts of choice from you. When all of you have shared all of your thoughts, and I mean all, then you will instantaneously experience love with them.

Read more about clearing and emptying your mind through The Clearing Process (it’s free). It will give you some sense of how to create a safe space for them to tell the truth.  With aloha, Gabby

P.S. You love them and they love you as much as you love everyone else in your family and on the planet. Love is a given. What keeps us from experiencing our love is we have hundreds and hundreds (even thousands) of withholds with most everyone which serve as barriers to the experience of love.

P.P.S: I'm assuming that you and your new spouse asked* and got all the children's clear unequivocal support to remarry? Often adults remarry without asking their child's permission, without tapping into the intuitions of their children, even forcing them to get along with children raised by a former  abusive parent. If asked, a child might say, "I'm not ready" or even "You're not ready." Based upon hos you communicate with me and I don't see that you've learned how you destroyed your marriage. What makes you think you'll do any better now. " Children will intend that the new relationship not work simply to awake the parent to the fact that they are not experiencing being in communication with them, (the primary custody parent).

* Ask meaning, to present it cleanly, without manipulation, so that they experience that it's totally up to them, and that it's OK that they say no—that you value that which they can but you can't see—that perhaps you're not ready, or, that you've made another incompatible choice. I mention this because your new partner clearly did not enlist the support of their children, a huge no no. In other words, your partner is unconsciously supporting your stepchildren in treating you as they have been (unloving, controlling and causing doubt). This compatibility (communication) issue should have been handled up front. Children are naturally spontaneously loving unless they are dragging around (dramatizing) incompletes and withholds. Children communicate non-verbally (as you've noticed) that something is wrong, that they are not in-communication with anyone. Sometimes children will unconsciously sabotage a new relationship simply because they think the parent doesn't deserve happiness yet due to how, from their perspective, one treated (or still are treating) the absent parent. 

Check back occasionally for minor edits (last edited 10/16/11)

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