My husband and I don’t agree on openness. We agreed on many things prior to our adopting our 2 kids, but now that our kids are home, my husband has admitted that he doesn’t believe in openness. We have one semi-open agreement with no visitation, and one open adoption with visitation for two years. And as time goes on, my heart becomes more and more open and I see no reason why we shouldn’t have closer relationships with our birthfamilies. I was thinking about talking to our birthparents about that and having a visit without telling my husband. How would birthparents feel about that?
Should I arrange visits behind my husband’s back?
– January 28, 2011Posted in: Community Wisdom
Wow, I feel very concerned about this for a number of reasons. Let’s start with what it would do to your marriage to keep this kind of secret. And then let’s move to what it would say to your kids that they’d have to keep a part of themselves secret? I guess I would want to know more about why he doesn’t believe in openness. Is he willing to get some education around it? Would he be willing to read some books? Or talk to other open adoption families? What worries him? Also how does he feel about the commitments that he’s made in these adoptions? Is he going to see them through? How far into the two years of visits are you guys?
I will say this, dishonesty and secrets hurt people and hurt adoption. Creating openness means being open with ourselves and within our immediate family as well. You cannot have an open adoption kept in a closet — it’s the very thing open adoption works to change! I hope that your husband will be willing to learn more about what the research says about openness (that it’s good for our kids) and discuss ways of stretching his boundaries. And I hope that you find a way to discuss this with him (perhaps with the help of a counselor knowledgeable about open adoption issues?) so that your kids don’t have to carry the burden of family secrets.
I am a birthmom involved in an open adoption with visits. Wow, I can’t imagine being in the spot you are in. I agree with what Dawn has said. I would want my child’s parents to have a healthy marriage and can’t imagine that being the case with hiding visits. I think your husband should get some education on openness and why the studies say it’s best for the children. When he made this commitment to openness, did you intend to go back on it? As a birthparent, I would be devastated for my son to lose the openness when I believe so strongly that it’s best for him and has many reasons for only considering couples who wanted open adoptions, that involved visits. Not only did your husband make this commitment to openness to birth parents but to your child. We have to remember, it’s about the child. If the adoption closed, you’d have to some day tell your child why. Why take such a huge part of a child’s life and wellbeing away from him when you don’t have too? I would be torn if this was the case with my son’s family as I would not want his mom seeing me behind dad’s back and children having to keep secrets. That isn’t fair to the kids. But I also would not want an open adoption closed. What are your husbands fears? How can they be overcome? Maybe less frequent visits, or are their particular behaviours that have happened he is uncomfortable with, etc? How can the openness remain but everyone is comfortable?
I agree. . . definitely discuss it with your husband. Maybe he would be okay with just you and your child going for a visit. Or maybe you can go by yourself or just you and hubby without child to work on your relationship with your child’s birthmom. I love that private time with our children’s birthparents when we get it. We go through “seasons” here. Sometimes we need a little breathing space after a lot of visits (we have three adopted kids). It’s not because we don’t want a close relationship–we just want some private family time (just us). I’m not talking a year of space. . . I’m talking a few weeks. I would definitely not recommend secrets. My husband and I are not always on the same page at the same stages of our life. We have learned to give each other their time and space to process things and figure out a compromise that can work for everyone. That alone is a process sometimes!!! It can never be easy can it? :0)