Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:She has lots of close friends but as far as I can tell no long term relationship. Maybe she is just secretive but that would also suggest intimacy issues. Anyway, all of my siblings are fairly reticent to be in a relationship. The lone exception being the youngest, who was away from my father for most of his life and also is the only male, which means his father issues affect him differently.
I am a guy who had many failed relationships and fucked up intimacy precisely because of my parent's awful toxic relationship: you do what "love" looks like to you - the familiar. I've successfully broken the pattern, but not until later in life and after a failed marriage and several bad LTRs (therapy and lots of time with surrogate families as a kid), but my two sisters haven't been quite as successful. One is a complete basket case (though she's got some spectrum disorder issues complicating it) and the other has the same kind of high drama yelling and fighting relationship with her husband that my parents did...and she was 5 when they separated. Two of my more memorable roller-coaster relationships were with women who grew up in toxic households and had pretty messed up intimacy issues.
Yes, raising your child in this environment will perpetuate the cycle in the next generation. Sadly, it is generally true that both parents have issues - and that they are drawn to people who are at least somewhat like their parents. I think my BIL is an ahole of the first order most of the time, but I also see where my sister plays an active role in keeping the drama game going...it's rarely the case that one parent is completely without fault or contribution.