Reply to How to help kids not date/marry people who trash talk their folks

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My mom once told me to try to avoid marrying someone who doesn't get along with his family. She said either that person is right and you'd be marrying into a family with difficult people OR the person you are dating is the difficult person. Either way it's bad news.

It was pretty good advice![/quote]

+100 People on DCUM who are practically crowing about how they are estranged from family, or worse, encourage others to become estranged, don't realize that they are announcing that they are damaged goods. I hope my kids avoid those people, too.[/quote]

As someone who grew up in a very dysfunctional family and who has gotten a ton of therapy and done a lot of self reflection in order to be a good parent and spouse I really resent the term "damaged goods." No one can help the family they are born into but they can their best as an adult to live an emotionally healthy life. While I would never wish to relive my childhood I have a lot of empathy and depth because of it. People in my situation are not "damaged goods"-we're people who were born to parents who shouldn't have had kids. Also, I don't go on this site too often-do people really "crow" about being estranged from family or encourage others to be estranged? I ask this as someone who is not estranged from my parents but definitely sets boundaries in order to prevent myself and my kids from being hurt. [/quote]

No, people don't "crow". But in an era where people have more resources for recognizing and addressing dysfunction in their families (I'm right there with you PP, on the work that goes into this so that you can be a good parent and spouse), there is also backlash. And this is not surprising. I remember when I first started therapy back in my 20s, I went into the therapists office and announced that I didn't want to sit around dissecting my childhood, that was the past. I wanted to just focus on these issues I was having with my career and love life, and the lack of direction I was experiencing. My therapist was like "okay, sounds good, this is your time." And then a year later she said, "I really think in order to get where you want to go, we're going to have to talk about your family and childhood and how those things have shaped you, and also how they might be obstacles to your goals right now." And I said no thank you and left. And then I went back into therapy a few years later and was like "I would like to talk about my family and my childhood and how they shaped me and how they might be obstacles to my goals right now." And THEN I got better.

So it is unsurprising to see people on here and elsewhere who feel threatened by that process. They feel personally implicated by it and they feel hurt by family members who might try to set reasonable boundaries with them. It is easier for them to engage in black and white thinking (that the world can be divided into good people from good families and bad people from bad families) than to struggle with the idea that most people have at least some dysfunction in their families and that almost everyone could benefit from thinking a bit about how they interact with others, especially those closest to them, and making sure those relationships contain mutual respect and appropriate boundaries.[/quote]

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