Reply to Loneliness when you come from dysfunctional family

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My spouse and I also come from extreme dysfunction. I focus on appreciating how fortunate I am to have a healthy marriage and good kids. I have friends and appreciate them.

What do you mean by support system if you say your friends are not what you consider a support system? [/quote]

Friends are a support until they're not. Until their own family takes priority. Until they're too busy, etc. etc.

Also, many people who don't come from dysfunction, or who are not intimately familiar with your individual family dysfunction, simply don't understand those experiences of the people who do. [/quote]

+1
This is so true.  People who have had no discomfort in their life are in la-la land, and not able to be good friends, because they tend to think that they have it harder than anyone else (and also have zero idea how good they have it!) - consequently, are not able to be there for other people, or even lend an understanding ear.  They tend to have a repulsive "what do you have to complain about" attitude. [/quote]

I would not go this far, but I do think people tend to assume that most other people's families are similar to their own. I think this leads to a lot of inability to understand or validate what others are going through.

What I think people often don't understand is that you have basically no control over other members of your family. You can control yourself and work on yourself. You can't make anyone else in your family be a certain way or respond to you in a certain way or have certain communications skills or want to have a certain relationship. For instance, my dad simply does not want a relationship with me. It doesn't matter how much I might work on that relationship -- he has zero interest in working on it, so it will never be anything meaningful or rewarding for me. It will always just be a source of abandonment.

I can go to therapy and work on how I respond to that abandonment, I can be kind to myself, find other forms of support, etc. But I can't erase that. I'll always be a person whose father abandoned her. It informs almost everything about me for better or worse. This is so different than people who have dysfunctional family relationships but everyone is trying. No one is perfect and if people make an effort, sometimes you can overcome these problems. But when your family members have not interest, awareness, or capacity for getting better, there is truly nothing you can do except deal with the fall out in your own life and try to put it behind you.[/quote]

Agree BUT people are human and can't always counsel their feelings out and away from their soul - it's not like they can get an exorcism and never feel hurt again.  People are human beings, and have feelings, and need to talk about their issues.  I don't bring my problems to my friends generally, but I do want to know that they are listening and that they are outside of their own head on occasion and are capable of caring. Sometimes the holidays suck, and sometimes you just want to make a comment about it- I am not talking about dwelling on it.

IRL, we are not Stepford Wives or devoid emotion, or 1950's housewives expected to answer the door with a smile and hoop skirt - it is not feasible, realistic, probable or possible.

I expect reciprocity in a friendship, and not a one way conversation or gloss over if something is bothering us in our lives. [/quote]

PP here and yes to all of this.

I wound up moving on from a bunch of friendships in my 30s because of this issue. I didn't want to discuss my family issues at length with my friends, and I didn't want therapy from them. But I had some friends who just seemed incapable of remembering or caring that some of my family issues are major. For instance, two close family members have tried to kill themselves. That's not something I like talking about or will bring up almost ever, but it was frustrating when I confided to a couple close friends about it and they just promptly forgot. I remember I was telling one of them about deciding not to go home for a holiday because I couldn't deal with the heaviness that year and she kind of rolled her eyes at me and said "oh don't be dramatic, it's just family, it's not that bad." I think she just couldn't really see past her own experience, which is a more "normal" family that has it's issues but at the end of the day are manageable, and the idea that my family has some deeper trauma that weighs me down just didn't stick in her head. I didn't want to get into a whole thing about that trauma that day, I just wanted a friend who'd validate what I was feeling and support me in the choice I'd made for myself, understanding some of the context of that decision.

I have a therapist and that's who I go to for an in depth discussion about my family dysfunction. But I've learned to let go of friends who aren't even willing to contemplate the idea that my family background might be a burden to me in way that theirs is not to them, who will lecture me about how to deal with my family or how to feel about certain family developments or events based on their own experiences and not really taking into account how mine have been different.[/quote]

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