The mother or father: How the experience of parents affects our relationship
we all sometimes catch ourselves repeating the behavior of parents- even if they vowed not to do it. How fatal is the influence of the family? Are we doomed to shout at partners if mom and dad were constantly noisy quarreling behind the wall? We tell you what you should pay attention to in relationships with parents and how to avoid destructive influence.
Relationships and communication
Ways to interact with loved ones and family rules are what are inherent in us since childhood, the code with which we perceive reality. We most often do not comprehend these rules - they are like embedded optics. For example, attitude to strangers: embarrassed or wary, frightened or curious. The child learns it in childhood, often before he learns to speak: he sees how adults' faces change, for example, at the sound of an unexpected ring at the door. This gives him information about what the outside world is like outside the parental home: is he hostile or friendly? Is it possible to show interest in him or is it better to strain in advance?
Relations and ways of communication in the family are assimilated in the same way. Who is the main - mom, dad, grandmother - and how is his power manifested? In some family, the main one who earns money and decides what to spend it on, in the other - the one who uncontrolledly spends it. In some families, the main one who says the most and most of all indicates what to do. In others, the head of the family can “punish” the guilty in silence and thus control them.
How do family members deal with conflicts? Discuss controversial issues? Turn conflict into a fight? Or silenced, and then everyone quietly tries to do everything in their own way? Is it permissible to shout in anger or should you always negotiate peacefully? Is it possible to call each other offensive words, do family members show physical aggression? How do they behave when they are tired and want to be alone - is this “allowed” or should close people always be close by and within sight? For Russian families who have lived in communal apartments for decades, the latter is a very characteristic habit: everything is visible to each other, personal space is for strangers, and family members have everything in common.
The good news is that you can always "sort" family rules: select suitable ones and add new ones, "amended and amended"
It's amazing how often people who aspire to build a family that is completely different from their parents (“I will never be like a mother and a father!”) Still come out very similar. For example, in some families, loneliness can be achieved only by quarreling and slamming the door - then no one touches a person for a while. The rest of the time, you can enter the room without knocking, and in some houses even the bathroom and the toilet. Growing up in such a family, a person may suffer from a lack of personal space and the opportunity to be alone - and then find out with amazement that he is also pursuing a partner, knocking into a closed room or bathroom every five minutes. From the family, he learned that if a person needs to be alone for a long time, this is a sign of great resentment, and he is involuntarily anxious.
Unlike the family myth, which is usually destructive, family rules are generally adaptive. They can interfere if they become too tough or too narrow - for example, if any conflict of interests means an inevitable quarrel, and in a quarrel family members always either shout loudly or offendedly silent. The good news is that you can always "sort" family rules: select suitable ones and add new ones, "amended and amended." It is safer to do this in the office of a psychotherapist - if only because there is a chance to examine and realize them in their entirety.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in severe stress, any person returns to the ways of interaction learned in childhood. Therefore, during marital quarrels, divorces, or even simply with great fatigue and lack of sleep, there is a risk to suddenly discover that you are shouting and throwing objects at the wall, just like mom and dad. If you know your weak points, you can try to prevent stress and not bring the situation to this.
Laws of attractiveness
This, of course, is not about the fact that Dad was a full brunette and now the daughter chooses the same men - although it also happens. Usually there are slightly more subtle mechanisms: does a man seem to be attractive who takes care of, or, conversely, someone who is busy with business and only sometimes draws attention to me, but at the same time he speaks beautiful words and gives gifts? Do I fall in love with women who for a very long time do not give any feedback or send contradictory signals, or to those who immediately show that they are very interested in me?
What men and women seem to us beautiful and sexually attractive? In this sense, the reasoning of glossy magazines that a woman should always be "at the height" - made up, well-groomed and "with full dress" - are untenable. They are not true for everyone, but only for those whose mother always came out for breakfast made up and dressed beautifully - such a partner would seem attractive to people who carefully look after themselves. There are, on the contrary, those for whom the “complete parade” will be perceived as distancing, a “uniform” for joint issuance or reception of guests - but in no way a close and sexually attractive trait. In this case, the partner in cozy home-made pajamas, disheveled after sleep, will look erotically attractive.
Unfortunately, not the healthiest features fall under this law of attractiveness. Abuse of alcohol or other psychoactive substances, a tendency to sharply distance oneself from a conflict, the habit of periodically ceasing to contact and unavailability are also included in this list. If the parents of the child behaved in this way, it is likely that he will choose a similar partner for himself. Of course, not because the propensity to marry a person addicted to alcohol is transmitted in the family as another gene - but because a person has become accustomed to such, albeit hurting, intimacy relationships since childhood. People behaving in some other way may simply not be in sight.
It would be useful for those who noticed a tendency to choose just such partners — hurting, fleeing, or already unfree, with a psychologist how the parental family was arranged and how close people behaved in childhood.
Fortress or communal apartment
It is believed that there is an inverse relationship between the strength of the outer borders of the family and the inner personal borders of each of its members. For example, in a family where the house is always open for friends, where you can come without a bell, where a folding bed for distant relatives from another city and friends from the neighboring republic are always at the ready, very permeable external borders. But within such a family, relatives will be more alienated from each other, which is quite logical: the family circle is always “diluted” by someone from the outside. Conversely, with the external borders inviolable, like a fortress (we do not call anyone to visit, we are friends only with our own, we rarely go somewhere and do not go to anyone) the personal boundaries of family members will hardly be respected.
Hypertrophied example of the second family system - Lannister from the "Game of Thrones". They believe that their family is outstanding: very strong, rich and noble, but forced to survive, surrounded by envious and traitors. The family’s borders are so closed that even romantic and sexual partners have to be found within the family: the older brother and sister have a long-term relationship, and the father, competing with his younger son, captivates and seduces his mistress, which ultimately leads to tragedy.
Couples who know the tendency to constantly distance themselves with the help of friendly companies, parties and guests, it will be useful to spend time together
The optimal variant of "permeability" of both boundaries is medium. Of course, this is very conditional, but extremes like the Lannister script are best avoided. If the spouses know that both were brought up in a very permeable ("Daughter, you will live in our room for a while, because in the morning my mother's friend came from Samara") or, on the contrary, overly self-contained families ("With overnight camping? sixteen years old? Only over my dead body! "), they can correct their behavior.
It is useful for those who are inclined to be closed to invite guests to themselves and “go out into the light” at least once a week — somewhere where there are other people. Going to the cinema, public lectures, any conditional clubs of interest, from riding school to board games. It gives something like “airing” relationships: new people, new impressions, fresh reasons for talking over evening tea. And those couples who know for themselves the tendency to constantly distance themselves with the help of friendly companies, parties and guests, it will be useful to learn how to spend time together, share their feelings, talk without haste and alone. This may turn out to be an unexpectedly enjoyable and close experience.
Photo:GVS - stock.adobe.com, Givaga - stock.adobe.com (1, 2)
