how do you cope or deal with negative relationships with either parents / siblings / or kids … does your relationship with certain family members effect your relationship with other members..
Broken... Negative relationships don't get my time (luckily those are very few in number). Do relations with one effect another? No. I can hardly track my own gripes let alone those of others.
Adding ~ My family has two commonly used sayings... "We don't have issues, we have subscriptions" and, "We put the 'fun' in dysfunctional." and both are pretty accurate.
A broken family or a happy home? Ha!
I find those two choices hilarious, on account of my parents have only ever been married to each other—for nearly 40 years, at that—they've had ten kids together, and from the outside everything looks great. Broken family? No, indeed! I remember the comments we'd get on how awesome our family seemed.
"Wow, your kids are so quiet! So obedient! They seem so happy! They get along so well!"
Broken family, hardly.
But a happy home? F--k no. Though those still in it will defend it to the literal death (which is sort of the goal). Ah, the dangers of 100% believing you're doing the right thing. A faith that solid leaves no room for doubt.
Anyway, I deal with it by not dealing with them. I swap light emails with a few of my younger siblings (and Grandma) every once in a while—that's it.
It's mostly okay. They've given up, I think: decided I'm hopelessly hellbound. Hooray!
I didn't like my family while growing up. My dislike for them as individuals compelled me to separate myself from them as a young adult. I remember realizing, at the age of nine or ten, that if a stranger treated me as they did I'd have nothing to do with them. "Family", it seemed to me, was a bad excuse to tolerate dislikable people. And the injunction to love them? Ridiculous.
I haven't been in contact with any of them for around a decade now, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.
Neither.
Now you come to mention it, neither of my parents did either. In other words, both of these categories are completely irrelevant to my family history
Looking at the replies above, I don't think it's just me.
I'd be surprised if many people here had happy childhoods or came from functional, happy homes where they learned healthy behaviors.
My mother was a child psychologist. Enough said.
Both. My parents split when I was 5 but stayed close. I had a happy childhood and still love spending time with my family. We have our issues but all in all we like and love each other and I’m grateful for that.
Broken: -teen parents -drug addicted father who died at 22 when I was 3 -severe mental illness on both sides -A narcissistic paternal grandmother who sued my mom for custody multiple times -A family that communicated with threatening letters from attorneys -Changed households and schools numerous times and bounced around between family members. -Mother with severe depression and a slew of toxic, emotionally abusive boyfriends
As an adult I have completely cut off my father’s side of the family and speak to my mother’s side as little as possible.
Primarily happy. If anything I was broken. We lived in California in the 60s and these were the early days of using Ritalin to treat hyperactivity. Hyperactivity was a more precise definition back then but treatments they were playing with ranged from Ritalin to mental-motor which consisted of picking letters out from a rotating ball, walking a balance beam, doing flip-flops with eye concentration on a body part, and crawling while staring at opposite thumbs. My mom took me to every new treatment in the book because at the time I would just get up and run around in class, even running out of the classroom, and this was mixed with bouts of high levels of aggression. The school playground had two large concrete tubes and I took to shoving kids off it and getting into fights, because, well, I loved to fight back then. So they gave me large doses of Ritalin and other meds but what they didn’t know then that they know now is it boomerangs if you don’t take the patient off Ritalin in puberty. Such was the case with me and I became withdrawn and sullen, but the propensity for violence remained. This all ties in with running away multiple times.
My dad took me off all meds and treatments, and when I had an incident that landed me in the crosshairs of law enforcement, my lawyer struck a plea deal to live with my aunt and uncle in Kansas City who trained police departments in combat and self-defense tactics. The result of that was I couldn’t go anywhere without a cherry top rolling up on me because my aunt and uncle made the word known. But I steadily improved. I am so non-violent today people would never believe that part of my past. But I put my parents through hell. So I think perspective is necessary. Parents are humans too.
The only traumatic bad thing I resent is when my dad was on his last tour in Vietnam and my mom watched the news in front of us. I was in fourth grade, the war was going sideways, and Saigon was falling. I had 10 months of hyperventilating fear. Looking back I understand she was just as scared, but why let little kids watch that? We used to record tapes to send to him and then he would record and send them back. Sometimes I could hear shots being fired or something exploding in the distance. I don’t understand why she let my brother and I listen to that either.
I think this tweet is appropriate, lol. But seriously, I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s experience.
I can say that CC has helped me with some behaviors I learned growing up - specifically being able to give and receive affection. I love my family, but they definitely were not the type of people that expressed love or affection much.
This reminds me of The Breakfast Club movie where they all discussed what such bad family life and parents they had. I'm almost afraid to admit it but I came from a happy family. This might not be cool or edgy but it's the way it was. No divorce or separation. No abuse. No drug addicts. No neglect. In fact this was how it was with most of my friends and neighbors. Maybe we lived in some parallel universe.
@snugbuddy don't be afraid of honesty, I'm certain not a single person here feels like their situation was cool. I'm happy for you or anyone who came from a happy home. 😊 Tbh, you're probably the type of kid who's house I spent the night at just to get a slice of what normal felt like 😅🙃
I also hate it when trauma gets used as a competition so I'm happy this thread hasn't gone down that route
Happy family. Even we had not much money and never went to vacations like others, we had day trips into the mountains and just in general had quality time together like board games or card games evenings. Sitting together in the evening for a movie. Home cooked dinners etc It all went to crap when my mother died, I was an adult already. That's when I realized she was the glue that held everyone and everything together. Now I very rarely have any contact with the rest of family because somehow I'm expected to do all the effort because...woman.
Living hell would probably be an appropriate teem. I escaped into books.
I believe my parents loved both me and my brother and they provided a stable and comfortable home but they had nothing in common. I never saw them affectionate with each other and they rarely if ever did things together. My mother was the homemaker and my father was the breadwinner and those were the roles they fulfilled. In more modern times, I believe my mother would have been a career-woman.
Broken. Alcoholic parents and maaaany many homes. It has really shaped the way I experience relationships. I’ve done a lot of work to heal and am doing much better now. Cuddle comfort has helped me sooo much. It’s easier for to open up to essentially strangers than it is to people I know. Im not a very touchy person with my family either and I’ve always felt I need more so cuddling helps me with this.
I wouldn't say broken, and I wouldn't say happy either. There was just too much drama and a lack of love while growing up. There was no violence in the sense that I and my sister was never maltreated, that's why I can't say it was a "broken home", while at the same time there was a lack of love too, expressions such as "I love you" was virtually non-existent while growing up - no one basically talked about that, I can't say I came from a happy home.
I come from garbage. It’s a miracle that I can function.
I won the good parents lottery, without a doubt. However, I was pretty young (13) when I left home and went to a boarding school. Life wasn't all that happy after that point. That was not a fun place to grow up. It meant that there wasn't a loving hug at the end of the day from mom or dad when I messed up in life.
Broken, terrible, and pretty sure I have complex PTSD and am addicted to self-help books and podcasts.
Definitely need more than 2 options to answer this question. Mine was not “broken” or happy, but severely dysfunctional. Of course at the time it seemed “normal” because no matter how messed up something is, it is your “normal” until you have something to compare it against.
My parents divorced only when I finished college but as far as I can remember they never had a loving relationship - that started when kids appeared in the picture (and it was also a stress point of my own marriage, aka past life). My mom always put the kids first and dad was a hard-working person, and demanded the kids good grades, getting a college degree and helping at the farm. We didn't have anything fancy but every basic need was never an issue. Still, the way you see your parents while growing up shapes you in some extent. Every situation is unique, as well as the way one is affected and reacts to it. Ultimately, I wouldn't say broken or happy, but definitely had less challenges and traumatic experiences than many, many people - especially at a point when you're just a kid.
When I was going through high school, my mom got knocked up by a guy that was two grades ahead of me. Everyone in my school knew and I never heard the end of it. My sister got it a lot worse. Back in my childhood my mom's tendency to try and play us against our step dad during their divorce cemented a lack of trust in her. And throw teen insecurity on top of it all and her constantly telling me I was a lazy good for nothing... It's a miracle to me reading over this that I have a relationship with her at all.
We're pretty much good now. She at least is willing to admit that she put us through hell growing up. She drives me nuts to this day, but I love her. She's my only mother. My sisters are my best friends, and I even made contact with my birth father after 17 years of avoiding him because my mother lied and told us as children that he left her and that he hated our guts.
Every day I deal with the consequences of my youth. I'm still unlearning a lot of the poison my mother poured into my head. Even if I forgive her, the damage is done and it's hard to not feel resentful. I'm going to be a better parent than her by orders of magnitude. I'm going to give my child the support and honesty I never got to have growing up. We're gonna do better...
I would think to say this website attracts members that come from broken places. I would say that I came from a bit of a dysfunctional home, but I have a good relationship with my parents. I would say that growing up with seizures and not fitting in at/school work left me somewhat jaded, though.
I guess one good thing is that many of us atleast know what not do when when we are parents. But we are going to make mistakes too.