The Dysfunctional Cycle of Modern Family Relationships
by Cathy Wagner - posted October 14, 2018

We've all got families. Many of us equate family with stress. Some of us have people who aren't blood relations that we think of as family, and they are closer to us then any blood relations could be. There are even those who would rather be loners than continue to stay connected to family after they've grown. Tell me. Do these sound like healthy family relationships to you?

Many family relationships are made up of needs, responsibilities, and baggage. It's a vicious cycle, but let's pick a starting point – when we were kids. When we are very small, we have absolutely no concept of how things work or how things “should” be. All we know is our immediate surroundings, that's all there is. Because our primary function is to learn, we pick up on everything around us and assume that this is the world and how it works.

No matter who our parents are, they give us our most basic understanding of where in the Universe we are and the local rules. The way our parents treat us, the way they treat others, the way other people around us interact with the world; all of this is “recorded” and used to navigate our own steps as we grow and eventually create lives of our own.

No matter who our parents are. If our parents are calm, kind and patient people, we might pick that up from them, unless the world around us indicates that they are the only people who care about those things and therefore “weird”. If our parents are bullies or neglectful, we are definitely going to get a negative message about life early on, that we will see echoed in the world around us and it will be reinforced.

As we grow we see bullies, perhaps at school. We see the bully get away with all kinds of bad behavior, because he is bigger and meaner than the other kids, and they're afraid to confront him. We also pick up a lot social messages from tv and movies, so many of which are an accurate depiction of the American fantasy life. They include a lot of violence, sexism and racism (even in sports), and to grown people it's entertaining. Some kids, particularly bullies, think this is surely how people are and this is the goal to to which they want to aspire. They think these “role models” are “winners”.

Even into young adulthood, unless corrected, many people think guns and violence are sexy. We have a shocking number of people who think it's ok to assault and even kill their partner or spouse with the reasoning,“They made me do it because they wouldn't shut up!” Some even more extreme cases think they have a right to a take a gun into a public place and mow down innocent bystanders because they are angry. But don't get me wrong, it doesn't have to be guns. We can destroy each other quite handily with verbal and emotional abuse...and we do, in outrageously large numbers, much larger than guns and domestic violence combined.

Then we have children. Hopefully, we stop to think, “Wow, this isn't a healthy culture!” Hopefully we do our best to teach our children that violence and abuse, in all their forms, is wrong, but that is no guarantee that a child will grown up to believe that. The more likely scenario is that parents will just go along with things the way they've always been. They'll say things like, “I grew up watching violent movies and I'm ok!” as their spouse remembers back to that night that they weren't so ok. Seriously, with domestic violence being the number one killer of women in the world, there is a lot more violence going on than people care to admit.

And that violence doesn't just affect women, it affects children who only know their immediate surrounding, that's all there is. Because their primary function is to learn, they pick up on everything around them and assume that this is the world and how it works. No matter who their parents are, they give these children their most basic understanding of where in the Universe they are and the local rules. The way their parents treat them, the way their parents treat others, the way other people around them interact with the world; all of this is “recorded” and used to navigate their own steps as they grow and eventually create lives of their own...