What Prevents Family Happiness?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Coming to me for psychotherapy, many married couples ask the question: "Why was everything good with us before, but now it has become bad?" Indeed, why did the man stop giving flowers, why did the woman stop pampering with a delicious dinner? Why are both already thinking about parting or divorce?

The answer lies in our parental family. After all, it is in the parental family that we learn to relate to our partner. It is there that we learn how to love and how to care.

An important condition for creating your own successful family is separation from your parents. What it is? Separation - separation. Physical and psychological separation from dad and mom. It is impossible to build your personal relationships (well, or successfully build) being in psychological dependence on parents. Such a separation should not be easy to pass, but it should pass successfully. And here the participation of both parties is important. A child cannot separate if his parents “do not let him in”, or this separation will be problematic.

What depends on our parents? By giving us support, loving us, creating rules in childhood, parents help us to get comfortable in this world. This should gradually decrease. Parents should give more freedom, transfer responsibility. But at the same time, be close, be ready to provide assistance and support upon request. It is at the request!

This is how we begin to form and develop our "I". And gradually we find ourselves no longer within the parental family, but close by. And already we ourselves begin to form a world around us, a new, our own world.

This is ideal. But this is not always the case.

What can go wrong? If not a complete family and this one parent forgets about the emotional side and about himself: “Are you all full? Are they all shod and dressed? Well, okay. No heart-to-heart conversations. Only home, work, shop. And at home there are only household chores: clean up, wash everything, wash. The child lacks attention and love, separation from the parent does not occur, or it does not happen correctly.

As an example: A girl addressed a problem in her relationship with her boyfriend: constant quarrels, misunderstanding of each other, lack of attention from the young man. In the course of psychotherapy, it turned out that her father died immediately after her birth. Mother tried to build a career and was given to her grandmother, she saw my mother on weekends. Then nursery boarding school, mother and grandmother on weekends. All this did not allow building normal love relationships with men, and even with women (in an attempt to find themselves there were homosexual relationships).

It so happens that the family is complete, but one of the parents (or both at once) is emotionally detached and little involved in the life of the family. The relationship between parents and between a child and parents seems to be normal, but only at first glance. In fact - a lack of emotional warmth. And again, a separation that has not been passed.

Example: a man applied for therapy with psychosomatics and lack of sex with his wife. Talking about the parents, it turned out that the mother was building a career, the father left work for this and tried to take care of the house and children. I saw my mother very rarely. she came late, and left early, she was often on business trips. The father was detached, clearly experiencing the social superiority of the mother. There was a huge void in the patient's soul that could not be filled with anything. And as a result - psychosomatics and a difficult relationship with his wife.

At first glance, it seems that all this was long ago and should have passed, but no. The need for a parent (s) is so great that it manifests itself in everything: in personal life, work, hobbies, creativity, etc. It is difficult for such a person to build love and family relationships. In a state of euphoria, everything seems to work out, but then everything rolls into an abyss. It is then that problems begin in the family between a man and a woman.

What are the exit routes? There are many options. A man and a woman remain in a pair, but in fact they are so emotionally distant from each other that there is no relationship. It may be that claims and hatred outweigh everything and the couple breaks up.

Ideally, everyone goes through separation again in therapy and the relationship moves to a new, adult level. More trust appears, dialogue is built. Family problems begin to be gradually resolved and the same harmony reappears. Harmony, which was at the beginning of the relationship, but without rose-colored glasses.

Mikhail Ozhirinsky - psychoanalyst, group analyst.