Family Scenarios In Relationships

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

When creating a family, each of the partners brings into it their own expectations and ideas, endows these relationships with their own dreams and goals, and draws a picture of the desired future. In addition to these intentions and ideas, the basis of family relationships is also based on a lot of unconscious beliefs about how to create a family correctly, which we borrow from our parents and subsequently reproduce in our own relationships. These attitudes and rules, on the basis of which we strive to build relationships in the family, repeating the parental model, have a very beautiful name - “family scenarios”.

Family scenarios are patterns of interaction between family members that are repeated from generation to generation, conditioned by certain events in family history. Family scenarios include beliefs and beliefs about how to live, family myths and ideology, rules and taboos, on the basis of which family members build their interactions with other family members, as well as with the world around them. These scenarios can relate to absolutely any aspect of family life: how many children to have ("no one in our family gives birth to more than one child"), money ("we never had rich people in our family - there is nothing to strive for"), professional activity (" we are a dynasty of musicians "), role-playing positions (" women in our family devoted themselves entirely to children and family "), everyday life (" our house is always open for guests "), etc.

Family scenarios have a lot in common with family traditions and rituals, but unlike the latter, they sometimes radically affect the fate of a person, and not just color everyday life. The reasons for the emergence of certain scenarios, as a rule, are not recognized by family members, and following them is taken for granted and sometimes even the only correct development of events. But there are always reasons, it's just that not always even the one who became the ancestor of the family scenario is aware of the cause-and-effect relationship.

Many are aware of cases when, for example, in a family, from generation to generation, women chose such men as their husbands, who left them soon after the birth of a child. Usually such stories are usually interpreted as "bad fate" or "the unfortunate fate of women of the family." But from a psychological point of view, there is nothing surprising or otherworldly in such family stories. It's just likely that three or four generations ago, a woman who could not build her family relationships formed certain beliefs about men - that they are all scoundrels, unreliable, they cannot be trusted. Such beliefs at one time helped her to cope with the reality and the consequences of a failed family life. And they were also designed to protect her from repeated similar painful experiences. It is quite natural that the same beliefs and attitudes towards men were subsequently transferred to her daughter, both consciously - by intimidation, threats, admonitions from her relationship, and unconsciously.

A girl raised by a mother with such a set of beliefs will subconsciously choose an unreliable man for her partner, because she has no experience of trusting relationships with a representative of the opposite sex (father), but will project onto men the fears and attitudes of her mother, which have already become her internal introjects (subconscious rules imposed from the outside that govern behavior). As a result, this may lead to the fact that the family scenario will be played again - “following in the footsteps of the mother”.

This example is one of the most "classic" examples of how family scenarios work. But there are also many less dramatic and less obvious manifestations of family scenarios in relationships. For example, the desire to leave the parental home as early as possible into "free swimming", which young people in every generation succumbed to, or the age of marriage. It happens that family scenarios are so firmly rooted that it becomes self-evident for the bearer of the scenario: for example, it is necessary to get married strictly before 30, or in no case not to marry before 35.

At the same time, it is necessary to understand that the family scenario itself is not an inevitability, not a sentence or a diagnosis. Each family system (and a family from the point of view of family psychologists is precisely a system) presupposes the presence of scenarios that are reproduced from generation to generation. Indeed, in essence, these scenarios are designed to protect against the dangers and uncertainties of this world (for example, the scenario of avoiding wealth later on dispossession of kulaks in previous generations, formed on the conviction “money is dangerous”).

But it so happens that a certain scenario no longer just does not protect, but even interferes with the creation of happy family relationships (like, for example, the scenario of creating only status marriages and avoiding real intimacy in relationships, because it presupposes vulnerability). In this case, it is important to see and understand this recurring plot, to look at it not as the only possible option, but just as one of the many possible scenarios for the development of events. This may require personal psychotherapy, because sometimes it is not easy to move away from the usual family "plot" because of the strong emotional burden of the latter.

Is it imperative to eradicate all family scenarios taken from parental families that you may find already in your married life? Obviously not. It is likely that such family repetitions will only become a pleasant tradition that holds the family together (for example, having many children, which will become a distinctive family feature that brings joy to all members of the family system). But if the family scenario goes against the spouse's scenario, then sometimes serious conflicts and even breakdown can arise, since deviations from the familiar family scenario, absorbed from early childhood, can cause tension, anxiety and even fear.

For example, on the basis of family attitudes and rules, a woman wants to realize the scenario of "early motherhood" - only this scenario seems to her to be correct and most obvious immediately after creating a family. And her partner, on the contrary, has a clear attitude that children should appear only after the spouses are confidently on their feet - he seeks to realize his scenario of responsible parenting, imitating his father. Obviously, with such a clash of antagonistic scenarios, a serious conflict is inevitable. In this case, it is very important to find the true origins of your aspirations, dig up programs and scripts that unconsciously seek to be reproduced, and find your true needs that should be realized. And then conduct a dialogue - both with yourself and with your partner, in order to come to a compromise that will satisfy everyone, and not only in words.

There is nothing wrong with the family scenario itself. The danger lies only in the fact that if a person builds his life only by reproducing parental attitudes or family scenarios, then it turns out that it is not he who lives his life, but the life “lives him”. It is important to be aware of what decisions we make in life and why - what drives us, what our needs and values we satisfy, what script we are writing. And if at some point you realize that you are repeating the scenario of your family system, and this causes a pleasant smile from understanding a fate similar in some way with other members of your kind, then you should not rush to change everything at all costs, only would be "not according to the script."Well, if, when analyzing your life, you find that there are many sad similarities, then it is better to turn to a deeper analysis of the reasons for your actions and take responsibility for your life.