Your Family, My Family, Our Family
by Kim A. Nelson

Here’s the way the plan for being a family is intended to work. Our parents model and teach what they believe is valuable. We learn how to be the parents, citizens, and people they hope we will be. Because our parents are not perfect (just like us), the plan provides for us to evaluate their model and teachings. We then improve on them where we can so our model and teachings will be better for our children. In turn, they are encouraged to do the same.

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Three family systems are involved when a new family is created by marriage: the bride’s family of origin, the groom’s family of origin, and the new family they create by marrying. To better understand the complexities of associating these different family entities, we need to identify whom we’re talking about and what types of families we belong to. Two kinds of families need to be described.

First is the family into which we are born. It’s identified as our family of origin. It does not matter what structure that family takes. It can even change its structure over time as its members redistribute themselves. For example, if your parents divorce and one or both of them remarry, you have two separate families of origin. Even though step-parents, step-siblings, and step- grandparents are adopted, not biological, members of the original family group, they may play a significant role in how your extended families relate. Their impact depends on how long they’ve been part of the family and how close you’ve become to them.

The second family if your family of procreation. This is you, your spouse, and your children, if you have children. This is your immediate family as a married adult. This is your family system that, if you procreate or adopt, your children will call their family of origin.

Different Perspectives

It’s in our families of origin that most of us learn how to live. We learn what’s important or valuable, what roles we play and how to play them.

Here’s the way the plan for being a family is intended to work. Our parents model and teach what they believe is valuable. We learn how to be the parents, citizens, and people they hope we will be. Because our parents are not perfect (just like us), the plan provides for us to evaluate their model and teachings. We then improve on them where we can so our model and teachings will be better for our children. In turn, they are encouraged to do the same.

In our families of procreation, we get the chance to put our new, improved spousal and parental mode to work. As parents, this is our change to build a new and improved family. In order to do this we must recognize that ours is a new independent family and knowingly set out to make it the best we can. That’s the challenge of building a new family. It’s the opportunity that marriage gives, the chance to make the world in general and our world in particular a better and more peaceful place. We can, by our choice, make the changes in our families of procreation that we’d like to have seen in our families of origin.

Personal Differences

As spouses, we’re different not only in gender, but also in how we were raised. Different people taught us how to be a person. We were taught in different social, emotional, environmental, and even cultural settings.

One useful model some counseling professionals use for looking at families is “family systems.” A family system includes extended family and in many cases even close friends or neighbors if they played a significant role. The assertion here is that it’s meaningful and important to look at individuals in the context of families. We need to look at people as part of a group, a family system, including families of origin and procreation. We need to recognize the impart of our extended families as well as our family history and traditions.

A Fine Art Model

Remember mobiles, those art objects invented by sculptor Alexander Calder? Mobiles are conglomerates of items (often very colorful) hung from a single point, usually by a wire or string. They’re designed to hold everything hung from them in perfect balance. They are often very complex and can move about their point of suspension subtly or dramatically, depending on the forces acting on them.

That’s how family systems are. They’re all attached, sometimes in complex ways. And they try to balance. Because they’re all connected, when movement or change occurs in one place, often somebody in another part of the family moves in response in order to try to keep that balance. Extended family systems are interrelated and have most likely, over time, come to some kind of equilibrium. The job of extended families seems to be to adjust all the individual parts, attempting to keep everything in balance.

My dad was an alcoholic most of the time I was growing up. (He quit drinking late in life, enjoying the peace and blessings of the gospel, and finally allowed himself to experience the love the Savior always had for him.) I was afraid for the most part to invite anybody to our house. In my growing up years I never knew what to expect at home. When you ventured into our house, it was like walking into a minefield. Some days you could go in and Dad was just fine. Other days, he wouldn’t be, and emotional explosions could ensue. There was no way to know which situation you would encounter until you walked through that door.

On the one hand, it taught me to be cautious when trusting or depending on people or situations. On the other, it prepared me to be a successful salesperson and later an effective counselor and manager. I’m always more comfortable if I know how everyone else is feeling—evaluating the minefield, so to speak.

It’s my experience that a lot of nurses, doctors, counselors, and other helping professionals come from alcoholic families where the empathetic helping model is one they understand well: “My feelings and needs don’t matter right now; let’s talk about your feelings and needs.” Such an attitude can be really effective if you’re a counselor. Would anyone want a counselor who started out with his clients by saying, “Shut up, stupid! Let me tell you how I feel.”

So in this case, a family situation I might have initially construed as a tough thing was a blessing in the long term. The adaptive style I developed illustrates how we adjust to create balance in our families.

Marriage Changes the Balance

When people get married, a new family is created. Family A (the husband’s family of origin) and family B (the wife’s family of origin) each send a member to this new family.

And guess what? This new family is not simply an amalgam, family A/B. Instead it’s family C, a brand new family—a new entity, a new mobile that seeks to balance its parts in a meaningful and independent way.

Often, at first, family C plays such an active part in families A and B that those families don’t recognize the new entity as separate or distinct. They exert all kinds of pressure on family C to make it balance within their existing systems.

However, as time passes and the new family asserts its independence (if family C is wise enough to do so), families A and B readjust and balance themselves, with family C as an appropriate associated appendage. This can be a difficult and painful process. It can go on for years and perhaps never really happen if not actively managed.

My Version of the Christmas Story

When I got married, I thought there were two kinds of people in the world: those who opened their presents on Christmas morning, and Communists. I’m sure you are wise enough to recognize this position as a bit exaggerated. But that’s how I felt, expressed tongue in cheek.

My wife’s mother worked all night at Western Union and didn’t get home until just after eight in the morning. She thought it was cruel to make Lois and her seven siblings to wait until that late on Christmas morning to open their presents. In response to their particular situations, Lois’s family chose to open presents on Christmas Eve.

After Lois and I got married, at my first Christmas Eve family part at Lois’s mom’s house, I commented that I could hardly wait until the next morning to see what Santa had for us. Her family said, “Oh, you don’t have to wait. We’re opening the presents tonight.”

Wrong! Anyone who doesn’t have the personal integrity to leave those presents wrapped until morning should be punished!

I felt strongly about this, as you can tell. Those feelings were very intense for me. The reason is, family rituals and traditions are often filled with powerful and well-defined emotions, processes, roles, and expectations.

The point is, when families A and B get together in a new marriage, we don’t automatically have a map for building family C. It takes some conscious choices.

This would also make a good discussion. Include what you’ve both noticed in your two families of origin and other families you’ve observed. Remember: this is not, for the most part, a question of right or wrong but one of preference and tradition.

Discuss:

· Similarities.

· Differences.

· Changes you’d like to consider.

Over time, watch your parents, your siblings as they marry, and your own behaviors as in-laws. Sometimes family A or B or both don’t want the new family to become family C. Why? Because

· “I know the in-laws and they stink.”

· “They’ll ruin my grandchildren.”

· “Family A (our family) is the best family, and family B is a bad family. That’s what family B stands for—bad.”

· “If you don’t stay as family A, you become family C, the creepy family.”

· “You shouldn’t want to spend time with family B. Those people don’t even open their presents on Christmas morning! How could you want to spend time with such heathens?”

No Laughing Matter

At arm’s length, sentiments like those are funny. But just wait until your son calls and says, “As you know, Mom, we’re planning to come for Christmas this year. But I got cholera, so we’re going to my wife’s for Christmas. They’ve all had cholera.” Cholera or not, that’s your child, choosing to go somewhere else!

Although potentially damaging, these examples we reviewed are pretty tame illustrations of family rules, rituals, and expectations, and how they affect the individuals involved. But they show that real differences exist between families—differences that pose potential problems. Sometimes we have trouble understanding each other. It might be even had to understand what we were taught in our own homes. We find ourselves asking these questions about what we were taught:

· Is it right or not?

· Does it create a problem?

· Why was I taught that?

· Who said that, and why?

· Does that make sense for me?

· Where did that come from?

Keep in mind that what works in one family system or culture might not work in another. Maybe there was once a useful purpose for a given standard, process, or teaching that has, over time, become unnecessary or ineffective. Nevertheless, it has been ritualized as a part of our family tradition. It has become our standard, ineffective or not.

Differences Are Inevitable

To be effective partners, we must understand our family systems and other components of our backgrounds that make us different from each other.

That doesn’t mean that Lois was right or I was right about when to open Christmas presents. It does mean that we saw the situation differently, for reasons that made sense to each of us. The critical thing to remember is that differences are inevitable. But these inevitable differences can be investigated and discussed. We can decide how to handle them in the future. We can decide what works best for us.

What happens when roles or expectations developed in our families of origin have a negative impact on how we feel about others or ourselves? Some family myths or expectations can be damaging to you or someone you love. Many of these negative messages may be well-intentioned in the beginning but somehow leave the wrong result.

Some are easy to spot. Others may rise up to bite you, even after years of marriage. These harder-to-see messages are all those roles, rules, lies, and myths that exist perhaps without our even know they’re there. But they’re real, and they can become stumbling blocks.

Such things may go unchallenged for years. If they don’t come into direct conflict with overpowering evidence that they’re false, or become directly harmful or painful, we don’t even acknowledge they exist. Perhaps we just don’t know they’re there, or maybe we just choose not to acknowledge them. To find these hidden time-bomb teachings that may be ticking behind the scenes, look for traditional family statements or beliefs that are always stated in the absolute. Some examples:

· Everyone opens Christmas presents on Christmas morning.

· Husbands who love their wives don’t play basketball on weeknights, send flowers often, and call from work twice every day.

· To ask for help is failure.

· Women who work are bad mothers.

· Anybody who gets sick is trying to avoid something.

· Discussing money just causes fights.

· Reading is a way to ignore me.

· The house must be completely clean before anything else can get done.

· The wife is responsible for paying the bills.

· The husband is responsible for paying the bills.

· You must work as many hours as you can to succeed.

· All the men in this family have bad tempers.

You may recognize some of these. Or maybe you recall other similar ideas that are specific to your own family. Their hallmark is that they’re statements of absolute belief, specific to us. Often they’re the scripts by which we live.

Playing Our Parts

The roles assigned to us in the play of life are generally handed out in our youth by people older and seemingly wiser than we are. Early in our lives, we’ve neither the power nor the experience to question them effectively.

Thankfully, much of the time these directors of our life roles are kind and wise, recognizing our talents and potential. However, far too often people who (for whatever reasons) are unkind, self-serving, threatened, or just not very aware or bright are in a position to place labels on us.

Some of the roles in the following lists may sound familiar. One way to sniff out these potentially damaging absolutes in our lives is to use the fill-in-the- blank method.

Have you ever heard or said:

· He/she is the . . . one in the family.

· She/he always (or never or won’t or can’t or shouldn’t) . . . .

By filling in the blanks with the first words that come to mind, we can often identify the role assignments or expectations for ourselves or others that are familiar from our past.

Give it a try. Exchange the words in parentheses below with the italicized word or phrase to create different negative or positive examples. Feel free to add others that sound familiar to you. Record your answers on a piece of paper as you discover what your expectations have been of your various roles.

· He’s the lazy one. (smart/stupid/quiet/funny/happy/dishonest)

· She’s the stupid one in the family. (smart/lazy/quiet/slow/funny/happy/dishonest)

· She’s the wild one in the ward. (Molly Mormon/spiritual/rebellious/bossy/dull)

· He’s the smart one in the class. (best/worst/brightest/silliest/with the most potential)

· She’s always late. (angry/happy/studying/talking/asking questions/showing off)

· He never gets it right. (quits/learns anything/forgets anything/understands anything/makes trouble)

Sometimes role assignments or behavioral expectations are stated as a question. They’re almost always stated in absolute terms as well, using words like never, always, or ever. For example:

· “Why can’t you ever. . . ?”

· “Why must you always. . . ?”

· “Why can’t you just . . . ?” (shut up/learn/listen/stop pushing/grow up/ do what I tell you)

Who Gets the Blame?

This book is not about placing blame or accusing parents, siblings, or extended family members of not being perfect. Nor is it about developing a master list of which rules, expectations, or roles work or don’t work.

I’m in no position to decide why you were taught what you were, or why you chose to believe what you did—just as I can’t know why you rejected other things people were trying to teach you. Certainly no one’s suggesting some global parental conspiracy to make children crazy or create ineffective adults.

The reality is, we’re taught in one way or another about life, and some of those lessons are not on the mark. Some of what you were taught will be problematic for your spouse and your marriage. Almost surely, elements of what you were taught or learned will be in conflict with what your spouse was taught or learned. It is valuable to be aware of this and review what you believe together.

You need to decide what works for you two—what new or different things you’ll choose to try—as you refine your marriage relationship and bring your family of procreation into peaceful balance.

Proactive creation of a positive family C environment means spending less time on the whys of the past and more time on the whats of the future. When a troublesome rule, role, myth, or lie is discovered, evaluate it, learn from it, and then discard it and move on. Don’t waste time with blame or bile. The questions is, What do we replace it with that works for us? Setting positive expectations for our marriage exposes these hidden obstacles and sets the stage for understanding and communication.

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