BellaOnline Forums Relationships Divorce Negative Behavior Patterns You Grew Up With

In our own life, we tend to mimic at least some of what we grew up with. If you come from a dysfunctional family, many of us do actually, you might find yourself repeating some of what you experienced, but feel quite natural in doing it.

So say you have a distant father and a mother who drowed the relationship out (the lonliness/lack of intimacy) by ignoring it or took it into her own hands with an affair, you might naturally find yourself if your the son who grew up with that, falling into the same pattern of the father, or if you relate more to the mother, one or even both of those behaviors.

If it's a natural instinct, are they correctible behaviors or behaviors that are even in need of correcting, if they happen to be ones that are natural in doing?

Elleise:

You have to first know that there is a different way of relating and then have the desire to change.

Personally, I broke the "cycle" of mothers being distant with their daughters with my only child. She grew up to know she could talk to me about anything, stuff I would rather not know/lol, but rather she come to me with her concerns.

It worked and kept her from drugs and pregnancy and death - we lived in the ghetto. I taught her, that while I was struggling as a single parent, it did not mean that we had to act "ghetto"...

My mom and her mom are "polite" and I had an awesome relationship with both of my grandparents (mom's side), dad's died when he was still a boy.

My mom and myself have zero relationship and after years of trying to work it out, finally gave up and concentrated on my daughter. Nicole is 24 and I am so PROUD of her and know that if she has a daughter (she has no kids at moment), she will continue to IMPROVE on what I started.

I don't hate my mom, but spent too many years mourning, yes, over a relationship that never existed due to the fact that she was too busy defending herself against an alcoholic husband who wanted her barefoot and pregnant. Back in Jamaica, West Indies, women did not have any options and while she had her Master's, she choice to stay with him.

To this day she has never discussed this sad situation and to be honest, if he had not died in a car accident while driving home drunk from work one rainy day when I was 12 (I will be 53 in a few months) - I doubt if she would be alive today.

So yes, we do tend to mimic what we grew up around, but it does not have to be so.

Great question as usual

I love that you were able to bridge communication and break that cycle of "distance." I never understood it myself, but for maybe if there's more kids than you can handle mentally, emotionally, etc.

Especially, parent-child connection. I have the same philosophy with my own daughter. My thought process is, if they can't just come to you as a person, then they're going to go to some other person somewhere else.

It takes a lot to break negative behaviors you've grown up with. But as you point out, you have to know, there are other ways.

I think half of the reason we grow up with what we do is like a personal home movie theater brought direct to your own home..you know, before Netflix, lol. But there you can pretty much figure out what not to do, or go ahead and do, but understand you're kind of getting a sneak preview into the types of outcomes you're likely to have.

Elleise, I have been reading this book The Narcissistic Family and it has been such an eye opener.

I can look back and see how my grandfather and grandmother worried more about what people thought of their family than they ever worried about their own kids. My own mother simply doesn't have the skills to make a connection, so we don't have a real connection - it's very superficial and though we only live 30 miles from each other, we go weeks or months without seeing each other. And then I married someone whose natural inclination is to worry more about what other people think that his wife and kids.

But see,now that I realize what I'm dealing with, and being told, by my therapist, that some things aren't normal - like my husband giving me the silent treatment cuz he's mad - I am able to see things in a different way, and recognize that something's not right.

That's a huge deal!

Of course I spend more time scratching my head and wondering how I ended up in this "B" movie!!