Family

I wonder why being family seems to give us a license to treat each other so badly. Is it because we're comfortable with each other and our standards slip a little? Or maybe we know deep inside that they'll love us no matter what and we'll love them back? Because rarely do we treat friends, acquaintances, employers and others, as badly as we do family, on a consistent basis. Nor do we take as much crap from those people as we do our families. There must be some sort of biological thing going on because we all "keep on keeping on" in the family stakes, no matter how bad things seem to get. A therapist friend once said to me that her industry would be out of business if it weren't for families. How sad is that!

The roles we have in our family are often defined very early on in life, and for some reason, we retain these often unwanted titles. "The black sheep, the easygoing one, the one with the quick temper, the brainy one, the capable one, the lazy one" and so on. Oh, as adults, we may shake them off sometimes, or for some of the time. But when the going gets tough and claws come out, for some reason, we're thrown smack bang back into those categories. Family roles, family dynamics - a complicated system. And one we seem to never gain enough perspective to see each member of the family as uniquely as we would someone else in our lives. Shared history can be a good thing, but it can also sabotage what could be. Families ......