When your family of origin sucks

I think it's less complicated (and less relevant). It just means that you only have one checking account. It doesn't really matter who has the check. It's probably on auto-deposit anyway.

I did that with my wife but it was just because I don't really care about money, I knew she liked to keep track of the banking and bills and the bills had to be paid regardless of who did it.

I think, in this particular case, it's just a spurious argument. True but not particularly relevant.

 

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Yes, it really does, to the relationship. Especially in working-class families.

That's irrelevant. What matters is the budgeting.

To you.

 

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"Auto-deposit" did not exist for those marriages - only a few and largely wealthy people had any such services available. Most of those men were being paid by having a physical check handed to them as they left work on payday. When I worded it as "turned over", I meant physically handed to the wife - in the envelope, usually, if it didn't need signing, but in any event completely under her control and management.

It did, according to my father, matter to the people he was counseling. That's what he thought he noticed, that it mattered.

Pretty much everybody in the relevant population had just one checking account - including those in the less happy, less stable marriages, that disproportionately concentrated the bases of power in the marriage in the husband.

It's not spurious - it's an accurate description of what my father noticed or thought he noticed.

And it's not an argument. It's an anecdotal observation, available for any argument that comes to mind.

Has an argument come to your mind?

 

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I wasn't specifically referring to what your father thought he noticed.

When there's just one checking account with joint control it's not likely to make much difference. If you are describing one checking account families where some don't have joint control, sure, that's less controlling and probably occurred more often in happier marriages.

This scenario and date is so old as to not be very relevant today.

Anyone with a happy marriage wasn't likely to be in marriage counselling however.

Maybe we should conclude that a marriage will be happier if the husband doesn't make so much money and will therefore be more compassionate. That fits in pretty well with your ongoing narrative in any event.

 

It is, though. Money, and who controls its allocation, is one of the three major issues of contention in marriages.

No, that's not even the least little bit what it's about.

 

Then don't specifically reply to specifically that.

It misses the point completely - to the degree of almost getting it backwards.

As noted, it did make a significant difference - that was the observation. If you find a carefully considered and decades of experience based observation of reality "unlikely" for no apparent or given reason, you should maybe recheck your assumptions. Or reread for comprehension, if your other posting is any indication of what happened there.

But they were (and are) very likely to know well, regularly meet, and converse with, someone who does counsel marriages - even if they didn't have problems with children and parents and inlaws and so forth, despite the health of their marriage. Think a minute - you can figure it out, if you know anything at all about the American working classes. Hint: church.

The days before auto-deposit are ancient history? https://techbullion.com/what-is-digital-payment-origin-and-history-in-financial-technology/

Routine auto-deposit for the population under discussion is less than 20 years old.

More to the point, power relations in marriage and family life have not gone away - the control of resource issues involved are hundreds of years old. Thousands. They show up in old Greek plays, already recognized as universal aspects of human life.

 

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That business of the power-relations, though, is very relevant in the generations, as well. What we grow up seeing our parents do is what seems right and proper to us as young children, wrong and messed-up when we're adolescents and confusing in early adulthood.
In my experience, the children of well-balanced families tend to grow up less confused, less conflicted about themselves, better able to form friendships and romantic relationships than the children of families where one or the other parent controls.
Not just money and budgeting, but decisions about where to live, what jobs to take, where to vacation, how to raise the children, whether to practice a religion, which people to associate with - when the power is shared by both adults, there tends to be a more secure and stable environment for the children.
Disparity is stressful in various ways - for every member of the family.

 

We might not be able to divorce our family but we can walk away.

 

Yes, I assumed it was religious based. I didn't specifically refer to your comments. There were other comments as well.

The days you described were portrayed as beinging well before the auto-deposit days. Men controlling the house, one pay check, counselling families and seeing turning over the check as being a great social improvement. It sounded like the 50's from your description.

It sounded like a religious environment in that he "thought" he noticed these connections. This sounds like the same marriage counselling that routinely told women to stay with their abusive husbands because God and the Church thought that would be best.

 

Making a big deal out of joint banking or direct deposit entirely misses the point.
You can have skewed power-structures in two-career, even wealthy families; you can have abuse without religion or a bad marriage behind closed mansion doors, without any counselling.

 

I appreciate everyone's sentiments here, and some of you sharing your family dynamics with me. I believe in God as some of you know, and I've been reading the Bible, again. Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, and while my family isn't an 'enemy,' it's uncomfortable to ''turn the other cheek'' just the same. I don't think Jesus made a distinction with his directives, however. (unfortunately) lol

 

Partly due to temperament, but also due to the fact that my immediate family lived thousands of miles from all other relatives (and, consequently, I never had to, nor learned to, endure family gatherings and suchlike), I've always had tremendous difficulty with being around people whom I consider reprehensible or loathesome. (My father excepted, of necessity, but then I also didn't speak a single word to him for over 15 years.) My disposition and behavior is such that... erm... people have actually gone out of their way to ensure that I don't have to be in the same room with someone I detest, or am likely to detest. For instance, I've never met my ex-girlfriend's brother, even though I am close to the rest of her family (parents, sister) and, even to this day, will have dinner or stay with them for a few days. I don't even think he's that bad--he's just a Republican (who didn't vote for Trump) and very much a capitalist. But, with me... it would be tense.

It's not a great quality, to say the least, but, at the same time, there have been occasions where people have actually enlisted me for this very quality: they know that I will say something that no one else will, no matter how awkward, uncomfortable, unpleasant it makes the situation. Once I knew someone who ran a popular restaurant. A few people informed me that he had this unofficial policy of not ever hiring women to work in the kitchen because... I don't know, because he was a prick. They informed me precisely because they knew I'd lose my shit over it. I did, and he actually changed this "policy"--he was the type that only responds to in-your-face tactics.

To be clear, I'm only talking of argument and saying "impolite" or "improper" things--never any sort of physical altercation, of course.

I don't really know what to make of this. On the one hand, I'm well aware that this quality of mine often results in unpleasantness--created entirely by me; and yet, I find that most people are so averse to confrontation, i.e., prone to politeness, that they'll simply allow for so much resentment to build up over years. So they'll maintain relations, whereas I'm apt to burn bridges--but what good are these "relationships" when people are unhappy, always having to walk on eggshells, and never really taking the opportunity to speak their minds?

 

That hits home!
Our adopted daughter never shared our values, so there was plenty of strife in the home while she was growing up. Eventually, she moved out; we kept helping her financially and sometimes emotionally as her romances blew up. We kept up regular visits back and forth, holidays, birthdays, etc. even as there was less and less common ground. After she married the banker of her dreams and moved into the dream freckled-brick house with two bathrooms per person in Snoreville, the visits grew even more uncomfortable. After a while, my mother refused to visit them: "I'm not going where I'm merely tolerated." so daughter came to see us, with the baby but without the banker, which was okay... sort of. Only, it wasn't really: it was an uneasy compromise.
Then, one day, I took the gut test. By accident, but I recommend trying it deliberately.
"The family is coming for dinner."
"Sorry, they can't make it after all."
Did your stomach drop with disappointment or unclench in relief?
So, what rewards are you getting from that relationship? Are they equal to or greater than the price?
Okay, so what are they getting? Are they keeping up with you because they want to, or because they feel duty bound?
What's the best outcome for the most participants?

For us, not seeing daughter, son-in-law and the suburban brats is like taking off the bullet-proof vest.

 

Reconciling is for whos benefit ?
seeking to fix something that is perceptibly broken with someone whom is emotionally incapable is simply inviting abuse.
equally inflicting a child with adult problems then punishing the child for getting violent.

just because the human form in front of you has a chronological age above 20 does not mean the thing controlling it is any older than a 10 year old child.
most often no older than a 15 to 17 year old teenager.

overly normal looking familys are a more often a sure sign of psychological trauma.
only around 1 in 50 familys are vanilla & that is mostly because 1 or both adults are highly emotionally advanced.

keeping in mind the trolls and god-awful types who might stumble into this thread...
i shall try and be brief.

as society has developed and human social intellect has been dragged kicking and screaming into an adjacent vicinity(the distance between trail blazers for social & intellectual development and those at the bottom is so vast it invalidates normal concepts of proximity to relative basic functional relationships)

anywho...
metoo
equal rights(LGBTQ+, Womens, Religous)
human rights (Global concepts)
those functional behaviour sets have been pushed and pulled along the way driven by chaos, truama and need, fueled by want, lust hate & evil & hope.

though it is maybe not well understood, the concept of victimising someone by defining them as being offensive is a fairly new paradigm to many mono culture misogynist or conservative religious people.

how this plays out against the pushing of younger society to adapt to more altruistic concepts of moral code and law is a malaise of egalitarian & nefarious intent.
mostly propped up by functional sheople in varying states.

primal drives quantify variant flux and interplay of forces between
ambulances at the bottom of the hill
with
fences AND ambulances at the top of the hill
with
expecting to be rewarded for ignorant actions(seeking validation)

pondering for a moment the sick _ucks that might be reading this & want to use any ideas on exploiting other people/children etc
i think i have not left any tools laying about(first do no harm).

 

My sister is three years older than I. When she was 18 she married an asshole who regularly beat the crap out of her. Of course, there was no real legal recourse as his dad was a cop. After a few years, and one child, he finally took off. Then she marries his best friend, who is even worse--the kind of person who puts cigarettes out on your face, and he even shot my dad once (relatively minor injury sustained). Five more kids, countless financial fiascos bailed out by my mother (with her extremely limited resources), and all sorts of, well, nightmarish episodes. After so many years, she finally gets rid of him too. I recall there being a couple of years during which my sister, with kids in tow, was moving from a shelter to a cheap rental to... Constantly, as this guy was hard to shake and would not stop terrorizing her. Needless to say, neither guy has ever paid a penny of child support.

My sister blames my mother for "enabling" her. Of course, my sister was a victim in all of this, but that's got nothing to do with my mom (apart from the fact that my mother married my father). And she put my mom through hell for who knows how many years.

I have absolutely nothing in common with my sister, apart from growing up in the same house. As far as her beliefs and such--and really, it's been decades since we've had a real conversation--the worst I recall was that she was somewhat homophobic; perhaps not virulently, but even so... it's there, and that's enough for me to feel compelled to address it . (Perhaps I should say it was there, maybe she's evolved some in the past 30 years.) I haven't spoken to her at all in perhaps 15 years, and I don't see her when I visit my mom. She has tried to call me a number of times over the past couple of years, and while I certainly don't loathe her, I'm disgusted by her treatment of my mom. I mean, I feel tremendous guilt over not being able to help my mother more than I have, considering what she sacrificed for me. What on earth could we (my sister and I) possibly talk about, and even were I to bring up all that, what could it possibly accomplish?

 

Probably nothing. Sometimes when you see that a friend/relative chooses to stay in a dysfunctional world the best thing that you can do is to not be sucked into it yourself.

Sometimes people who are messed up gravitate to those who are even more messed up as it makes them feel better. Dealing with "normal" people just reminds them of how messed up they are.

 

This thread needs a fireplace, some blankets, and plenty of hot tea ...

I could listen to you guys all night long. Your stories have helped me feel less ''crazy,'' for want of a better word. Maybe ''crazy'' isn't the right word, but less...anxious. Less...disrupted.

For me, I think what I'd like to see change at this point, is to not allow these people to trigger me anymore. I don't want to be angry with them, anymore. Even if they never change, which they likely won't...I don't want to be mad at or hurt by them, any longer. Perhaps, that part is up to me, now. I've experienced some occasional, trickle-down apologies my way over the past few years, but then they go back to being who they are. I love them? Like in an obligatory, they raised me, I owe them kind of love? But, if we were not related, they wouldn't be in my life. We wouldn't be friends. I know that without a doubt, but this doesn't mean that I need to become like them.

In a way, I feel empathy for my family, because it astonishes me that people can muddle through life, and not learn anything meaningful. Sure, they have learned how to earn and spend money like it's nobody's business, but they seem so lost...like so obsessed with how they appear to others...it's all about the optics. They should take all of that energy and actually work on self-actualization, and improvement.

Nonetheless, I can't change them, only how I react to their treatment of me, which truth be told, isn't always bad. I know in some narcissistic way, they love me. Maybe we have to learn to love ourselves enough that it all just doesn't matter. Most days, it doesn't matter...they're my family and I keep them at an arm's length.

Some of you seem to have developed quite a thick skin when it comes to your family of origin challenges - I could learn from you.

 

Thank you very much for sharing all of this; why do think your sister behaves as she does? Why does she gravitate towards these types of men?

 

That third person - usually a victim - very often is the sticking-point. You can't abandon them, and they connect you to the person you least want to associate with. Some choices are very, very hard.