My Dysfunctional Family

They say there’s no such thing as a perfect family. I completely agree. My family is quite far from perfect, and if it didn’t sound so cliché, I’d simply say they’re just not normal. This certainly applies to our communication styles, as well. Although I have previously covered this topic, before I begin to focus on communication among my family members, it is important for me to briefly recap my family history.

I was adopted when I was six months old by my parents who had been acting as foster parents for several children. My (now) sister, who is one year older than me, was adopted at the same time, marking the end of their ten year foster parenting career. Aside from the foster children, my parents had also raised four boys of their own, who were all either beginning or attending highschool at the time. By the time my adoption was even legal, they had all moved out of the house.

My adopted parents separated when I was three years old and were legally divorced by the time I was five. My mother took custody of my sister, and my father took me. I grew up nearly on my own, as my father worked long hard hours every day. My brothers had all moved away, and my sister would only visit on the weekends and during the summer months. For most of my life, however, my family was basically my father and I.

When my sister began highschool, she convinced our mother to let her live with us, and my mother moved further away. It was about this time when my father became involved with his girlfriend. While, I never really liked the woman, I did enjoy having a woman’s touch around the house. When she finally moved in, she brought her daughter along with her. Although it is not completely relevant, it is important to note that this woman had been divorced as well. Despite the fact that I didn’t like having these ‘intruders’ in my home, I did begin to appreciate the actual feeling of ‘family.’ Up until this point, dinner with my father consisted of a comfortable seat on the couch, in front of the TV, with plates on our laps. When the women moved in, we began sitting at our previously lonely dining room table, adding to that ‘family’ feel.

By the time I had started highschool, my youngest brother, twenty-five at the time, had come back to live with us while he began taking college classes part time, as he worked full time. It was great to have another male role model around, and for the first time in my life, the dinner table was full—every night! This opened us up to a new level of communication. We shared stories of our day, talked politics, and even had belching contests…like a normal family…right?

When evaluating our families, it is very useful to remember some theories that were developed by John Cuber and Peggy Harroff, of Ohio State University, regarding different marriage types. These marriage types include vital, total, passive-congenial, devitalized, and conflict habituated marriages.

Although, my father and his (still) girlfriend are not actually married, Cuber and Harroff’s findings may still apply to their situation. Throughout the duration of their relationship, I have observed them pass through more than one of these relationship types. The first, much like most new relationships, is the vital relationship.

In The More Total View: relationships Among Men and Women of the Upper Middle Class, Cuber and Harroff describe the vital relationship as one with highly involved couples, who have not lost their individual identities. They note that the clue that a relationship is vital derives from the feelings of importance surrounding and that that importance is shared. In the early stages of my father’s new relationship, he was highly involved with her, mostly due to the fact that they were working at the same location at the time. According to Cuber and Harroff, in vital relationships, it is usually apparent that the people are living for something which is exciting and it consumes their interest and effort. This was certainly the case for my father and his girlfriend at the time.

After a few years went by, my fathers’ relationship had developed into a conflict-habituated relationship. In this type of relationship, there is extensive tension and conflict that is usually managed or controlled. Cuber and Harroff found that these types of couples engage in verbal arguments and fights about nearly everything yet are discreet and polite about it, when in the company of others. These couples rarely succeed at concealing it from the children, which is probably why it was so obvious to me. Essentially, as Cuber and Harroff explain, there is awareness by both members of the relationship that incompatibility is pervasive, conflict is ever-potential, and an atmosphere of equilibrated tension permeates their lives together. Aside from some understandable issues such as money, I believe that this stage in their relationship had many causes, but it was primarily the tension between this new ‘family.’ My sister and I were not used to taking orders from some random woman, and were definitely were not alright with her daughter sharing our privileges. While this stage in the life of this relationship was rather short, it seemed quite prevalent to me at the time.

My father and his girlfriend have now moved on to yet, another relationship type in this next stage of the relationship. Unfortunately, it seems they are now involved in a devitalized relationship. Basically, according to Cuber and Harroff, the relationship has lost its ‘zest.’ By now, both my brother and I, as well as the girlfriend’s daughter have been attending full time universities for a few years. The added tension from the children is now gone, and we have all grown to accept each other. In the devitalized relationship, there is typically no serious tension or conflict and there may be aspects of the relationship which are actively satisfying, such as mutual interests in children, property, or family tradition. My father and his girlfriend were once alive with love, and now it seems as if the excitement and passion is gone and duty remains. The duty to habit. Cuber and Harroff point out that these relationships tend to continue despite the ‘numbness’, and conflict does not occur in part because of the inertia of ‘the habit cage.’ Its almost as if my father and his girlfriend are now just together because of their habit of, well, being together. Regardless of how it seem, I know they love each other, I just don’t think that they at in love anymore. Now, getting back to that dinner table.

These days, the packed dinner table is much less frequent, now that we are all at college, but it still happens. This past Thanksgiving, I took a step back and observed the ways in which my family interacts at the dinner table. Unfortunately, little meaningful conversations actually exist. Our discussions are actually more like non-stop joke cracking and a slew of comical put downs. My brother and I make jokes and laugh obnoxiously throughout, while my father and the girls have belching contests. I’m sure you can imagine how repulsive this actually is while you are eating a meal. There is just an overall lack of seriousness at our dinner table, always.

We are not a very interpersonal family, and rarely discuss important topics as a whole, which is ultimately why nobody really even says anything meaningful at dinner. My father is not very emotional at all, and has a lot of difficulty expressing how he feels. Naturally, this has rubbed off on the rest of the family, which is also why nothing important gets mentioned at dinner. Expressions of satisfaction from members of my family come in the form of a smile, or a good chuckle, especially from my father. I can tell when he is dissatisfied when he reacts with no reaction. That also goes for the rest of my immediate family. It seems that, as a method of avoiding the verbal expression of feelings, my family primarily uses nonverbal communication to convey feelings.

So there really isn’t such thing as a perfect family. I feel that that’s is a good thing, since nothing actually is perfect, and if it is, there’s probably something wrong with it. After analyzing the different aspects of how my family interacts with each other, and using Cuber and Harroff’s ideas, I am finally able to appreciate the uniqueness that each member of my family brings to the table.

Moving on...

Guilty by association. To some, the phrase may mean nothing at all. To others, it may imply criminal activity. For me, it meant voluntarily giving up my best friends and turning my whole life around.
Everyone has that friend or group of friends with whom they grew up. Naturally, I was not any different. Growing up, by best friends provided me years of good times. Reminiscing, my memories remind of clips straight out of the film Stand By Me. For those who are unfamiliar, Stand By Me focuses on the lives and adventures of the friendship of four young boys, from tree-houses to troublemaking.
As far back as I can remember, all the way up until my junior year in highschool, I had the best of times with who I thought the best friends I could ever have. We did everything together, building forts, swimming in the river, sleepovers and birthday parties. These were boys with whom I walked to school for ten years straight. We knew each other inside and out.
My circle of friends and I has always been considered the “bad kids,” or the troublemakers of our grade in school. We were popular because we were defiant, and we were defiant because it was fun. We were always the ones clowning around, and the first to be sent to the principal’s office every day. Substitute teachers feared us- we were the ones who played the ‘name switch’ game on them, which sure was a blast. Outside of school however, our antics were becoming a bit more serious and we began shaping our lives to come.
My friends and I would gladly participate in ‘mischief night,’ on every night other than the night before Halloween- because that’s when the police are expecting it, of course! Our means of mischief eventually grew from harmless toilet paper to more risky acts, such as blowing up port-a-johns in the highschool baseball fields. We also too
Our risky behavior was not limited to mischiefing, however. Before we knew it, we were stealing seemingly harmless cigarettes from our parents and ‘experimenting.’ Subsequently, we became smokers. The experimentation didn’t stop there, at the same time, we were drinking alcohol whenever we could get our hands on it. By the time we made it to highschool, we were experimenting with drugs. The only peer pressure that existed seemed to be only between the four of us, we did whatever the other did, no questions asked.
Little by little, all of this risky behavior started to catch up with us. Our minor acts of mischief were becoming more criminal, and soon, we were getting caught by the police every other time…and charged. It got to a point where we couldn’t walk down the street together without being monitored by the local police. They would literally creep down the road as we walked and watched our every move. Our daily prank phone calls eventually led to serious harassment charges, and our mischievous acts led to a slew of criminal charges.
One by one, each of began to feel the wrath of our actions and our lifestyles. By freshman year, we were all on juvenile probation. By sophomore year, two of them were in and out of drug rehab. By junior year, one of them dropped out of highschool, while the others were failing miserably. My antics in school were getting me suspended every other day while the closest of my friends had begun doing cocaine, and eventually started stealing money from my family and I in order to nurse his habit. While there were many other things that led up to my breakout, this was the last straw.
I always felt I was the strongest of the group, and in retrospect, I was right. I was the only one who didn’t actually have to do what they were doing, regardless, I did anyway. At some point during my junior year I took a step back and looked at our lives. We were all bringing each other down. I realized, if anything, my association with these boys was masking my true potential, and that they weren’t going anywhere in life but down- and I did not want to be a part of it anymore.
It was time for me to clean house. I needed to get out of the ‘bad crowd,’ and establish a better reputation, both in school and my town. I realized that the only way I was going to grow was if I completely disassociated myself from my friends. Not surprisingly, this was an extremely difficult task. It’s really hard to give up your friends voluntarily, on your own terms. At the time, I was resented by them. Now, as I’ve made it to my senior year in college, they finally understand why I had to do it.
So I did it. I stopped spending time with them, took classes without them, and ultimately gave up all of my friends. I started to focus on the good things I could do with myself and my time. In school, I became the first student to schedule an entire period for the purpose of assisting severely mentally and physically handicapped in my schools special services classroom. While it was not actually my intent, this helped people to associate me with good things rather than that ‘bad kid.’ I put more time into my schoolwork, took up extracurricular activities, and picked up a girlfriend whom encouraged my positive personal growth. It became much easier to forget about my old friends when I began dating her, because I was able see what a true friend really is.
Being guilty by association nearly ruined me. Looking at my old friends today, it is easy for me to see how my decision to leave them behind was necessary for me to be where I am today. I was the only one of them to go to college. Heck, I am the only one who left town. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that those guys will be ‘townies’ for life. My association and negative reputation was difficult to redeem, but not impossible. After all is said and done, I have become a success story for the administrators at my highschool- the same administrators who insisted I should just drop out of school because I was going nowhere. In any case, cleaning house and moving on from any sort of a relationship is a terribly difficult thing to do, but sometimes we find it necessary. In my case it was necessary in order for me to erase the negative associations and become an asset to society.