To ask if there's such a thing as a 'nice normal family'?

[moutonfou]

Background: my family are close, affluent in theory, my dad has a good job. From the outside we probably look like a 'nice normal family'. But there are issues - bad financial decisions, debt, mental health issues across the piece. Parents would probably have split up long ago but for dad being main breadwinner and mum having no means to go it alone, plus my only sibling has a learning disability, lives at home and has been NEET for 3 years with no sign of that changing, which causes everyone anxiety.

Today DH and I went out to lunch and I saw the family of an old friend who always seemed to be the perfect family. All really close, dad has a solid job in a profession, nice house, kids went to private schools, all now established/successful in professions themselves. The kids are starting to have their own kids, some of whom were there, and they all looked so happy together.

They were all sharing a bottle of wine, which really got to me somehow, because a typical wine scenario for my family would be my dad drinking a bottle of wine to himself and becoming gradually more incoherent, my brother glued to his phone or asking if we can leave, and me and my mum drinking tap water to keep the cost down and trying and failing to involve everybody in a conversation.

I commented that sometimes I get jealous of 'nice normal families' and DH said there's no such thing. There's something you aren't seeing in every family.

I accept that, but surely there must be at least some 'nice, normal families' out there? Maybe there are a few worries/issues there, but essentially they're all close to each other, moderately happy and fulfilled in life, and not too uncomfortable financially?

The OP reminds me of the opening line of Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

From my own experience and observations in life, “happy families” don’t exist. Every family has its secrets and sadnesses. Just because things look “perfect” doesn’t mean they are.

Most families are 'normal and functioning' until, in a moment, they're not. Whether you choose to recognise the disfunctional things, or whether they don't seem disfunctional to you personally, they're still there.

I very much doubt there's a family within most peoples' close circle that doesn't have one or more issues like eating disorders, addiction, mh illness, unfaithfulness, domestic abuse or violence or bullying.

Most people are nice. Most people have families. Everyone is'normal'..they are being the person they are. But I know that that's where it pretty much ends. The way to be a nice normal family in the traditional 1950's way...for your whole life? Just an impossible goal. Nice things happen. Bad things happen. People make choices that help or hinder family life. People have big and small events that significantly change the direction of family life. Truely, a' nice family life' is a mirage, a falsehood and not something on which to obsess, maintain.at all costs, or pretend to have..or even to jealously observe.
Having come from such a childhood, to being married and striving for the' nice normal family life' before husband buggered off with my friend after 24 years...I can honestly say..from the outside it appears my nice normal family looks to have imploded..no partner, no income, significant changes in aspirations, counselling...my new' perfect family life' as a single mum and my two fabulous children is now perfect. Difficult, but just as good as when it was at it's best in the' perfect family model'. Happiness genuinely comes from letting go of envying other peoples relationships, embracing the strengths your family life brings you. I truely have found that my' not perfect family unit' is actually better.Harder..but more rewarding.

I'm not sure why some people have cited "good jobs" or "financially comfortable" as evidence of normality. Median average income in the UK is 21,000 so it isn't "normal" to be well off.

It's also not normal or realistic to get through life without experiencing illness, variable mental health, grief, some degree of tragedy in the extended family at least.

If your asking: are there functional families out there? Then I would say: Yes. Thre are families where people are capable of navigating conflict without resorting to abuse, supporting each other through adversity and enjoying each others company.

There are also abusive families. And probably quite a high number of families where people's behaviour is a bit toxic but not quite toxic enough to nc.

My extended family is abusive and, as a result I grew up in quite an insular nuclear family, with not much contact with with relatives outside that. We were, and are, pretty functional amongst ourselves.

I used to feel that made us a bit abnormal but I've been surprised in life how much low level disfunction is simply put up with in "normal" families.

I remember one of DH'S uncles pinching my bum at our wedding, for example, and one of my friends going "Oh dear! There's always that one Uncle isn't there?" I thought "well yeah, we have sexually abusive uncles in my family as well but we don't invite them to things.

I grew up in a big lrish family. We have managed as siblings to stay closely connected into our 50s. There is huge support and friendship. We all have our own families now but our bond together is strong but not overpowering.
My own familly is not normal as my dh has a mental illness. However he has been stable for years, we are financially stable after a few hair raising years, our dc are well educatedd and doing well and we all get on well together now. So maybe after a few bad years ee could nearly be classified as normal now!! We support each other a lot and as our difficulties were public we are hiding nothing. We talk openly about what struggles we had so no skeletons in the cupboard.

I know a few of these.
Dh family included. All get on, no divorce illness or death. Kids all go to uni and get married, buy houses etc. I used to feel fairly intimidated with my weird family.
But oh my god,over the years I've realised nobody's perfect.
They are emotionally repressed, totally stuck in their ways and now in their late 50s/early 60s, the parents are practically parents again while they look after Bil and Sil children.
They seem to lack true empathy and pretty much refuse to acknowledge Illness of any kind.
I'd rather my mad but empathic and kind lot any day.

There's a very "shiney happy family" on face book who seem to have big get togethers weekly and the teens seem to hang out with their boy:girlfriends and parents as well as other family members. Lots of smiley group photos with nauseating comments.
I realised the other day that these get togethers are always around alcohol and that's probably why the teens and their partners are so keen to hang out with them 😂

My family takes the FUN out of dysfunctional and pisses all over it. Seeing 'normal' loving families used to get to me as a child and later on but...

You never know what happens behind closed doors.

I was the same @PinkyBlunder I almost used go adopt other families. My dad was a violent, mentally ill bully and my mother just appeased him.
I went on holiday with a family once when I was 11 and sobbed when I got back as I didn’t want to go home.
What is normal though?

I have a nice normal happy family - or have had since my dad died 10 years ago.

So, to everyone it looks like we are the happiest family around - and we are - NOW....

I would say my family are loving, supportive and functional. But we also have had illness, bereavement, MH issues, financial worries etc. I think very few people have a 'perfect' life and the few I've met that do tend to be nastier, less empathetic people for it.

Exactly Wanna I think I just sort of gave up in the end. Now I have my own family, I tend to focus on making it as 'normal' as humanly possible and consciously not following the same behaviours that I saw in my childhood.

For those of us who don't live in Pleasantville with Crumbs, normal is in the eye of the beholder rather than a series of perfect MC families living perfect MC lives.

Most families have their ups and downs, just as most families put on a good face for outsiders. One of my siblings lives in a picture postcard village, quite sought after. I could write a soap opera based on some of the dramas, scandals and sins in that village but nobody would know from the outside. Makes my city life seem very pedestrian!

The reason that Crumbs’s comments touched a nerve is that it was a description of a perfect life without a glimmer of understanding that it’s not like that for everyone. It felt a very smug post. And as a member of a seemingly permanently dysfunctional family it feels so painful to be left on the outside of these groups who don’t seem to understand that life is not like that for everyone. I didn’t know that Crumbs is well known fantasist on MN. Is it not real then all this perfect life?

There are millions of nice normal families on Facebook...all of them liars
My sister's family all seem loving and perfect but when I mentioned this to her at a family wedding....and she had had a few drinks she told me lots of things that I didn't know that demonstrated they were far from perfect...or normal.

A lot of people probably have some troubles - relationship not as good as they would like, a child with MH issues etc

I’d say we are quite a normal family. Parents don’t have any mental or physical health issues. Comfortably financially. Their relationship isn’t amazing tho and probably just stay together out of inertia. They don’t argue they just don’t do much together.

My sibling is successful and had a lovely family of their own. My mum loves spending time with the grandkids.

I’m successful in work but things are a bit ‘odd’ woth DP versus a ‘normal’ relationship. No physical or mental health issues for me or my sibling.

Does Crumbs live in Stepford?
That version of "normal" sounds very much like the sort of normal where everyone is desperately hiding the nasty undercurrent underneath. Nobody dare admit to less than a perfect life because if they do they'll be ostracised by the rest of the group.

And I do believe that if you scratch the surface of any family there'll be skeletons lurking.

There are issues in EVERY family. Literally all of them. The happiest most "normal" family I know is a single mum with no extended family and two teens. They're very happy. I think because there is no one literally to complicate things.

I have two parents who are together, nice house and cars. I love them to bits and we are close, we go out for meals and I get on with my siblings, they get on withwith my parents. But there are money issues/ups and downs financially, worries with owning a business, arguments, chronic illness, issues in the extended family with a long standing argument going on.

In the end though we all just get on with it, try and be nice to each other and make the most of what we have got. If you realise no one family is perfect and normal you can appreciate what you have more.

They dont exist. On the surface you might think they do.

Dps family appear lovely. His parents a lovely couple been married years go plaves every weekend take grandchild. Have a fb perfect life.

You dont see that i dont speak to them, dp barely sees them and that they have two more grandkids one who doesnt even know them. That his mother doesn't go away every weekend because she wants to. She goes because knows what his dad will dp if she expresses her actual opinion.

All their friends think they have an idyllic life

I don’t think being nice is related to how many difficulties there are in your family. I don’t think there is a normal family really, those that I know that always present the stereotype of one seem very one dimensional and insincere to me.

On the outside my nuclear family would perhaps fit into crumbs’ village (though I’d hate every second of it), but that would be to ignore the inner lives of us all which are what make us who we are. It’s the grit that causes the oyster to create the pearl

I often wonder this too. It is incredibly depressing to be presented all the time with the fully functioning 'front' most people put on. Or are they putting it on? I don't know. I just often feel my life is very dysfunctional.

There are lots of 'normal' families. But not everyone's idea of normal is the same.....

In my experience of my own friends/family and working with people as a therapist (so meeting lots and lots of people and getting to know their family dynamics pretty well: they are a really broad section of society and don't come due to their family problems so I don't think it's that skewed) there are 'normal' families out there, but there so vanishingly rare that they can't really be considered to be the norm by any stretch. I have only two friends who have a 'normal' family (parents still together, all get on well, no obvious MH or substance misuse problems or estrangements), the rest are their own blend of fucked up.

My own family is a disaster zone: my mum drank herself to death when I was early twenties, my brother in and out of jail and turned out to be an abuser to his own family so we're now permanently estranged, dad is on his third marriage, long history of MH issues on my mum's side, a sister I've never met who is also estranged etc etc etc. and yet among those of us still in touch and alive (my dad, step mum and I) from the outside enjoying a meal we are a perfectly nice normal family who get on and like each other. You just don't and can't know what goes on behind closed doors.

I don’t think so. Families can look perfect from the outside, but you never know what goes on behind closed doors. Not in a sinister way, but every family has its issues. I have many good friends and none has a simple family scenario be it in their immediate or wider family. I can get a bit jealous of friends with a big extended family as I don’t have that, but I know that some are dealing with big health problems within that scenario or have fallen out with siblings etc.