To worry my dysfunctional family will deter a future partner?

[Willow79]

This worries me a lot. I've recently turned 29 and feel I'm in quite a good place mentally and emotionally. I've had a few relationships and a nearly right sort of guy last.

The issue is my parents. They divorced when I was very young. Barely said a kind word for years then become friends as I grew up. Each had relationships that did not culminate in marriage and came to an end.

When I was 15, they took me on holiday together and held hands one night when we were out. I asked what was going on and they didnt explain. They broke up. 2 years later they did this again and other family members found out and were horrified, saying they were not a compatible match. They broke up again!

So now about 15 years later they are still friends and now they go on holiday together. They also spend some weekends together. And still divorced! It is so mad I havent even told my close friends they arent together because it seems like they are. I told my mum it bothers me that boyfriends must think it is bizarre and she laughs it off, saying I just need to put up with it. My dad's colleague also recently annoyed him by telling him his situation is very unhealthy.

2 exes clearly were bemused by the situation but said nothing. One guy said he thought his own parents SHOULD have divorced years ago as they didnt get on

But I feel I've got Helena Bonham Carter & Tim Burton for parents (well without the money and all that). They are also artists and involved in politics so pretty bohemian and interesting.

I just do not know how to explain this scenario to future partners and actually worry I'm doomed to a life of unhappiness because a guy with a normal family would be put off. AIBU?

To be honest if that's your idea of a dysfunctional family, you need to get put more!

My great grandparents were first cousins from a small village where people married into the same families constantly, so I've got a dodgy gene pool to go with the other oddness.

OP, if I look around at the families of people I know, I can offer you

A bigamist

A husband and wife so committed to some benefit fraud they pretended to separate and he lived in a caravan in the field next door for years

A man who spent Monday to Friday weekly living with his mother and only travelled to stay with his wife and child for the weekend. For about fifteen years.

A highly-regarded couple who had repeated and public affairs with one another’s’ graduate students and confided in their young teenagers about all details

Someone I knew at university whose parents had died in a suicide pact

Nothing about your parents’ set-up strikes me as ‘dysfunctional’, even if I can imagine it being difficult to live with growing up.