How much do you think our parents relationships and our upbringings influence the relationship choices we make?

[YoJesse]

I've always thought I'm nothing like my mum and I'd never put up with a broken shitty relationship for years on end. I used to hate it when my Dad was home (he worked away a lot) because they'd try and pretend to be a happy couple then he'd get drunker and drunker and she'd get more and more passive aggressive and they'd have low, whispered arguments about anything till he passed out on the couch. I used to wish so badly they'd just divorce which they eventually did when I was a teenager. It was infidelity why they split not alcoholism or having a dead relationship. Somewhere along the line I think I learnt that you stay married unless one of you cheats even though I always resented their decision and I possibly learnt that you stay married with an addict and just 'put up'.

I separated from my STBXH earlier this year but not for infidelity reasons (he had addiction issues) and it felt wrong despite rationally knowing it had to be done as he was unsafe with our ds and I was getting dragged down with him. Instead of being a martyr an putting up I ended up using substances too which made his actions in our family life normal.

So.... Am I just looking for a reason I'm a fuck up and married a twat and should own my actions or can they be linked back to how I and other people saw relationships growing up?

Not knowingly, it's just that sometimes you realise things later, with more experience and you lack some insight when you need it.

nicenew he's just a bloke I fancy. I'm too burnt to do anything yet and I hope too self aware.

My family aren't great at relationships but I'm the one that really fucked up!

ricecrispies I get that but none of them are addicts and my sister really has the perfect life.

Jesse, ffs will you stay away from the stoner

You sound like someone who makes the same mistakes over and over again. Glad to see you finally got rid of the hard drug user but it's really not an improvement to then go after a soft drug user

You ate asking how to stop the mistakes of one generation rolling over into the next. First step: look at your own choices .

Have you actually stopped using yourself ?

Yes, I've slipped up a few times but overall I'm doing really well. I had to cut contact with a lot of friends which was hard but it helped. He just sort of cropped up in my life. His daughter goes to the same nursery and he collects her a couple of days a week and we just got used to walking/talking together with the kids. I know it's not a great improvement but he seems so grounded and deep and kind. I'm really not going to rush into anything with anyone.

I do make stupid mistakes over and over in all areas of my life but I've had to grow up a lot this year. I'll try and take a step back from him. (anything between us is probably in my mind anyway).

Ds is now my focus and as this post is about I don't want the cycle to repeat. I'm so scared we've damaged him already.

just cropped up ?

You know you have free will, yeah ?

Yeah I'm aware of that! I mean he just nice and fit and I like him but I won't act on it. Really a bad idea right? Not in ds's best interests.

Definetely subconsciously.

I believe it's quite common to choose a partner like your opposite gender parent.

It canal Sao be the case if your childhood is unhappy you go to the opposite type of living as an adult.

So if a lone child, having many children, younger parents having your own children older etc.

Hmnn, from the other side here. Parents happily married for over 40 years. Grandparents both married from twenties to death. I'm one I've of three, we're all happily married, and pretty much married our first partners.

I have a distant relative who divorced on my mums (child of great uncle) and no divorces my dad's side.

I'm hoping to keep the family tradition going.

It's very influential. But manifests in a complex way. It's rarely a straightforward carbon copy of our parents' relationship because different people are involved & influences are received from other sources. Also, we often recognise dysfunctional dynamics in our own upbringings & avoid them so strictly we have all sorts of blind spots surrounding that. An example might be: someone growing up with violence having a zero tolerance to that herself, but not recognising emotional abuse because she doesn't think that abuse can look like that & it's coming from someone who is the polar opposite of the childhood example etc.

Sorry, I see the thread became more specific. Stoners aren't much cop are they, Jesse? Lethargic addicts. My brother is one. A waste of a life.

I thought my ex was so different to my Dad and to all my family. My Dad's a predictable, benign drunk who embarrassed me a hell of a lot growing up but no violence or anything. I never wanted to end up with someone as selfish and embarrassing as him and I never wanted to have a horrible passive aggressive relationship that you thought you could hide from your kids.
I didn't have a PA relationship with my ex cos I don't have the self control my mum has!

pushing no they're not if I'm honest. Earlier this year I was smoking weed every night till falling asleep and I couldn't really function that well in the day. It does make me really lazy but it doesn't seem to affect everyone in the same way.

Any Fucker's comment that he "just cropped up" jumped out at me too.

I suspect our upbringing can make us a passenger in our lives. We're so conditioned to certain behaviours that we are almost sleep walking.

Could you decide now that Stoner Guy is nice to look at in the queue for Nursery, but not potential relationship material. Then end it in your head and never take it any further. So already you are recognising your instinct to be drawn to a certain type, but deciding not to go there based upon experience.

Addiction loves company. You're at a real risk of sliding down that slope again if you hook up with this chap. You know that, you sound intelligent.

Haven't read the whole thread but online dating.

It's the only way really to engage your rational brain in assessing someone, and opens you up to people outside of your (probably equally emotionally messed up) usual crowd.

It's how I met DH. And our worlds would never have collided in a million years otherwise. I came from an abusive home, he has a lovely normal family parents happily married 40years.

You do have to consciously choose the ones who fit the decent job / clean living criteria though rather than going on the pictures (because acknowledge it or not, you'll be influenced by things like what he's wearing in the pictures, if he looks babyish i.e. not drug ravaged and too much visual analysis will put you right back to dating your usual sort).

I don't know because my parents have been married for over 43yrs. For me I think it's down to personality, not confident, shy, caring etc etc that I've attracted those that took and used that for their advantage, endured abused and violence etc. Taken me until I was 36 to learn I'm not this piece of shit and Basically love myself and all the good qualities I have. I would never put up with any of the shit now that I did back then. Am in my 40's.

It's funny because one of my siblings marriage is reflection of my parents and they very happy as in with each other.

They fuck you up, your mum & dad; they may not mean to, but they do. Larkin's poem is right on this, but his solutions to the problem aren't!

Jesse, make a conscious effort to stay away from the stoner.Just rule him out rather than even think of him as a potential.Rause the bar much higher and you'll have a better chance of happiness.

I think respecting yourself and then by default expecting others to respect you, is the key to all relationships, sexual and nonsexual.

Your parents relationship may not be perfect, they may even be divorced but if you have grown up in a family where respect is shown, even if there are problems, then you have been brought up with strong boundaries and a good relationship ethos.

If these have been absent in your childhood then it depends on your ability to find and demand this respect for yourself, perhaps with the help of therapy. Be open to self awareness.
Those who are lucky enough to engage with others outside the family or meet someone significant who "does respect" have a head start. But it does depend very much on personality traits. Those who sink when faced with adversity and those who swim, although resilliance also is connected to role models and family upbringing. Such a combination of luck factors really.

pushing yeah they do fuck you up but despite alcoholism mine were ok. Something I can't get over with my ex is how bad his early life was. It still makes me sad that he had such an impoverished, abusive start to life. It fucking kills me.

I'm going to distance myself from the nursery Dad. Maybe he's not right.

pushing yes it does love company! My little addiction voice wants that but the stakes are too high to start spiraling down that way again.

MsStricrly- in your experience, is the copied behaviour un-learned if the parents re-marry when the children are fairly young and they are shown an example of a good relationship?

I've completely repeated my parents' relationship but my brother and sister haven't at all. I'm jealous of how they managed not to repeat the pattern but I didn't. I wish I knew their secret!

Place marking

Showing an example of being a happy, adjusted single parent is ok as well isn't it?

I wish I knew the secret to not copying your parents mistakes. It's like I've picked up the worse sides of both my mum and dad.

I honestly so worried about ds and how he'll be. I want him to have healthy, happy relationships and don't want him to repeat our mistakes.