Do rubbish parents "put off" a prospective partner?

[Shesagambler]

Reflecting.
I have crap parents. Still in contact but see them distantly. I've had counselling over the years and re-parented myself as best I can.
I've had several long term partners too, had 2 children with one whom I still get along with and share the children with, but embarrassingly, none of my partners have ever asked me to marry them.
When I think of my friends who have married, they all come from loving, close families and their husbands have all become a part of their extended family- as if love attracts love.
The friends I have from backgrounds lile mine are also unmarried and one is divorced having married young.
I guess as we get older and more independent and parents are no longer around, family backgrounds are less important. But when you're in your late 20s,is marrying into a "family unit" as important as marrying a partner to many people?
I would like to know the answer to this.
Would it put you off marrying someone like me?
FWIW, I am now mid-late thirties and wondering if I will ever get my chance to marry someone nice and have that stability I have always wished for. My parents are selfish drinkers who generally don't do anything for me unless there's something in it for them.
Ex-partners have always looked down on my parents, joked about them, eye-rolled at them, told me honestly that they're really crap (I've always appreciated the latter). It all seems such a shame having never been part of a loving family unit and as a little girl,longing for the day I would have my own, to have never married still and be a single mum. I love my children and I'm so glad I had them, but I didn't quite envision it this way. I have a good job, our finances are quite good too, no debt, nice home. But it would be nice to feel wanted by somebody. My friends whose husbands adore them appear to have parents who adore them also.

I would be very wary of parents with partners who were truly unkind, in future. Problems/ addictions/ unusual life stories, no. Unkindness: yes.

I think it depends to a very large extent on how self-reflective a person is though. Someone who has horrible parents and won't hear a word said against them... no, never again Someone who has horrible parents but who can see this and has distanced themselves from them: possibly fine.

I do think that as a general yardstick, the parents can be a good yardstick, particularly if you're introduced to them.in the "here are my wonderful parents" kind of way.

Lots of yardaticks. You know what I mean!

It should in theory but have seen very many instances where it doesn’t. My dp dated someone and remarked on her parenting but stayed with her for a while longer despite some really bad stuff.

Equally I’ve seen women turn a blind eye. I just think it depends on the person.

I married my ex because I loved him, and left him because I didn’t. (Obviously that’s the short version!) However, and with hindsight, I wish I’d properly thought through the impact of marrying into an unhealthy family dynamic. I also think my own different but still some level of dysfunctional upbringing meant I made bad relationship choices myself. It took years of counselling to unravel and I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone from a toxic family again, unless they’d also done that work. Even then I’d think twice. Sorry.

By the sounds of it you do have a stable and loving family. Families come in all different forms and shapes.

@Shesagambler I come from a very disengaged and half arsed family that allowed a huge amount of abuse. Little of the abuse was directly from them, but their neglect created a huge mess for me.

I was proposed to, and was married. By/to someone who wanted a woman who was pretty/arm candy, and ready for him to look down on as less than him. He could not stand me as a person, but he liked the way I looked and the way I made him feel. The marriage would have lasted had we not had DC. Once I held my little baby in my arms, I had a realization of my own innocence that ultimately destroyed the marriage and the family life we had.

I would say that for many people, a partner with a rubbish family background is absolutely ideal. And not for good reasons! Having been married isn't a sign that you are in the running for a "stable family life" at all. Marriage can be a weapon in the arsenal of an abuser. "Stable" families are often the most abusive. Abuse binds people together... often for life...

My current DP is lovely, comes from a family that is lovely from the outside, but in reality is also chilly and not very emotionally competent. We understand each other well, can talk about things, we have empathy for each other. He isn't put off by my family at all. He has never proposed to me though!

That being said, I think it is good that some folk know what they want, and are able to back off from a potential partner whose family upsets, offends, disturbs, etc. them. That's life, people should judge what they can and can't cope with, what will and won't make them happy.

I would like to question your language a little bit. You DO have a stable family life. Nice home, finances OK, two children and a good coparenting relationship. That is stable, that's excellent really. Your children are really lucky!

Is what you really long for, a partner who will make you feel loved, accepted, cherished? If that's what you want, I totally get it. I can remember writing in my journal once, somewhat facetiously, "all I want is a person who loves me the way my parents should have loved me, is that really too much to ask". It's hard, and shit.

I take solace in the idea that I've broken the chain. I will probably be lonelier than a lot of my friends; I don't get to have the full illusion of that all encompassing, healing love that some people seem to get in their relationships. But maybe by being the stable one, my DC will be set up for a better future than was available to me when I was his age.

Not sure that helps. xx

I met my DH when we were young, 18 and 21. I was desperate to be part of a ‘normal’ family as I had/have a dysfunctional one.
He wasn’t put off by mine, there were some big perks of having a non-conventional unit. For me, I honestly thought that I was joining this wonderful family and would be gaining what was at the time missing from my own. It took a long time to realise that actually his family had their own big issues and my DH was very ok with following me when I moved away for uni. We’re now 15 years on from his moving out (19 years together) and the flaws with his side of the family have become more pronounced and he’s actually vocal of the let down regarding his side of the family. It’s not always been easy, but we do what’s best for us and our children rather than trying to engage and push for what we’ll never get from his family - never what I expected when we first met!!

This is all so interesting to read. My DCs father would/will never speak negatively about his own parents, but there are a lot of issues. This is part of the reason we also separated.
He is emotionally unavailable, much like his parents who make him practically, very over-reliant on them. Still, at 40 years old, they sort out his mortgage, his car MOT and servicing, ferry him around when he goes on nights out etc.
It was much too much for me. However, to the outside, he's from a stable background. No debt, hard-working, lovely home, great holidays as a child etc etc.
Perhaps where I've gone wrong is choosing people who are delusional about their backgrounds and therefore, do not have the capacity to change for the better like I believe I have?

I'm appalled by some of the comments here. People who have suffered in childhood and survived and made good lives for themselves do not deserve to be looked down upon. They are among the strongest and most empathetic people you could meet.

Thankfully I have a wonderful DP who wasn't remotely put off by my crap parents. Not married yet but it's on the cards. My sister is also happily married. OP not everyone is so judgemental about people's backgrounds. I wish you well in the future, however that looks.

Mm yes. If my husband didn’t go no contact with his parents our relationship probably would have ended.

Op i know plenty of people from dysfunctional families who've built their own happy families. Myself included. Important thing is you recognise it was dysfunctional and don't let them affect the marriage. Move away if possible.
I also know of people who haven't accepted their family is dysfunctional and distanced themselves. They've never had a successful long term relationship

In all honest if I knew the amount of heartache my dysfunctional MIL would cause, I would certainly have thought far more carefully about marrying my DH. They're kept at a greater distance now which helps, but this antagonises MIL and makes it worse as well as more bearable in other ways.

It's also evident in my DH in ways I don't think he's always aware of- I think he finds emotionally connecting with the DCs harder work than I do, and I'm sometimes left cringing if I'm sat in another room, listening to him undermining himself by making unrealistic threats that the kids know he won't follow through on. I can pretty much hear his mum in him when he goes down that route, and it means he has less authority with the DC than I do as he's undermining himself.

On the flip side, I come from a close family, 2 of us married people who I think were effectively looking to join it having come from dysfunctional backgrounds themselves. One of my SILs seems to see my mum as an additional parent figure. My other SIL is also from a dysfunctional family but one which goes in the other direction- she is still tied by the apron strings to her own mother (in a pretty extreme way) and wasn't looking a new family to be part of- effectively my siblings and I all married people from 'interesting' family backgrounds.

Ex-partners have always looked down on my parents, joked about them, eye-rolled at them

I don't think anyone nice or kind would do that. Ex-h turned out to be a dick but he never looked down my dysfunctional family or said anything about them except to support me when they upset me. He tried to be friendly to all. I felt bad for him that he didn't have a relationship with his in-laws (except my mum).