The Family

The foundation and origin of the immediate family are the parents and all other relations within that family tend to stem from the one between the parents. That is certainly true in my family situation anyway. I would say that my parents jump between a total and passive-congenial marriage style. They both work during the day – my mom five days a week and my dad sometimes six. My mom usually gets home around five and my dad usually arrives home closer to six. They do make a point to spend time together during the week usually by watching television in their room and discussing their days in the kitchen or living room.

I noticed that my mom is definitely the main person that my dad communicates with. This is directly related with one of the three cores of communication satisfaction, thoughts. In my dad’s mind, my mother is the only person he thinks he should be concerned about updating with the day to day goings on in his life. He demonstrates this by telling her about the events – both good and frustrating – of his day at work as a contractor. My mom is a great listener and tends to be very honest and open with my dad. My dad has also told my sisters and me on numerous occasions that he considers my mom to be his best friend. There is an undeniable degree of closeness in my parents’ marriage.

However, to call their marriage a “vital marriage,” would not be accurate. There are many factors in each of my parents’ lives and tendencies that keep them apart perhaps more than they’d like. My mom does all the grocery shopping and my dad cannot stand to go shopping. On top of his absolute contempt for shopping, he is often exhausted after work and does not want to step foot outside the house again. My sisters and I always almost accompany my mom shopping and it often becomes quite the outing. During these (at least) weekly shopping outings, my parents are apart. My mom, sisters, and I also go to a church that my dad has no interest in attending with us. We’re working on him and I am hopeful that one day he will decide to try the church out, but as of now, he stubbornly refuses to go. So, the entirety of our typical Sunday afternoons is also lacking our dad.

Over the years, my dad has become more of a solitary person. His social life consists of his family and that is basically it. My mom, on the other hand, has lots of friends outside the family that she spends time with. This difference in social lives sometimes leads to conflict in their relationship. I know that both of my parents would like to spend more time with one another but my Dad’s stubbornness often gets in the way of that. My mom definitely uses the more productive conflict management style.

Through words, another one of the three cores of communication and satisfaction, she explains to him that she’s sick of going places by herself all the time and how she wishes he would come with her more often. She often communicates her dissatisfaction with this particular tendency of his. She told me that early on in their marriage, she would always let things slide and not speak what was on her mind, but now my mom makes a point to be in constant communication with my dad about how she’s feeling whether it’s something he wants to hear or not.

This method that my mom uses with my dad is slowly, but surely yielding positive results. Recently, everyone in my family has been noticing definite improvements in my Dad. He’s slowly, but surely become less stubborn and more open. A few weeks ago he went to a movie with my mom which, silly as it may sound, was a huge step for him. The movie theater is another one of the many places he hates going, but my mom really wanted to see the movie, so he went with her. I was astonished to hear this great news seeing as the last movie they saw in the theater together was “Saving Private Ryan.” It was even a chick flick! I honestly do believe that my father’s intentions are in the right place, but his thoughts and stubbornness are what need to be altered – which is something only he can do. But it’s exciting to see him starting to break through this barrier and finally responding in a productive way to my mom’s honesty with him.

This relates directly to the last of the three cores of communication and satisfaction, emotions. Through hearing my mom’s words of dissatisfaction about how he isolates himself from many family and nearly all outside-family functions and processing her dissatisfaction in his thoughts, my dad (although I am sure he would deny it) must have felt guilty. Since he loves and cares about my mom, her expressed dissatisfaction with a particular behavior of his affected his emotions and consequently affected his actions as well.

To demonstrate a communication rule that goes along with what I illustrated above between my father and mother, I’ll use an example. A few years ago, a friend of my mother’s invited my mom and her family to come to a barbeque she was holding at her house. Although my mom accepted the invitation and took my sisters and I along, none of us even expected my Dad to go. Though she did mention it to him and told him that she was unhappy with his refusing, none of us were shocked in the least bit at this. To the contrary, we fully expected my dad to “snore” this gathering (as he calls it).

To venture away from the relationship between my parents and its effect on our family unit, my two sisters, Megan and Julia must be mentioned. There is nobody else that I am closer to than my two sisters and they truly are and always will be my best friends. They (and my mother) are the only people that I can say, with absolute certainty; know exactly who I am, through and through. We use all six of the sibling maintenance behaviors in our relationships with one another – humor, social support, family events, escape, and verbal aggression (Campbell Eichorn 297). Since we can (and do) tell anything and everything to each other, we often go to one another for social support by talking about our problems and getting advice from one another. We also use our relationships as means of escape during difficult times in our lives. This is because we feel totally safe and secure around each other.

I also strongly identified with the last behavior, verbal aggression. Since we know that we can say exactly what we want and how we feel around each other without judgment, it is easy for us to vent our frustrations with one another. Though, as the book noted, it may sound like a negative behavior, this usually turns out to be a positive thing. Nothing is ever able to sit and fester – as soon as a problem arises between us it is automatically and bluntly addressed. There is no, as we discussed in class, “pile-up” between us since we immediately address our aggravations when they arise.

To conclude and return to the foundational block of a family – the parents – I return back to my mother and father. Although I think my parents have a lot of great qualities about their relationship, when I get married I want to have a vital marriage relationship with my husband. For me to marry someone, it would take a tremendous degree of mutual love and trust. When you love someone, you want to spend a lot of time with them. Even if the activity is not something that one partner is particularly excited about, I want a marriage where we both recognize that getting to be with each other outweighs that.

As illustrated in class, couples will often make sacrifices for one another – like watching a movie or a sports game that they aren’t particularly interested in, but doing it anyway because the other person is. While of course, having time apart to continue growing as my own person is essential, I want the kind of marriage where this is concept we talked about in class is constantly in practice – either because love compels us to or because we consciously make the decision to act out of the love we have for each other.