Why do so many marriages today fall apart, as parents, having no experience positive family, destroy the family children what a “small dose of care” and how to openly talk about the difficulties – says family psychologist Ekaterina Burmistrova.
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Usually does not happen: “I’m selfish, let’s get divorced”
– Catherine, why today so easily fall apart? What happens to the marriage?
In my opinion, in Russia there are three very serious factor in the family situation. The first two are characteristic not only for our country but for many others.
The first factor: very very high standards for the relationship of man to himself. We, those who are married who are going to marry, and those who have already divorced, got used to the fact that from childhood we were given a lot of attention, we went with a high level of care, attention to our physical comfort.
In the end, if there is no rethinking of the selfish behaviors, it serves as a detonator in marriage. People used to take care of himself, he is well, he is comfortable, he is only doing what it develops, satisfies, brings him joy and pleasure. Yes, all of this is important but the family, even in families without children, each ego needs to move a little, learn to take steps towards to another, to a second person.
When a child is born, he is small, all the time care for it, and the era of care – long, have no what to move, but to reconsider all the priorities. It turns out that the priorities of each person in the family at the time relegated to third place.
The woman begins to care for the child, then about your spouse (although it should be Vice versa), then about yourself. And it is heavy to carry. The man begins to believe that it is used here and it has no place here.
I very simply describe the situation, showing how to detonate one of the variants of the selfish attitude that we all so in the firmware of the subconscious, that we do not even notice.
Usually does not happen: “I’m selfish, let’s get divorced”. A person simply has a feeling that his life is not good, he is bored. The door of divorce open: please go and try again. Very easy to find the cause of the second spouse, in circumstances even something.
The second factor. Today, the family from the point of view of survival is not so necessary. For example, the peasant family in the late XIX – early XX century were doomed to poverty, and sometimes poverty, if it was not a breadwinner. Then the family needed the large because it was a different society with a different economic and social dispensation, women didn’t have suffrage…
Now global feminization has led to the fact that a woman can earn and feed their families is not worse and sometimes even better than men. Women are just as ambitious and competitive.
Today a woman is not so scared of being alone. Yes, it is not easy, not so glossy, how can the supporters of easy divorce and easy change of relationship, but still possible.
Not long ago, a woman after divorce doomed to the status of “divorcee”, the marriage was considered inviolable and it was considered shameful. Now the picture has changed. Today, public attitude allows you to get away not only from the destructive marriage in which the couple suffer, from with marriage violence, with distorted emotional relationships, but in the event of any insurmountable problems: just the tension in the family, dissatisfaction, which may accumulate in because of some circumstances. But people do not believe that they need to overcome to stay together, and take it as a reason for divorce, rupture of relations.
Divorce rates in Europe are much smaller, everything is done to ensure that divorce was more difficult: it is inconvenient, economically, socio – joint mortgages, the responsibilities for the care of children upon divorce, etc.
– What is typical for Russia?
– The third factor, we, Russian, should be devoted to some serious research.
What now is the number of divorces is partly due to the fact that already the previous generation of the families were incomplete, weak. It turns out that two generations of women lived without husbands, and sometimes three – great-grandmother, who was widowed in the First world, civil, revolution. Then my grandmother was left alone in the war, after the war.
And already two generations of women who have lost their husbands due to external circumstances or to get them emotionally crippled, growing sons and daughters that don’t see full or positive family before the eyes: perfectionarea woman, if a man, often a drinker with a vicious temper. This sample is now played on the fact that the marriages of the next generation is not strong.
Maybe the generation of our parents is not so easily divorced, but divorces have become more, when the children grew up. Many marriages was, in fact, no family relationship no longer existed. A lot of marriages existed in parallel relations – no wonder that this theme was repeated for the Soviet story, overall very puritanical films “Autumn marathon”, “Love and pigeons”…
When this third factor is summed with the first two, we get a surge of divorces.
Today often married people who are not ready for a relationship.
Often marriage is the result of pregnancy. That is, people are not really going to, but had a child and decided to try it. And at the level of values, no principles, no something that would keep the family from disintegration. Even in the families of believers outwardly divorces less the first 10 years. Then when undergoing a period of neophytes, they also sometimes fall apart. Are saved more frequently when there is real faith, but if everything is based on just the words of the father, in 10, 12, 15 years there is a crisis, which is not always overcome.
To blame the ancestors
– The same negative baggage does not remove it from people the responsibility for the family? It is all the fault of the Luggage, we relationship not responding?
– Answer. Your life is your decision. It is a predisposition. As, for example, the predisposition to allergies, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. If we eat everything, do not follow the flowering period and do not take measures, the ancestors are not to blame, that we’ll get sick. You need to try to live the kind of life that these diseases could not start.
In our country there is some predisposition, partly due to the traumatic experience unedited, to divorce have a huge number of families.
When in meetings, group sessions, I ask, who grew up in full families, raise their hands are usually not many. The question of who the mother and father in a full family kept a good, functional relationship, even less.
Nightmarish challenges of the past century so disturbed the life of the family that PTSD is still not reflected. Now under it get representatives of the fourth generation.
Then there are parents who don’t know what a normal marriage, I can not support their adult children and Vice versa, often working on the destruction of their marriage?
– Of course. Parents, because they often have marriage or split up, or were destructive, that is still no happiness, when the first difficulties insist: “Daughter (son), if you’re sick, get divorced”. And this is when the first difficulties of adaptation – instead of saying, “Yes, the first year is always difficult”.
Yes, indeed, there are relationships and situations, of which it is better to go, not spend years of his life. But they are much rarer than the running difficulties of marriage, about which much has been written in books. When two people, two selfish, two children begin to live together. They’ve learned that each conditional first piece. They completely failed with the roles still do not understand what was happening. Of course, it will be difficult.
In family psychology there is a term – the “border”. Yes, now the nuclear family – husband, wife and children, and there is a subsystem of the family, including parent, to the older generation. That is, the family of the parents – the Union state of the specific nuclear family, and therefore, still have boundaries. And they should be, albeit flexible and permeable.
And negatively on the young family can affect not only destructive parental experience, but also positive. For example, the parents of the husband – ideal relationship just a magical marriage. And this ideal puts pressure on young families, which is not so smooth.
– Some gloomy overall picture is…
– Not bleak, because the ability to cope. Always have a good understanding of who you married, who you married, what inherited the baggage of a spouse. Go back to the analogy with diseases. For example, if a family history has a predisposition to allergies, people are very attentive to this and try to it is not manifested in the child. Specifically the advance will think to give him eat, what not to give, will consult with the allergist in advance and be very careful.
I suggest exactly the same thing – to be attentive to psychological heredity.
Besides, for example, that a spouse from a very troubled family from a family where there was a divorce, from a family where there was alcoholism, mental illness, some such relations between the spouses, which I would not like to repeat.
For believers, I believe, however pathetic it may sound, there should be a systematic practice. In General, our country and the people in need of understanding and eradication of negative experiences: historical and family. I do not mean to that all to go to a psychologist: we all have different circumstances and opportunities.
You just have to think that you had that you unknowingly copied from the experience of parents, and this phase to pass. Understand that almost everyone has some negative baggage from the parent families.
Even if you are very careful, under load, fatigue like this can pop up. You suddenly shout at her husband, as a mother, or becoming isolated and not talk to your wife, as a dad… These patterns of behavior popping up from the depths of the subconscious, and to clean them requires several years. This usually occurs on the fifth, seventh, tenth year of marriage. That is, after the first stage of “adjustment”, which is written as many books passed.
Here is the next level when a person is faced with samples which he had learned when still didn’t understand, learned indirectly, as the child learns everything. And work with these patterns of behavior – work, it is not instant. You can’t just get in there and dig, it takes time. You deliberately not allowed the parental patterns of behavior in relationships, you know that it hurts, you don’t want, you yourself gave a promise not to do it as a child, and you clean out all year after year, month after month.
Small doses of care not to harm the common cause
In the beginning you raised the question of selfishness that a person’s attention to their needs may not be useful in family life. But the man must take care of yourself, isn’t it?
– Of course. There is a question of volume. Add a spoonful of rum in coffee is a single volume, to drink a coffee Cup Roma is another volume, and a bottle of rum – the third volume.
Parents, especially women, often suffer catastrophically low level of self-care, there’s often even homeopathic doses no.
I’m talking about small doses of the care that not to the detriment of the relationship and not to the detriment of the common cause. For example, 20 minutes a day of required reading books for 20 minutes a day of walking alone or taking a bath behind a closed door. Talking about this volume, and not about to go away for two weeks and repeat it five times a year.
The same care is required and men. Yes, they go to work, they are not at home, but outside they are hard at work.
So when returning home 20 minutes husband it would be good to sit in silence, the children can wait. This holiday, unlike the two hours of a computer game. You know, two or three hours in a computer game occur when the person is already chronically tired and had these little intervals of recovery.
It is clear that our conversation shared and therefore no recommendations can not be.
But try to find out how much personal time you have every adult. It’s not personal. Not when you are at work, not when you are off work go, not when you’re going for… but sometimes none at all.
Sometimes it is too much and this can distort the relationship.
So how to protect the family, in which the baggage of all those factors you mentioned in the beginning?
– You need to understand that the heavier the strain in the family, the more you will need attention to ensure that these samples are not to bring into their family. Just such a situation. Bad teeth – teeth treat. Weak back – strengthening the back. Bad heredity is working on it. The main thing – not to run.
The second point is to openly talk about what is difficult. To learn safe ways of talking about difficulties.
If you have discoveries about the spouse, then they have to share very carefully. Because all that was said about the other, it is with high degree of probability is perceived as a condemnation.
If you noticed something about myself, I emphasize, not about the other, myself, can just say: “you Know, I notice that when I’m tired, I’ll stop talking like my mother, or get all the blame”. Or: “I notice that when in a hurry, then start screaming, like my dad, although I don’t want to.” It is important to share these discoveries about myself.
Links to webinars Ekaterina Burmistrova
http://burmistrov.school.tilda.ws/garmonichnoe_nachalo