| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 9:05:12 AM | Hi Girlflower
I am interested in the persons whole life. To be honest i am the first after 19yrs of marriage for it to come to an end. Relatives etc have been married for about 45yrs +. I was brought up in England and Scotland and like to hear about other peoples live experiences. Places i have been are Paris, Nice etc and never knew at that time you can get in trouble for stealing grapes (74) Family is very important for me as i live with my parents as both did so much for me when "i was butt head in my younger days" At 48 i look at the whole picture and is not based on attraction. Anyway food for thought. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 9:51:23 AM | | I think family has some influence on who we are, but I also think what matters more is how you deal with the things you get yourself into, your own life situations and how you deal with them. We learn so much through life after we leave the nest so too speak, that this is what forges who we really are, not to say an abusive upbringing would not have a great deal too do with who you are today but the percentage of people who live through that is relatively small, (would be good to know about though). And just a side note I know for me anyway that the old Sex talk is the last thing on my mind in the first or even forth or fifth meeting between myself and a woman unless she would bring it up, and that's not too say I'm not interested in Sex just that's not how I was brought up. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 10:04:15 AM | While many people are blessed with a good upbringing,
I don't hold it against a girl if she missed out on that.
Some people had really lousy families and overcame alot.
If a girl was from an alcoholic family and was an alcoholic herself...
Then she didn't escape from that.
I would avoid her .
If she did overcome that,
I would date her(and avoid her family/LOL)
To know a girls family, is to to know what she was blessed with or had to endure and rise above. In the end, we all must make our own way. No matter from whence we sprang. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 10:08:22 AM | | I think your early life does have an effect on who you are now. But it is important to remember that person could be who they are now in spite of their early upbringing rather than because of it. So yes it has an effect but it is more important to see what their current attitudes are now rather than what their previous history was. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 10:25:34 AM | | Family matters. Sexual preferences matter. Money and views on money matter. All of it matters -- just not on the first date. Hopefully, we all went to meet someone we partially pre-screened via communication. We then ventured out to see if they were physically attractive before proceeding to get to know them. Getting to know someone includes their family and their position in that family. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 10:29:31 AM | | If the your date and their ex are still raising children -- yeah, family matters. If there are boundary issues about family (they come over whenever/always) -- yeah, it matters. If they are helpful, loving, respectful of your life (basically) -- it may not be an issue, but it matters! | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 11:27:34 AM | A large part of what you value and what you are is based on how you reacted to your family and upbringing. When a relationship gets serious, I not only want to know about her family, but hopefully meet them as well. It doesn't have to do with a "good or bad" upbringing, more with WHAT it was and how she reacted to it.
Wow, that sounds a bit like a dad giving a "third degree", but it's more about figuring out if you'll be compatible beyond physical attraction, and if your values really line up beyond trying to please each other.
How many of you have been in great, intense relationships, with seemingly so much in common, only to have them unravel based on different values? Has happened to me a couple of times, and (after the fact) those differences were pretty obvious when I considered our upbringings. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 11:33:48 AM | No two people will have the same upbringing, and most families, whether rich or poor, have some degree of dysfunction.
At our age, it really doesn't matter, but what does matter is how we are today. I was married close to 34 years, and our backgrounds were the complete opposite, but there was some dysfunction in both families but of course he didn't believe his father beating him with a belt almost every day was abnormal. I on the other hand, thought that was terrible, but my father was abusive and an alcoholic. What is in the past stays there, but it is good for conversation now and then.
JMO  | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 1:16:34 PM | I would put it this way, if you were head over heals for someone and then find out they had a terrible upbringing or family(in your eyes) would that negate who that person is today? To me what matters is the person in the here and now not the yesterday, unless they cannot let go of that yesterday. Both my parents were heavy drinkers but I turned out OK, and I have never drank, I figured I saw enough of what that could do growing up, so maybe it really helped me in the long run, and it also taught me never too give up on anything no matter how bad it seems. And so far so good (except for the divorce and I really tried on that too).
So after all that what I really am trying to say is should we not put more emphasis on the here and now of a person? Or am I all wet? | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 2:11:22 PM | mes. # 34
I would put it this way, if you were head over heals for someone and then find out they had a terrible upbringing or family(in your eyes) would that negate who that person is today?
No of course not;) Wanting to know about someones childhood and upbringing and all about their family dynamics is not for someone to use against them or to put them down in any way if they happen to come from an unfortunate background.
But it does help you understand the person better when you know where they've been, and what they've lived (or survived) through.
For example, my younger sister's husband turned out to be a very aggressive, controlling, abusive husband and father who physically, emotionally and mentally terrorized both my sister and their young children, until she finally had the courage
to leave him for good.
It helped me to understand his behavior better once I found out that he, along with his 3 brothers, had all been severely abused by their alcoholic father, along with witnessing their father abuse their mother all through their childhood. All four brothers have been in and out of therapy and all of them have been abusive in their many short-live relationships.
Once I found all that out, it was easier for me to forgive him for what he'd done to my sister. I now only wish him well in his own healing and recovery.
I have also had a short lived relationship with a guy who had been physically abused as a child by an older brother who took the role of the father after the father passed away, and that guy also turned out to be aggressive when angry or frustrated.
He never did hit me, but the relationship ended abruptly when during a disagreement, he ripped my phone off the wall, grabbed me by my shirt, ripping it, and punched the fridge door (instead of my face) so hard he dented it, and then proceeded to kick in my balcony full glass door, shattering it to pieces and scaring the crap out of me...thank god my granddaughter wasn't here is all I can say.
The legal troubles alone that followed that incident is not something I ever want to go through ever again. Not to mention what it did to my head....I'm a pacifist and I shun any type of violent or aggressive behavior...I honestly don't need that shite in my life or in the life of my granddaughter. 
So yes, knowing where a person has been in the past helps you see and possibly prevent certain issues that could come up in the future if that person hasn't dealt with those issues already.
I not only find it interesting to know a person's background on it's own merit, but I find it tells me a lot of what and who that person is today, and who and what he might be in the future.
If someone can't deal with me knowing about them, then they don't have to deal with me either...it's really as simple as that, in my opinion anyway;) 
JMHO | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 2:26:11 PM | I've known people who had terrible childhoods and were determined to have something different and better in their own lives and for their kids. And I think there probably have been criminal types raised by good parents. So I don't believe that everyone will turn out like their parents.
I do seem to end up swapping stories about childhood and families with people I meet. To me it just seems like the natural flow of conversation when you're getting to know someone, but I don't make any kind of assumptions about what those experiences say about the person's character. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 3:01:22 PM | We are the products of our hereditary and/or environment.
This is a really interesting thread. It seems like family is very important in determining the people we turn out to be. The hereditary part certainly comes from the family, and the environment was how we were raised within that family. I've noticed differences in people coming from larger families versus those who were only children, or smaller families. And there are many other differences that come from background.
There's that saying "I know where you are coming from". It kind of means that I understand you. I enjoy hearing about a person's family and how it shapes their views. The family they were raised in and the family they currently have. It matters a lot, in my thinking.  | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/9/2008 3:29:10 PM | I think hearing stories of moments of how someone grew up as interesting. OP, yours sounds fun.
Then there are those that were adversely affected by how they were brought up, we are all a product of how we were raised. | |
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| Does Family Matter?
Posted: 1/10/2008 12:13:52 AM | | I'm always fascinated with a person's childhood (if it was a nice one, if it was a bad one, I'm still interested, but let's save that for more intense conversations). I don't have stories of dancing in fountains, or throwing water balloons at cops, but I have a traditional American suburban upbringing. I had my share of fun. I haven't traveled the world until I became an adult. As long as you don't come off as snooty and make judgments about my childhood. I do like to tell women my family's life story. Being Japanese American, I feel it's important to tell someone that my parents were interred in concentration camps during WW2. And how our family lost everything. But I do love simple stories of driving for days in a hot station wagon on family vacations. Stories of an eccentric uncle or brother. Whatever feeds an interesting conversation is open season. I care about the whole person. That does include their past. It makes us all the more interesting people. I really don't care about if you fixed yourself a ham sandwich yesterday or that you had trouble finding the other sock in the dryer. | |
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