On Survivors of Happy Families

While it may be true, as Tolstoy says in the first line of Anna Karenina, that every happy family is alike, it is also true that the outcome of growing up in such a family is not so predictable. There has been an immense amount written about the ways in which childhood trauma, disturbed family relations, unreliable parenting and other forms of dysregulation affect a child and her/his future life course, but I have some observations about the opposite situation that may be counter intuitive.

Anyone who has practiced psychiatry or psychotherapy for any length of time has observed the obvious connection between early attachments and later problems in relationships; with almost mystifying regularity we tend to replay dynamics from our childhood parenting experience in our early (and later) intimate relationships. This can be improved upon, yet it takes hard work and often a long time, and plenty of guidance for most of us.

A more surprising discovery that has come out of my 35 years practicing psychiatry is the kind of troubles encountered by people who apparently had secure family attachments, a peaceful dynamic between parents, no disruption in their childhood development, and a loving environment. Of course there are a million kinds of subtle disconnect even in those idyllic settings, such as temperamental mismatch between child and parent or child and sibling, the “how did I end up in this family, since I am so different?” phenomenon. But overall, these families show no signs of the typical discord, abandonment or erratic parenting we see in the past of so many people who end up in our offices.

Take the example of a young woman from a stable, loving, intact family who begins to experience confusion and a profound sense of betrayal when her dating partners behave in ways that mystify her. Ghosting, duplicitousness, cheating, lying, manipulation, controlling behavior and/or violence are totally unfamiliar to her and were never present in her earlier life. She has no frame of reference in which to view this aspect of intimacy, and may try harder to accommodate, or assume it is her fault. Blindsided, it may be hard for her to imagine the shadow side of human intimacy and she is deeply hurt by it. She may persist longer than necessary out of this naive understanding of the ambiguities she is facing.

None of her intimate experiences, at least early on, match her expectations. The model afforded by her parents just doesn’t seem to be on tap. Her lens, in some sense, is a simple one, not up to the complexities of a world in which many people are ambivalent, hurt, unaware of their own motives, moved by complex unconscious forces. She is suffering from naivety.

Children who have experienced dislocation, divorce or complex family dynamics can be in some sense primed to the multiple dimensions of people’s motives, dark and light, and may already understand on some level that powerful unconscious forces are at work in all of us. They are less likely to expect anything in particular of others; this could be cynical, but it may also be a freedom from expectations that allows them to see an undesirable dynamic at play early and call it for what it is.

In the world of wine producing, so I am told by my expert friend, a vine that is given everything it needs produces uninteresting wine. The grapes that grow in difficult terrain, having to extract nutrients and water under less than ideal circumstances, develop more complex and desirable qualities. While we all try and give our children everything we can, we all fail to varying degrees. Despite our best efforts and fueled by our failures, we may produce offspring who are complex, rich in understanding, resilient, sophisticated in the ways of the world, and ready for anything!