Things I often think about during holidays!

How does your upbringing influence you behavior in relationships?

The fact that I was an only child contributed to my infatuation with  special days, as my mom would give me a few gifts for my b'day as a kid  and my birthday cards from were left standing up on the piano until Easter cards started to arrive in the mail.

 I can't change the world, but
I can contribute in some small way!

Here I am in my mid-life years and I still remember being excited when holidays rolled around. However, my relationships   over the last few decades didn’t share in my excitement, so now I just mostly stick to my memories, and not try to change any ones habits . While I’m only slightly disappointed  that folks elation weren’t on the same level as mine, I have always been more bewildered by the idea that they didn’t share the same interest in birthdays/ aniversaries, holidays etc.
I guess since I was my Mom's miracle baby at the age of 44....she never gave up on having a child... made me a special gift that she celebrated along with me. It's not to be expected that other folks would have the same type of feelings.

After a few years of much observation, I finally realized that attitudes and lack of action weren’t their own doing. Some families don’t acknowledge birthdays and holidays the way other family do. The way they observe special days isn’t wrong of course, but rather it’s just different.
During premarital counseling, our pastor had us discuss our formative years, our relationship with our parents during that time, and our feelings toward various life- altering events. he asked us to list our favorite memories and our painful ones too, as well as explaining how close our respective family units were.
Those sessions didn’t fully resonate with me until our marriage. As it continued, I was able to connect the dots to both my now ex-wife's and my own behaviors, and how such behaviors line up with that of our families. What I’ve realized is that it’s hard to deviate from what you’re familiar with or what a person believes based on their upbringing. In fact, what a person brings into their marriage is heavily influenced by their familial experiences.

In a psychologist  article, “Look Back on Your Childhood: The Better Marriage Project Par,” she writes, “Some people repeat mainly their interactions with one of their parents in their adult-to-adult marriage relationship. Others repeat elements of their patterns with both.”

Our difference in opinion on trivial things like the necessity of thank-you notes, parking in or out of the garage, and even how and what to cook  are all based on how we were raised. But what happens when a person’s childhood includes a strained relationship with their parents or negative experiences that they’ve held on to for so long?

Relationship coach Jordan Gray lists specific childhood issues that can pop up in a relationship, including fear of loss or rejection, fear of being unlovable, the habit of people-pleasing, being overly reliant on others, and inflexible and unrealistic expectations. In order to help combat any baggage from your youth that is ultimately brought into a relationship, Gray suggests you “Understand that everything your parents did for you they did from one of two places: their love for you, or their unconscious patterns that their parents put into them.”

Of course, seeking a third party like a licensed psychologist can help you dig deeper into your past and figure out how and why things are manifesting themselves in your relationships and family life.

Learning more about why I acted the way I did in my marriage or why I have particular expectations and standards has greatly helped the communication in relationships. The Maya Angelou quote,“You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been” likely wasn’t about marriage, but I find myself greatly relating to it these days.
 I hadn’t been married that long, when I  realized   how my dissecting our past   could continue to be a benefit to the future of my relationships.  As a Systems  Analyst, I know communication is one of the hardest things for folks to master, but being open and honest about your familial relationships and encounters can positively affect your futures together.