They used to say you can choose your friends but not your family, however in these days when there is a vast range of famial set-ups, it seems that you can! You may well be forgiven for not knowing who is and who isn't family and who belongs in "our" family or "your" family, especially as that can seem to vary from situation to situation, from year to year and sometimes on the turn of an event or incident.
Some people seem very definite and say it’s only blood relationships that count, if so does that mean that husbands and wives or civil partners are not family? because if they did have close blood ties they may well be on dodgy ground from a legal point of view! (not that it stopped Cersei and Jamie of course).
There are those who have very close blood ties, brothers, sisters, parents and children who say and do appalling things to each other, ever watched those poor, exploited, dysfunctional people who appear on a certain morning TV show?
So who constitutes family seems to be very different things to different people and within any given "family" there are also huge variations in the complexities of the relationships.
For some of us the baseline is that of unconditional love, which does not stop us from disagreeing with some family members over things, but it does mean that we still love them even when we despair over their behaviour.
So my keywords for family and special friendships are
· unconditional love,
· mutual respect,
· positive regard,
· active listening.
Obviously non-judgemental is clearly missing from the list and that is because try as I might I’m definitely NOT a saint!!!!
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