In the work that I do I see a lot of couples. Over the last year and a half that I have been working with couples in the Indian cultural context I am becoming more and more aware of family structure and dynamics in our context. Yes of course we all know that our culture promotes family harmony, respect for elders, 'bonding' and lasting relationships but I am beginning to wonder at what cost? I have found myself having outrages thoughts when thinking about couple client, one of these outrages thoughts is that Indian families are codependent and the dynamics of a family are geared towards keeping the next generation from developing their own unit.
Yes I am generalizing here and aware that most relationships around me aren't codependent but I continue to believe that those are not the majority and I am of course talking about heterosexual couples, as I don't think culturally we acknowledge intact homosexual relationships to make generalized statements about the family dynamics in that system.
Many family therapists and psychodynamic therapists have talked about the need to differentiate from one's family of origin. A mistake one can make is interpret differentiation as being cut off. Murray Bowen theory on family systems suggests that differentiation is described as the capacity of individuals to function autonomously by making self directed choices, while remaining emotionally connected to members of the family of origin. He also talks about emotional fusion in family systems which can be described as a sense of intense responsibility for another's reaction or by emotional cut off from the tension in a relationship. He also suggests that the greater a family's tendency to fuse the less flexibility it will have to adapt to stress.
So if we look at what stress means in the context of the work I do I guess it means when the couple decide either to separate, or seek outside support to help them navigate their rules and roles, or when one couple member gets described as being 'unwell' or 'not coping' or 'not adjusting'.
I have to say this word 'adjustment' absolutely infuriates me. Marriages are about acceptance and change, yes I can see that, adjustment to me implies not questioning the rules of a system, and often in our culture is imposed on the woman as not adjusting enough. Mostly women are raised to know they will not be living with their families forever that they will have to live with and adapt to rules of another family. Isn't it paradoxical that we raise our girls to become individuals or differentiate from the family of origin only to fuse with another family? I think this message is contradictory. Most men in our culture are raised to be leaders of their family system, but leaders that must follow the rules set by their family of origin. Again that is just confusing to me, leaders who aren't allowed to be seen as challenging or changing a system.
We often hear you marry a persons family when you marry them. If you examine this what does this mean really. Do we actually marry the members of a family or do we marry a person who is informed by their family's belief system and hopefully has been able to adapt them to what works for him or her. Do we even have a choice if we are marrying the people or the belief system? In our culture most couples aren't encouraged to form their independent, differentiated way of working, part of that maybe because most married couples do live with or depend on their family of origin.
A comment I often hear from couples is "this is not how we do it in my family" or "this is the way my family does it", I think by not differentiating we are encouraging couples to draw their family of origin into a battle of defining themselves which really should be negotiating their own dynamics. Men who do move out of the their family of origin home often feel this is the biggest and only change they need to make in a marriage, what they maybe missing is how moving out is merely a physical distance however emotionally they remain fused and entangled, sometimes the fusing increases as a reaction to the pull for differentiation.
I am starting to feel/think that as families we can do more harm than good by not encouraging differentiation, we confuse love with respect. Love is fusion, as a baby you belong to your parents you are an extension of them. Respect is you are your own person, free to make your own choices and live by rules that you find fit for you.
No I am not encouraging an anti-establishment, detached way of being, but a choice in how we want to think and how we want to be. There needs to be some ownership and encouragement given to men and women in our culture to define what a family means to them, what kind of relationship they would want for themselves with their family or origin and their family of marriage, they aren't one and the same and they aren't mutually exclusive.
"The freeing of an individual, as he grows up, from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary though one of the most painful results brought about by the course of his development. It is quite essential that that liberation should occur and it may be presumed that it has been to some extent achieved by everyone who has reached a normal state. Indeed, the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations. On the other hand, there is a class of neurotics whose condition is recognizably determined by their having failed in this task.” - Sigmund Freud
