My family is totally stable and awesome, but I don't have lasting relationships because of my own issues.
I think it's been 21-22 years since I had what anyone would describe as a significant other.
that's interesting. But , are you sure your "own" issues as you call em arent linked to your parents, to your mother, or father?
I know weak fathers who disapear compeletely behind the mother, who manipulates emotionally kids and the father and dominate em emotionnaly. Kids start having troubles in their relationships with others as a result.
If the mother is dominating the whole family, and if it has an impact on the sons or daughters, it can be seen as a dysfunctional family too. It's just that nobody's aware of it cause the one who has a dominating form of power over everyone else was smart enough for nobody to figure it out. There are tyrants that are loved by everyone until someone figures they are tyrants and inform everyone else.
The way you interact with others -men, women- is deeply conditionned by the way your mother and father interacted with each others and with you and your sisters or brothers.
People in their 30/40s often feel like "everything was always fine" but who for some reasons feel deeply unhappy, unsatisfied, feel like they always repeat the same mistakes over and over without any end in sight, until they figure "not everything was that fine" especially in their families and that they are just reproducing something that wasnt fine at all but that they learnt unconsciously from their parents.
If i ever happened to be right on target with my assertion, it would mean you d have to vote "1,2" , too.
