8: Family Matters

“Our parents are the first human beings we see when we arrive in the world, the first people to hold and nurture us, and much of what we learn to expect from close relationships comes from them. Our siblings, if we have them, are among our first contemporaries, who show us how to behave and also how to get into trouble. Our extended family often defines how we understand the meaning of community. But whatever the makeup of our family, it is more than a group of relationships; it is, in a very real way, part of who we are. So these relationships come with some very high stakes. Their character can have a dramatic effect on our well-being.

Here is where Emmy Werner’s research, our own Harvard Study research, and many other pieces of research from across cultures and populations converge to show that a critical link between childhood experience and positive adult social connections is our ability to process

emotions.

It is from our relationships as children—especially our relationships with our family—that we first learn what to expect from others. This is when we begin to develop the emotional habits, so to speak, that will be with us for the rest of our lives. These habits often define the way we connect to others and our ability to engage others in mutually supportive ways.

A crucial point here is that our ability to process emotions is malleable. In fact, managing emotions is one of the things we actually get better at as we grow old. And there is strong evidence that we don’t have to wait until late in our lives for this to happen. With the right guidance and some practice, we can learn to be better at managing our feelings at any age.

But there is a middle way. We’ve been advocating a strategy of facing toward problems, rather than avoiding them, but facing a problem is not always the same as fixing it. Sometimes facing-in to our families means learning how to sit with uncomfortable situations and emotions, and allowing ourselves to feel and express the emotions that many of us try to avoid. Sometimes the best thing we can do is respond in a way that is less absolute and more flexible, as Neal and Gail managed to do.

Neal and Gail were at a crossroad: Should they try their best to engage with Lucy and her challenges? Or should they back off a bit and give Lucy more room to either flounder or thrive on her own? While they struggled with these questions, their response was most often to face toward Lucy’s difficulty rather than minimizing it or pretending there was not a problem. When Lucy pushed them away, they didn’t throw their hands up and cut her

off. Instead, they gave her room, and waited for another opportunity. Lucy’s siblings also gave needed support to their parents and to Lucy. All through the experience, even in times of shouting and fighting, the family’s love for each other would eventually surface. They remained flexible, though none of them was perfect. Sometimes they had to step back, sometimes they had to step in. But they never turned away.”

One thing we can be sure of—nobody we encounter in life can ever be fully known. There is always more to discover. Making those discoveries, and taking them to heart, can sometimes correct biases that have been stifling our relationships with the people we’ve known the longest—our families.

First, start with yourself. What kinds of automatic reactions do you have to your family members? Are you passing judgment based on past experiences, and foreclosing the opportunity for something different to happen?

One simple thing we can all do is to notice when we find ourselves wanting someone to be different than they are. We can ask ourselves, What if I just let this person be themselves without passing judgment? How would this moment be different? Recognizing another person for who they are and meeting them where they are can go a long way toward deepening a connection.

Second, routines are important. We mentioned in Chapter Seven that one way to enliven intimate relationships is to step out of routines. While breaking up routines can also be great for families who find themselves stuck in the doldrums, the fact is that family relationships are often defined by their regular contact. This is true for families that live under the same roof together, and it’s especially true for families that are living apart. Regular get-togethers, dinners, phone calls, and text messages all serve, in combination, to glue a family together. As life changes and becomes more complicated, finding new rituals can help keep family connections alive when they would otherwise wither. Regular contact used to happen more often through religious events like baptisms, Ramadan, and bar/bat mitzvahs. These still occur of course, but as the world becomes more secular, some families struggle to find replacements.