Fredl
3rd November 2005, 09:35 AM
One of the claims tscc makes is that it is "family centered" to a much greater degree tham other Christian Churches.
I think there is a substantial degree of truth to this, but find myself profoundly ambivalent on the subject. I know that as a young man, there was nothing I wanted more than to become independent of my family of origin. My relationship with my parents and all three of my siblings was terrible. I doubt that being members of the church would have changed this to any significant degree. When I hit college, my fraternity brothers remarked on the fact that I never seemed to want to go home on holidays. They were mostly Jewish and came from very close families.
When I married, I got along very well with my first wife, a brilliant young woman with a Chinese mom and a Filipino (Tagalog) dad. Our marriage ended in 6 years because she couldn't have children. Ironic; she had persuaded me she was pregnant at the time we married. She became very wealthy and successful after we divorced.
My second wife was Mayan, Jewish and Spanish, from Honduras. We had four children and she qualified me for Alanon. All four of our children are quite successful. Our family life was pretty dreadful, though I was quite close to my children during it. The two married ones seem to have unusually happy family lives.
All this was prior to me joining tscc.
I've been married for 19 years to my current wife. Our family life is, I'd say, excellent. I'd also say that tscc's contribution has been substantial, but somewhat mixed. I think its most important contribution has been to establish a NORM of successful family living. The problem is that it provides precious little knowledge as to how to make that norm a reality. For several years, our family life was stormy and difficult. This continued through our early years in the church with little change. Finally, in one particularly stormy episode, I returned to Alanon. There, with the help of what seemed like an enormous recognition I received from seeing the motion picture "The Last Samurai", I learned how to get along with a person with a damaged psyche. And to make allowances and compensate for my own damaged psyche. I came to understand there were good reasons for our difficulties but there were ways, not so much to overcome them, but to live with them.
For some time now (2 or 3 years), we've gotten along fine. Our quarrels are mild and easily resolved. I've come to a place where I really enjoy life, a stark contrast with a few years ago.
Looking back today, I think that what was important was the great difference between the Alanon approach and tscc approach: Alanon accepts the premise that there are many problems in life we will NEVER overcome and the secret of happiness is to learn to live gracefully with things we can not change. The church, focusing on the idea of repentence and forgiveness, creates a huge difficulty in living with a spouse who has problems and can't or won't acknowledge them. Church counselling focuses on acknowledging problems and "resolving" them, a sure reecipe for disaster in many situations.
Now, from what I've seen, there are plenty of LDS families that have problems. Nevertheless, I also think there are a lot of LDS Poster Families that attribute a lot of their success to the influence of the church. And, in my own case, accepting that happy family life could be viewed as the NORM was definitely helpful to me.
So, the bottom line for me is that tscc, while being quite devoted to successful family living is significantly ignorant about family dynamics within dysfunctional families and quite clumsy in dealing with them. Its model is the functional family and it is baffled in dealing with suboptimal people living suboptimal lives and often does more harm than good in dealing with them.
At least, this has been my experience.
Fred
.
I think there is a substantial degree of truth to this, but find myself profoundly ambivalent on the subject. I know that as a young man, there was nothing I wanted more than to become independent of my family of origin. My relationship with my parents and all three of my siblings was terrible. I doubt that being members of the church would have changed this to any significant degree. When I hit college, my fraternity brothers remarked on the fact that I never seemed to want to go home on holidays. They were mostly Jewish and came from very close families.
When I married, I got along very well with my first wife, a brilliant young woman with a Chinese mom and a Filipino (Tagalog) dad. Our marriage ended in 6 years because she couldn't have children. Ironic; she had persuaded me she was pregnant at the time we married. She became very wealthy and successful after we divorced.
My second wife was Mayan, Jewish and Spanish, from Honduras. We had four children and she qualified me for Alanon. All four of our children are quite successful. Our family life was pretty dreadful, though I was quite close to my children during it. The two married ones seem to have unusually happy family lives.
All this was prior to me joining tscc.
I've been married for 19 years to my current wife. Our family life is, I'd say, excellent. I'd also say that tscc's contribution has been substantial, but somewhat mixed. I think its most important contribution has been to establish a NORM of successful family living. The problem is that it provides precious little knowledge as to how to make that norm a reality. For several years, our family life was stormy and difficult. This continued through our early years in the church with little change. Finally, in one particularly stormy episode, I returned to Alanon. There, with the help of what seemed like an enormous recognition I received from seeing the motion picture "The Last Samurai", I learned how to get along with a person with a damaged psyche. And to make allowances and compensate for my own damaged psyche. I came to understand there were good reasons for our difficulties but there were ways, not so much to overcome them, but to live with them.
For some time now (2 or 3 years), we've gotten along fine. Our quarrels are mild and easily resolved. I've come to a place where I really enjoy life, a stark contrast with a few years ago.
Looking back today, I think that what was important was the great difference between the Alanon approach and tscc approach: Alanon accepts the premise that there are many problems in life we will NEVER overcome and the secret of happiness is to learn to live gracefully with things we can not change. The church, focusing on the idea of repentence and forgiveness, creates a huge difficulty in living with a spouse who has problems and can't or won't acknowledge them. Church counselling focuses on acknowledging problems and "resolving" them, a sure reecipe for disaster in many situations.
Now, from what I've seen, there are plenty of LDS families that have problems. Nevertheless, I also think there are a lot of LDS Poster Families that attribute a lot of their success to the influence of the church. And, in my own case, accepting that happy family life could be viewed as the NORM was definitely helpful to me.
So, the bottom line for me is that tscc, while being quite devoted to successful family living is significantly ignorant about family dynamics within dysfunctional families and quite clumsy in dealing with them. Its model is the functional family and it is baffled in dealing with suboptimal people living suboptimal lives and often does more harm than good in dealing with them.
At least, this has been my experience.
Fred
.