Imagine growing up in a family that looks put together and stable to everyone else, but to those on the inside, is strained and at times abusive. Unfortunately, for a great many people, that is the norm.

Couples pair up in their relative youth, and may have children because it is “what you do”, without having the foggiest notion of what the realities of life with multiple children and employment pressures will bring. I have seen how abusive relationships can create generational trauma, and how that continues to negatively impact interpersonal relationships.

It is an incredibly difficult cycle to break! Children find ways to cope, but often those coping strategies are not good to carry into future relationships. Add to that, stigma of talking to someone about your problems at home, and it becomes a pressure cooker of a life.

You marry to escape, and yet, fall right back into the pit. If you don’t have a partner who is strong enough emotionally and smart enough to pull you into therapy, your relationship will continue to be an unhappy one. And that will in turn, become the reality for your children. They will feel it every day.

How can you escape from this? A great therapist can be a terrific person to guide you into a more peaceful existence, but it is not a simple thing to find just the right person! And the financial aspect of paying a therapist until you really feel whole, is no small matter. If you find just the right person, will that end the cycle? It will certainly help you to find the best tools to steady your future path, but it will not help those with whom you shared that painful life, including your offspring. After all, they may not have found a great therapist, and if they are not attending sessions with you, they will still carry the pain.

Is it reasonable then, once you have found your balanced life at last, to expect your offspring to want to engage with you? Adult children of dysfunctional family lives, do not automatically change when you do. They are still triggered by things you may say or do, and may have decided that the best way for them to cope is to disengage from that painful family entirely, and try to build something better on their own.

That is a pain my partner and I now face, as we begin to make plans to marry as our 71 year old, better selves choose to find our own “more perfect union”, but our respective children may not want to be involved at all! In my situation, my offspring seem to be handling this new reality fairly well. They did not live in a dysfunctional family, and when things did not go so well, we talked about it. My partner and soon to be husband, has not been so fortunate.

This has set up a situation over which I have no control. His off spring do not wish to speak with him or with me. They still feel the resentment of all the years of arguing and fighting, and just want some peace! Their mother wanted a divorce, and she got it. But the damaged family remains, circled in on themselves and adjusting to having parents who no longer speak to each other.

I have a great deal of empathy of these young adults. They didn’t get what they needed, and they are struggling as all young adults do, to figure out their own places in this life, and to feel less stress. I have no expectations that I will ever be able to have a relationship with any of them. My heart aches as I see how this has impacted my soon-to-be -husband! His three grand children will not be a part of his life, and it is so painful to come to terms with that!

Moving forward and starting what we believe will be a much healthier and happier future together, means a door has been shut that we cannot open. It can only be opened from the other side. So as we celebrate our union, and our love for each other, there is a shadow that follows us. I can only hope that in time the pain will dissipate as we have new experiences with each other, and find ways to celebrate our lives without the ghosts of the past. And when we struggle with our feelings about these losses, we will talk about it!