Why All Your Ideas About “The Perfect Family” Suck
Part 5 of “What’s in Your Life Script?”
Perfection doesn’t exist in this universe.
Many of us look back on our childhoods and wonder how we never saw just how fucked up our families really are.
And everyone’s family has some kind of problem. Or problems.
I have a few uncles with anger problems and some aunts who emotionally crack if you so much as think of a criticism in their direction.
The illusion of normality is enticing.
Who doesn’t want to have a perfect, normal family? Where there are no conflicts, no parents missing soccer games or working late at the office?
The idea of relative normality is a trap.
In comparison to the rest of my extended family, my parents could be considered the “normal ones” from their respective gene pools.
Heck, I consider me the “normal one” next to my sister.
But I know that’s not right. It’s not wrong, either.
It just…isn’t.
Because “normal” doesn’t exist.
What Exists is the Broken Human Condition
Nobody is perfect.
I’ll bet you’ve heard that from almost every direction imaginable.
And yet we still yearn for — strive for — search for — the perfect family.
We go into marriages expecting our spouses capable of mind reading.
We go into business meetings expecting our coworkers and bosses to be just as prepared as we are.
We go into schools and universities expecting to learn how to survive the real world.
And we are eternally disappointed.
Believing in perfection and the possibility of obtaining it has the potential to cause an existential crisis. When well-meaning partners whisper, “You’re perfect” in our ears the tendrils of doubt take hold.
What if I yell at my kids? What if I secretly really hate one of my family members? What if my partner realizes just how imperfect I really am?
When everything becomes measured against a scale of perfection, everyone loses.
The perfect family does not exist, and so all of our ideas of what the perfect family should look like are therefore useless.
All it creates is expectations that can never be met.
What’s in Your Life Script?
Growing up, I had very specific ideas of what I wanted in a spouse. In my mind, having all those things would mean a perfect man for my imperfect self.
My husband is not perfect, and neither am I.
Long before I met him, I trashed my ideas for the perfect man and focused instead on the qualities Kris Gage measures against.
What idea did you have about “the perfect family” that turned out to be just as flawed as everything else?
