your parents incomplete passages (Minirth Meier Arterburn)

 Frankor Minirth, Paul Meier, Stephen Arterburn, The complete life encyclopedia : a Minirth Meier new life family resource, 1995

pp.389-390

p.389

   Deal with your parents' incomplete passages.

   Deal with your parents' incomplete passages.  As we were growing up in our parents' home, we absorbed attitudes and impressions about marriage and husband-wife roles from their example.  We assume that our attitudes about marriage (which largely reflect the attitudes of our parents) are “normal” because those attitudes are the only ones we've ever known.  Suddenly, we are thrown into a sink-or-swim situation with another person from another family background with a whole different set of attitudes that he or she thinks are “normal” but that we regard as “weird”. 

p.389-390

It's time to reconsider, and to take a hard look at the attitudes and impressions we have absorbed by osmosis from our families of origin.

p.390

   What passages or task did our parents fail to complete?  Did they fail to overcome the tendency to jockey for control?  Did they fail to learn how to make responsible choices?  Did they fail to maintain individual identities?  Fail to practice forgiveness?  Unless you become consciously aware of these passages in your parents' life where they got stuck or derailed, you are likely to repeat their pattern.

p.390

   What self-defeating attitudes did you absorb your parents?  “Men don't show emotion or say ‘I love you.’”  “Women can't be trusted with money.”  “Sex is a weapon in the battle of the sexes.”  “Keep your man on a short leash; men can't be trusted.”  Your parents' attitudes were probably never verbalized when you were growing up, but they were modeled, and you absorbed them unconsciously and uncritically.  Now they have to be dug up like land mines, one by one, so that they can be defused.  If you don't, they will continue to explode unexpectedly throughout your marriage, wounding both you and your spouse.

p.390

   What's more, some of those land mines will still be lying around for your children to discover.

p.390

A key principle of this passage of marriage is  [‘]All incomplete passages become unfinished business for the next generation.[’]  If your parents left any unfinished business for you to deal with, then finish it now.  Resolve these old issues in your present-day marriage, and make a commitment not to pass them on to your own children. 

   (The complete life encyclopedia : a Minirth Meier new life family resource / Frank Minirth, Paul Meier, Stephen Arterburn, 1. mental health ── religious aspects ── christianity ── encyclopedias., BT732.4.M55   1995, 613──dc20,  )

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πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα