Which Family System Are You Married To?

In a few weeks, I get the honor of officiating at the wedding of a couple Caron and I have been counseling. It has me reflecting on countless ceremonies I’ve conducted over almost four decades and on all the love-struck couples everywhere who get impacted by one critical issue.

When we marry someone, we aren’t just wedding them, we are marrying their family tree.  

People joke about this but it is absolutely true.

As much as we genuinely love our spouse, and they love us and both of us are serious about our vows, the family system we grew up in, moved in with us—for the long haul- no matter how determined we’be been to run from or reject certain disparaging aspects of it.

We are designed BY and FOR relationships. This means our family of origin has already had an enormous impact on who we are as adults.  Not only do we get our family’s genes, but our family ( God love them!)  sets in motion our entire relational identity that impacts the tone and tendencies of how we attach and interact  – especially with our most significant other.

Someone has said: Jesus may be in your heart but grandma is in your bones. 

Recently we heard our friends and mentors, Rich Plass and Jim Cofield, authors of The Relational Soul talk about eight distinct family systems and how they affect our own marriages and families.

Which one did you grow up in?

1. The “Functional” Family  

• Life is essentially defined by your role within the family system.
• Your role in the functional family will define how you engage relationally. Older children are usually assigned leadership roles. Younger children are assigned roles that require compliance and obedience.
• Persons understand their value and significance in terms of tasks they perform and the amount of work they accomplish.
• In the functional family system, no one is asking, “How are you feeling?”
• Emotions aren’t important because the objective is to get the work done and carry on.

2. The “Dramatic” Family  

• Life in the dramatic family system is continuously emotionally intense.
• Someone in the family is always acting out some form of drama somewhere.
• There is typically a crisis, and the family is emotionally structured around enduring, navigating, and occasionally resolving the drama. Only to have a new one emerge in due time.
• Drama is the relational glue. The electricity is being cut off. A major bill is overlooked. A car accident. A broken bone. A sexually promiscuous child, a spouse overspending, the in-laws disagreeing over vacations. Conflict over the next vehicle to buy. The list is endless.
• Emotions are exaggerated.

3. The “Traumatic” Family

• The traumatized family is one that is defined around surviving a traumatic event.
• Traumatic events may be a natural disaster: a fire, an earthquake, a hurricane, or they can be relational: sudden and or tragic death of a parent, sibling, close friend; a divorce, a family move, or adopting a child.
• The traumatic event serves to define the family for an extended period of time or perhaps permanently as in the case of chronic illness (e.g. dementia), death or divorce.
• It can lead emotionally to anger, aggression, or depression, withdrawal or isolation.

4. The “Chaotic” Family

• The chaotic family is marked by confusion and lack of adult leadership and authority.
• The chaotic family structure is more of a free for all where personal boundaries are not respected.
• The adults, in particular, have abdicated their role of establishing order and ensuring that family practices such as appropriate grooming, sleep patterns, meal times, school attendance, proper attire, etc. are established and maintained.
• Authority tends to rest with the most dominant personality.

5. The “Moralistic” Family

• The moralistic family is the family focused on keeping the rules.
• There usually is a lawgiver who enforces the rules and insists on compliance.
• Without the rules, the lawgiver is usually very anxious, and if the rules are broken the rule-giver becomes angry.
• The rules are defined by whoever is emotionally in charge.  The family system is structured around what we OUGHT to be.

6. The “Authoritative” Family  

• The authoritative family is dominated by an enforcer who is in charge and maintains control.
• The focal point is not primarily a moralistic framework, but the need to control.
• The family enforcer may have moralistic ungirding but it may just be whatever the enforcer believes is necessary for maintaining control.
• The enforcer may control not by issuing commands on right or wrong, but through anger, blame, or physical force.

7. Emotionally “Entangled” Family  

• The emotionally entangled family is marked by parents who use their child for their own sense of emotional stability and strength.
• The parent(s) is overly dependent on their child.
• The parents are overly involved in the life of their child and their child’s friends
• The parent(s) will often confide in their child inappropriate information about their marriage, or family problems.  Emotionally entangled families often seek a child to be a mediator between parents.

8. The Mature “Inter-Dependent” Family

• Each member of the family is recognized as an individual
• Family responsibilities are clear and role appropriate.  Adults are adults and children are children.
• Adults assign age-appropriate tasks to children and have age appropriate expectations for teaching personal and family responsibilities.
• Parents maintain authority, sustain clear boundaries, and demonstrate love and affection toward one another and all family members.

In order to love from a healthy soul, we need to know what unloving things we may be doing in our family or significant relationships and how we came to think and behave the ways we do.

Here’s the deal: our family of origin is where we learn emotional intimacy (or not) . It teaches us how close we can be and how can safe we can feel as we practice intimacy in our marriage.

Which of the above systems best describes your family?  Was your family a hybrid of several systems? How do you see this system affecting your current marriage and family? Which family system resembles the one you are forming now?

• If you want more about this:  This week Caron and I will be talking in more depth about the good, bad & the ugly of family systems on The Live True Podcast.

Resources for you to use:

If you are interested in our helping you break through your family system into a whole new world of fulfilling, emotional intimacy with the people in your life, then CLICK HERE to contact us.

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David Loveless

David Loveless is a leadership coach, pastor to pastors and strategic, spiritual advisor to churches and businesses, throughout the world. He is the Co-Founder of "Live True." He previously served as founding pastor of Discovery Church, Orlando, Fl for 29 years. David and his wife Caron are parents of three sons and are the grandparents of their seven delightfully energized children.