Love Your Family

Family: Acceptance Without Expectation

One of the hardest lessons we learn about family is that being related to someone does not give us the right to decide who they should become.

We enter family relationships carrying expectations. We expect parents to understand us, siblings to support us, children to make choices we approve of, and relatives to behave according to what we believe family ought to look like. And when they don’t, disappointment can quickly turn into criticism, resentment, judgment, or even rejection.

But nobody came into this world specifically to live up to our expectations—not even the people we love.

Family members are individuals before they are roles in our lives. A mother is still a woman with her own history. A father is still a man shaped by his own experiences. A sister or brother has their own personality, ambitions, fears, flaws, and way of seeing the world. Even our adult children eventually become people whose lives belong to them.

Love becomes difficult when we confuse loving someone with approving of everything about them.

We can love people and disagree with them.

We can accept people and still establish boundaries.

We can recognize someone’s flaws without reducing that person to those flaws.

And we can want better for someone without constantly communicating that who they are right now isn’t good enough.

That’s an important distinction.

Sometimes what we call “wanting the best for you” is really wanting someone to become easier for us to understand. We want them to communicate the way we communicate, value what we value, make the choices we would make, pursue the life we would pursue, and respond to situations the way we believe we would respond.

Then we become frustrated when they don’t.

But difference is not necessarily dysfunction.

The quiet family member doesn’t need to become outgoing. The unconventional relative doesn’t necessarily need to become traditional. The person who chose a different career, lifestyle, relationship, or path through life hasn’t automatically chosen incorrectly simply because we would have chosen differently.

There is enormous freedom in allowing people to be themselves.

That doesn’t mean family should tolerate cruelty, manipulation, disrespect, irresponsibility, abuse, or behavior that continually harms other people. Acceptance is not permission to mistreat us. Understanding someone doesn’t require surrendering our dignity.

Sometimes change really is necessary.

Every family has behaviors that can be improved. We may need to communicate better. Apologize more readily. Stop bringing up old mistakes. Respect boundaries. Listen without immediately defending ourselves. Become more dependable. Stop gossiping about one another. Learn to disagree without declaring war.

But healthy change is different from demanding conformity.

The goal shouldn’t be, “Become who I think you should be.”

The healthier question is, “What can each of us do differently so this family becomes healthier for everyone?”

That question includes us.

It’s easy to identify what everybody else needs to fix. Family gatherings can sometimes become unofficial performance reviews where everybody has notes about everybody except themselves.

Perhaps the person we’re waiting to change isn’t the only person who needs to change.

Maybe we need more patience.

Maybe we need to stop keeping score.

Maybe we need to listen.

Maybe we need to apologize.

Maybe we need to stop using someone’s past as permanent evidence against their future.

Maybe we need to accept that the relationship we imagined having with someone isn’t the relationship they’re capable of giving us—and decide how to love them realistically instead of continually punishing them for disappointing an expectation they never agreed to fulfill.

Family relationships become healthier when love stops being an audition.

You shouldn’t have to become somebody else’s preferred version of yourself to deserve basic respect. Neither should they.

There should be room in families for personalities to differ, generations to disagree, people to grow at different speeds, and individuals to occasionally get life completely wrong.

Because sooner or later, every one of us will need that same grace.

We will disappoint somebody.

We will make decisions others don’t understand.

We will say the wrong thing.

We will fail to show up perfectly.

We will change.

And sometimes we will remain exactly who we are despite someone else’s sincere belief that we ought to be different.

That’s humanity.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give our families is to stop constantly measuring them against the people we imagined they would become.

See the person who is actually standing in front of you.

Love what is lovable.

Address what is harmful.

Forgive what can reasonably be forgiven.

Set boundaries where boundaries are necessary.

Encourage growth without making affection conditional upon it.

And remember that improvement should be something families work toward together, not something we demand exclusively from one another.

Family isn’t about finding perfect people.

It’s about learning how imperfect people can love one another without controlling one another.

We don’t have to approve of everything.

We don’t have to tolerate everything.

We don’t even have to remain equally close to everyone.

But whenever possible, we can leave room for people to be human.

Because sometimes the change that benefits the entire family isn’t turning someone into the person we think they ought to be.

It’s all of us becoming a little better at loving the people they already are.

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