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Families who Fight may be Healthier Than Families who Don’t

Wishing for a good, healthy fight in my family

Beth Nash Bruno
4 min readOct 9, 2019
Photo by cloudvisual.co.uk on Unsplash

I slip on a pair of pants and fasten the button at the waist. They fit perfectly, which is a miracle. I am shaped weird and it’s hard to find pants that fit me. This pair I snagged from my mother’s closet because she doesn’t wear them. They came to her as hand-me-downs from my sister.

My sister who has not spoken to me in several years.

My family is a wonderful, loving family that has a huge aversion to confrontation. We never have heated arguments. We don’t express anger out loud to each other. I always thought this meant that we were a healthy family.

I know many families that argue and fight with each other all the time. I have always thought that was an awful way to relate to family members. I felt that it was dysfunctional for people to yell and get mad at each other, but I am rethinking that idea.

Everyone in my family has learned that anger is not an acceptable emotion to express out loud. This has created a group of people who are dysfunctional in their own way. We use passive-aggression as our form of expressing anger. We never confront each other when we are offended. We don’t deal with conflict. We just walk away.

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Beth Nash Bruno
Beth Nash Bruno

Written by Beth Nash Bruno

Human learning to be human. Writing in hopes of getting there.

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