Culture

Culture is something we're all influenced by. We mainly think of culture as societal trends however, culture exists in every relationship, whether it's with your classmates, your family, or your spouse. Culture is how we interact with one another. And honestly, it’s easy to think culture is what it is, that we can’t influence it. However, like most things in our lives, we have more control than we realize. We can do specific things that influence our culture with those we love. 

At first it may seem overwhelming to change an entire culture within a relationship. But I think it could be helpful to choose specific aspects you want to change in your relationship. For example, you could choose to work on creating a more verbally affection relationship. You and your partner could come together to first make a goal to become more affectionate and then create a plan with a few simple steps to make that happen. You can plan to have phone free dinner or to complement each other once a day. If you’re not happy with the culture of your relationship, there is so much power in acknowledging that you can help fix it. You have the power to change culture just with a few simple actions. 

I think it is also important to realize that just like we have the power to fix relationships, our actions have great power to damage relationships as well. When in a relationship every action doesn’t just affect us but those we are engaged in a relationship as well. While we’re obviously all imperfect people, we can still do our best to create the best relationships possible by understanding how we affect each other. For example, if a father spends more hours working away from the family, the mother is forced to pick up the slack at home. She spends more time with the children and the father spends less time with them. This causes the children to grow closer to the mother and their relationship with their father to weaken. In addition, there may be some resentment between the mother and the father because she has to bear more responsibility at home. The family is like an ecosystem, each member and their actions affect each other. 

I think that’s why it’s important to be aware of family culture. Like I talked about in my last blog post, it can be so easy to fall into old habits. Without even realizing it, we could be implementing our family culture we were a part of when we were younger into our current family culture. I think one of the best things about starting your own family is you get to choose what your family culture is going to be like. You and your spouse get to choose the habits you want to establish. You get to choose what is and isn’t acceptable in your family. It’s important to start thinking about what you want your family to be like today. It’s easier to start these habits before children join your family because the habits will be well established. Also, if you and your spouse have a healthy and loving culture, that will create a happy and loving culture between you, your spouse, and your children. It’s hard or even impossible to have a happy culture as an entire family if you and your spouse don’t have one. So, start today. Talk to your partner about what you want your family to look like. Ask them about what habits they want to establish. Ask them about their family culture and what they would like to keep from it and what they would rather change. We have the power to change culture. And once we change our own culture in our families, it can influence societies culture for the better as well.