Hey guys, thanks for tuning in.

Hope you're having a great day. Sarah is here. But if you have not heard from past episodes, she is fighting a terrible sore throat cold something and she basically can't talk. So she's here producing and that's why you'll be hearing only from me and today's show with Tracy Macmillan and Tracy is a television writer, relationship expert and author whose writing credits include Mad Men, Good Girls Revolt, Marvel's

Runaways and United States of Tara. She's written three books and a memoir and she really rose to fame, I guess you could call it in the relationship space when she had a viral blog, why you're not married and for more than two years had an article on the Huffington Post under the same title, why you're not married, that was the most viewed article in the history of Huffington Post.

She's also the host of a show on the network own family or fiance, you'll hear her reference that and we talk a little bit about that in today's show and dive into the impact of family dynamics on relationships and we talk a lot about attachment theory and Tracy shares her personal journey of dealing with her attachment history and a lot of value there.

And we really think Tracy for getting personal because I think it's always great to hear people's personal stories and know that you're not alone in struggling in your relationship, struggling with yourself.

We're all dealing with different things. So thank you Tracy for that. And as always, we appreciate you guys tuning in, leaving us those five star reviews on iTunes to help us to grow the podcast, telling your friends and family, we really appreciate you guys.

Enjoy today's show.

Hey Tracy, thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So today we're going to talk about the impact of family dynamics on our relationships and obviously this is a big one and one that we all bring with us, we come from families, we get into relationships in that plays a huge role in how we relate.

So let's start by having you tell our listeners what one of the bigger things you see in people's relationships as it relates to their childhood and their origin family and how that can impact their present day romantic relationships.

Well, the very first thing I think that happens is that our issues in our present day relationships usually originate in our families.

So one of the things that's so amazing about family or fiance is that we bring the cause and the effect into the same house.

And anytime you get multi generational like it's like multi generational therapy essentially is where both sides benefit from bringing those two things into the same place for three days because invariably whatever is going on with the parent.

Okay, so the thing about family or fiance is there's really two different ways things happen sometimes there's a family problem in the couple that the family sees the couples not dealing with it.

And sometimes there's a problem in the family or with one of the parents and one of the partners that needs to get resolved right so it can either be the problems in the family or the problems in the couple either way.

This process of bringing families and couples together invariably surfaces, whatever is going on so a lot of times what people like to do is the way they get along in their families or in their partnerships is to just keep the beach fall underwater.

That's how I put it they just don't say what they really think whatever is the scariest thing they can say they're not going to say it they're not going to go to the heart of the matter they're just going to pretend it's not happening and that's how they're going to keep the peace and instead that doesn't really keep the peace it keeps the suffering going what I find on family or fiance is that on day one they say the worst thing that they've been trying not to say for however long they've been trying not to say it whether it's the couple or the family.

And once you get that out, you can start the healing process. It really is that the truth shall set you free it's cutting to the core so can you share a specific example of that and kind of how people might be able to apply that to their own family dynamics and relationship.

You know I'm so terrible. I mean I can tell you things that happen all the time on the show. Okay here's an example so there was a couple and the man in the couple was parenting her children in a way his step children her children they weren't very yet but still her children in a way that the children were finding very unhelpful.

Well they blamed there they blamed him right kids blamed him but what was really clear is that the mother was allowing this to happen well cut to the way the mother was dealing with her own family she felt abandoned by her own family and I'm like well look what's happening you felt abandoned by your family your kids feel abandoned by you do you see how this is working its way down the generations.

So you're really looking for patterns like that like whatever you feel a lot of times what your kids which if you're the partnership.

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