This is about the reasons my relationship with my parents was complicated, difficult and generally unsatisfactory. To use the jargon, this is a reference to its ‘disfunction’.

Firstly, it was not because they were bad parents. That would not be fair to say. And I don’t mean this in any way to imply that it would have been better if they had, if they had been unkind, cruel, and abusive, as is the experience of some unlucky souls. But if they had, one problem would have been easier addressed. With bad parents there is no trouble in attaching reason for one’s emotional problems. With a culprit clearly identified getting over the ill-effects, finding a solution, whereas still a hard task, is nevertheless an identifiable one. There are clear mechanisms for analysing and supporting people who had bad upbringings if they are up for the tackling the job. With successful therapy they can and do move on.

But I say again I would not of course ever have preferred that and it doesn’t apply to my parents who were on the whole kind and generous. Equally importantly, they were always there. In a crisis they were around. I believe that to be the first role of parenting: just being there. Also with my parents everything that was theirs was without question ours too. They sacrificed their own possibilities in life for the sake of family. On the face of it these are considered good things and in that sense my sisters and I were lucky recipients.

However, there was a large fly in the ointment. It was that my parents themselves had a terrible relationship. The family environment was a perpetual war-zone. When it wasn’t we were always waiting for it to break out. That meant that we could never feel fully at ease in the home. A row was only any short conversation away. When you have such a situation - on the one hand safe and conducive, and on the other, hostile and dangerous - there is a contradiction in your mind. There is an element of hot and cold, one minute secure the next treacherous. Here, you are always on the brink of battle. Any minute you may need to run for cover. In terms of good relationship such an atmosphere can be poisonous and psychologically damaging. There is a roller-coaster feeling to the emotional dynamic. The safe-house is not so safe after all.

To repeat yet again, I would not have preferred totally inadequate parents. But the minor advantage in having duff guardians is that you can say fuck them, and go find a better life. With the hot and cold thing you are forever connected to it. You remain loyal and hopeful for the good stuff but are continually blighted by the bad. I think that some of the problem issues my sisters and I have had in relationship life are connected to this formative experience and easily traceable to the appalling relationship our parents had. That they refused to discuss it (lame justifications were offered - ‘everyone argues’ etc.) didn’t help. This meant the issues were never unravelled and an attempt made at resolve. They fought the same fights for fifty years, over and over. They seemed oblivious to the damage done by the degree of extreme verbal abuse exchanged between them and thought this was somehow normal and consequently okay. It wasn’t.

If there is a concluding insight to this it is to say that in an all-things-equal world we would all of us want to be in and around relationships that were nurturing and not abusive. That, in order that we could develop emotionally in the appropriate way. But of course that’s not the world we have. We have one that is fucked-up and to operate within it we need to be suitably fucked-up too. It’s a curious irony that it’s your experience of adversity that is just as likely to propel your success in the world than anything better. Perhaps this is rather like the way exposure to bugs helps strengthen physical immunity. Similar with the emotional life - adversity is needed to some degree. Perhaps I have been driven in life partly by the adversity that came from being raised in a hostile environment.

And yet having said that, I still believe that the cardinal prospect for the good life is one rich in quality relationships. I believe that to be by far the best tonic for emotional health. It can come from any source: family, friends, teachers, mentors, colleagues or any of the varying sorts of intimacies that are possible. In that sense my mother and father’s contribution was defective. I say for the nth time (lest misunderstood) that they were not bad people or bad parents, but just flawed individuals whose sense of value didn’t afford them the appropriate insights for forming healthy attachments.

If you were going to use your experience of adversity to drive ambition in the direction of moral improvement then maybe to have had bad experience is a useful fuelling factor. What better contribution to make to the world than something that helps humans relate better. What better world could there be than one where relationship is its over-riding concern.