Why You Should Treat Your Family Like Strangers

It’s All Too Easy To Have A Short Fuse With The Ones We Love. Time To Disarm.

- Jennifer King Lindley

YOU ARE THE SOUL of forbearance with the prattling colleague in the next cubicle. You shine thousand-watt charm on the eye-rolling teen who bags your groceries. Then you arrive home. Your son has left the ketchup out. Again. Hellfire rains upon him.

It is a truth universally acknowledged: We are often most impatient, angriest, and least compassionate toward those we should be kindest to—our supposed loved ones. (“If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family,” wrote spiritual teacher Ram Dass.) Partners, parents, sibs, kids—all can receive an outsize portion of our ire. “We feel free to be ourselves around those we are closest to,” says Joyce Marter, a Chicago-based psychotherapist with Refresh Mental Health. “But it’s not good when we don’t offer them basic kindness and respect.” After all, snapping may be satisfying in the moment, but a pattern of it can corrode relationships, say experts. And it rarely achieves much. (When was the last time a bitchfest resulted in no more dishes left in the sink ever again?)