Why Bother with a Family?

"Instead, all family relationships should be understood as chosen, voluntary, and less obligatory relationships, and we encourage family communication researchers to consider the harm that can stem from referring to families as nonvoluntary relationships" (Berry & Adams, 60). A family could be nonvoluntary. I know communication is unnatural, but I grew up being taught that unless one of us is a sex offender or a murderer (or some other extremely immoral actor) you stick by family no matter what. Blood is thicker than water. At least, that was how it was supposed to work until August 2016. My family took in one of my sister's best friends, a boy in his senior year of high school. All of a sudden, I had a foster brother. I will be honest, no matter how much I learn about communication, unless one of us suffers brain trauma and has a dramatic change in personality and ethical beliefs, this boy will be someone I tolerate at best. My family is no longer nonvoluntary. Every day I choose my family, I am also not rejecting him. It sucks. There are days I see him as Buber's I-it. He means nothing except tempers and chaos. He is an object, like the pea in the princess' bed. This thing is dragging down a formerly healthy social group. We do not know how to communicate what we feel in appropriate ways, we lash out, we hide in silence, and there is always disgust and hatred boiling, waiting to be dumped on someone.

This sentence made me realize I can have my family, and reject him. I could reject some members of my family, and keep others. I could even dissolve all contact with my family. But I struggle to fathom how that works. How does someone choose. Is this where connection vs separation comes in? I realized the other day that I now flip between cynicism and nihilism about how this boy could have a positive or even neutral effect within the blood family’s relationships. This class is making me wonder if communication is about being honest, or if communication is theater. Can I express something in a way that to me is a lie and fictitious, but manipulate it to seem truthful and/or understandable to another person. Is it all an art? What is communication really about, what I am supposed to use it for? And how does understanding these theories make my conscious misrepresentations or honest forth comings moral?