Your information is confidential and requested to help you and your partner lay the best foundation for your relationship. Your partner will NOT be given your answers, though both your answers will be discussed in a future session. Ways to define your Family of Origin are below:

• Family can be biologically related and non-biological
• Family is whomever you choose it is, based on communal living arrangements growing up, care arrangements, love, genetics.
• Family of Origin are the people you grew up with, who you called your family, whether they lived with you or not.
• Family exert a strong influence on you as a child and shape your early views about yourself, life, the world and your place in it.
• Family can be active in this role, or noticeable by their absence.

Sometimes you want things a particular way because as a child it had to be that way to please your family. And sometimes you want things now because you did not receive it as a child but wished you had. As an adult in a relationship, these things may still be important, or their importance may have changed but the habit remains.

It is helpful to reflect on the views of your Family of Origin. Some will be unconscious, and some may or may not be helpful to you now. The following questions allow you to review what influences come from your FIRST RELATIONSHIPS with your family.