"People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own"

Each person experiences their own family through an intimate, detailed, and unfiltered lens. Day by day, every flaw, quirk, and secret is laid bare within the close environment of home. The full tapestry of private arguments, embarrassing habits, and unspoken disagreements becomes deeply woven into one’s personal narrative. When someone looks at another family, they are mere spectators, privy only to glimpses, hearsay, or the curated faces presented to the world. All families, from a distance, seem to carry a patina of normalcy, or even charm, in their dysfunction. Outsiders are not invested in those details; what would seem intolerable or grotesque within one’s own family becomes quaint, or at worst mildly awkward, in others’.

There is a deeply rooted human tendency to extend empathy, or at least tolerance, when viewing other families. Perhaps it is because the observer lacks attachment; these flaws do not threaten them personally, nor do they feel responsible for changing or enduring them. It is easy to shrug and let others’ familial oddities pass unnoticed, assuming their troubles are part of the universal chaos of domestic life. Conversely, when confronted with the failings, and strangeness, of one’s own family, it feels personal and inescapable. Their messiness overlaps with one’s own self-image, blurring the line between where individuality ends and family dysfunction begins. Every embarrassing parental outburst, confusing tradition, or inherited suspicion of difference reflects back, interrogating personal identity and values.

The horror is thus compounded by proximity and implication. There is no safe distance when the oddness is in your own living room, reflected in your childhood memories, or embedded in the very dynamics that shaped you. Others’ families simply become stories or anecdotes. Only your own has the power to truly shock, because only with your own do you carry the weight of expectation, disappointment, and exposure.