we all want a forever relationship that we tolerate the bad and relish the good. we were taught to seek this. but no one mentioned that if it is not a joint effort it wont work. when i got married the first time i thought it was forever. as i was brought up to think. what are we teaching our sons and daughers. stay in an awful situation cause that is what is expected of a wife/husband/live in/ what ever we call that other person. i feel like callin it self destructive and code.

Yeah, those are sad songs that I remember.

I was sooooooooo crazy over my ex. It was in part due to hypomania. I did not know that I had bipolar2 back then.

I think the following are some good happy songs: Shiny Happy People,
Jingle Bells, Joy To The World, O Holy Night ( my favorite Christmas song), Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree, Johnny Loves Me, I've Had The Time Of My Life, My Girl, etc...

I could think of more sad than happy songs! :(

I feel bad for the children of divorced parents.

Take good care of yourself!

Don't feel too bad for the kids of divorced parents - their parents actually made the decision that being apart was better for all concerned than living with dysfunction. My parents divorced when I was 18 and it was one of the happiest days of my life. Home was a miserable place until my father left. Now they are both much happier people, and so am I.

I too was raised on depressing music: my mother listened to (and still does) country, and some folk music. I remember one song - 17 - by Janis Ian. Talk about depressing. That pretty much summed up my life at that point too. It let me into my first long-term relationship with a guy that treated me like shit, but I put up with it because at least someone was interested in me. Better than being alone, right? Not! But that's what I thought. And it continued into adulthood. I am just now on my own for the first time ever, and learning that I can handle things by myself, and I don't need anybody to "want" me to be a happy person. So liberating.

I hope I have raised my kids to not be like me. It's hard because their father is an alcoholic, and they grew up with similar dysfunction as I did. I'm hoping I'm showing them a different way to live. Time will tell.

Yeah, I have noticed a lot of the books, movies, songs that I used to really love actually have some pretty unhealthy ideas in them. I read a book a little while ago and I found myself thinking that I would have really loved this book if I had read it a couple of years ago, but this time I was seeing a lot of dysfunction in it... instead of hoping the main couple would end up together in the end (which is what I would have been hoping for if I had read it a couple of years ago), I found myself thinking 'why on earth is she putting up with that and why does she keep going back for more now, when this is the one point where she can get away from this control freak' and I was thinking 'Isn't she seeing all the red flags here?!!. Haha, it is interesting. I guess that a lot of book/ movie/ song writers are probably just as unhealthy as the rest of us either are or have been... they don't know any different either.

And yes, it is good to finally be seeing that we don't have to put up with awful relationships, that there are actually other options.

So much of it encourages either enduring or engaging in abusive behavior - A Kiss With a Fist? Edward telling Bella how he could kill her, her falling apart completely because he left her?

good responses. yeah i used to read thing or see a movie that i thought gosh i hope they get back together and everything ends like it should. wow i feel jaded. and yes twilight is def a more recent example of a girl giving her life for a vampire ? i thought this the first movie- wow that poor girl without a mom that is so influenced by him. and yes sometimes divorse is in the best interest of all. wow hollywood and their crap relationships that are so code. think of all the young people that think these hollywood love stories are reality. hope i can make a difference for my granddaughters as i did not always do this as a mother.

Those things aren't put out to encourage us to buy into that as much as they are ways that other codes express themselves. Pretty much all areas of the arts are full of people with issues.