Our parents usually are our first role models for what it means to be in a relationship with someone. Their relationship can influence your adult relationships in lots of ways. Whether we recognize it happening or not, we often take our early cues from watching them.
How they relate to each other begins to form a roadmap for how we might do the same. We imitate behaviors and characteristics you find in your parents’ relationships consciously or unconsciously. It may be in the way they speak to themselves, how they handle conflicts and how affection is shown.
This influence can extend to the little things too, for example, the kinds of gifts they would get for each other, or how much they complimented each other in public if they were tactile, or how collaborative they were when it came to practical tasks like organizing chores or making plans. One area in which this can be particularly relevant is how they were with you as parents.
As we only know our parents from the point at which they became parents themselves, it’s not uncommon we find ourselves most directly copying their behaviors when we reach this life stage ourselves. It’s a familiar experience to many: talking to your child or your partner in a certain way, and realizing you’re taking the same tone, or even using the same words, as your mum and your dad. It can often be hard to distinguish between which habits are useful and which are less so as our parents are our primary source of information for a long time, these behaviors can simply seem to be the way that things are ‘done.’
As we get older, we might try to be our parents or even fear to be a resemblance of what they had. we might recognize that we’re copying our parents, and begin to wonder whether it is a good idea to do this you try to do the exact opposite of what their parents did. This tends to be the case when elements of their upbringing were unhappy because of how their parents acted because, for instance, there was always so much shouting or passive-aggressive behavior in the house, or there was so little openly expressed affection, or, at the more end of things, there was infidelity.
The process of exploring a relationship and finding a way to be different often takes a long time, and sometimes requires a little professional help along the way. Talking about your feelings and actions with your partner can help you recognize where things might be tricky. It can be helpful to recognize, for an instant, when you’re unthinkingly shutting down during disagreements, or becoming distant when things are hard elsewhere in your life noticing this gives you the chance to work together to find ways to mitigate issues.
It is okay to know that we will not end up in bad relationships because our parents did and neither is a blissful relationship guaranteed if our parents had/ have a blissful relationship. And if your relationship is not going the way it ought to, these are a few options to try out.
Firstly, you have to recognize the problem, when you learn about the strains in the relationship you can go on to talk about how you feel and what you think. Talk about how a disagreement made you feel. Talk about how you want issues to be handled and cut yourself some slack: create boundaries for yourself. You can also seek professional help; speak to a counselor. These habits can make your relationship somewhat better.
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