How Did Your Parents Love Each Other?

The way your parents loved has a lot to do with how you build intimate relationships.

What kind of relationships did your parents have? Did they stay lovingly married to each other for 30 years? Or did they bounce through a string of dangerous partners that left them (and you) heartbroken and confused? Believe it or not, these relationships take a heavy toll on who you become as an adult. We tend to fall into the partnership patterns of our parents. If they don’t know how to love, we struggle to love when we grow up, too.

What happens when your parents have bad relationships?

Your parents’ bad relationships aren’t an isolated incident. If they wheeled through a lot of abusive partners, then chances are you’ve been set up for the same patterns. When our parents can’t form or maintain stable relationships, we wind up falling into the same types of relationships in our adult lives.

You get put at major risk

A lot of parents have a bad habit of thinking that their romantic relationships are compartmentalized from the lives of their children. They will carry on with fights and resentment, all the while thinking that the children will be fine as long as they “aren’t in the middle”.

Of course, any child raised in a dysfunctional relationship will tell you this isn’t the truth. No matter how hard a parent tries to “hide” their bad relationships from them, the pain always gets transferred squarely onto the child.

Children always absorb the fallout of their parents’ poor relationships. Mom gets talked down to by Dad, and then she goes into the next room and screams at the kids to discharge her bad feelings. It turns into a total whirlpool of toxicity.

What’s worse, though, is that these terrible relationships often expose children to physical, mental, emotional, and even sexual abuse. That’s right. Bad partners aren’t just bad to the adult parent they’re committed to. Children become victims of toxic partners far more frequently than any of us like to admit.

You normalize dangerous connections

Some parents like to think that they can tell their children one thing and then do another — but that’s not how it works. Your children don’t form their lives based solely on what you tell them to do. They also act (and react) according to the actions you take and the decisions you make in your own life.

If your parent had nothing but bad, abusive relationships, then you start to see that as a normal thing. Even if your mother tells you never to fall in love with a man who hits you, that becomes the norm when you watch her get beaten on the daily.

We build our partnerships based on the examples our parents give us. All those verbal lessons can only go so far if they aren’t living in line with their truth. It’s a bit like monkey-see, monkey-do. If the primary relationships in your childhood are abusive, this becomes your baseline.

You attract toxic partners

A parent with an endless stream of toxic partners teaches their child to settle for the same. When your entire childhood is based around one parent catering to the violent and chaotic whims of the others, you see this as the norm and you work to recreate it in your own life.

Parents who attract toxic partners instill their children with the same energy. Instead of looking for people who meet their needs, they downplay their happiness and chase after people who put them back in that place of toxic instability.

In order to attract healthy and happy partners, we have to be confident in ourselves and willing to put our foot down when things are wrong. Anything else leaves us at the mercy of a world that never had our best interests at heart.

You learn to settle for less

So much of our self-esteem as individuals (and as partners) is based on the relationship that we have with our parents. When we have healthy ties with our parents, our self-esteem is bolstered. When we have terrible relationships with them, then the same happens.

But our overall relationship self-esteem is also tied to the relationship that our parents have with others. Take, for example, the little girl who watches her mother squeeze herself down into the smallest shapes possible.

The little girl watches her mother lower her self-esteem, and grovel after men who don’t want or value her. In turn, that little girl learns to do the same in her relationships. She makes herself small and plays an inferior creature to the men in her life…just like her mother did.

When we watch our parents settle for less than they deserve, we come to think that we should do the same. After all, our parents are living gods to us. If they aren’t worthy of love and respect, how could we be worthy of that same love and respect?

You never gain valuable skills

We tend to think of our relationships as mystical things. A lot of that is because of the influence of TV and movies, but a lot of it comes from the warped ways we’re taught to approach these intimate partnerships by our parents.

If your mother or father didn’t have the skills to build stable and respectful relationships, then guess what? You will not step into the world with those skills, either.

Our parents teach us how to navigate our feelings and our partnerships. We watch them flex their intimacy muscles, and we echo those same behaviors and patterns in our own lives.

How many times did your mom or dad sit you down to talk about conflict? Or the best way to respectfully handle major upsets? For most of us, this answer is never. So give yourself those skills now by accepting what you lack in the arena of building loving partnerships that last.

You can be the one who breaks the pattern.

The relationships you have in your adult life essentially become a reflection of the relationships your parents have during your childhood. It makes sense. Our parents form the core of our baseline, and we learn how to navigate the world by watching how they lead their lives.

When your parents have abusive, harmful, limiting, or otherwise toxic relationships, you learn to build the same. You’ll settle for partners who don’t have what you want and break yourself down into smaller and smaller pieces to be loved.

None of it works, however. We only find the love we need when we break the habits and realize we’re bigger than our parents’ mistakes.

Don’t slip into a cycle of violence and self-flagellation. Give yourself the clarity, support, and self-belief to pursue better partnerships than your parents had. Align yourself with partners who see you, love you, and celebrate you for the growing and vibrant person you are.

I am an author, coach, and podcaster who helps survivors create their ideal lives after trauma and relationship upset. Join my recovery mailing list for free weekly advice, or click the link below to learn more about me.