When Your Family Hinders Your Relationships

Realizing my family’s fears are hindering my romantic relationships and learning how to overcome these barriers

I started dating much later in life than most of my peers. While many of my classmates started dating in middle school or high school, I got started dating in college. My parents’ attitude to dating was that I should prioritize my education over romantic relationships. I was expected to focus on acing my entrance exams and ensure I was accepted to a high-ranking college instead of spending time with boys. Also, my living situation was not conducive to allowing friends or potential boyfriends to come to my house for visits. My parents’ turbulent marriage meant there was constant yelling at home and my mother’s PTSD-induced hoarding meant the house was strewn with items everywhere all the time. I also lived with my grandmother and aunts who were very nosy and would have asked about anyone who came to visit.

Another reason my parents were against relationships at the time was that they were very worried that I would make bad decisions and end up pregnant before I was ready. They had heard lots of news stories and were worried I could become a victim of rape. My grandmother constantly asked if I was dating, and warned me to stay away from boys who only wanted to have sex, but were not committed to serious relationships. I also knew about the dangers of STDs from friends and educational materials for teens. I don’t blame my parents for their worries and think they were correct to be concerned.

Nonetheless, I was quite lonely during my school years when I had many secret crushes and couldn’t act on those feelings. I painfully remember there was a fun system of “candy grams” and gifting carnations in middle school. Kids would buy a “gram” and write on the piece of paper the name of the person they wanted to send it to. It could be sent to friends or crushes. The grams would be delivered at the end of the month and the teachers would read out the names written on each candy gram and give it to the student. I remember desperately wanting to receive one, even harboring a secret wish that one of my crushes would send me one. That never happened. I didn’t realize that the best way to get candy grams was to make it reciprocal.

I observed as a couple of my friends began dating in middle school and shared some of their struggles with unrequited feelings. I watched public displays of affection on my school field trips. I wanted to date as well and felt sad that I wasn’t allowed to. I felt unloved and starved for affection. But my parents didn’t provide me any guidance on how to handle my feelings of attraction and I didn’t understand of how romantic relationships worked back then. Instead, I read a lot of fantasy love stories and watched romcoms through which I absorbed untrue notions about relationships. If parents don’t offer proper relationship guidance for their kids, “they are getting messages about these topics from elsewhere.” While Asian parents considered middle school and high school as too early for teens to date, it was the normal time to start dating according to American culture. Teens are expected to start dating when they are around fifteen years old.

When I was dating after college, my father worried about my choice of partners and asked many questions about their backgrounds. My parents’ questioning of my boyfriends made me unsure of my choices in partners. My parents’ comments such as “Why is your boyfriend so skinny?” and “Does he really love you or he is just using you?” severely undermined my confidence. After I broke up with one of the boyfriends my parents criticized, they told me they liked him. Wtf? Then why didn’t you ever tell me that? As I was not confident about my romantic relationship skills and choice of partners, what I needed was encouragement and guidance from my parents on how to navigate relationships. Instead, they added to my insecurities with their unfiltered questions.

Bringing boyfriends home to meet my family did not go well either. My grandmother gossiped about my love life with other relatives and word would get back to me, making me feel self-conscious and intruded on. One of my aunts shamed a friend’s daughter (who was my age) for bringing home more than one boyfriend to meet the family. I felt like I could never win with this type of behavior; simply having a relationship led to gossip, and breaking up led to even more gossip, but I wasn’t going to quit dating either. It was tricky business to inform my family after a boyfriend and I broke up. I was ashamed to admit the relationship failed and my family provided no moral support for me post-breakup. Once, my Uncle said to me, “No wonder why I don’t see any pictures of you and your boyfriend on Facebook” after one of my breakups. With every single action I took scrutinized and judged by multiple parties, my relationships collapsed before they could become strong enough to withstand such pressure.

I was envious of my cousins who had a more relaxed environment to learn about relationships. One of my aunts maintained a nice house and was opened to allowing my cousin to bring home female friends. She didn’t pressure him or ask many questions. She was good at encouraging her grandson to have fun while dating. I imagine my cousin had the luxury of learning about the following essential dating skills in a safe environment: asking people out and declining dates, planning dating activities, treating dates with respect, conversing well and about the right topics during dates, setting healthy boundaries, and interacting with a date’s parents. The kids who are lucky enough to start learning these skills early are the ones who are likely to have successful relationships later in life.

I confided in my aunt and my therapist about the difficulties of having a romantic relationship within my turbulent and judgmental family environment. My aunt was familiar with my grandmother’s antics and advised me to not introduce any more boyfriends to my family until I was engaged. My brother learned from my experiences and wisely did not bring any girlfriends to meet my parents until he had been dating his current girlfriend for two years. A few of my friends suggested waiting until after the engagement to introduce a boyfriend to the family as well. I also had a nagging doubt in my head that my family didn’t genuinely want me to be happily married based on their unsupportive actions and words, probably because they were not in happy relationships themselves.

I assumed that I would be able to date someone for several years and have them integrate into my family’s life, spending many holidays getting to know each other before I finally decided to settle down with them. As I grow older, I realized this idealistic picture that my fifteen-year-old self had in my head would not come true in the way I envisioned. I also realized that this was part of growing up and I was fine with letting that dream go. I saw how harmful an unsupportive family environment was and vowed to separate myself from it. I decided that I would find my support system through a combination of friends, my therapist, and online resources. My therapist reminded me that despite the challenges I faced and lack of support from my family when it comes to romantic relationships, it is ultimately up to me to get back out in the dating arena and build my own relationship.

Besides the fact that my parents couldn’t provide adequate dating guidance in my teenage years, they took up tremendous space in my life and my brother’s life with their overwhelming marital problems. I was treated more like a counselor than a daughter for many years up until my late twenties. My parents couldn’t contain their arguments and needed mediators. When my brother and I lived with them, we were worried they might physically hurt each other or us when their arguments reached fever pitch. We stepped in and tried to de-escalate these situations, asking them to stop arguing. Sometimes I would see my mother sitting at the kitchen table or in the car crying after an argument. Kids shouldn’t be witness to such conflict between their parents. Even when I no longer lived with them, my parents would consistently bring up their problems during phone conversations.

Years later, I recounted to my therapist how much mental space my parents’ difficult marriage took in my life and how much it still dominated my relationship with them. My therapist helped me understand that my parents’ happiness is not my responsibility and it is unhealthy for me to put their problems on my shoulders. For example, I pondered whether my parents should get a divorce for many months. After speaking with my therapist, I realized I should not even be considering this question as it was not my problem. From then on, I set boundaries between my parents’ marital problems and my relationship with them. Their marriage was between them, and it was their responsibility to seek the solution to their problems. I no longer allowed them to discuss their marital tensions with me.

My parents’ outsized marital problems sent me the message that their needs are more important than mine. Even now, my mother calls me on the phone and tells me she prefers that I move back into her neighborhood so it is easier to reach each other in case of emergencies. I understand she is deathly afraid of being left alone in her old age, so she is preemptively demanding that I live close to her now. She also misses me and wishes to see me more often. But I realized that her fears and marital problems have already gotten in the way of my love life when I was younger. Back then, I was unaware of the issue and unable to do anything about it. As a much older and more capable adult, I understand that it is my responsibility to give myself space so I can have my own life.

Thus, I decided to prioritize my own life and happiness. I will live as I desire. I give myself space to find and grow my relationships without sharing dating details with my mother. It was not an easy process. It was fraught with guilt on my end. I had to convince myself that I could choose to disobey my mother’s wishes. I had to tell myself: “I give myself permission to have a healthy relationship full of kindness, compassion, and fun,” as Manette Morgan says in her book Finding Your Voice. I did not give myself this permission for several years because I felt survivor’s guilt that I can reach for happiness while my family is caught in a cycle of toxic enmeshment.

On the flip side, my parents’ happiness is their responsibility. My parents do have the financial means to change their lives and relationships for the better. They can choose to seek therapy, live with more space and privacy, and enjoy themselves by taking exotic vacations. These things they can afford. Unfortunately, they would never choose to give these things to themselves. It is also not within my ability to change their minds on this, nor is it my responsibility. Thus, I understand that I can choose happiness without feeling guilty even when the rest of my family will not make the same choice.

“The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have the richest inheritance of all,” says Thich Nhat Hanh in his book How to Love. Happy and healthy emotional inheritances leave kids with the ever-important qualities of self-acceptance, unconditional love, and self-respect. Kids with these qualities live their lives with more confidence, assured of themselves and their place in the world, and can connect and form happy relationships with ease.

I’m still keenly aware of the missing element of comforting motherly advice when I’m facing challenging moments. There are moments when I need a few minutes of loving attention and wise words and feel the emptiness of not having an emotionally available mother to guide me. I have found safe people to fill the space. I’m grateful for them. I know it takes another committed and consistently trustworthy person to help repair my emotional traumas over time. I am finding people to tell me the things I needed to hear from my mother:

• You are fun, open, caring, have lots of energy, but you also need your space. You will find someone to love you for all that one day.
• I’m on your side. I support you. I want you to be happy and have your own family and kids.
• You look beautiful no matter how much you weigh. Don’t let anyone shame you into feeling ugly about any part of your body.

Walking around with unhealed trauma takes a lot of energy. With an emotional injury, our mood is less stable. Our anxiety is more likely to spike, we can be triggered into a downward spiral, and our fight-or-flight responses kick in more often. This expends much of our emotional energy without our notice. Imagine how much more productive and happier we could be if we weren’t carrying around emotional damage. Once we start to heal though, “little by little, we withdraw our energy from [our losses] and invest it back into life,” says Manette Morgan. We begin to heal and fall back in love with the beauty of life and the journey we are on. That is where I am at now; experiencing happiness and satisfaction about my journey and remembering how precious life is.