Partner or parent? Our relationships mirror our childhood issues

As complex as the human mind might seem sometimes it is actually pretty easy to figure out its patterns. Everybody's mental and emotional behaviour works quite similar and that helps to analyse how we function. Gaining psychological knowledge will bring so much understanding to our human interactions and the way we respond to others and life in general.

One of the biggest insights is that our childhood basically affects most of our adult life especially if we are not aware of our triggers and wounds. Many people bring their unresolved childhood traumas into their relationships, especially romantic ones, and wonder why they keep repeating the same pattern over and over again. If you attract a certain type of partner and struggle a lot in your relationships it might be a good idea to look closer at the relationship you had with your parents and they had with each other. The unhealed wounds and traumas we carry get triggered when we get very close to someone and start having an intimate relationship. Our inner child comes through and wants to fulfill its unmet needs but acting from this place cannot bring forth a healthy adult relationship.

Just to give some examples, if we had a father who was distant and couldn't give us the emotional warmth and support we would have needed as a kid we will most likely attract men that act the same way. Unfortunately our mind 'wants' to stay in familiar places and our soul provides us situations to heal our wounds. This combination makes it difficult to break out of old patterns. We attract emotionally unavailable men almost as a selfulfilling prophecy that confirms us that all men are like that, like our fathers.

If we had mothers that were overprotective and always did everything for us, maybe not letting us learn by experience, we might not be the most independent person now. We might be looking for a partner that acts more like our parent and we want to give away our responsibility in many areas of the relationship.

There are so many different patterns we can bring to awareness in our human relationships depending on the connection we had to our parents. Look at the people you attract and see if there is a common thread. Are you dating people who are very controlling, aloof, emotionally immature or even abusive then look at your childhood and see where this behaviour is reflecting your past. Often, but not always of course, also depending on your sexual orientation, women attract men who have a lot in common with their fathers and men attract women that act more like their mothers. Of course this can also be implied in same sex partnerships depending on whether we are more in our male or female energy.

The unavailable father who neglected our emotional needs might have formed a very insecure person who takes the bare minimum in a relationship. This person might keep ending up with a partner who is not very warm and loving but the little affection that is shown keeps us 'hooked' as deep down we belief that is all we deserve or can get because this is what we got as children. Our first human connection taught us here that this is how close relationships are supposed to be, which of course is not true.

To obtain a healthy and loving relationship it will require a certain amount of work from ourselves. It is not about being 'perfect' or completely healed, we just need to be aware of our wounds and willing to work on them. A relationship will without a doubt mirror our childhood wounds and if we are not willing to take responsibility for them we might end up blaming our partners. As painful as inner child work can be as important it is if we want to live a happy life. We have to become the parent we needed as children in order to not push that role onto our partners. It is a strange thing that our mind makes this strong connection between parent and partner. Also in friendships we will meet our inner child from time to time and might realize that it was the little us and not the grown up us who just reacted but a friendship still has more distance to it than a romantic relationship and makes it easier to be more conscious. The closer we are to someone the more we might be unable to see our own behaviour and beliefs from an objective perspective.

The relationship to our parents is the closest we have as it was responsible for our physical and emotional survival. Even though it often looses its closeness which is normal and healthy it paves the road for all our future connections.

There is so much to say about certain patterns and reasons for struggle with our partners but we have to do the inner work ourselves. Starting therapy, energy healing, even reading books about that topic and journaling are just a few possible ways to work on our inner child issues. We have to bring them to the surface and reflect on our behaviour and our beliefs. A lot of our thoughts are based on old false beliefs that we were taught as children.

Being in a relationship brings a big possibility to heal. Ideally we can learn and grow with our partner but it might be hard to grow at the same pace as everyone has a different capacity and will to do the work. If one person is putting a lot of effort in healing their relationship and their inner wounds at the same time there must be the same amount of effort on the other side in order for it to work out. Inner child work can be really painful, as mentioned, depending on how deeply wounded we feel. Some of us grew up highly traumatized as children and to heal these wounds takes effort. Nevertheless now it is up to us if we want change. We cannot blame our parents or our partners but we can work on ourselves, forgive our parents and ourselves and realize what we want and deserve in a relationship. If that means to end an unhealthy relationship it will be painful but it means taking a step further in our healing.