When I see parents who treat their children badly, beat them up for flimsy excuses, use their weaknesses against them and call them unprintable names, I shake my head in disgust.
Many parents are destroying the self esteem of the children daily with the way they talk to them and handle issues affecting these children.
As a parent, transferring the frustration of your marriage or relationship on your children has far reaching consequences than your eyes can see at the moment. Your children will suffer from lack of love, affection, peace and go in search of these feelings in outsiders.
This is one of the reasons some ladies fall head over heels for men who say hello to them or even show them a little bit of affection. They see this as an opportunity to enjoy what they lacked during their childhood.
If you are confused about your relationships and wonder why you keep attracting the wrong kind of partner, here are ways to explain how your relationship with your parents translates to your romantic life in adulthood.
The more attentive your parents are, the more open you might be in relationships. As you are loved by your parents, this directs you in terms of understanding what love is, how you receive it, how you express it, and most importantly, how you rest in love. The manner in which you were parented becomes an integral part of how you will navigate love as an adult.
How expressive and attentive your parents are during your childhood will reflect how open you are in future relationships. Expressive, affectionate and attentive parents tend to raise healthy children who are comfortable expressing themselves well.
The more inactive your parents, the more attention seeking you may be in relationships. Inattentive or emotionally-dramatic parents raise children who are excessively attention-seeking and are often loud in their emotional expression.
They will use every means possible to cause a person to pay attention to them. The key is they will do whatever it takes to get someone’s focused attention. This is called an insecure-ambivalent attachment style.
As an adult, if you often find yourself vying for a romantic interest’s attention, it’s likely you were constantly yearning for one or both of your parents’ attention as a child.
Whether this was a result of one or both of your parents’ own attachment styles, the absence of a parent, or some other circumstance, depends on individual upbringing.
The less emotionally expressive your parents, the more reserved you could be in relationships. Some people are raised by emotionally-reserved or repressed parents who strongly disprove of emotional expression and requests for attention from children.
They train their children not to express their needs or their desires for affection, attention, and closeness with the parents. Many Nigerian parents are raising their children this way and they think it’s the right way to do things.
People raised by such parents grow up to be stoic and unexpressive in their relationships at least until the other person threatens to leave them, which briefly shocks them out of their reserved state so that they can express the true depth of their feelings.
These people can express their love in non-verbal ways with different gifts, physical touches and sometimes quality attention, but lack good communication of their true feelings.
Sometimes they will even struggle with physical touch. They want sex and never cuddle, hug, hold hands or even kiss their partners passionately. They can spend all their time on hobbies or work to the extent that their partner feels ignored.
This is a comprehensible reality for many people. Whether you find yourself expressing such behaviors in adulthood, or you have been in a relationship with a partner who has such tendencies, dismiss the idea that something is innately wrong with you or another person.
These qualities are learned from a very early age and can be viably worked through constant communication and respective love languages. It can be hard to change this behaviour but it’s possible.
If you grew up in an abusive home, you are more likely to have no emotional attachment in your relationships. This is why I am always angry with women who are physically and emotionally abused in their marriages yet they claim they are staying back because of their children.
Stop it. You are damaging your children. You are showing them through your acceptance of constant physical abuse that they can be walk-over in their own relationships.
As a mother enduring physical abuse, you are setting bad examples for your children by enduring abuse and damaging them emotionally and psychologically. These children will grow up thinking abuse is a normal part of relationships.
Children who grow up in abusive backgrounds tend to be manipulative in relationships and often don’t see people as human beings. They see them only as objects that can be used to meet their needs. They are also emotional con artists who use the promise of love to deceive their love interests.
Unfortunately, many people are raised in abusive or dysfunctional homes. It’s not uncommon for the behaviors learned in abusive homes to be carried into adulthood, serving as reminders of what is normal, or even a subconscious or conscious response to actively avoid becoming vulnerable to any and all emotional connection.
If an adult child doesn’t break the cycle of abuse, and repeats it, any romantic relationship is going to have abuse as part of it. Of course, the abuse may show up as an adult who chooses an abusive partner because they haven’t worked through the trauma of their parental relationships.
Having divorced parents often makes people either cynical about marriage or excessively cautious, but then they can throw caution to the wind and fall head-over-heels for someone they have excessive chemistry with.
However, the excessive chemistry tends to be explosive and they often break up just as fast. You often see this pattern with the non-secure attachment styles. Basically, it is your attachment style that is the bigger predictor than your parents being divorced per say.
However, divorce when a child is under five years old can affect attachment, as well as one parent abandoning or being inconsistent or disinterested in the child after the divorce can negatively impact the child’s attachment style.
While there are a number of circumstances that contribute to divorce and how a child will react to and register divorce, having divorced parents does not pre-determine a person’s fate in romantic relationships. While possible, cynicism about love and short-lived relationships are not inevitable.
Some people are going to approach romance from the point of view of having had parents who divorced. They will understand divorce, from having had a front row seat, and they may either take a jaded point of view of romance, or they may want to make sure their romances don’t end in divorce. People have different ways of reacting so just because they come from a divorced home does not mean they will have a knee jerk reaction to divorce.
Having a healthy relationship with your parents in adulthood increases your likelihood of enjoying a healthy romantic life. Having a supportive parent who can listen and give good advice can really help smooth out the rough spots in a relationship unless your parent hates your partner and can help your relationship survive inevitable challenges.
Although a person’s relationship with his or her parents may evolve over time and become less of a factor as independence takes over, having a healthy relationship with your parents is beneficial to romantic relationships in adulthood.
While your relationship with your parents has a way of affecting your love life, all hope is not lost for people who have had terrible or non-existent relationships with their parents.
You can overcome this with a conscious focused awareness of these dynamics and their impact on your adult perceptions of love and this understanding can elevate you out of the negative relationship experiences of your childhood and into wonderful, fulfilling relationships in adulthood.
If you did not have a particularly pleasant childhood and still do not share a positive bond with your parents, hope is not gone for you and how your romantic future will play out.
While you are expected to learn from past lessons, mistakes, and traumas, it is imperative to consciously act in favor of the life you wish to build for yourself.
The success of your relationship is independent of these factors and entirely dependent on how you choose to conduct yourself as a partner and whether you are ready and willing to give as you expect to receive in love.
Re: Why do some women resort to curses when guys break up with them?
Truth be said, ladies need to open their eyes instead of raining curses on someone who does not deserve their tears or love, they should please just move on. Well done Kate, more grace to your elbow. -Anne
I always enjoy your write-up. Everything you said about ladies cursing guys who broke up with them is true. It is sad that ladies have this bad attitude. I will attribute their anger to lack of control and too much commitment, trust, and love for guys.
I will advice ladies is to stop putting all their hope and trust in men rather, they should trust God because it is only God that will determine what will happen in their lives. They should stop laying curses on guys because they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. -Onyinye Pascal
I really appreciate and encourage your write-ups. In life, not everybody will be in support of what you do. Many guys take dating as what they would do just to have their way with different women.
Laying curses on a guy after break up is not good, because you or any of your relative might end up marrying him. Dear guys don’t play with someone’s feelings and heart. If you know you are not ready for marriage, don’t date. -Ikuero Gustine
It is very ungodly to place curse on somebody that disappointed you or broke your heart. You should take the matter to God to treat matter in your favour. You also need to check if you are not the architect of the heartbreak in the first place. -Gordon Chika Nnorom, Umukabia