Relationship advice

The other day I was asking myself what relationship advice I wished my parents had given me growing up. Now, quite frankly, as a teenager I probably wouldn’t have listened to them anyway. However, it was an interesting thought experiment. And after over 10 years of working as a therapist, I came up with two key points, which I am happy to share with you.

I hope that by sharing this with you, it may inform your own relationship choices and – if that applies to you – that it may also help you in considering what you are role modelling for your children.

1.       The importance of our attachment

I only learned about attachment theory relatively late in life, as part of my therapy training, and it has been such an eye-opening theoretical framework for me. Since then, I have had multiple clients confirm to me what an important theory this is. One client even argued that it should be compulsory reading in schools. And given the amount of heart ache I have witnessed and heard about as a therapist I can very much see her point.

In a nutshell, attachment theory suggests that the relationship we have as an infant with our primary caregiver shapes who we become in romantic relationships as adults. It distinguishes different attachment styles that correspond to varying needs for intimacy and independence.

When I was younger, maybe quite naively, I didn’t even know that people could differ in their need for closeness. Somehow, I thought that once you find a person that you get on with and who is right for you, you naturally progress towards greater emotional and physical intimacy until you decide to spend the rest of your life together.

In my mind, this involved moving in together, getting married, having children and sharing both household chores and parenting. Little did I know that while this may be the dream for many people, it may not be what they actually feel comfortable with. It may be a fantasy rather than a reality, and more importantly, it may not be possible with someone with an opposing attachment style.

I am aware that theories are a simplification of reality. They are a particular lens through which we choose to look at the world. This means that our attachment style will only explain a part of what goes on in a romantic relationship, but quite a fundamental one.

What makes our attachment so important is how powerful it can be. Because it goes back to the relationship we had with our primary caregiver as an infant, it can feel very primal and completely separate from our rational interpretation of a situation.

I have experienced a number of clients literally feeling and behaving like their life is coming to an end because of a breakup or a serious conflict in their couple relationship. It can feel as existential and as threatening to our survival as if we were infants on the brink of losing our parent.

At the same time, for many people their attachment is very much out of their awareness. It can take a number of relationships and recurring patterns before we come to realise that our attachment style is the common denominator.

For example, it is not uncommon for someone with an avoidant attachment style to create distance in the couple relationship through criticism rather than learning to notice and communicate their need for space.

Learning how much emotional intimacy we need and are comfortable with and finding ways to articulate these needs thus become crucial building blocks for creating and maintaining healthy relationships. This also includes an acceptance that love alone is unlikely to change someone else’s attachment style.

2.       The relationship between our parents

This second point may seem an obvious one for some. It is about the role that our parents play in how we relate romantically. By that I refer less to our own relationship with our parents and more to their relationship with each other or other partners that we have witnessed growing up.

Even if this may seem clear to some people, I still hear a number of clients tell me very confidently that the way their parents have behaved towards one another or other romantic partners hasn’t affected them much. I hold some reservation towards these claims.

In my professional understanding and experience, the relationship between our parents acts as a blue-print for our own romantic relationships. Many times, it is the first romantic relationship that we get to know and defines for us what it means to be married or a couple.

Much of this isn’t ever expressed in words but is shown and taught through the interaction between our parents that we experience. Consciously or unconsciously, this is what we come to understand a romantic partner, a wife, a husband to be like.

If we can acknowledge the impact that our parents have on us, we also come to see that the relationship between our romantic partner’s parents hugely matters. As such, getting on with our partner’s family may not just be a ‘nice-to-have’.

Thinking back to my teenage years, I often didn’t even know the parents of the people I was interested in. All of that seemed completely irrelevant to me. What mattered was whether the person I wanted to date was attractive and if there was chemistry between us. Their parents seemed like a distant older generation that didn’t have a clue about the life we wanted to lead.

In these years and probably well into early adulthood, I could have been that client telling my therapist that I didn’t want to talk about my parents or my partner’s parents, and that all that I was interested in was the present and my current struggles. I am not disputing the sincerity of my own perception then or my clients’ perception now. And I am also very aware that sometimes what we need to focus on in therapy is what is immediate and acute.

However, with time and considerable professional experience, I can’t help but notice recurring relationship patterns as they present themselves to me in the therapy room.

I see the impact of the relationship between their parents play out with clients in a number of ways.

I see clients who have experienced very loving enduring romantic relationships between their parents who go into new relationships with a lot of optimism and openness and are surprised by their partners’ reservations or fears of commitment.

These clients have high standards for the romantic relationships they want to lead because they know first-hand what is possible, and they may struggle to find a partner who can meet these standards because of the psychological wounds they bring.

I also see clients severely scarred by their parents’ divorce who are questioning the whole concept of marriage or romantic relationships all together and who have a hard time trusting their partner’s love.

I experience clients who have witnessed domestic violence between their parents and who find themselves in physically abusive relationships. And even if it is on a much smaller scale of occasional verbal or emotional abuse, I see clients choosing partners who may be similarly critical or manipulative as one of their parents behaved towards the other and gradually erode their confidence.

Whether we like it or not, very often we are drawn to what is familiar. It is what we know and what we think we can cope with, irrespective of whether it is good for us. While we all have the capacity to change and are not defined by our past, not repeating familiar patterns can be difficult and requires awareness and understanding.

And this is why I hope that with this post, at the very least, I can invite you to consider these factors for yourselves and your current or prospective romantic partners so that there can be reflections and conversations about them.