it is not our partner's job to be the parents we never had
OOF… this can be a hard pill to swallow.
How often do we demand, whether it’s consciously or unconsciously, that our partner love us the way our parents never did? That they offer us the type of unconditionality that we never received? That they reparent us and tend to all of our needs?
While of course to a certain extent having a corrective experience of being seen and heard is a beautiful thing we get to experience in our partnerships, but there is a difference between that and demanding that they give us what we never got.
Because we so often replay our childhood wounds in our adult relationships though, it’s inevitable that this happens.
It is well known in the world of psychology that us humans tend to repeat what we do not tend to. Freud called it a “repetition compulsion” and stated that often we repeat, not remember, our patterns. Attachment theory calls this “unconscious mental models.”
This isn’t meant to be some scary manifestation bullshit but rather a way of understanding how the brain works. The brain creates templates for how to see the world, in order to be able to discern how much information it takes in. This is a good thing.
AND. That means if we don’t question it, we will most likely enter relationships that have the same level of “emotional health” as our family of origin.
It also means that we tend to recreate childhood dynamics in our partnership, often as a way to attempt repair, and to finally get the love and belonging we sought in our families.
On some level, this is inevitable for most relationships. That’s not a bad thing. We can use this space of relationships to learn about ourselves, what we need, and how to untangle from the past.
The invitation here isn’t to judge ourselves when these patterns arise, but to explore with curiosity what is coming up. As we do this work, we learn to unhook our partner from this unconscious expectation. This then gives our partner the freedom to show up as their full selves rather than a narrow version of what we think we want.
This is how relationship thrives and changes our relational templates. It is possible for all of us.
Our partnerships are a tremendous playground for deeper healing, if we allow it to be so. XO
