Should You Blame Your Parents?

Let’s talk about relationships, dating, and marriages today, shall we?

When I got my MA in Counseling Psychology, I learned an immense amount about the intricacies of family dynamics and how our growing up years unconsciously impact who we become as adults: our relationships with ourselves, what careers we choose, how we act professionally, how we behave in friendships, how we parent and yes, who we choose to marry and how we act in our romantic relationships.

I also met my husband while I was getting my MA, so yes, I basically analyzed the crap out of him, myself and our relationship LOL… fun times ;)

The most helpful exercise my then newish boyfriend and I did together was drawing a big family genogram of our families of origin and how we (and everyone else) acted in a time of difficulty. These reactive patterns turned out to show us how we still intuitive act today when things get stressful or tense.

To give you an example: What we discovered is that when there is a problem, I turn all my energy towards the problem, jump into action and try to reinstate control asap. I process what happened internally later. My husband on the other side tends to get quiet, withdraws and turns inward to deliberate his plan of action before he actually acts. Through this exercise, we saw that we did this even in our teenage years! Knowing this about each other, we can have more respect and empathy for our individual mechanisms while sometimes learning from each other and other times giving each other space to do things our own ways without taking it personal.

This simple recognition has been revolutionary for us in our marriage.

My belief in therapy and having tools to understand our childhoods to shed light on our current selves -on our own AND in relationship to others- is deep and real, which is why I am so excited to introduce you to Justine Carino, LMHC today.

Justine is a licensed mental health counselor with a private practice and she will talk to us about how our childhood plays an immense role in the conflicts we have with our partners AND what we can do to shed actually find resolutions and more harmony.

Should You Blame Your Parents? 

How Your Childhood Can Play a Role in the Conflicts You Have with Your Partner

by Justine Carino, LMHC

According to research by relationship expert Dr. John Gottman, about 70% of conflicts between couples are unresolvable.

When I first heard this statistic at my training in The Gottman Method for couples therapy, I was appalled.

How could this be? How could couples have that many differences and have a marriage that actually lasts?

I thought my whole point of being a therapist was to help people resolve their conflicts!

After a few minutes of letting that percentage sink in, it started to make sense to me.

So many couples complain that they fight about he same issues over and over again and never find a resolution for them.

This statistic made me realize that this pattern is completely normal. It’s not just you and your husband struggling with this, we all struggle with perpetual issues in our marriages. Kind of relieving, right?

So how do we learn to deal with these perpetual dilemmas in our marriages, so we don’t feel so stuck and frustrated?

The answer isn’t so simple and it takes a lot of willingness from each partner to learn a lot about each other.

There is usually an underlying meaning or purpose behind gridlock issues in relationships that informs an individual’s position on it, and that is what we want to explore.

First, we want to try to gain perspective on why our partner feels the way that they do about the conflict and take an empathetic stance towards why they have this perspective.

Empathy is hard to practice when you are angry, but it can quickly disarm you. Then, we want to unpack how your partner’s upbringing and childhood has influenced their side of the argument and gives certain meaning to their perspective of the dilemma. When you are open to exploring how your own childhood had impacted your romantic relationships, you will learn that a lot of history is hidden in both sides of the argument. 

I know it is so cliché to say that all you do in therapy is talk about your childhood, but it really does play an enormous role in who we are today, the choices we make and who we pick to be our partners. 

Does the phrase “you married your father” sound familiar? Exploring the patterns from your family of origin can be life changing and eye-opening.

The families that we grew up in are templates for our understanding of emotions and they are also the maps for our social and romantic relationships.

Our families taught us how to set boundaries with other people and regulate our emotions without us even being aware of it. What was modeled to us by our own parents in their relationship, the culture and community we grew up in, the gender roles we witnessed and our own role in our family system all plays a part in our romantic relationships.

Believe it or not, we often play out patterns from our childhood, even if they were hurtful or damaging, just because they are familiar to us.

Familiarity is comfortable, even if it is dysfunctional.

It sounds crazy and contradictory, but our inner psyche can really get us into trouble if we don’t learn how to pay attention to it.

For example, you may end up married to the angry alcoholic because you grew up with one. You know exactly how to tolerate this kind of man and the kind of behavior that comes with it. It’s predictable. Dysfunctional, but predictable. 

Our subconscious can play some tricks on us if we don’t play close attention to it. A lot of our behavior comes from our subconscious motives. 

For example, calmness and stability may be uncomfortable for you because you didn’t grow up in that type of environment. So you recreate a little bit of chaos in your life by ditching the nice and emotionally stable guy and for a partner that excites you, but in all of the wrong ways.

By identifying the dysfunctional patterns that may have been modeled to you in your youth can help you to then break the cycle of dysfunction that has been passed down from generation to generation in your family system.

Through this type of discovery and insight, you have the potential to create a better marriage with your partner and better relationship with your own kids. We bring all types of baggage into our marriages and parenting styles without consciously being aware of it.

If you were the “good girl” or “people pleaser” amongst your siblings in order to keep the peace at home, you may notice that you often sacrifice your own needs to meet the needs of your partner in your present life. This is a role that may have served you in childhood but it will no longer serve you as an adult. It leaves you feeling worn out and resentful and you will need to learn how to set healthier boundaries in your relationship in order for your needs can be met as well. 

A sustainable marriage is one with healthy boundaries. 

So when you find yourself fighting with your partner over the dishes for the millionth time, ask yourself, “are we really fighting over the dishes?”

Maybe you are actually fighting over gender roles and cultural expectations that have an influence on your mindsets. By unpacking the deeper meanings we attach to our side of conflicts, the more likely you are to gain a new perspective and make a new choice about how to approach the topic in the future. You may even find some resolution after all. 

So, should we really blame our parents for the conflicts we have in our relationships?

The answer is no.

It is easy to blame other people for our problems, but that leaves us with less accountability and more resistance to change ourselves for the better.  I advise that the same empathy you have for your partner’s perspective on conflict due to their childhood should also be used to empathize with your parents. Your parents have their own families of origin that have left imprints on who they are and how they approached their own marriages and parenting choices.

We each have the responsibility to take a close look at the patterns from our families that have benefited us and hurt us. We then chose what we want to let go of for the next generation, not only to free ourselves, but to free our children of the burden of unhealthy relationship patterns. 

Justine

About Justine:

Justine Carino is a licensed mental health counselor with a private practice in White Plains, NY. Justine uses a modernized approach with her clients so therapy can feel more relatable and down to earth. She specializes in working with teens, young adults and families struggling with anxiety, depression, loss, relationship issues and family conflict. Justine provides individual, family and pre-marital couples sessions as well as workshops for parents and teens. She uses both family systems techniques and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to support her clients in making changes they want to see in themselves.  Justine is a graduate of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology of Yeshiva University and has post graduate training from the Ackerman Institute for the Family and The Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Website: www.carinocounseling.com

Instagram: @_thoughtsfromthecouch_

Email: carinocounseling@gmail.com