How our past childhood relationships can shape our marriage.

Let’s look at how early childhood patterns shape how we feel and relate to our partner in the marriage. Individuals who feel bad have ‘taken in’ that they are ‘not good enough, from their earliest childhood experiences. Situations of neglect or emotional deprivation  often leave individuals feeling unwanted or a burden. To protect loved ones, they internalize these bad feelings  as existing within them.  So, anger towards significant others turns inward and becomes directed towards themselves. So, they may feel bad about themselves, such as self-loathing, have self-hatred and beat themselves up. An abuse victim may feel bad on the inside, rather then feel angry towards the perpetrator.

When there is too much bad experiences taken in, they cannot tolerate it and have to push it out, projecting it outside, so the outside world is bad and mistreats them, so they may mistrust others. Often, individuals have little hope about relationships, expecting partners to reject them or hurt them, reading into things that are not even there. In couples, they often misread the actions of others.

Resolve the past so it doesn’t determine your future relationships.

Our past interactions forms the lenses of how we see ourselves and each other.  John Bowlby describes these as’ internal working models’ which lay the foundation for the ‘self’ and ‘other’ representations. It forms the view of their ‘self’ and ‘others’. They may doubt themselves and doubt others to be available to them, affecting their relationships. In their views about their ‘self’’ , they may feel worthless and interpret things negatively that happen to them. In their views of ‘others’,  they may see others as uncaring, unloving, harsh or mean. They do not see how these feelings distort reality, of how they see themselves and others. So, they misinterpret the actions of their partner, reliving their earliest pain.

As a marriage counsellor, Nancy Carbone sees how these internalised representations or feelings are unconscious and distort how they see themselves and see others. The may assume their partner is being judgmental, critical or mean, when they are not. They may also distort how they think others see them. Often these thoughts come from within themselves and are hard to manage so they project them out, thinking the external world does not like them, instead of owning that they don’t like themselves, disavowing feelings of self-hatred. Our partner may trigger feelings of not feeling good enough, so often  we blame our partner for making us feel this way.

Improve your relationship by understanding your ‘self’ and your partner.

 A relationship therapist allows individuals to dismantle these interpersonal thinking patterns. So, they do not allow past events to be re-lived and re-enacted in their present relationships. For instance, someone who has abandonment issues may control his relationship, to avoid abandonment. Someone who feels unsafe in relationships may  avoid getting close. Relationship Counselling manages these underlying feelings and overcomes these distortions, so they  do not take over the relationship.   Marriage counselling allows individuals to see themselves and others more accurately and relate in a more attuned way, rather than misunderstanding each other. Improve your relationship by understanding yourself and your partner.

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[AG1]