Childhood Relationships and Their Effects on Adult Life

One attribute shared by far too many discontented middle-agers is that they have failed to attain adult status with their parents-- and, consequently, with themselves. This odd, and often unrecognized, factor can cause a host of problems in their own lives, which only worsen with the death of the parent. It is always difficult to lose a parent; one not only loses the parent, but there are also the additional factors of losing the relationship, and what that means in terms of one's own life.

In the natural family-of-origin, all members eventually become adults. When family dynamics are of a negative nature, this process does not occur in its natural fashion. You will then have people in their forties, fifties, and even older, ceaselessly talking about their childhoods and youth as if it were the present-day; you will also hear people in these upper age-ranges commenting about their present-day difficulties with their now-elderly parents; these are people who are stuck in their childhood roles-- they have never achieved adult status.

If the parent is already deceased, this compounds the problem. In such instances, you may hear that the parents 'did the best they could,' but with the underlying anger and pain making it clear that not only does this person know that that was not the case, but that the effects of it are very significant. They have not resolved the relationship they had with their parent; and that fact at its extreme can cause a person to sabotage his potential in his own life and future.

All children need and deserve love, nurturing, and acceptance from their parents. If one does not get this from them, he will go through life attempting to recreate situations which mimic that original relationship in an attempt to "re-do" that parent/child relationship-- and have it turn out in the more desirable, correct way. At its worst, he (or she) will go through life choosing partners who exhibit various traits similar to the original parent; he will then attempt to mold the partner into the original parent, but to become the 'good parent' which the original one was not. This includes both attempts at forcing the partner to conform to the personality traits of the parent and attempts to gain the nurturing from the partner which he did not receive from the parent-- both of which are not only futile, but place the partner in a "lose/lose" position.

This pathology is not gender-specific; you can find males who choose women based on their negative childhood relationships with their mothers, as well as women who choose 'copies' of their fathers. The common key is that the more destructive a person's childhood relationship was with his or her parent, the more intent will be his or her need to seek out partners whose most negative traits coincide with those of the original parent.

When this fails, the repercussions which follow are nearly always gender-specific. The male will usually take on the role of his original 'bad' parent, whereas a female will usually take the unresolved conflicts out on herself.

Sabotaging one's life is a factor rarely seen for what it is; but it is very common in these types of situations. It is one of those instances in which the problem is rarely put into words, but one's actions speak volumes. The middle-ager who has not achieved adult status will, albeit with little ability on his part to recognize it, continue to live his life on his (or her) parent's terms. Whatever message he was given about himself as a child, he will try to live up to-- in a feeble attempt to gain the parent's love, acceptance, and approval. His behavior will illustrate, for example, 'if I am the no-good failure that you said I am- then will you love me?' It is startling how many people conduct themselves in such a manner, having no clue as to what they are doing or why. Even those whose behavior appears unconventional and rebellious-- the 'nobody can tell me what to do, by george!'-- while displaying phoney bravado, are merely acting out a knee-jerk response to parental objection.

Taking all of these factors into consideration, it should not be difficult to understand how detrimental unresolved childhood conflicts can be to the remainder of one's life-- and therefore to go through the necessary process to resolve them. Whether the parent is living or long-deceased, it is still necessary, for a person with such unresolved issues will continue these life-destroying attempts to gain his parent's 'approval' even if the parent is dead.

Although it is a process, it is generally not necessary for one to spend decades in therapy, or poring over 'self-help' books about 'healing your inner child' or 'how to re-parent yourself,' in order to learn how to let go of the needed relationships which one did not have in one's childhood, and to attain one's own self-identity as an adult. In other words, in order to be a full-fledged adult in one's own eyes and to conduct one's life accordingly, both sacrificing yourself and your life for impossible approval and rebelling to 'show' that you don't need it, have got to 'go.'

The best time to undergo this process is while the parent is still alive. While this may or may not serve to reconstruct a relationship with the parent on healthy, mutually-respectful terms, it is even more difficult if the parent is already deceased. In the interest of living your own life rather than trying in vain to salvage what's left of it after it may be too late, the time to attain your adult status in your own life is now.