Don't Treat Your Lover Like a Child or a Parent

Parent-child relations can be a thinly disguised power move when they show up in your love relationship. They can also be a disappointing way of trying to make up for what was lost earlier in life now in the adult context of a love relationship. Either way, they often bring negative consequences to a love-life. Here's how....power moves are fundamentally a problem for love because simply put...love thrives on equality between partners. For example, when you feel equal to your partner you can speak freely. Speaking freely makes a person feel safe and open and receptive in a love relationship. Love always grows and repairs well under these conditions. When lovers start incorporating parent-child ways of communicating and relating to each other, one person plays the parent and the other plays the child. Obvious forms of interpersonal equality are out as parent-child modes of communicating come in. Beyond the obvious reality that there are two equal adults involved, parent-child modes of communicating are not very friendly to adult loving. They often involve one person telling another what to do with criticisms and control. The partner who plays the child gets to be passive-aggressive of course (that means resent it and rebel undercover) and the partner who plays the parent suffers his/her own brand of resentment because they never get to relax and just be loved for who they are. Beyond the lousy communication and relationship parent-child interactions create in adult love relationships, there is often the underlying hope that parent-child disappointments from previous times in life can be undone in an adult love relationship. Sorry to say this never works. In the long run its a lot easier to grieve the loss of parent-child love in childhood and work on getting and giving reasonable and healthy forms of love in adulthood.