How Understanding Your Family of Origin History Can Help Your Relationship With Your Partner Now
Growing up in the U.S. in the 90’s, I watched shows like Full House on TV. It was one of those thirty-minute sitcoms where no matter what happens, the problem is resolved in that half-hour window and everyone comes together for a big hug at the end. Another thing that struck me was how often the parents and adults in the show expressed their love to their children verbally. There were many utterances of “I love you” sprinkled in the day-to-day interactions on the show. As a young girl of immigrant Asian parents, my parents expressed their love to me differently. Unlike the show, my parents rarely expressed their love to me through direct verbal declarations. They expressed it more through acts of service, such as making my favorite foods for me, or making sure I had a jacket when the weather got chilly. They also expressed love through sacrifice; none bigger than leaving the comforts of their home country to provide their children new opportunities. I began to wonder why what I saw on television wasn’t matching my experience at home. I wondered if there was something I was missing; I distinctly remember writing my mother a letter asking her if she loved me. Back then I couldn’t ask her directly, so I put it in writing.
What about you? Or your partner? How was love expressed in your families growing up? Something I do when I work with clients is to help them explore how emotions were expressed as they journeyed through childhood and adolescence. I help couples understand how their family of origin histories may impact their relationship now. For example, take a moment and think back: what are some of the messages you got from your parents about difficult emotions like anxiety, sadness, or grief? Were you taught that crying wasn't tolerated and so you had to learn to put on a happy face in spite of how things might have felt on the inside? What about hurt or anger? Maybe you learned that expressing anger wasn't "proper," and so you conditioned yourself to stuff it away when you felt it bubbling up inside. And how about love? How was love expressed in your family?
It can be quite the revelation when we start unpacking our stories. We'll find that if we were taught that love = working long hours to provide for the family, then we as adults might also feel that we're showing our love to our spouse and children by spending those ten hours a day at the office. Or if we were often told how much we were loved, we now might continue that practice, ensuring we end every night with an, "I love you."
Along the same lines of understanding how we were taught to express ourselves, it can be a very helpful thing to get a better understanding of how we cope, too. Think back to when you were younger. Was it safe to express your emotions verbally? When you shared your anxieties or fears with your attachment figures, how did they respond to you? If you didn’t feel their support, how else did you cope?
How about nowadays with your partner? What happens when you feel upset because of something your partner did? Are you able to turn towards them for support? Do you try to stuff down your feelings, maybe telling yourself your feelings are “too much,” but end up acting more irritable with your partner? Do you withdraw, turning inward to “wait things out” in hope you would feel better later? Or maybe you find something else to do and distract yourself from the tension between you and your partner. Understanding both the internal patterns of how you cope with emotions and the patterns of how you and your partner interact can be important in helping the two of you work towards a better relationship.
A withdrawer, when scared deep down, might cope by finding a place to be by themselves so they can lick their wounds. But this withdrawing will lead a pursuer to feel alone, or even abandoned, as if their partner, in the height of a conflict or difficult moment, chose to just vanish and run away. And when they feel alone, they might amp up to share their distress, to try to reach for their partner. Their expression of distress feels tense to their withdrawing partner, and the withdrawing partner may distance even more. See how this can become a perpetuating negative cycle?
Part of what I do is help couples explore their patterns so they gain a better understanding of how their emotions and coping mechanisms manifest. This better understanding of yourself and your partner can not only deepen your relationship in that you can see and hear each other better, it can also help as you two navigate challenging moments. Better understanding of why your loved one goes silent when they're scared or angry, for example, may help you see that they're not giving you the silent treatment. But instead, perhaps they are feeling like a deer in the headlights or coping with something difficult and so they've gone inwards, into their own thoughts. And with some support, you and your partner can learn better ways to reach for one another during those times when you get scared, anxious, sad, or hurt.
Our lives and our relationships are very different from television sitcoms. As nice as it may be to resolve all of our conflicts in half an hour, it's often not so easy or quick. Gaining a better understanding of what you've learned as a child and brought into your relationship as an adult while learning the same about your partner can give you powerful tools for reconciling, managing arguments, and yes, expressing "I love you."
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Writer Bio: Dr. Annie Hsueh, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist (PSY25708) who specializes in couples counseling in the Los Angeles area. She helps couples gain insight into relationship patterns in their lives and ways to work towards more fulfilling relationships and marriages. She is based in the Los Angeles area and see clients throughout the state of California via secure online therapy platforms. To learn more about how therapy can help, you can reach out to her for a complimentary consultation.
Image Disclaimer: Stock photos used. Posed by models.