Marriage is perhaps our most complicated relationship. Marriage includes shadows and images of all previous primary relationships. We take the relationship with our parents into our marriage. If our parents are divorced we also take their divorce into our marriage. We bring our siblings into our marriage. Sometimes our grandparents come with us into our most significant relationship.
Our parents comfort or discomfort with affection affects us in marriage. Parents comfortable with affection suggest that our marriage should be at least as comfortable. What, then, if my spouse is less comfortable with affection than I?
We learn conflict resolution from our parents and our siblings. If, as siblings, we were never allowed to come to resolution in conflict by ourselves how can we do so as adults? If our parents only argued and then argued some more without resolution they have modeled for us that nothing ever gets better. If they never argued or discussed differences of opinion within our hearing then we similarly didn’t learn that couples can disagree and then come to resolution through loving understanding.
We learn how parents should be treated from the way our parents treat(ed) their parents. What happens when marriage partners have wildly different understandings of how we include our parents in our marriage?
Kenneth Rhea has 36 years of experience in helping couples resolve the issues of their most important adult relationship.
