{"id":401,"date":"2013-04-20T00:53:02","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T22:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/jojardine.co.za\/?p=401"},"modified":"2015-10-29T01:00:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T23:00:35","slug":"your-family-history-and-how-it-influences-your-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/your-family-history-and-how-it-influences-your-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we end up &#8216;marrying&#8217; our parents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Its uncanny how, to coin\u00a0an old clich\u00e9, so many of us end up marrying our fathers\u00a0or mothers.<\/p>\n<p>When I first begin counselling and holding workshops, I used to think the importance of family influence was over-rated.\u00a0 Over the years however,\u00a0\u00a0the link became impossible to ignore, with the increasing regularity of relationship patterns mirroring parental issues.<\/p>\n<p>For example, if you\u2019ve attracted partners who were emotionally unavailable, unstable, married, unable or unwilling to commit, ask yourself if your parents were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Physically absent during your childhood? Possibly either through death, or due to the nature of their work, for example,\u00a0a pilot, salesman, politician or businessman or woman, who was rarely at home.<\/li>\n<li>A workaholic? Or, perhaps due to financial constraints, it became necessary hold down\u00a0two jobs to make ends meet?<\/li>\n<li>Physically present, yet emotionally absent?<\/li>\n<li>A disciplinarian?<\/li>\n<li>Physically, emotionally\u00a0or mentally abusive?<\/li>\n<li>Over-protective?<\/li>\n<li>Unfaithful?<\/li>\n<li>An alcoholic?<\/li>\n<li>Depressed?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The rule of thumb seems to indicate that whatever hurt or disappointment you experienced in relation to one (or both) parents, 1) it\u00a0will have an effect on your self esteem, and 2) you can be pretty damn sure you\u2019re going to attract a similar dynamic in your \u00a0partner and relationships, and 3)\u00a0have to deal with it,\u00a0 one way or another.\u00a0\u00a0If your father was very strict, you may well have a pattern of attracting men either with a temper, or anger issues. Or\u00a0very mild,\u00a0laid-back\u00a0types. If your mother was a nurturer who\u00a0stayed at home and took care of the\u00a0 children, you may choose to be a career woman and marry a man who is content to be a house-husband. If your parents pushed you to achieve, you might find successful men appealing, or possibly\u00a0marry a workaholic.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, the\u00a0interaction between\u00a0your parents\u00a0&#8211; how they\u00a0treated each other &#8211;\u00a0is also an important\u00a0factor. Perhaps your father took the lead and your mother\u00a0submitted to him, in which case\u00a0you may find you tend to attract\u00a0controlling men. Which you may enjoy or struggle against, depending on\u00a0your experience of\u00a0the way your parents handled it. Conversely, you might find yourself drawn to passive men, with you taking on the role of provider.<\/p>\n<p>The roles we take on in our childhood also include our relationships with our siblings. For example, most of us can relate to being either labelled as, or in the shadow of, someone who smarter, prettier, or more sporty and outgoing. And so we carry this with us into our relationships, perhaps having a competitive streak with our lovers or\u00a0possibly being rejected &#8211;\u00a0or chosen &#8211;\u00a0in favour of those very same sibling issues.<\/p>\n<p>It is important to realise that we attract a particular partner and relationship, relative to the level of our self esteem at the time. \u00a0And just as our family dynamics have a good or bad influence on our self esteem,\u00a0\u00a0it is up to us\u00a0to choose to use, or lose, the power it has over us and the impact on our relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Its uncanny how, to coin\u00a0an old clich\u00e9, so many of us end up marrying our fathers\u00a0or mothers. When I first begin counselling and holding workshops, I used to think the importance of family influence was over-rated.\u00a0 Over the years however,\u00a0\u00a0the link became impossible to ignore, with the increasing regularity of relationship patterns mirroring parental issues. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arachne.co.za\/profileclub.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}