Love in the Shadow: How Being Your Parent's Confidante Can Impact Your Romantic Life
How we show up in our romantic relationship can have a lot to do with our roles in childhood. One of those roles that some children find themselves in is providing counseling or emotional support to their adult parent.
In the intricate tapestry of human relationships, few threads are as delicate and influential as the connection between a parent and child. One role that can emerge within this dynamic is that of a confidante – a child who becomes privy to their parent's innermost thoughts, struggles, and emotions. In the world of mental health, we often refer to this as the parentified child who has responsibilities placed on them that are inappropriate, considering their age and abilities. This unique role, while often rooted in good intentions, can cast a long shadow on the canvas of the adult child's friendships, but most often people seek out help when they are struggling in their romantic relationships. Let's delve into the complexities of this dynamic, by exploring the multifaceted impact it can have on shaping adult romantic connections.
The Unseen Ties That Bind
At its core, the relationship between a parent and child lays the foundation for all subsequent interactions. The child learns from their parents' behaviors and communication styles, shaping their own understanding of intimacy, vulnerability, and trust. When a child takes on the role of a confidante to their parent, this learning process can take a distinct turn. The child learns not only about their parent's emotions, but also about their parent's need for emotional support. This can be too much for a child to hold as they have not had their own experiences or reached the developmental milestones that allows one to be able to problem solve. They also find themselves in over their head as the child absorbs their parent's insecurities and problems leaving them feeling anxious, depressed, or confused as they don't quite have the skills yet to relieve themselves of the emotional burden without feeling as though they are negatively impacting their parent.
Inequity of Emotional Labor
These children can appear to be emotionally developed beyond their years as they have taken on this role of confidante. While empathy and compassion are commendable traits, this emotional load can become a challenge to bear. As you can imagine, this can carry over into adulthood where many of these children grow up to be the nurturer in their romantic relationship, often over attending to their partner's emotions while neglecting their own. For those who were their parent's confidante, the comfort of the role they played might subconsciously lead them to seek partners who mirror their parent's emotional needs. They often feel that their partner does not understand their needs and are not able to provide an equal amount of emotional labor to the relationship. This can lead to a sense of longing to be nurtured from their caretaker and from their romantic partners. Or it might manifest as difficulty in opening up or an inability to distinguish between offering support and being overwhelmed by their partner's emotions.
The Struggle for Authenticity
Authenticity is a cornerstone of any meaningful relationship. However, for those who were their parent's confidante, authenticity can become a complex terrain to navigate. They might find themselves torn between their learned role of providing emotional support and their desire to be their true selves in their romantic relationships. They may even struggle with being able to differentiate between what is self and what are other people's request of them. This internal struggle can hinder the development of genuine connections and hinder the ability to communicate openly with a partner.
Parent vs. Partner Needs
As I stated earlier, the interplay between a parent's past reliance on their child as a confidante and their child's adult romantic relationship can be the reason that many individuals, couples, or family's seek therapy. If the parent continues see their child as their emotional support into adulthood, it can lead to challenges in accepting their child's choice of a romantic partner. As the child develops new relationships they may feel a pull from their parent to constantly make space for them. This can result in the person feeling obligated to make a choice between their parent and their partner. In certain situations, the adult child may choose to move away from their parent, as they feel the only way they can move forward with their life is to create clear physical space. In other instances, the adult couple struggles to create healthy boundaries with the parent and this results in significant distress in their relationship.
Adult Child and Parent Relationship
Balancing the needs of your partner and parent can become challenging. We commonly hear about mother-daughter relationships that can result in the daughter being the confidante, but this can happen any parent child relationship.
Breaking Free: Embracing Change and Growth
Recognizing the impact of being a parent's confidante is the first step toward creating healthier romantic relationships. It involves acknowledging the patterns and behaviors that were ingrained in childhood and consciously working to reshape them. Seeking therapy or counseling can provide valuable tools to understand how past dynamics influence present interactions. Learning to set clear boundaries, communicate effectively, and embracing vulnerability can pave the way to have a more balanced and fulfilling romantic relationship while also maintaining a relationship with your parent. This may require having a family therapy session that allows for all parties involved to begin to look at new ways that they can provide emotional support to each other that feels more balanced and nurturing. A core understanding is to begin to help everyone cultivate a sense of agency and that we each have power to influence our lives. Reclaiming agency over our relationships can improve one's ability to establish new boundaries and identify what their own needs are within the relationship.
In conclusion, the shadow cast by the role of being a parent's confidante during childhood can reverberate through one's adult romantic relationships, but reclaiming your sense of agency in relationships can help to heal the wounds from being in a role of confidante. It requires deliberate effort to overcome this but the impact of making this shift can begin to heal the individual, couple, and family. The journey towards healthier connections begins with self-awareness and a commitment to break free from patterns that no longer serve us. To learn more about therapy options at Bloom and Build Integrative Psychiatry please visit the Family Therapy page.
About the author
Dr. Alecia Greenlee, a dedicated psychiatrist at Bloom and Build Integrative Psychiatry, specializes in fostering healthier relationships within BIPOC families. With a focus on repairing connections between adult children, their parents, and siblings, Dr. Greenlee navigates the delicate threads of family dynamics. Encouraging self-awareness and a commitment to breaking free from ingrained patterns, she advocates seeking therapy to reshape behaviors and foster more balanced and fulfilling relationships. For more information on therapy options at Bloom and Build Integrative Psychiatry, please visit the Family Therapy page.
