Richard Hogan: New partners, old habits, simmering tensions... families are complicated
Richard Hogan: "Families are complicated. Parents can struggle watching as children who once adored them and looked up to them forge their own way in the world. Parents can feel rejected as their child finds their own identity free from their influence. Adolescence can be fraught with conflict as children push back against their parents' authority and identity."
Families are the most complicated system we will ever have to navigate.
Our vagal nerve signal can be quite depleted after making a monumental effort to reconnect with your family of origin. They say and do things that get under your skin like no one else. It’s almost like they have a shortcut to your trip-switch.
No matter how much you talk yourself up and tell yourself ‘don’t fall back into that role you had as a child’, the minute you step through that door you are walking into the skin of your childhood self. You can feel hopeless as you fall back into old habits you thought were long gone, saying and doing things you really know you shouldn’t.
Of course, siblings' partners add a whole new dynamic to these tricky relationships.
Birth order also matters...
The eldest is often burdened with too much responsibility, while the youngest can be infantilised by parents. And don’t forget the middle child, sandwiched in-between two big personalities, often having to put the needs of those other siblings before their own. These roles can breed lifelong resentments and tension. An only child can struggle to find their own identity, having no other sibling to dilute their parents' attention.
Parents can struggle too, watching as children who once adored them and looked up to them forge their own way in the world. Parents can feel rejected as their child finds their own identity free from their influence. Adolescence can be fraught with conflict as children push back against their parents' authority and identity.
As I said, families are complicated.
But no matter how complicated and frustrating our family of origin is, most of us don’t have a family name that is a global brand and we certainly don’t write a press release to tell the world about how odd, annoying, and superficial our parents are.
That kind of thing is a whole new level of family dynamics, one not easily forgotten. Particularly when your family is splashed all over the front pages.
The Beckham saga, in some regards, gave us all a little break from the main plot of Trump's desire to annex Greenland. By god, we needed some light relief.
But there is something so sad and familiar to all of us in this story — a mother and daughter-in-law struggling to connect, a son trying to find his own way free from his family's identity, other siblings caught up in the drama.
Most families experience a version of this conflict. There are many reasons why families fall apart, but one of the most destructive things any mother can do when a child brings a new partner home is to create some sort of competition for that child’s attention and love.
We all have to accept that our children will have a relationship with someone that is deeper and more intimate than our relationship with them. Yes, we gave them life, but no, we don’t own them. That can be hard to accept.
Parents can forget that they did it themselves when they met their partner and had children and moved off into their new world together. They left their parents behind.
Things get problematic when we think we have ownership of our adult children. We can start to blame our child’s partner for their new independence.
‘Since he met that cold bitch, he has never been the same' — words I often hear in my clinic. Parents really struggling to identify with their child now that he/she has found a partner they love.
We might not like our child’s partner but we should never express that to them. Instead we should ask questions like 'what is it you like about her?' or 'does he/she make you feel good about yourself?', 'are they supportive of you?'.
The minute you make a judgment about their partner, you have pushed yourself away from your child. You essentially create that Romeo and Juliet vibe where they feel no one understands them. They certainly know you are not a safe place to come for advice, and if their partner is coercive they will not come to you for help.
So, avoid the biggest mistake most parents make and ask neutral questions.
Of course, we may not like our child’s partner, and they very well might not like us. But learning how to manage that dislike so that you can be in your child’s life will be an important skill to develop.
When parents make judgments about partners and they express them to their child, that child, in a fight with their partner may often express what their parents think of them... ‘my parents are right, you are a selfish person’. That can be the roots of lifelong family conflict and alienation of grandchildren.
If you do get the sense that your parents don’t like your partner, calmly explaining to them why you love her/him and how you want them in your life, but you need them to respect him/her would be an important conversation to have.
When we let things simmer away, they eventually boil over, maybe not in the form of a press release but there certainly can be a destructive explosion that ruins a family dynamic for life.
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