Your relationships affect your children
- Memory
- Dec 7, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 8, 2021
The way you do relationships is not only affecting you.
Sometimes we can get wrapped up in romantic relationships and how we feel done by, by a man or a woman. In those moments, we do not look around to see who is being affected and impacted by our behaviour.
When you are reacting to a lover, fighting about a partner, getting depressed about your relationship, stalking a man or woman, recognise that you are harming yourself.
You are exposing yourself to unhealthy habits and situations where you can end up hurt physically, as well as the not so visible mentally.
In stressful situations and relationships, you forget that you are suffering psychologically, and it does nothing for the quality of your life. You live in survival mode just to feel alive in an unsafe situation.
However, in your self-focus, and desiring a relationship, you also forget other people who are harmed in the dynamic.
Your partner might also suffer, although they co-create the dynamic with you. One of you might be the antagonist and the other, the enabler. While both of you can consider making changes, you each need to consider how much you are hurting each other.
Your children or any children involved in this relationship are the most unfortunate victims of the actions of both of you.
It does not matter how much loving we claim to be to our children, if we are struggling psychologically we cannot love authentically. We can also end up taking our frustrations on children or using them as crutches in our struggles.
It is important to recognise when relationships are getting toxic, whether you are single parent with children, or in a partnership. Think about your children.
Your relationship battles take the focus off your children.
Your attempts to lure a lover take your time away from your children.
Your fights scare your children and undo the safe home they need to explore the world.
Your relationship instabilities will destabilise your young children who rely on you for stability and security.
Your jealous for his or her ex might affect how you treat your step children.
The way you treat the person who is a step parent to your children might lead to adverse treatment of your children.
A chronically unhappy parent will trigger unhealthy coping behaviours in their children. Children have to adapt to survive with you.
Children are victims in a traumatic relationship.
They are pawns in an unhealthy relationship.
In regrettable breakups there are placed between warring parties.
They are going to suffer if a parent prioritises romance above all else.
When a parent is pursuing an unavailable partner, trying to reconnect with an ex, and just struggling in unhealthy relationships, children are emotionally and sometimes physically neglected.
Some children also become casualties of our relationship decisions.
Perhaps this is the conversation that we might open up before we try to patch up an unhealthy dynamic, reconnect with that ex, or try to change someone who is leaving us.
If we reflect on the work we are doing now to try and piece together our unhealthy childhood experiences that led us here, we can appreciate that, it might not be a good idea to pass that on to the next generations.
While we cannot undo what we have already done, we can start learning to do things differently, and let it end with us. We can do the following;
To stop putting our desire for a man or woman before our wellbeing, and especially the welfare of our young children. Or to desire relationship to the point of trying to seperate a partner with his or her children.
We need to unlearn prioritising romance at all costs, and start creating relationship goals which accommodate our children.
To avoid assessing men or women based on looks, status, height or money, but to assess how safe they are for us, our children and with our children.
To stay single until we find a partner with whom our children see us happy.
To leave relationships that are making us unhappy. In these relationships, we abandon our children.
To recognise this;
Our children are learning life from us. An unhappy parent equals unsafe children.
They are learning relationships from us.
They learn behaviour from us.
Abandonment is not only physical, it includes neglect and inattention, which is both physical and pyschological.
Let us stop making excuses for our toxic relationships while, for once thinking of young people who have no choice but to be around us. Yes, we can throw tantrums a bit, because it is hard to accept that we might not be healthy parents. That is part of humaning. However, at some point we need to acknowledge what we are doing. That we can change too.
For those of us with young children, it is time we learn to do things differently to avoid being hated or avoided by our children in future. We are not going to make overnight transformations, but starting is key.
We need to minimise bringing damaged individuals into the world.
The work starts with self-honesty. These behaviours catch up with us at some point. Imagine what we are doing right now, scrutinising how our parents raised us. Our children will do the same.
Ask yourself this question;
Would you want you as a mother or father considering how you behave in relationships, at work, towards your children or while looking for a relationship? It does not matter whether you do it behind their back, there is no secret under the sun. You are transmitting that behaviour to your children one way or the other..
For once, for your children, change something.
Heal for your children.
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