I’ve talked in other posts about how childhood issues can wreck relationships, one after another. But there’s another way they show up in successful relationships, as recurring issues.
In a lot of cases these recurring issues surface as something that causes a spat or fight in the relationship. You’ll hear one party say “Why do you always……?” and the battle will be on. Or the crying will start. Or both. Here’s a couple of things to notice about this.
First, if somebody says “you always..” it’s a hot clue to the fact that this is an old issue to the complaining party. By old issue, I mean real old – like childhood. Psychologists call words like “always” global terms, meaning that they go beyond the current situation and even beyond the individual being accused.
Even without “always” if the issue is a repeating one, with the same behavior, same language, same complaint, you can be sure that it’s the same type of repeating childhood issue for one or both of the parties.
In fact, it’s one of the things that attracted the two people to each other! As I’ve said in other posts, we (our subconscious) seek people who will recreate the situations that hurt us as children so that we can resolve them. If you have two people who can understand this situation and work together on it, you can have important healing. If not, you just get repeating conflict.
When my wife and I got married she was really sensitive to anything that made her feel devalued or unappreciated, and I didn’t understand how easy it was to push that button. That led to some major upsets. However, when we figured out what was going on, she began to work on her self esteem and I worked on thinking before I spoke! By working together and understanding what was going on we were able to heal the situation, and we haven’t had that problem for years. Without understanding what was going on – the childhood issue – we probably would have just blamed each other, as many couples do.
So if you have this kind of a repeating issue, now you know what it is. It’s there in your relationship to be healed, and both of you have a part in creating it and a part to play in healing it. It’s not just one person’s problem, even though it often looks that way, it’s both of your’s.
So get started! Talk it over, make a plan, get to work.
