How Childhood Upbringing Influences Your Selection of a Life Partner

If you keep falling into heartbreak over and over again,

Or if you keep holding on to someone who treats you badly,

That could be a sign that you have a twisted definition of love.

How we grow up can twist a wrong definition of love into our mindsets.

You get loved the wrong way and still call it love, or you love others the wrong way and fail to understand why they walk away.

Last time I wrote a post about Zandie, a beautiful lady wondering how to move on from an ex who keeps coming back.

Today we are using Zandie’s question to understand how our childhood upbringing influences the types of people we love.

If you have already read Zandie’s full question, simply skip it and get straight into today’s wisdom; but if this is your first time hearing of Zandie, here is the question again for context:

ZANDIE’S QUESTION

ZANDIE: I already feel like crying. It’s like I have a wound that won’t heal. 

I first loved this guy called James four years ago.

In the first year we broke up but I just couldn’t move on – I remained stuck on him.

There was no sex, I lost nothing else except him. But still I couldn’t move on.

Two years later I tried another relationship.

This was a good guy and he loved me, and even to this day I know he still does.

But we broke up. I couldn’t love him no matter how hard I tried...

Three years after the break up with James, he (James) returned into my life.

He behaved all sorry and I still loved him. I took him into my heart, not knowing he was going to break it again.

A year later he came into my life, and the same thing happened. 

I know I’m stupid to keep taking him back like this. I try to be over him but I fail.

And every time I think I am over him, he just finds his way back into my life again. 

I give him another chance...he makes me believe he has changed yet he would be lying.

He never treats me right even from the very first days that we get together.

He just goes silent on me. He distances himself ...the more I try to reach out to him the more he shuts me out.

It’s really bad ... even the way I’m always there for him, ESPECIALLY FINANCIALLY ... I don’t go to work but I always make a plan for him.

It hurts that I let the good guys go hoping he will change one day.

Why do I keep going back to him? Why?

Because I know if he comes back right now... I will still give him another chance and he will hurt me again. 

Why does he keep coming back to me? Is it to hurt me?

I already answered why this guy keeps coming back in the post: How to Move on When Your Ex Keeps Coming Back

Today I want to answer why Zandie can see such a clear lack of love and still fail to let go. Just like many people see red flags, even suffer them, but still hold on in the name of love.

Usually, the way we grow up influences our choice of life partners later in adulthood.

For that reason, I later contacted Zandie and asked her more about her past…

MOFFAT: How was the marriage relationship between your mum and dad?

ZANDIE: Ouch it was terrible! I honestly never saw love in the marriage. My mom could have left, but she only stayed for us her kids.

Zandie doesn’t know growing up in an abusive and loveless mum/dad relationship has made her tolerate a loveless relationship in her life too.

How Childhood Upbringing Influences Your Selection of a Life Partner

i) You can’t imagine relationships being better than what you grew up seeing.

Your childhood experiences make up your world.

Though there are many good relationships in this world, in your world good relationships don’t exist because you never saw any while growing up.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA | How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye

You can’t let go of this bad relationship because your mind thinks it is normal, and it would be over-ambition if not pride, to think you deserve something better than what you grew up in.

Leaving a person who is as bad as your parent feels as bad as leaving your parent. So your brain keeps asking, “If this man was your father would you have left him?

Wouldn’t you give him another chance? Come on, this is your father that we are talking about.”

Well, the truth is your boyfriend is not your father, and no other man; not even your boyfriend or husband, has a right to be your father in your life.

Even if you were born in a dysfunctional family, dysfunction is still abnormal, it still hurts and it can still be avoided. 

Your mum made a wrong choice, but you can still make the right one.

Above all, remember that the world is bigger than where your eyes end to see. As I write in my inspirational self-coaching book Cinderella Taught Me Lessons:

If you want a successful marriage, stop focusing on your mum and dad’s broken marriage. Look for couples that have made it, and be close to them.

You will see that surely love and happiness can be real in marriage.

ii) You believe you can keep a partner through their dependence on you

Your mum stayed with your dad because she was financially dependent.

So at the back of your mind, you have a hidden subconscious belief that helping him with money should somehow motivate him to stay in your life…

Unfortunately, there is nothing that you can give anyone to make them love you – nothing at all.

From your attempts, you can see that money doesn’t make a person love you.

And from your mother, you can learn that she gave her body, her loyalty, and children, but that still didn’t make your father love her.

Walk away from a love in which all you do is give. Love doesn’t cost a thing!

The next point is more important…

iii) Your past made you believe you can stay with your partner even in the absence of love

Your mum stayed in a loveless marriage. Mum taught you to stay even when you are in pain. This was the worst lesson of your life.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA | How I Kissed Heatbreak Goodbye

This is why specialists now say it is better, for the children, if their parents separate rather than grow up seeing them fight and abuse each other.

Those experiences twist children’s definition of love, making them susceptible to staying in the very same kind of destructive relationships when they are grown up.

This is why children who grow up in abusive homes are more likely to stay in abusive relationships too. It is because their past normalized the abnormal.

The purpose of love and marriage is happiness.  Everyone has their happiness prepared for them.

However, because of the past – many are fooled into settling for a lifetime of sorrow, stress, and pain.

You don’t need to change the past, all you have to do is wise up and run for your life.

iv) You are likely to fall in love with a person who is similar to your parent of the opposite sex

Most times men are attracted to women who behave like their mothers, whether they were good or bad.

And most times women are attracted to men who behave like their fathers, whether good or bad.

- MOFFAT MACHINGURA | How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye

Psychology discovers that being strongly attracted to someone doesn’t mean you are meant to be together. It may simply mean that person is in some way similar to someone you know very well – usually a parent or guardian.

The human mind is attracted to familiarity.

This is the reason why girls who grow up abused by their fathers have higher chances of falling in love and getting married to men who will be just as abusive as their fathers.

When they thought they were looking for love, their minds were looking for familiarity.

The real reason good people are hard to find is that we are searching for familiar people and not good people.

We love what is familiar to the description we carry within us.

We turn down good people, take them for granted, or even mock them – it is because our brain is uncomfortable with people who are different from our father or mother.

We are scared of loving good people because our minds subconsciously think "The devil you know is better than the angel you don't know."

If you have never known good people before, then good becomes “too good to be true.”

These thoughts happen faster than our ability to notice them, yet they are the thoughts driving the major decisions of our lifetime.

How to Break Free from This Cycle of Dysfunctional Relationships

So Zandie, you have to sit down and consider the definition of a good man in your life. So far you have met two bad men in your life i.e. your dad and your ex-boyfriend.

List down all the bad you saw in them on a fresh new page of your journal or notebook.

Now on top write the heading:

These are the Signs of a Bad Guy

Below it, write all the negative things you disliked in your Dad and your Ex-boyfriend. e.g.

• Doesn’t care about my feelings
• Verbally abusive
• Harsh

Then on the next page write the heading

These are Signs of a Good guy

Then write the opposite of each point that you wrote in the previous page e.g.

• Considerate
• Cares about how I feel
• Empathetic
• Careful with words
• Speaks words that heal.

NOTE: I didn’t write negative statements like "he doesn't hurt me" I directly said "he heals." Be positive and direct.

Every day take time to pray and meditate on the qualities of a good guy that you listed.

Tell yourself this man will be worth keeping and any other kind of man will be worth losing.

When you know what you want, then finding it becomes easier.

In fact, you will find you have been bypassing it all this time – simply because you didn’t know the signs by which to recognize it.

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