The Mother Wound and the Father Wound: Their Impact on Your Love Life
157. The Mother Wound and the Father Wound: Their Impact on Your Love Life
You’ve had a difficult relationship with your father or your mother, and you’re wondering exactly what impact that has on your romantic relationships?
You’ve heard about the Mother Wound or the Father Wound, and you’d like to know more.
In episode 156 I talk about the influence of your parents’ relationship on your love life, and in episode 89 about attachment styles.
In this episode I’m going to describe the typical mechanisms I’ve been able to observe in more than 600 people I’ve accompanied with their parents, and the influence this has on their romantic relationships.
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The Parent-Child Dynamic
The parent-child dynamic doesn’t only shape how you believe a relationship should work — it also shapes the construction of your identity.
Why?
Because a child tends not to question their parents’ behavior, and instead attributes the fault to the dynamic that formed between them and their parent.
Here are the 8 most common dynamics I’ve been able to observe — again, these are your perceptions as a child, not necessarily your parents’ intentions:
The comparing/critical parent
The impact in your love life of a comparing parent:
- You find there’s always someone better than you, and feel threatened quickly
- You feel under pressure to be perfect
- You don’t find enough in yourself to be loved
- You compensate through achievement and over-adapt
- You have the feeling you can’t count on your partners
- You feel like the last priority
- You don’t take up space in relationships and ask for little
- You have difficulty expressing your needs and boundaries
- You feel like you’re walking on eggshells
- You’re hyper-vigilant about your partner’s actions
- You quickly enter into power struggles
- You feel either blocked in conflict, or you explode
The parentified child
The impact in your love life when you were the parent of your own parent:- You feel 100% responsible for the success of the relationship
- You mother your partners
- You can’t rely on your partner
- You have difficulty receiving
- You project yourself quickly onto others
- You don’t see the red flags
- You can’t properly evaluate your partner
- You automatically think it’s your fault
The helicopter/controlling parent
The impact in your love life when you had a controlling parent:- You no longer trust your own judgment
- Others’ opinions matter more to you than your own
- You don’t notice when your boundaries are crossed
- You see control as proof of love
- You have difficulty setting your own boundaries
- You feel quickly suffocated by your partner
- You have trouble respecting your partners’ boundaries
- You have difficulty managing uncomfortable emotions, especially frustration
- You have difficulty knowing whether you please the other person
- You disconnect from your emotions
- You avoid intimacy in relationships
- You settle for crumbs
The “Good” Parent and the “Bad” Parent
A child will naturally tend to classify one parent as “good” and the other as “bad”:
- If one parent was stricter and set more boundaries
- If one parent behaved meanly toward the child (physical or verbal violence, power games, manipulation)
- If one parent was more absent than the other because of work, hobbies, or social life
- If a parent was emotionally unavailable despite being physically present
- If the child had the impression that one parent was mean to the other. They somewhat took the side of one of the two parents.
By adulthood, it becomes obvious that you need to work on your relationship with the “bad” parent.
What’s harder to realize is that you often need to do the same work with the “good” parent, and to recognize that they may not have been as good as you thought, that this parent also helped create the situation, and that ultimately things weren’t black and white, but rather grey on both sides.
What If Your Mother Was the Problem?
This is the title of a book that illustrates well how deeply these dynamics can be buried, only becoming conscious when we run into problems in our romantic relationships.
Here are the most common mother-child dynamics I’ve observed, and their impact on the construction of your identity or your way of relating:
The narcissistic mother
This is a mother who gives her attention to the child who reflects well on her, and rejects the child who doesn’t — either because that child lacks achievement or because they push back against her expectations. She may create a form of competition among siblings, dividing the “good child” from the “black sheep.” This mother often abuses the authority she holds over her child, using guilt or belittling to steer them in the direction she wants. This can be very confusing for a child who receives praise outside the home and is constantly criticized at home (the feeling of never doing enough). The narcissistic mother prioritizes her own needs over her child’s and has a strong need for control in order to protect her reputation. In adulthood, this can lead you to adopt narcissistic patterns yourself, or to fall easily into dependent or abusive relationships. For a daughter who has suffered greatly under this model, this can even lead to rejecting her own feminine energy, and so rejecting herself. For a son, this can create the feeling of repeatedly meeting women who are critical and belittling, or who place great importance on how the relationship looks from the outside.
The fragile mother
If as a child you perceived your mother as fragile — whether because she had a physical or mental illness, was depressed, or simply struggled to assert her own needs and boundaries — you may have taken on the role of the Rescuer, becoming the parent of your own parent. In adulthood, this can lead you to keep playing that rescuer role, or, on the contrary, to swing toward extreme independence, because for you a relationship implies too much responsibility. For a daughter who had a fragile mother, this can make it hard to connect with her own vulnerability, preventing intimacy from forming in a relationship for fear of being as fragile as her mother. For a son with a fragile mother, this can create the feeling of meeting partners who can’t manage their own lives.
The overprotective mother
If you felt that your mother overprotected you — whether out of her own fears or because she wanted to spare you from suffering — in adulthood this can lead you to limit yourself, avoid taking risks, doubt your own abilities, and believe others know what’s best for you. For a daughter, this can lead you to adopt a maternal role in adulthood, or your partners may accuse you of trying to control them too much, while you see it more as a sign of love and care. You may also take on your mother’s fears about men as your own (“all men are…”). For a son, this can lead you to take on the “man-child” role, or, conversely, to avoid commitment as soon as you feel you have to answer to someone.
The rival, jealous mother
As a daughter, you may have had the impression that your mother was jealous of your looks, your love life, or your achievements in general. As an adult, this can create a form of fear toward other women (“I need to be careful”), or toward your own success and happiness in general (“my happiness has a negative impact on others”). If you felt in competition with, or inferior to, your mother, this can even shape your idea of what a woman needs to be or do in order to attract someone — so if you felt your mother was prettier than you, this can leave you with the sense that you need a certain look to be liked. For a son, this could show up as no girlfriend ever being good enough, or your mother reproaching you for abandoning her as soon as you had a girlfriend. In adulthood, this can create a certain loyalty toward your mother, in the sense that you never really make room for a woman in your life — she will always remain second priority.
The mother who makes you her partner
If your mother didn’t feel fulfilled in her relationship, she may have had you take on the role of her partner — sharing her troubles with you, asking your opinion, and even talking to you about her relational difficulties with your father, in a way that is inappropriate for your age. You end up in a kind of triangle between your mother and your father, serving as the crutch that keeps that relationship functioning. In adulthood, you repeat this romantic triangle by piling up stories where the other person is already in a relationship, is coming out of a breakup but hasn’t finished grieving it, or has you take on responsibilities that aren’t yours, such as caring for their children or managing their divorce…
The Father Wound
I could certainly take all the dynamics I’ve identified with mothers and apply them to fathers as well, but I’ve observed them less often, empirically, in the people I’ve accompanied. I think the influence of gendered roles in child-rearing still plays a part here.
I’ve also come across exceptions where the wounds are, in a sense, reversed — so feel free to make the connection with whatever resonates with your own case.
Here are the father-child dynamics I’ve observed most often:
The checked-out fatherThis is the dad who has no say in raising the children, sets no boundaries, and leaves the mother to hold that role. He’s the “cool dad” because there are no rules; he doesn’t really play his role as a parent, more the role of a buddy you have fun with. In adulthood, this can make it hard for you to take your share of responsibility in a relationship, or draw you toward people who don’t take their share of responsibility in building the relationship. For a daughter, this can create the feeling, in adulthood, of having partners where you have to handle everything, do everything, and that you’re alone in the couple, unable to rely on the masculine. For a son, this can make you reject your father’s model, and your own masculine energy, because you don’t want to be like him.
The absent fatherThis is the father who works a great deal, or is physically present but absorbed in his phone, a hobby, or DIY projects, and doesn’t really have time for his children. In adulthood, this can lead you to meet people who are not very available for a relationship, whether in terms of time or emotionally. You may also tend to idealize the other person quickly. For a daughter, this can create the feeling that you shouldn’t ask for too much in a relationship, or that you don’t even expect more from one. For a son, this can create the impression that you need to succeed, to bring home the results, in order to be loved as a partner.
The authoritarian fatherThis is the father who could be physically or psychologically violent, who criticized a lot, around whom you may have felt you were never enough, and whom you feared when he got angry. In adulthood, this can make it hard to access your own healthy anger and your own authority — both essential and healthy for communicating your needs and boundaries. You may also easily fall into relationships marked by power struggles and conflict. For a daughter, you may repeat a pattern of submission, in the sense that your partner dominates you and you see this as proof of love. For a son, you may reject your father’s model outright and still repeat it, or, conversely, end up in relationships with authoritarian partners.
The demanding fatherThis isn’t necessarily the father who gets angry if you don’t succeed, but rather the father who values performance — what his children achieve in life — over developing an intimate relationship with them. In adulthood, this can lead you to feel that you must be perfect to be loved, that you must succeed to be worthy of love, that what you do for the relationship matters more than who you are within it. You may feel you attract partners who are demanding and don’t allow you the right to make mistakes. You may also be quite exacting with your own partners, because you hold yourself to a high standard of perfectionism. For a daughter, this can influence your choice of partner — choosing someone for their status rather than for what you actually want to experience in a relationship. For a son, this can shape what you believe you must have in order to please your partner: the job, the car, the apartment, the money, the status, the clothes…
Moving Beyond Your Parental Dynamic
From what I’ve seen with my clients, these dynamics are often left unconscious because they’re too difficult to admit, or because the “bad parent” has been identified while the work with the “good parent” remains entirely unconscious.
In that case, becoming aware of these dynamics is an important first step to identify whether, and when, you replay this dynamic in a relationship. The second step consists of deprogramming this dynamic that the body has learned — because these automatic patterns are recorded in the nervous system, not just in your thoughts — and then choosing a more suitable dynamic in your relationships. This is the work you do in the Opening up to Love program.
If you’d like to learn more about how your past shapes your relationships, and why this healing work needs to go through the body, I invite you to watch my free webinar, “How to Free Yourself From the Patterns That Keep You From Being Happy in Love?”
For you
FREE Webinar "HOW TO FREE OURSELVES FROM THE PATTERNS THAT PREVENT US FROM BEING HAPPY IN LOVE?"
Subscribe now to my newsletter and receive the replay of the webinar how a wound from the past is created ?
* Mandatory fields
If you register for this webinar, you will be subscribed to my newsletter and you will be able to receive offers from me. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please read my
privacy policy (german only), to see how I process the data.
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Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Éditions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir à l’amour”, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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