Parents Influence Who Their Children Marry

Believe it or not, parents influence who their children marry. Parents help shape their thinking about potential mates. When you raise a child, you help shape their thoughts about relationships and marriage. 

Your Marriage Is Teaching Your Children

That is why triangling creates such damage. It instills in children flawed self-perceptions and a skewed sense of who they are attracted to. As a parent, you are not only an example but also help shape their thinking about a future spouse. 

For your boys, you may be teaching them that their spouse needs to be a more controlling woman, just like mom, who is in charge. That does not mean that he likes the way his mom is, but it represents a standard of “normal” and his family system.

Attraction Then Complaining

Jump back to the roots-and-wings idea. Consider Louie and me. My development was more separate (wings), and Louie was more relational (roots). I was less social than Louie was. Somehow, I was attracted to that social component. Many other things attracted me to Louie, but that social element and her finding fun in almost anything played a part. Louie’s attraction to my being separate, stable, and independent is true as well.

Our development led us to seek someone who would “fill a hole in our life.” While that sounds good, it backfires.

We continued our relationship and finally got married. Now that we are married, what do you think will happen? We complain about the things that attracted us to each other. I complain that she wants to attend parties and social events, and be with people. I want to stay home. Her strength or development now irritates me.

Well, what about Louie? She attracted me because I had this stability, being dependable and independent. She wanted that as much as I desired her relational ability. One thing she liked was that I would stand up for her in fights with her mother. She would let her mother control her and create problems, and I would not put up with that.

So, the very things, the power I was exhibiting, and the relationship she was showing became irritable to us once we married. I would say, “Well, can’t we just stay home—I don’t want to go to that!”  “But, Hermann, it will be fun!”

Couples Deserve Each Other

That brings us to two excellent truisms that we learned from Dr. Howe.

Couples deserve each other

and

We tend to marry someone of similar emotional health

Those are interesting statements to say to couples when they come to us with problems. It often helps couples understand that both contribute to the problem, not just one.

Those two statements helped me see my brokenness when Louie and I were in our crisis. I was so arrogant that I believed that I was doing everything right. My spiritual and emotional health was as damaged as Louie’s. That is a harsh truth to swallow for me!

Those sayings are not absolutes but truisms, but please consider them.

We tend to focus on someone else’s behavior, not our own. You tend to give a lot of grace when dating, but where does it go after you say I do? It is like a psychological switch in your mind. Click! Now, I do not like what attracted me to you.

Often, during premarital counseling, Louie and I say, “The person you married at the altar is not the same person you see at the reception.” Why? Because time has passed, both of you are changing, and that psychological switch is on. All of the family system issues will be more predominant in your relationship.

So, what attracts you to them may irritate you later.