Does it sometimes feel like your partner needs more parenting than your children? Even if you don’t have kids, perhaps you’re always picking up after and organising your husband as if he were a teenager? If so, you may well have developed a parent/child dynamic in your relationship. Although common, it isn’t good for a marriage, causing resentment as well as sapping passion. Here, two experts reveal how this happens, the signs to watch our for — and how to move things back to a more grown-up affair.
Psychologist Amanda Charles, author of The Psychic Psychologist, says: “It’s when one partner takes on a dominant, caregiving or controlling role — the ‘parent’, while the other becomes passive, dependent or submissive — ‘the child’.” The parent role can take two forms: nurturing or critical. “The nurturing ‘parent’ offers emotional and practical support, while the critical ‘parent’ tends to take control through judgment, reproach or micromanagement,” explains Ms Charles explained.
The critical ‘parent’ is often brought out by frustration at feeling that the ‘child’ partner isn’t pulling their weight, or measuring up when it comes to responsibilities. “This can create a cycle of control, where the person who has assumed the role of ‘critical parent’ feels the need to manage every detail, often unknowingly stifling the ‘child’ partner’s growth,” Ms Charles said. “This dynamic can become entrenched over time, with the p.
