Could your childhood relationship with your parents be affecting your romance?

Monday, February 10, 2014 by: J. Anderson
Tags: child-parent relationship, romance, Valentine''s Day

(NaturalNews) As Valentine's Day approaches, could your adolescent relationship with your parents be harmful and be causing your current romantic relationship to be dysfunctional? Sounds disturbing, but recent research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) demonstrated that there is a small but very important link between the quality of the relationship you had with your parents during your adolescence and the intimate, romantic relationships you have 15 years down the road. Those are some long-lasting effects!

The survey was conducted over the span of 15 years with over 2,900 participants. As you would expect, it demonstrated that higher quality, more loving parent-adolescent relationships resulted in the then-grown participants also experiencing higher quality romantic relationships and vice versa.

There has been a great deal of research lately into the long-term effects of many types of parent-child interactions or relationships. For instance, a 2013 study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin indicated that the earlier in the life of a child that their parents got divorced, the greater the chances of that child as an adult having insecure relationships with their parents. This was compared to children whose parents got divorced much later in their lives.

Parent-child relationships and interactions not only have long-term effects but have distressful short-term effects as well. Another 2013 study, this time by the Academy of Finland (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland), illustrated not only that the use of guilt-inducing parenting when interacting with your child can cause feelings of distress in the immediate future, but also that feelings of distress and anger can still be apparent the next day.

While parent-child relationships and the accompanying interactions can have many lasting effects on the grown child, the JMF study scientists indicated that it isn't completely the parents' fault for a grown child's relationship problems. Matt Johnson, a scientist of the JMF study, explained, "It is important to recognize everyone has a role to play in creating a healthy relationship, and each person needs to take responsibility for their contribution to that dynamic." This Valentine's Day, keep in mind that the romantic bliss or lack thereof in your life could partly be the result of your adolescent relationship with your parents!

Sources for this article include:

http://www.eurekalert.org

http://www.sciencedaily.com

http://www.alphagalileo.org

About the author:
Living healthy starts at-home and it starts by educating yourself! To learn more about living a healthy, natural lifestyle visit DIY Active.