Some children are literally raised to hide their emotional needs.
Many parents who raise their children this way are otherwise fine people with good intentions who were themselves raised to believe that emotions are irrelevant and emotional needs are a bother. Others might be unable to respond well to their child’s emotional needs because they are addicted, depressed, struggling, self-involved, or simply unaware of their children’s needs in general
All of this has a profound effect on your future dating and love relationships. It certainly can set you up to look for the wrong kind of love with the wrong kind of partner. It can even make certain elements of a healthy relationship feel simply wrong.
Here are some obstacles caused by emotional neglect-
1. Feeling and Accepting Love.
When your parents show low interest in your feelings and emotional needs, it creates a kind of emotional desert inside of you.
How it Affects Your Relationship:
Even when you find someone who gives you the ingredients you need most (emotional attention, care, and responsiveness), it may make you uncomfortable. You do not know what to do with it and you may have an impulse to run away.
2. Fear of Rejection.
When, as a child, you go to your parents for the natural emotional support that all children need, and do not receive it, you automatically feel rejected.
How it Affects Your Relationship:
As an adult, you may unconsciously organize your choices and actions around that fear, making it difficult to initiate a date or even believe that someone would want to be with you.
3.Shame About Sex or Loving Feelings.
How it Affects Your Relationship:
You may grow up being blocked by a wall of shame from pursuing a partner and sharing romantic and sexual feelings with another.
4.Deep Down, You Feel You Don’t Matter.
How it Affects Your Relationship: If you devalue your own feelings and needs, then how do you confidently ask for things or expect things from a partner? What do you do if your partner wants to make you happy? Will they have to guess what you want and need? That is a formula for struggle and pain and makes it difficult for you to get what you actually want and need in your relationship.
Even though you were discouraged from showing and sharing your feelings as a child, you can start showing and sharing them in your relationships today.
Being open and vulnerable enough to share what you feel and need with another person is the true source of meaningful emotional connection. This healthy give-and-take is what relationships are built on.
Comments