16 Ways Children Of Divorced Parents Love Differently

Childhood experiences almost always shape our adult selves. If one has a healthy childhood, physically, mentally, socially and emotionally, there is a higher likelihood of a mature and healthy adulthood.

Similarly, negative experiences chip away at a child’s mental progress, and more than often makes them emotionally retarded if not anything else. Sociopaths, psychopaths and MPD patients can almost always trace the origins of their condition back to their childhood.

Parents getting divorced or parents cheating on each other, or simply parents not being in love with each other anymore can have an effect on the child’s psyche.

After all, parents are role models and the first model of a romantic relationship a child sees is that of its parents.

So if your parents got divorced or just not in love with each other anymore, you might see the following 16 tendencies in your own love-life:

1. You have fairytale notions about love

This is because your parents were probably very much in love before things fell apart. And that start was what the first impression on your mind was about love and relationships. You are the one who elopes and puts a lot of importance in the little details like where you are going on a date, where you propose or writing the perfect vows.

2. Heartbreaks have been the norm in your life

You have experienced it yourself. More often than not it was because your expectations from relationships have been way too high to materialize. You have measured your life in leaving lovers and broken promises instead of the proverbial coffee spoons.

Related article: 3 Things That Will Likely Happen When You Stay Together “For The Kids”

3. Your expectations come with an added paradox

Even though you know how good relationships and “big loves” are and feel, you have a voice inside your head that constantly tells you how things will fall apart; because simply, that has been the state of affairs in both your parents’ lives and yours. That is why you often find yourself in emotional crossroads.

4. Lovers leave, love doesn’t

You believe in the eternal nature of love as a feeling. You believe that as long as you can love someone that you will be okay. As a result, you end up making homes in people. Sad part, people leave, with your homes. But you are still optimistic about your ability to love, promising yourself how the next one will be the one.

5. One-sided affairs too are okay for you

If you believe in the goodness of love itself, it is only logical that you find yourself feeling okay as long as you have an object of love; even if the object itself does not love you back. You find yourself doing things for people you love just because you love them. You find joy in that.

6. Stability is something you crave over all other things

This means you will find yourself surrounded by people with so called “normal” families. You do this because you sense warmth and completion in such surroundings; a wholesome goodness which you miss in your own life.

7. You are paranoid when you are in a relationship

You will be a questioning wreck, but more often than not, you will never show it in your demeanor. You will keep having second thoughts, not because you fall out of love too easily, but simply because you have seen a strong marriage/relationship (it might not have been strong. It may have been weak from the start but of course you didn’t know) fall apart. This makes the relationship you are in, sloshy, punctuated with needless fight-like episodes.

8. Monogamy seems a dangerous prospect

This is not because of promiscuity; in fact promiscuity is the last thing on your mind. This is simply because the notion that two people can be happy together “forever” is foreign to you. Given how your parents’ relationship failed badly.

9. You are a clingy person

When you make your home in people, you end up holding on to everything and anything you can: memories, false hopes, the smallest of gestures – anything. You keep patting your heart on the back for being brave and keep telling it things will mend themselves.

10. If someone really listens to you, that’s all it takes

When someone truly listens to you and your issues, and provides even a semblance of protection in your worst moments, that’s all it takes for you to love them. You fear abandonment more than anything else in life. When someone provides you a helping hand, you consider it a life-jacket and rely on it to keep from drowning. As a result you have more often than not misread signals from others and been embarrassed because of it.

11. Fights with you are very strange

Because firstly, you have grown up seeing that there always is an easier solution. You are often the root of the fight, but even when you aren’t responsible, you are the one who blames themselves for the fight. More often than not, you are the one feeling terrible and left out. However, you do try to mend things harder than an average person.

12. You equate insanity with love

This is again because of your parents’ relationship with each other. You think love drives people to do things they might regret later. It is because ironically you acknowledge the strength that love can exert on people’s minds. It is very easy to drift off in love and do things that are unnecessary and even harmful. The passions of love are also the subject of dark treatment, for example: Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover deals with similar emotion – how easily love can turn into obsession and murderous psychosis.

13. Expectations

You find solace in love. One can even say, you find your life in love. You expect a lot from relationships. On the flip side, this also forecloses any possibility of flings/short term things as well. When you are in, you are really all in.

14. Things change with you when the novelty ends

After a couple of months, when the so called honeymoon phase is done with, you start noticing small changes and incompatibilities between you and your partner. But then you feel guilty about doing so in the first place and reprimand yourself for it.

15. You forgive in a jiffy

You sometimes forget why you even fought or separated with your partner. But more often than not it’s too late by then. If it was their fault, you end up forgiving them and find reasons to blame yourself for the separation. You yearn for them despite being faultless.

16. Making the move

No matter how deep your love for someone is, you will never be the first to speak out. You will always keep stalling it. I have known people who get drunk to ask their crush out and probably with you it’s the same. Unless there is some serious compulsion, you will never make the move.

In conclusion, it is of the essence that you stop blaming yourself. No relationships are same.

With some diligence and a pinch of dedication, your love might just succeed where your parents’ failed.