When You Love Someone Who Never Feels Good Enough: Understanding the Lasting Effects of Chronic Parental Criticism, Part 2

Loving an emotionally healthy partner

Here is Part 1 of this series.

If the adult child finds an emotionally healthy partner, they might feel uncomfortable because this person can challenge everything they learned about love. For the adult child, love was historically mixed with criticism, guilt, disappointment, and control while unconditional love and kindness can make the adult child suspicious and distrusting.

The adult child might wonder, “what does this person really want?”; “why are they so nice to me?”; “why do they love me like this?”; “when will the criticism come?” The absence of criticism can feel unfamiliar and unfamiliar doesn’t always feel safe.

The emotionally healthy partner may express appreciation, affection, gratitude and admiration. The adult child might hear the words, but struggle to internalize them because they might think to themselves, “if they really knew me, they wouldn’t feel like this.” Years of criticism can create a deeply rooted belief that love must be earned. However, the adult child’s difficulties with emotional regulation, if not recognized and handled through interventions, risks negative effects to their romantic relationships (Riggs, Cusimano & Benson, 2011).

Researchers have found links between childhood emotional maltreatment and reported difficulties in communication, relationship satisfaction, intimacy, empathy, hostility, defensiveness, and overall relationship quality (Vaillancourt-Morel et al., 2024).

Specifically, some research has discovered that men who grew up with parents who were chronically critical or did not provide a healthy emotional environment are found to provide their partners with less support, engagement, and positive communication skills and have a greater observation of negative traits like high levels of conflict (Malek & Papp, 2015).

The risks of refusing to recognize the unhealthy patterns

If the healthy partner is trying to hold up a mirror to their emotionally injured partner, that person will have to answer to their partner’s insistence that they’ve been unfairly treated, how much they’ve sacrificed, how very little recognition they received, and how long they’ve tolerated this treatment. Sometimes these adult children get angry at the messenger showing them the truth.

If you happen to be one of these people, you are potentially sacrificing your relationship to hold on to your old coping strategies with your parents. That is very direct, I know, but it is true. While you’re feeling tremendous pressure to remain loyal to your parents and the criticism dynamic, you’re putting your partner in the position of being second and ignoring the pain they feel on your behalf, or pain they get if they are also in the line of criticism fire.

If you are the partner in this situation, understand that your partner might feel a great sense of shame beneath the defensiveness, irritation, and anger. They grew up in a family where emotions were not processed in a healthy way, so they didn’t learn how to handle anger, grief, disappointment, and shame in healthy ways. Instead of saying to you, “I’m angry with my parents,” they say, “why are you making such a big deal out of this?” Understand that your partner’s frustration might be understandable, but that doesn’t make it something you must inherently accept.

Because of the environment in which the adult child grew up, healthy partners may see the unhealthy relationship patterns when they participate in family events. That healthy partner will notice how the adult child is treated by seeing and likely mentioning the criticism, double standards, manipulation, and lack of appreciation. A healthy partner will want the adult child to be treated differently.

The adult child, when confronted with this information, will feel conflicted because part of them will agree with what the partner sees, but part of them feels strongly compelled to protect their parents. This can create tension because the partner sees and hears harm while the adult child feels the need to remain loyal to their family and defensive of those unhealthy family dynamics.

Healthy and unhealthy conflict

The healthy partner might model healthy arguments and quick attempts to repair after a fight. In unhealthy households, disagreements don’t get discussed. Feelings run high and hot, but efforts to repair are not done. The adult child does not learn how to disagree in a healthy way. The adult child has not had modeling of emotional maturity, so they might struggle with the skills needed for healthy discussions, especially around disagreements or hurt feelings.

What also tends to happen in this dynamic is the overly criticized, unappreciated adult child takes their frustrations out on their partner. The partner might think, “your parents are the ones criticizing you all the time, but why do you seem angry with me?” From the adult child’s perspective, a lot is happening under the surface. The real reason is often this: his parents feel unsafe to confront.

For someone who grew up with chronic criticism, challenging the parent might feel emotionally dangerous, even in adulthood. Their nervous system learned not to argue, not to upset them, not to challenge them, and keep the peace. Unfortunately, those hurt feelings will often get redirected towards their partners. This is not because the partner deserves it, but because they’re the person least likely to abandon them (Finzi-Dottan & Abadi, 2024).

Healthy partners understand that conflict is just a part of being in a relationship. Relationships require work and sometimes compromise. Adult children of unhealthy family dynamics may not have the skills they need to participate in healthy conflict resolution and tend to be afraid of rejection and fear they won’t ever get true acceptance (Finzi-Dottan & Abadi, 2024). This is not a put-down for these people. It’s reality. Growing up in emotionally immature environments and then having potential relationships with emotionally immature people does not equip these people with the skills needed for healthy discussions and arguments.

In healthy relationships, disagreements can happen without the relationship being threatened. Many people who grew up in the unhealthy dynamics tend to result in insecure attachments to romantic partners (Riggs & Kaminski, 2010). A healthy partner should be able to have constructive conversations that might be difficult, without fearing the other person will shut down and threaten them to leave. Someone raised by highly critical parents may unconsciously expect rejection, withdrawal, punishment or humiliation and because of that, a simple disagreement can trigger intense anxiety because their nervous system learned long ago that conflict equals danger.

A thinking myth might be at play here and that is the healthy partner believes that the person they’re dealing with is their present-day partner. However, if this partner is in the family environment that is filled with emotional dysregulation and criticism, or in moments of high stress, they may actually be encountering old survival strategies that were formed decades before. The partner that becomes defensive, shuts down, redirects anger, blames the healthy partner, or chases parental approval is not consciously choosing the childhood patters, but reverting to those strategies that once helped them survive.

Understanding this does not excuse the behavior and, if the adult child wants to improve their relationships, they need to first recognize what they’re doing, forgive themselves for that, and learn how to behave and respond differently to preserve or create a healthy partnership.

You do not have to keep engaging in these disrespectful interactions

If you are the criticized adult partner, it is your responsibility to recognize it and stop it, and if you cannot stop it, then you learn how to function in that dynamic by learning new ways of responding to parental criticism without internalizing it and processing difficult emotions. The technical word for this is learning emotional regulation and if you grew up in the chronic criticism, then you grew up in an emotionally dysregulated environment (Riggs, 2010).

Learning HOW to regulate emotions might require reading about it and seeking therapy. I know, I know… so many people say therapy is the answer, but this is something serious and severe that needs someone outside of you to help navigate and learn coping skills. Therapy does not mean you are broken. It does not mean you are weak. It does not mean your relationship with your partner is breaking apart. It means you’re taking ownership of your situation and trying to improve it for you, your partner, your current or future children, and, what’s even better, every single generation after them. Your partner will be very grateful and likely even help you in that process with a generous and loving heart.

References

Finzi-Dottan, R., & Abadi, H. (2024). From Emotional Abuse to a Fear of Intimacy: A Preliminary Study of the Mediating Role of Attachment Styles and Rejection Sensitivity. International journal of environmental research and public health, 21(12), 1679. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21121679

Maleck S., Papp L. M. (2015). Childhood risky family environments and romantic relationship functioning among young adult dating couples. Journal of Family Issues, 36(5), 567–588. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513×13491749

Riggs, S. A. (2010). Childhood Emotional Abuse and the Attachment System Across the Life Cycle: What Theory and Research Tell Us. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926770903475968

Riggs, S. A., Cusimano, A. M., & Benson, K. M. (2011). Childhood emotional abuse and attachment processes in the dyadic adjustment of dating couples. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(1), 126–138. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021319

Riggs, S. A., & Kaminski, P. (2010). Childhood Emotional Abuse, Adult Attachment, and Depression as Predictors of Relational Adjustment and Psychological Aggression. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 19(1), 75–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926770903475976

Vaillancourt-Morel, M.-P., Godbout, N., Bigras, N., Sabourin, S., & Bergeron, S. (2024). Partner effects of childhood maltreatment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(2), 1323–1343. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231173427

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