4 ways your relationship with your parents affects who you choose as a partner

• Our parents play a big role in the way we show up in romantic relationships, a therapist said.
• They inadvertently teach us what's normal in a partnership through their own dynamic.

From the moment we're born, our parents or caregivers help us learn to walk, talk, and navigate the world around us. So, however unsettling it may sound, it makes sense that they also unintentionally have a huge impact on our romantic relationships as adults.

And this is thought to happen in more ways than one.

Well-established psychology theories such as Freud's Oedipus complex — the idea that a child is in some way sexually attracted to their parent of the opposite sex — and attachment theory — which says that the bond we form with our parents goes on to shape how we operate in future relationships — are centered on the notion that our parents play a role in our love lives.

The first romantic relationship many of us ever see, our parents', becomes the blueprint for what romantic love looks like to us, Melissa Stanger, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker based in New York, told Business Insider.

And in the same way that you might aspire to be confident like your mom or avoid being hot headed like your dad, your parents' characteristics often play a role in who you choose to pursue romantically too, she said.

Stanger shared four ways your parents influence the partners you choose.

We are attracted to what's familiar

We are often subconsciously attracted to what we know, so our parents' behavior and how they have interacted with us is thought to affect what we look for in a relationship and who we are attracted to, because it's what we see as normal, Stanger said.

This can be partly explained by the Oedipus complex, she said, the idea being that young children are attracted to their primary caregiver in some way, in the sense that they meet their need for desire, attention, love, and validation.

As we grow up, we no longer have the same caregiving needs, but still have emotional needs, which often get transferred onto our partners, she said.

And because people want their needs to be met, they can subconsciously be attracted to people who remind them of their parents.

Seeking out 'a corrective emotional experience'

In the same vein, if someone grew up with parents who had a lot of negative traits that left them feeling neglected, they may look for a partner with similar traits in order to create "a corrective emotional experience," Stanger said.

Traits tend not to be inherently good or bad, she said, but these might be things such as a parent who invalidated their child's feelings, failed to show enough affection, or gave mixed messages around the kind of love or care they deserved.

In essence, being with someone who also treats them this way as an adult unintentionally puts the person in a similar situation to the one they had growing up, in the hope that they can make it into a better or more positive experience now that they have more control, she said.

Our parents' relationship shapes our image of romantic love

Most people witness romantic love for the first time via their parents' relationship. The way that the parents relate to each other impacts what normal and healthy looks like to the child later on, Stanger said. For example, if you saw your parents being physically affectionate with each other — often holding hands or hugging — you will see that as normal.

The mold they leave you with can be helpful or unhelpful, depending on how healthy their dynamic was. If your parents never argued in front of you, you might believe that fighting in a relationship is unhealthy, when in reality, disagreements are part of any healthy relationship, Stanger said.

Another child may have grown up witnessing one parent always agreeing with the other and apologizing to avoid conflict, and might in turn believe they can't speak up for themselves or say how they feel because that would be shutting down their partner's feelings.

Stanger said that it is possible to break these patterns, although it may involve the help of a therapist.

Our attachment styles are formed in early childhood

The four attachment styles — anxious, avoidant, secure, and disorganized — provide a general outline of the most common ways people behave and feel in relationships.

Someone with an anxious attachment style may ask for a lot of reassurance because they are worried their partner will leave them. While someone with an avoidant style might feel uncomfortable committing to future plans because they fear having to be vulnerable.

According to attachment theory, people develop their attachment style based on the way their parents loved and cared for them, and this goes on to affect every relationship dynamic they have, including with friends, bosses, and co-workers, Stanger said.

She believes that in different situations, people display different attachment styles. For example, if your parent was physically affectionate but they often forgot important events, you might feel comfortable being physically intimate with a partner but easily triggered and in need of extra attention from them around your birthday.

Correction: November 27, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misidentified Melissa Stanger's title. She is a psychotherapist, not a psychologist.