by rachelthemuse | Feb 23, 2018 | Couples, Emotional Intelligence, Relationships
I see a lot of clients for marital/relationship counseling, and one of the most common and frustrating factors that people struggle with when they come to see me is something that I call the Parent/Adolescent Dynamic. This happens when one partner has taken on the role of the Parent, or Director, in the relationship, and the other partner is stuck in the role of the Child, or Adolescent. In these relationships, one person is basically in charge of knowing what needs to be done, and they end up having to ask, direct, or otherwise nag their partner to complete responsibilities that need to be handled. This is an unhealthy relationship pattern for many reasons, but it’s not the fault of one partner of the other.
What is the Parent/Adolescent Dynamic?
Honestly, the way I see this dynamic play out most often occurs with a woman in the role of Parent, and a man in the role of Child/Adolescent. However, this is by no means the only way it happens. I’m going to use the example of a woman in the Parent role to illustrate my points here, but be aware that these roles can occur in any relationship with either partner taking on these two roles.
In this situation, the woman/Parent is constantly having to tell her partner what chores need to be done, what bills need to be paid, what child-care responsibilities need to be attended to, what planned events or activities need to be prepared for, what needs to be purchased at the store, what pet care duties need to be fulfilled, and on and on and on. Often, I hear from the partner in the Child/Adolescent role “I don’t mind doing whatever she needs, she just needs to ask me”. It sounds like cooperation, but it’s really a form of relinquishing duty.
In this example, the woman is in charge of knowing everything that needs to be taken care of, and is in charge of making sure everything gets completed on time and as needed. The man essentially can say he is helping and cooperating, but he takes no part in being pro-active about responsibilities. This dynamic is damaging to relationships because the relationship is not functioning as a partnership, but as a Parent/Child relationship.
How Does the Parent/Adolescent Dynamic Affect Your Relationship?
For the person in the parent role, it’s exhausting. You didn’t sign up to parent your partner, you wanted someone who would share responsibilities, support you in both tangible and intangible ways, and be, well, your Partner. For the person in the adolescent role, it’s equally frustrating. After all, you didn’t sign up to be treated like a child, nagged about your duties, and punished verbally or emotionally when you didn’t do your chores. It’s infantilizing, and for men, also emasculating.
In most cases, you both came into this relationship looking for a partner, and when it starts to feel like you’re in a Parent/Adolescent relationship, it’s going to start to feel less like a partnership and more like a drag. No one wants to be treated like a child, and no one wants to have to nag their partner like a parent. Even worse, sometimes the person in the adolescent role will become resentful about being treated like a child, and will begin “acting out”, by saying they will complete certain tasks and then “forgetting”, or just saying they will do it later and then dragging it out until their partner starts nagging them again, causing more frustration, resentment, and even arguments.
How to Fix the Parent/Adolescent Dynamic
The solution here requires both partners to make some changes. First, you need to have an open discussion with each other if you feel that this is the kind of dynamic that is developing in your relationship. You need to both recognize the role that you have been playing and discuss what you really want your partnership to look like.
If you have been in the adolescent role, recognize that it is not your partner’s job to tell you what needs to be done around the house, remind you of the responsibilities that you agreed to, and direct all functions of the household duties. You’re an adult, so act like it. Don’t want to be nagged about taking out the trash or helping with dishes or children? Then start being more pro-active about what needs to be done so your partner doesn’t have to “assign” you chores to do.
In some circumstances you can both agree about what needs to be done and assign who is responsible for doing it. However, in my opinion, this is not ideal. Chore lists are for teenagers, not adults. If you don’t want to be treated like a teenager, then act like an adult. It’s fine to have some general roles if you both prefer to do certain tasks. For example, one person may be primarily responsible for mowing the lawn or cooking dinner. These divisions may occur naturally based on what each partner prefers to do or is more capable of doing well. That’s not a problem. But all partnerships require some give and take, and if you notice something needs to be done, just do it. There’s no point in keeping score.
If you have been in the parent role, you may be in for some frustration as you try to make these changes. It will be hard to refrain from engaging in your role as director and assigner of duties if you have been used to doing this, because if the pattern continues, you will see things that need to be done and either end up doing them yourself, or feeling secretly insane inside as you wonder when and if your partner is going to step up and do what needs to be done. This will take some adjusting because while you are used to knowing what needs to be done, and when and how to do it, you will need to allow some space for your previously adolescent partner to step into their new adult role.
Give it some time, because one of the most important parts of fixing this problem is that you refrain from asking multiple times for something to be done, or reminding your partner of the things they said they would do. If you get frustrated and start asking multiple times or reminding your partner over and over about something they said they would do, the pattern starts to get further engrained. Sometimes, unpleasant things may happen, like the trash piles up or a bill incurs a late fee. I know, I know, this shouldn’t happen. But you are trying to break unhealthy patterns, and you must give your partner some space to feel the consequences of their own inaction rather than you pointing it out to them all the time. People will not grow up and take responsibility if you always fix everything for them, nor if you criticize how they do everything. If your partner feels like they can never do anything right, they will likely just stop trying.
Solving This Problem Together Takes Two People
These changes are not going to happen if you do not talk openly and frankly about what the problem is beforehand. For example, if you have, in the past, tried to passively stay silent while the lawn went un-mowed or the dishes piled up, “testing” your partner to see how long it would take them to notice and step up to the work that needs to be done, then continuing that pattern is not going to help. You have to figure out how to walk the line between direct communication about what you both need and expect from your partnership, and being the director and supervisor of everything.
This means that you may need to let go of some of the things you want to control. The towels may not be folded the way you like them and you might run out of toilet paper. Partnership is a growth process. As individuals, we all have to make adjustments when we choose to become a partner to someone else. If you want that partnership to develop in a healthy way, you need to recognize that it is not your partner’s responsibility to conform to what you want them to be. You both need to make adjustments to find the dynamic that works for you both. But don’t allow an unhealthy dynamic to fester and grow in your relationship. You both need to be part of the solution, so recognizing and talking about the Parent/Adolescent Dynamic and how it is damaging your partnership is a good place to start changing.
by rachelthemuse | Feb 10, 2018 | Culture, Emotional Intelligence, Self-care
As someone in a caregiving profession, I know all about “self-care”. Other people in caregiving professions and high stress jobs are frequently reminded that we need to take care of ourselves in order to ensure our long lasting ability to continue to perform our work with ongoing engagement and consistent quality. In fact, we’re lectured about it constantly, as if some extra yoga and another pedicure will absorb some of the daily stressors we experience in our work and home lives. It’s true that if you don’t take time out from your normal obligations to do enriching and meaningful activities, your quality of life will suffer. However, the way our culture has become accustomed to pointing to “self-care” as the primary remedy to all of the stress that has built up in our lives is problematic.
One problem with this over-used prescription is that it is just another way of deferring responsibility to the individual to resolve all of the culture induced distress that has become overwhelming in the first place. For example, if your primary stressor is your job and/or working conditions, self-care can only go so far in remedying the problem. If the conditions that you work under do not change, the stress is going to remain. Certainly you can develop a set of coping skills, habits, and life-enhancing activities that will increase your quality of life outside of your job, but if you keep returning to the same stressful environment day after day, the amount of relief you will experience is limited. While some of us have choices in the kinds of jobs and career options we pursue, it’s not always practical, feasible or even desirable to just go out and find a new job when the stress levels become unmanageable.
Administrators, managers, and supervisors love to hand out the self-care prescription when employees complain about their workplace stressors. It’s easy to see why they do this. This absolves the company of any responsibility to manage the workplace environment in a way that promotes the wellbeing of their employees by offering on-site services to enrich employee health and happiness, ensuring employees have reasonable work expectations and sufficient resources to do their jobs well (including fair compensation), and prioritize employee mental and physical health in their overall business plans. By telling employees “make sure you’re practicing self-care”, the employee becomes responsible for managing whatever workplace expectations come their way, and if they can’t handle it, it’s their fault for not taking care of themselves.
Another problem with our approach to using self-care as a catch-all recommendation for worker health, is that we tell workers particularly in the caregiving professions that they need to practice self-care “so that you can care for others”. We also tell this to parents, reminding them that one of their duties is to care for themselves so that they can continue to care for others. The reason this is problematic is because we again are ignoring the needs of the individual in service to the sacrifices that individual is making for others, whether that be to their workplace, their family, or others. The assumption is that if you are burnt out and stressed beyond reason, that you cannot then attend properly to the needs of others. It’s not that the statement itself isn’t true, it’s that this is the wrong way to look at self-care. Taking care of yourself is something that you deserve independently of your value to your workplace or your family. You should take care of yourself because you deserve to reap the benefits of enjoying a good quality of life enriched with the things that relax and rejuvenate you. Will it make you a better caregiver, employee, parent, or colleague? Probably. But that’s not the point. Maybe you like to exercise, meditate, pamper yourself, engage in spiritual practices and reflections, spend time with the people you care about, or give back to your community in meaningful ways. These are things that you should do because they enrich your quality of life and connection to others, not because you owe it to the people you give other forms of care or service to. You should go about doing the things that help you to enjoy your life because it is your life and you deserve to enjoy it.
One thing that would be more helpful to most people would be if their employers starting looking at employee mental and physical health as something that they have a stake in too. Some employers have found creative ways to support their employees beyond providing a general recommendation that employees take care of themselves. These measures can go from ideas such as bringing in massage therapists or other service providers on site, allowing flexible or work from home schedules, up to profit sharing or co-op models that provide employees with more stake in their own companies. Such approaches to managing employee mental, physical, and financial health can go a long way towards increasing quality of life without increasing the pressure and burdens on employees to find their own solutions to workplace stressors. We can all support companies that engage in practices such as these, which reflect a business model that values the employees. We can also support each other by dropping the “so you can take care of others” part of our encouragement to care for ourselves. We all have a limited time in which to live our lives, and it can be a great joy and source of personal satisfaction and meaning when we care for others, whether that is our clients, our friends, or our families. Moreover, we deserve to care for ourselves, as well as to receive the care others have for us, because our lives are independently valuable. We are not only mothers, fathers, children, caregivers, or employees. We are individuals deserving of our best quality of life as we see fit, and the steps we take to care for ourselves can and should be done to enhance life for the pure joy of it, not merely to preserve our ability to care for others.
by rachelthemuse | Feb 22, 2017 | Couples, Culture, Emotional Intelligence, Relationships
Shankar Vedantam’s podcast Hidden Brain recently aired an episode concerning the hook-up culture that is prevalent nowadays both on college campuses and in other social circles occupied by young people. The discussion revolves around the role that casual sex has in the lives of young people and the various social norms that dictate the changing rules of dating, relationships, and sex.
One of the most interesting points that was made was that the rules of hook-up culture disallow emotional investment in the object of sexual conquest. Essentially, the rules dictate that sex itself is not taboo, but becoming emotionally invested in your partner is. Instead of the traditional concept of dating, in which a couple gets to know each other and expresses some level of affection and interest towards each other prior to advancing sexually, sex is now the first barrier to be crossed. Only after perhaps a few casual “hook-ups”, in which commitment is verboten and emotional affection is taboo, would a couple explore the possibility of actually liking each other and wanting to date more seriously.
The fact that emotional investment in an intimate partner is considered a violation, and could lead to a person being labeled as “desperate”, is an indication of the deep fear of vulnerability that pervades many people across age groups in our culture today. Fear of being hurt or rejected causes people to limit access to their own emotions and avoid creating the bonds that actually bring emotional fulfillment in relationships. Equally as disturbing is the fact that showing your emotions to another person can cause social ostracism and comes with the possibility that expressing your feelings could bring about the emotional pain of rejection.
None of this, of course, means that participants in hook-up culture are less likely to desire emotional intimacy and committed partnerships. Yet it does make achieving those things more difficult. Avoiding the work of developing emotional bonds because of the vulnerability involved leaves people missing out on one of the most fulfilling parts of relationship experiences. There is no guarantee that any relationship will work out, and it is impossible to avoid any emotional pain. Yet emotional pain can bring about personal growth and important reflections about what you want and what to avoid. It’s possible that hookup culture is contributing to emotional stagnation, as people avoid intimacy and fear vulnerability. Sexual exploration is an important part emotional growth as well, but when the culture surrounding it makes emotional intimacy punitive, then individuals are losing out on an important part of their own growth: love, in all of it’s messy forms.
