How old expectations about closeness, conflict and vulnerability can show up with the people we love
One of the confusing things about difficult childhood experiences is that they don’t always show up in adulthood in ways that obviously look connected to childhood.
Someone may know that their childhood was painful, unstable or confusing, but still wonder what any of that has to do with an argument they had with their spouse last Tuesday or why they suddenly became anxious when someone they were dating didn’t text them back.
The connection sometimes becomes clearer when we stop looking only at what happened and begin looking at what the present situation means to the person experiencing it.
Imagine that your partner comes home one evening and seems unusually quiet.
That’s the event.
But almost immediately, our minds begin giving the event meaning.
He’s angry with me.
She’s losing interest.
I must have done something wrong.
I’m bothering him.
Here we go again.
Or perhaps:
Fine. If she doesn’t want to talk to me, I don’t need her either.
Two people can experience exactly the same behavior from a partner and have remarkably different emotional reactions to it.
Sometimes understanding those reactions requires understanding the relationships that came before.
We Don’t Just React to What Happens
As children, we gradually develop expectations about what happens when people become angry, disappointed, distant or emotionally close.
If a parent’s silence usually meant that anger was coming, silence may begin to feel threatening.
If expressing sadness repeatedly resulted in criticism, vulnerability may begin to feel dangerous.
If affection was unpredictable, distance may create an especially powerful need for reassurance.
If disagreements regularly escalated into screaming or humiliation, even ordinary conflict can begin to feel like the beginning of something much worse.
These reactions don’t require us to consciously think about childhood.
In fact, the person may know perfectly well that their spouse is not their father or that the person they’re dating is nothing like their mother.
And yet the emotional reaction can arrive before that more thoughtful understanding does.
This is one reason difficult early experiences can become so confusing in adult relationships. We aren’t necessarily responding only to the person standing in front of us. Sometimes we’re also responding to what certain behaviors have come to mean.
When Distance Feels Like Rejection
Consider someone who grew up with a parent whose emotional availability was unpredictable.
At times the parent was warm and engaged. At other times, perhaps because of depression, stress, marital difficulties or their own emotional limitations, the parent became distant.
As an adult, this person may be especially sensitive to subtle signs of withdrawal.
A partner has a difficult day and becomes quiet.
A text isn’t answered for several hours.
Someone they’re dating seems slightly less enthusiastic than usual.
None of these events necessarily means very much.
But internally, the reaction can be enormous.
Something changed.
I’m losing them.
What did I do?
The person may begin seeking reassurance, sending additional texts, repeatedly asking whether something is wrong or analyzing every detail of the interaction.
Another person with a similar history might respond in exactly the opposite direction. Rather than pursuing reassurance, they withdraw first.
If you’re pulling away from me, I’ll pull away from you.
The behaviors look different, but both may be attempts to manage the same underlying experience: uncertainty about whether closeness can be trusted.
When Criticism Feels Like Something Bigger
Imagine another person who grew up in a home where mistakes were met with humiliation, harsh criticism or anger.
Years later, their spouse says:
Could you please try to clean up after yourself in the kitchen?
On the surface, this is a fairly ordinary request.
But the person doesn’t experience it as an ordinary request.
They hear:
You’re incompetent.
You’re disappointing.
Nothing you do is good enough.
And suddenly a conversation about dishes becomes a much bigger argument.
They may become defensive, criticize their partner in return or shut down completely.
To the partner, the reaction can seem wildly disproportionate.
But from the inside, it may not feel disproportionate at all. The person isn’t consciously thinking, This reminds me of being criticized when I was nine.
They simply feel attacked.
Understanding the history doesn’t mean that every defensive reaction should be excused. Adults remain responsible for how they treat the people around them.
But understanding why a relatively small interaction carries so much emotional weight can make it much easier to respond differently.
Sometimes Closeness Itself Can Feel Dangerous
We usually think of relationship difficulties as problems with conflict or rejection.
But for some people, being loved can be surprisingly uncomfortable too.
A person may desperately want a relationship while simultaneously becoming uneasy when someone actually becomes emotionally available.
Early relationships may have taught them that closeness comes with expectations, intrusion, criticism, unpredictability or eventual disappointment.
So they may feel comfortable pursuing someone from a distance but strangely restless once the relationship becomes secure.
They might begin focusing on the other person’s flaws.
Attraction may diminish.
They may suddenly feel trapped or wonder whether they chose the wrong person.
Or they may simply feel an unexplained urge to create distance.
This does not automatically mean that childhood trauma is responsible whenever someone loses interest in a relationship. Sometimes people simply discover that they aren’t compatible or attracted to one another.
But when the same pattern occurs repeatedly, it can be worth becoming curious about it.
What changes internally when someone becomes available?
What does dependence feel like?
What does being needed feel like?
What does it mean to allow another person to matter?
Sometimes the difficulty isn’t getting close to the right person. It is tolerating what closeness itself brings up.
Conflict Can Become a Test of the Entire Relationship
For people who grew up around unpredictable conflict, disagreement can also acquire an unusually powerful meaning.
A relatively ordinary argument may feel as though the relationship itself is in danger.
Some people respond by urgently trying to repair things. They apologize even when they haven’t done anything wrong, abandon their own position or become preoccupied with making sure the other person isn’t angry.
Others shut down.
Still others become increasingly aggressive because they have learned that conflict is something you either win or lose.
Again, what matters is not simply that the person “had a difficult childhood.”
The more useful question is:
What did conflict teach them to expect?
Did disagreement mean abandonment?
Humiliation?
Hours of screaming?
Days of silence?
Physical danger?
Or perhaps there was almost no open disagreement at all because everybody in the family learned to pretend that everything was fine.
Those histories can produce very different adult reactions.
Our Adult Relationships Can Activate Old Coping Strategies
This is where difficult early experiences can connect directly with adult relationships.
In childhood, people develop ways of managing circumstances they cannot control.
One child learns to please.
Another becomes tough.
Another disappears into fantasy.
Another stays extraordinarily independent.
Another becomes highly sensitive to other people’s moods.
These strategies may have worked remarkably well.
The problem is that adult intimacy eventually creates situations that resemble the emotional dilemmas in which those strategies originally developed.
Someone becomes angry.
Someone is disappointed.
Someone pulls away.
Someone gets too close.
Someone needs us.
We need someone else.
And without consciously deciding to do so, we can reach for an old solution.
The people pleaser gives in.
The guarded person attacks.
The independent person disappears.
The anxious person pursues reassurance.
The person who learned to ignore painful feelings insists that everything is fine.
The past isn’t literally repeating itself.
But an old strategy is being recruited to solve a new problem.
Understanding the Past Doesn’t Mean Blaming Everything on It
There is a risk in talking about childhood this way.
We can begin explaining every adult problem by pointing backward.
That isn’t particularly helpful either.
People are affected by temperament, adult experiences, current circumstances, the partners they choose and countless other factors. Sometimes your partner really is behaving badly. Sometimes a relationship simply isn’t working.
Understanding early experiences shouldn’t mean talking ourselves out of what is happening in the present.
The goal is to become better at distinguishing the two.
What is actually happening between us right now?
And:
What is this situation bringing up in me?
Those are different questions.
Both deserve attention.
Therapy Can Help Create More Choice
When I work with adults who have experienced difficult or complicated childhoods, one of the goals isn’t simply to uncover what happened years ago.
It is to understand the pathway from past to present.
What happened?
What did you need?
How did you learn to cope?
And where does that same strategy show up now?
Sometimes this work involves thoughts and memories. At other times, people notice the pattern first through their emotions or bodies—the tightening that occurs when someone sounds disappointed, the urge to leave when a conversation becomes intimate, or the sudden feeling of panic when a partner becomes quiet.
Becoming aware of these reactions can create a small but extremely important space between feeling something and automatically acting on it.
Instead of:
She’s quiet. She’s losing interest. I need to fix this.
There can eventually be:
She’s quiet. I notice that I’m immediately becoming afraid that she’s pulling away. Let me find out what’s actually happening.
Instead of:
He’s criticizing me. I need to defend myself.
There can be:
I’m feeling criticized very quickly. Is he attacking me, or is he asking me for something that’s difficult for me to hear?
And instead of:
I’m feeling trapped. I must be with the wrong person.
There can sometimes be:
Something about becoming closer is making me want to run. Before I decide what that means about the relationship, I want to understand what’s happening inside me.
The goal isn’t to stop having emotional reactions.
It is to become increasingly able to recognize where they come from, understand what is happening in the present and choose how we want to respond.
In that sense, healing from difficult early experiences isn’t necessarily about becoming a completely different person.
It can mean becoming less automatically governed by strategies that once made perfect sense.
The past still belongs to us.
It just doesn’t have to make every decision for us.
For Questions or Consultation Inquiries—>
Additional Resources:
What Is Childhood Emotional Neglect? Understanding the Experiences We Didn’t Get
How Does Childhood Trauma Affect Adult Relationships?
About the Author
Koby Frances, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with more than 15 years of clinical experience. He has served in academic and clinical leadership roles, including as Chair of Psychology at Touro College South and Director of Training at SUNY, and has advanced training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (Level II) and Internal Family Systems (IFS). His clinical work focuses on helping adults understand how difficult early experiences can affect emotional functioning, relationships, intimacy and recurring patterns in adult life. His professional writing has appeared in Psychoanalytic Psychology and other publications.