How Your Relationship With Your Mother Affects Your Love Life
Your attachment style was formed long before your first crush.
It dawned on me the other day that I haven’t a single childhood memory of being held while crying. I’m sure it happened. I wasn’t raised by animals. There had to be at least one occasion when someone pulled me close and wiped my tears. Perhaps I was a baby or too young to remember the instance.
My first recollection of sobbing into someone’s arms comes when I’m 30 years old, at my grandmother’s funeral. Those arms belonged to my cousin. He came over and retrieved me from the island of my grief. I stood alone with clenched fists, staring at my grandmother’s casket, trying unsuccessfully to fight back tears until his embrace compelled my surrender.
I don’t doubt that if my cousin hadn’t come over, I would’ve stood there indefinitely, weeping until mustering the strength to retreat. This would’ve been stuffed into the file containing countless examples of my feeling uncomforted and overlooked in times of sorrow.
But this upbringing made me STRONG. Or so, I thought.
I never examined how a lack of emotive response from my mother or caregivers influenced the way that I approach romantic relationships. We…
