Our first experience of loving and being loved occurred when we were children. A parent’s love may at times be deeply tender and enchanting – but it can easily involve tricky dynamics as well. Perhaps we learned to love a depressed parent, or a very irritable one. Perhaps we came to associate love with trying very hard to please or a constant fear of abandonment; we might have been exposed to
favouritism, and learned to see love as something we could only get if another person didn’t.
As an exercise in understanding how your childhood has shaped your experience of love, you could try answering the following questions.
1) What might have been less than ideal in your childhood experience of love?
2) How might the themes you have identified in childhood love still be showing up in your adult love experiences?
How did it feel to answer these questions? Reflecting on our childhoods can be emotional and multifaceted. You might find it helpful to talk the questions through with someone you trust, or you might like to read more about the topic below.