Her Honest Space

From family and friendships to love and parenthood, this honest reflection explores how the relationships we witness growing up can influence the relationships we build throughout our lives.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships. Not just romantic relationships, but all relationships. I started thinking about how much of the way we love, communicate and even parent comes from what we witnessed growing up.

As kids, we don’t really think about it. We just watch. We watch how our parents speak to each other, how they handle disagreements, whether they communicate openly or avoid difficult conversations. We notice affection, support, frustration, patience and even the little everyday moments without realising we’re taking any of it in. Then one day we grow up and start building relationships of our own.

I don’t think we intentionally copy what we saw growing up, but I do think those experiences become our normal until something makes us question them. Sometimes we keep the beautiful parts, while other times we realise there are things we’d like to do differently.

Becoming a parent has made me think about this even more. It’s made me realise that my son isn’t just listening to what I say to him. He’s watching my partner and I every single day. He’s watching how we speak to each other, how we handle stressful moments, how we work through disagreements, how we apologise and how we support one another.

It made me stop and think about my own childhood. If children learn so much about relationships simply by watching us, what did I learn from watching the adults around me? Not because I’m looking to blame anyone. Every parent is doing the best they can with what they know at the time. But it does make me wonder how much of who we become is influenced by what we saw growing up.

Maybe that’s why some people find it easy to communicate while others avoid conflict. Maybe that’s why some people naturally show affection while others find it uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why we all enter adulthood with different expectations of what love, support and partnership should look like.

The more I think about it, the more I believe awareness gives us a choice. We get to decide what we want to carry forward into our own relationships and what we’d like to leave behind. We can appreciate the moments that made us feel loved and safe while also recognising the habits or patterns we’d rather not repeat.

Whether it’s with our partner, our children, our parents, siblings or friends, every relationship teaches us something. Some relationships challenge us, some comfort us and some make us stop and reflect on the kind of person we want to be. I don’t think the relationships we witnessed growing up define us, but I do think they influence how we communicate, how we trust, how we show love and how we respond when life gets hard.

Now that I’m a parent, I think about that a lot more than I used to. Not because I want to be the perfect parent or have the perfect relationship, but because I know my son is learning from us every day, just like I once learnt from the people around me. It reminds me that my own relationship with my partner isn’t just ours. It’s also the first example of love, respect and partnership that our son will witness. At the same time, I hope he grows up seeing the importance of strong friendships, supportive family relationships and surrounding himself with people who make him feel safe, valued and accepted.

None of us are going to get it right all the time. We’ll lose our patience, we’ll get things wrong and there will be moments we wish we handled differently. But maybe that’s part of the lesson too. Maybe our children don’t need to see perfect relationships. Maybe they need to see relationships where people communicate, apologise, grow and continue choosing each other. They also need to see that healthy relationships come in many forms, whether that’s with a partner, a lifelong friend, a grandparent, a sibling or someone who simply shows up when it matters most.

I’d love to know what you think. Have you ever stopped to think about how the relationships you witnessed growing up have shaped the relationships you have today?