Anybody who's a parent knows that raising children is incredibly tricky... and incredibly delicate. Everything you do can affect the way that your child looks at the world. How you eat, whether or not you're active, how you treat the people around you... and how you and your partner behave in your relationship. Chances are, if you're a single parent who's started internet dating, you try to take these things into consideration every time you go out or bring a date home.
But many people don't think about how their own childhoods affect their behavior. Once, you were a child, too. And your parents were the ones who taught you (or, more likely, showed you by example) how to behave in a relationship. Perhaps your parents treated each other with love and respect. Or perhaps they were bitter and angry, never able to make compromises. Whatever you saw of relationships as a child set you up for how to behave in relationships now.
This means if you're looking to make a relationship work (or looking for a new one on a free internet dating site), it's important to understand how you see relationships, and why. Because unless you understand what's behind your unhealthy (or, if you're lucky, healthy) perspective on relationships, it'll be close to impossible to change.
Communicating
Families are like fingerprints... no two are the same. Some families are places of openness and communication. When somebody felt something strongly, whether that thing was good or bad, it was discussed openly. Other families, however, work within a rule of silence: if you keep quiet about your problems, conflict never becomes an issue. Because it never comes out into the open.
Of course, being raised in an open family, where you're exposed to conflict and communication and compromise, is healthier for your future. This allows you to develop an assertive point of view, and to see conflict as a means to a compromise, not as something to be feared or brushed under the rug.
But you don't get to choose how you were raised, or how your parents decided to communicate with each other while you were growing up. If your home environment as a child was a place where you kept silent about your problems and were discouraged from creating any conflict, there's a good chance that you have problems expressing yourself honestly and openly.
Do you see passive aggressive or overly meek behavior in yourself? These things aren't going to help you have a healthy relationship. So it's important to understand where they come from and take steps to change them.
Trust
Trust is the backbone of a successful relationship. You have to trust your partner to do the right thing by you, and not to hurt you. You have to trust your partner to be there for you when you need them. And you have to trust that your relationship will work.
But trust is one of the hardest things for people who have seen their parents go through difficult relationships. If you were lucky enough to have happy parents who made you feel safe and taken care of, trust probably isn't an issue for you-- it comes easily. But if you were abandoned or felt unloved, trust is bound to be more difficult. Especially if your parents didn't trust each other, either, while you were growing up.
Knowing where your issues with trust and commitment come from is the first step in developing a healthier attitude. Make sure your partner knows where your problems stem from, and work together on building up your ability to trust.
Relating
No matter what kind of home you were raised in, you learned things about how a committed couple interacts with each other. If your father was generally out of the house, working late hours or spending evenings with his drinking buddies, this is how you might expect to behave (or have your partner behave) in a relationship. If, however, what you saw as a child taught you that a husband or partner should be home to spend plenty of time with his family, this is probably what you expect from a relationship. When two people were raised to have entirely different expectations --you think husbands stay home and he thinks husbands stay out, for instance-- it can create a lot of conflict in your relationships.
You can't completely eliminate the effects of your childhood. But if you understand the roots of your behavior and your expectations, you and your partner can work together to create a compromise. As long as you are both open and try to communicate your concerns and wishes, there's no reason why you can't grow and change together.
Sometimes you're trained from childhood to create happy, healthy relationships because that's what you saw as a child. But just because you saw something different doesn't mean you don't have the tools to create great relationships, too. You've got all the tools you need; you simply need to dig them out from under your baggage.
