In every relationship, the generations before you are also speaking

There's one sentence that comes up sooner or later in almost every conversation about relationships and parenting.

"I promised myself I wouldn't raise my kids the way I was raised."

That sentence can be spoken with very different feelings. Sometimes with anger. Sometimes with sadness. Sometimes as a very clear decision: I'll do it differently.

And then, years later, when the person is a parent themselves, when they're tired, overloaded, in a rush or under inner pressure, they suddenly catch themselves saying exactly the same sentence their mother or father once said.

The same tone.

The same look.

The same inner stiffness.

And they're hit by a shock.

Not necessarily because the sentence is always bad. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. The shock comes more from this: in that moment, the person sees very clearly that something is living inside them that didn't start with them.

Their parents are speaking through them.

And if their parents are speaking through them, then their parents' parents are speaking through their parents.

Generations don't go away.

They keep speaking through us in our relationships, in our homes, in the tone of our voice, in our silences, in our expectations, in our fears, and in our ways of receiving love or pulling away from it.

The question isn't whether they're speaking.

The question is whether we can hear them.

Maybe you're thinking this doesn't apply to you.

That you're aware. That you've read, thought, maybe been in therapy, analyzed your childhood. That you're different from your parents.

And maybe you are.

In some ways, definitely.

But in others, especially in the ones you can't see yet, you carry your childhood deep inside you. Everyone does. That isn't a weakness. It's how a human being learns the world.

The problem isn't that we have a past.

The problem starts when the past is steering us without us noticing.

Because what you can't see in yourself often starts to live inside your relationship.

How your parents' relationship built your inner model

The first relationship you saw as a child was your parents' relationship, or the relationship of the adults closest to you.

Whether it was warm, cold, quiet, tense, loving, unsafe, caring, or broken, it was your first model. A child's brain doesn't yet ask whether the model is right. It just learns.

This is how a man speaks to a woman.

This is how a woman speaks to a man.

This is how conflicts get resolved.

This is how love is shown.

This is how anger looks.

This is how silence works.

This is how someone apologizes, or doesn't.

This is how people stay together.

This is how people leave.

This is what family is.

A child can't analyze this. They record it.

Those recordings stay deep, often below conscious thought. Later, as an adult, the person can say: "I don't want to repeat this." But their body, their voice, and their nervous system may still go back, in a tense moment, to what they learned earliest.

If you grew up in a home where conflict came with shouting, your body may have learned that conflict means attack.

If you grew up in a home where conflict came with silence for days or weeks, your body may have learned that conflict means coldness and disappearance.

If you grew up in a home where love was shown only through actions, you may find it hard to believe words.

If you grew up in a home where love had to be earned, you may find it hard to take in care that comes just because.

These lessons don't stay only in memory.

They go into the body.

And when you walk into your own relationship as an adult, you bring them with you, even when you don't consciously choose them.

Until you see them, you often live them out.

Why this is hard to see

It's easy to say: don't carry the patterns you got from your parents into your relationship.

It's much harder to actually do.

The reason is simple: you don't see your own early models the same way you see other people's.

Your childhood experience felt normal to you even when it wasn't healthy. It didn't feel like a "model." It felt like the world.

You didn't know as a child that conflict doesn't have to mean panic.

You didn't know that silence doesn't have to mean punishment.

You didn't know that love doesn't have to be conditional.

You didn't know that one parent doesn't have to carry the whole home mentally alone.

You didn't know that an apology can come from an adult's mouth too.

You didn't know that closeness can be safe, not demanding.

You just learned that this is how it is.

And then a partner walks into your life who grew up in a different home. With different silences, different fights, different touches, different fears, different expectations, and different signals of love.

Their reactions can confuse you.

Your reactions can confuse them.

Both of you can feel that the other is strange, wrong, too sensitive, too cold, too demanding, too passive, or too controlling.

But often you're simply two people from different backgrounds, trying to build a new model, while the old models keep speaking inside both of you.

Classic generational transfers

Let's look at some common ways patterns from earlier generations come along into a new relationship.

The first is the carrying over of love language.

If you grew up in a family where love was shown through words, you may assume that's how love is shown. If your partner grew up in a family where love was shown through actions, words may feel foreign to them, even uncomfortable.

One says: "Why don't you tell me you love me?"

The other thinks: "But I did everything for you. Can't you see?"

Both can be giving love.

But the other one may not hear it.

It isn't one person's fault. It's two childhoods meeting.

The second is the carrying over of conflict style.

If conflicts in your home were resolved by shouting, you might shout in conflict as an adult. But you might also do the exact opposite: go silent, disappear, avoid every sharp conversation, because shouting was frightening to you.

Both can be a reaction to the same childhood.

If your partner grew up in a home where fights were resolved with silence and a long coldness, their nervous system may experience silence as a normal pause. To you, that same silence may mean being abandoned or punished.

It isn't only two opinions colliding.

It's two early lessons colliding about what happens when love and conflict end up in the same room.

The third is the role in the family.

As a child, you had some role in your family.

Maybe you were the oldest, the one who had to be responsible. Maybe you were the calmer, the one who kept the family's tension low. Maybe you were the "good one," the one nobody had to worry about. Maybe you were the one everyone worried about. Maybe you were quiet, invisible, or the one who brought joy into the home when others were struggling.

These roles don't automatically vanish when you become an adult.

If you were a holder as a child, you may start holding your partner too. If you were the quiet child who didn't cause trouble, you may stay silent even when the relationship needs your voice. If you were the emotional balancer of your family, you may end up, as an adult, taking responsibility for your partner's mood.

You may not choose this.

Your system just recognizes the role.

The fourth is the pattern of leaving and staying.

A person whose parents separated may carry a deep knowing that love can end. That doesn't mean they can't commit. But their nervous system may react very strongly to any sign that resembles withdrawal: a quieter voice, less touch, a changed look, a difficult period.

An old fear can activate inside them: now it's starting.

Another person, whose parents stayed together even in a very hard and loveless marriage, may learn something else entirely: love means suffering. They may stay too long in a relationship that doesn't nourish them, because childhood taught them that leaving isn't an option and that suffering is just the price of family.

Neither is a conscious decision.

Both are echoes of childhood inside adult life.

The fifth is the theme of closeness and control.

If you grew up in a home where closeness was unstable, one day warm and the next day distant, your body may have learned that people can change any moment. Such a person, as an adult, may hold their partner very close to check that they're still there.

Or the opposite, they may keep distance themselves, so they don't get hurt as badly if the other one were to pull away.

One becomes clinging.

The other becomes avoidant.

The root of both can be the same: an early experience that closeness wasn't really reliable.

These patterns don't mean the person is broken.

They mean their body once learned something for survival that an adult relationship now needs to look at again.

What my wife and I have learned alongside five children

One thing my wife and I have learned alongside five children is that the birth and growth of children brings up a lot from our own childhoods that we didn't know to expect.

Not only with the first child.

Every child opens something new.

In some moments, when I've been tired and have said something too sharply to one of the kids, I've heard a voice come out of my mouth that I didn't want to pass on. It wasn't always a bad voice. My parents gave me a lot of good. But in some moments I've felt clearly that I'm not choosing entirely freely right now. Something old is speaking through me.

The same has happened with my wife. A reaction she experienced as hard when she was a child can come out exactly when she herself is tired as a mother, overloaded, or trying to carry too much at once.

Over time we've learned that those moments aren't a punishment.

They're information.

They show where something inside us still hasn't been processed. Where we haven't actually chosen yet what we want to carry forward from childhood and what we don't. Where we've assumed we're free of something, but a moment of pressure shows that the body remembers differently.

In a big family there are a lot of such moments. Every child is different. Every child touches a different place in a parent. Some children activate our need to control. Some bring out tenderness. Some test patience. Some show our own childhood pain especially sharply.

And every time, two things are possible.

You can say: "This is just how I am."

Or you can stop and ask: "Where did this come from, and do I want to pass it on?"

We can't choose what was given to us in childhood.

But as adults, we can choose what we pass on.

Generations and your relationship

This knowing can make a relationship much deeper.

You start seeing that when your partner reacts to something much more strongly than the situation seems to call for, their reaction may not only be about you. Maybe you said one sentence, but their body heard something much older.

Your words were today's.

Their reaction came from yesterday.

Not from last night.

From years ago.

That doesn't mean their reaction isn't real. It is. Their feeling is real. But it may be only partly connected to you, and partly connected to an old experience you happened to touch.

The same goes for you.

When you react more strongly than the situation calls for, you can ask: when did I first feel this? In which home did I learn it? Who was I then? What role did I have? What was I protecting myself from?

These questions don't resolve everything immediately.

But they change the nature of the conversation.

When a couple can see that they aren't only fighting each other, but often also fighting old patterns speaking inside them both, more compassion enters the relationship.

Then it's no longer only:

"You are hurting me."

But sometimes also:

"Something old is hurting us both right now."

That doesn't take responsibility away.

But it gives responsibility a deeper context.

What to do with this

One. Look at the model you carried in.

Sit down and ask yourself honestly: how was love shown in my home? How were fights handled? How was silence used? Did people apologize? Did they touch? Who carried the home? Who stayed alone? What was considered normal? What couldn't be said?

Those answers are part of your inner model of a relationship.

Two. Look at the model your partner carried in.

This conversation shouldn't be an accusation, but curiosity.

What did they see? How was love expressed in their home? What happened during conflicts? Who carried responsibility? How was care shown? Which sentences stayed inside them? Which tones of voice do they fear? What kind of closeness do they long for?

A conversation like this doesn't resolve every conflict right away.

But it gives the two of you a language you didn't have before.

Three. Notice when your reaction is bigger than the situation.

Every time you think "why am I reacting to this so strongly?", there's probably information there.

Maybe it isn't only your partner's behavior today. Maybe it's an old story your system has now brought to the surface, because the relationship is close enough to touch it.

That doesn't mean your partner isn't responsible for their behavior.

But it means your reaction may contain more history than it seems at first glance.

Four. Sometimes say it out loud.

Not always. Not in every conversation. But at certain moments, one sentence can change the entire room.

"I noticed I reacted to you more strongly just now than the situation called for. I think it touched something older in me. I want to understand it, not just put it on you."

That sentence isn't weakness.

It's maturity.

It tells your partner: I'm taking responsibility for what's happening inside me.

Five. Consciously choose what you pass on.

Your children learn from you the same way you once learned. Not mainly from what you say, but from how you are.

They learn how your voice changes when you're tired. How you repair the relationship after a fight. Whether you apologize. Whether you listen. Whether you hold your partner's dignity. Whether you speak with love even when things are hard.

If you want to give them a different model than the one you got, you have to build that model consciously.

That's hard work.

But it's work that changes generations.

You aren't your parents. But you have to choose that.

In the end, this is all about one thing.

Generations keep speaking until someone starts to listen to them.

Listening means noticing. What am I carrying? Where did it come from? Which part of it is valuable? Which part was survival but doesn't work as a language of love anymore? What do I want to continue? What do I want to end?

That doesn't resolve everything at once.

But it gives a freedom that unexamined patterns don't.

You don't have to be your parents.

But you have to choose that consciously.

Every day. Every moment when you catch yourself saying a sentence you didn't want to say. Every time you react in a way that feels foreign to you. Every time you hear someone else's voice in your own voice.

Sometimes that voice has to be stopped.

Sometimes it has to be understood.

Sometimes a completely new language has to be found.

But the most important part is this: you don't do it alone.

You do it next to the person who lives beside you. A person who is also carrying their parents, their childhood, their fears, their learned ways of love, and their invisible inheritances.

If both of you dare to look at what you're carrying and to choose what you pass on, you're not only building a better relationship.

You're building a new generation.

Pert Lomp is the founder of Evoluna, a graduate of the Fontes leadership mentoring programme, and an EMCC certified mentor.

From the series "What's really going on in your relationship":

- 8/9 → Children don't create a relationship. They reveal what it really is.

- 9/9 → In every relationship, the generations before you are also speaking. (this article)

- Back to 1/9 → Masculine and feminine energy is not gender, but direction.

If these words touched you, start with the Evoluna self-discovery assessment. It doesn't diagnose, it reflects. → evoluna.app

Pert Lomp is the founder of Evoluna, a graduate of the Fontes leadership mentoring programme, and an EMCC certified mentor.

From the series "What's really going on in your relationship":

7/9 → You don't see in your partner what you're hiding in yourself

8/9 → Children don't create a relationship. They reveal what it really is

9/9 → In every relationship, the generations before you are also speaking (this article)

1/9 → Masculine and feminine energy is not gender, but direction

If these words touched you, start with the Evoluna self-discovery assessment. It doesn't diagnose, it reflects. Start your journey →