Common Ground

Inheritance  ·  Power

Whose Marriage Are You Living In?

A daughter flinches, and a father recognises the flinch. How a childhood gets into a marriage, and how it stops.

2 min read

Last week my daughter spilled juice on my laptop bag. Before I had said a word, she flinched. I know that flinch. It was mine, forty years ago, in front of my father. I swore I would never be him. I have never raised a hand to her. So why is she afraid of me?

Harish

Harish, you kept your promise. You have not become a man who hits. But you may have kept something else of your father’s without noticing: the tension he brought into a room, the mood that tells a child, “Careful. He might explode.”

What is going on

The family therapist Terrence Real teaches that the way we behave under stress is like a thumbprint.1 A thumbprint is the mark a thumb leaves when it presses into something soft, and you can tell the shape of the thumb from it. Our stress habits were pressed into us by an important relationship, usually with a parent, and they still carry its shape.

A thumbprint made of curved ridges, labelled how you act under stress. An arrow points from it to a box labelled the relationship that pressed it: the shape of the thumb. How you act under stress The thumb The relationship that pressed this shape into you.
Real’s line: show me the thumbprint and I will tell you about the thumb.1

Childhood gets into adult life in two ways. The first is doing the opposite: your father used his hands, so you never will. You can see that one, and you deserve credit for it. The second is copying, and it is much harder to see. Children learn from what they watch, not just what they are told. So we often copy, without realising, the very things we hated: the tight jaw, the heavy silence, the sigh that makes a child check your face.

A childhood splits into two routes. Reaction: you become the opposite; my father used his hands, so I never will. Modelling: you become a copy, often of what you despise; the tight jaw, the silence that fills a room, the sigh that makes a child check your face. A childhood What you were handed. Doing the opposite “My father used his hands, so I never will.” Visible, and to your credit. Copying The tight jaw. The silence that fills a room. The sigh that makes a child check your face. Easy to see Hard to see
Two ways a childhood gets in. The first you chose. The second you did not notice.1

Research backs this up. One study filmed teenagers arguing with their parents at 14, then filmed the same people arguing with their own partners about seventeen years later. The more hostile the family had been, the more hostile and less warm the adult relationship was.3

What helps

The first step is to trace the habit back to where it came from. Real uses three questions.

Real’s three questions as three boxes: who did I see do this; who did it to me; who did I do it to, with nobody stopping me. Who did I see do this? I watched it happen. Who did it to me? I was on the receiving end. Who did I do it to, with nobody stopping me? I practised it on someone.
Three questions to ask of the thing you do under stress.1

Then repair, out loud. Children learn as much from watching a parent make up as from watching a parent lose their temper. A simple sentence is enough: “That was mine, not yours. I am working on it.”

Real describes hurt in a family as a fire that rolls down through the generations, until one person turns around and faces it.2 That person protects the children who come after.

A row of generations from left to right. Grandparents and parents have flames above them. Then one person turns around to face the flames. The children after that person have none. Grandparents Parents You Your children turns to face it One person can stop the fire.
Real’s image: damage rolls down the generations like a fire through a forest, until one person turns to face the flames.1,2

Your daughter flinched, and you noticed. That is what turning to face it looks like.

When this is not enough. If you notice that you frighten your children, or you were hurt badly as a child and it still floods you, a psychologist or family counsellor can help. Children recover well when a parent starts to repair. Need to talk to someone now? Tele MANAS is free, day and night, on 14416.

Inat Therapy · Anahita Tanwar, Clinical Psychologist · online sessions across India

These pages are for reflection and self-help. They are not therapy and do not replace a doctor, counsellor or lawyer. If you are struggling, Tele MANAS offers free support day and night on 14416. In an emergency, call 112.

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