Podcast | Do Our Parents’ Attachment Styles Shape Our Future Relationships?

Not Fine, Thanks: How does your childhood relationship with your parents impact your future romantic relationships?

Podcast: How does our parents' relationship affect ours? Decoding attachment styles

(Photo: FIT/Aroop Mishra)

Yes, parents shape the lives of their kids, their personalities, and the people they become. But how deep do the fault-lines really run?

On this week's episode of Not Fine, Thanks, we ask two young Indian millennials, Nidhi (28) and Aparna (29), if they think their childhood relationship with their parents has impacted their future romantic relationships, their expectations from their partners and how they approach conflict.

FIT also speaks to psychiatrist Dr Ruksheda Syeda to help decode the phenomenon of attachment styles.

Aparna says that she has inherited her father's short temper, and it frustrates her when people point out that she's 'behaving like her father,' when things get heated in conflict.

"Because that's exactly the thing that I don't like about my father," she says.

She says this is the reason she was looking for someone with a calmer temperament.

"This is exactly how my husband is. He is the exact opposite, and he's always super calm when I'm stressing about things."

Aparna, 29

Nidhi talks of her childhood where she feels like she grew up emotionally detached from her parents in a household where expressing emotions was not commonplace.

"In all of my relationships, partners, I have gone towards a desire for intimacy, often leading to severe attachment issues," she adds.

"(It has led to) not being able to get out of a relationship even when I know it's not going the way I want it to, and despite being financially independent because I've been so attached."

Nidhi, 28

"Every time I meet someone new, that becomes a checkbox that the person needs to be emotionally available," she adds.

Speaking to FIT, Dr Ruksheda Syeda explains that abuse can be of different types, and that even neglect is a type of abuse.

"Abuse can also be a real or a perceived aspect of it. If my parent is scolding me, my parent may not be very angry with me but I am perceiving it as anger and hostility so that's also a trauma," she explains.

"Sometimes parents, adults, and even schools may laugh it off saying, 'oh, this was nothing,' and 'you're making too much of it.' What we need to understand is that a person's experience, whether it's a child or adult, is relevant. Because that's their truth and that's their history."

Dr Ruksheda Syeda, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist

Tune in to listen to the full conversation!

Not Fine, Thanks is the Quint's new podcast series where host and health reporter Anoushka speaks to young Indians about everyday mental health. Catch new episodes every Wednesday.