No matter how old we are, we all carry emotional baggage from our childhood. Whether this emotional baggage was dealt with a long time ago or we’re still learning how to deal with it, it can affect many aspects of our adult lives and shape who we become. Let’s look at several traits characteristic of people who grew up with emotionally barren parents.
1. They need constant reassurance.
If someone had an emotionally absent parent, they grew up questioning whether their parents loved them or not. When they become an adult, they still carry this insecurity around with them, which means that their marriage and close friendships are affected by it. They’ll forever ask their spouse or friends for reassurance that they genuinely care about them.
2. They fill this void with other things.
People who grew up without emotionally available parents often find the best way to deal with it is by filling the hole left by this trauma with other things. For some people, this will be relationships or their careers; for others, it will be spending money on things or even becoming addicted to something. When you replace that lack of emotion with alcohol, shopping, relationships, or your job, you temporarily patch over the problem without doing anything to permanently fix it.
3. They fear being abandoned.
When children are unsure whether their parents truly love them or not, they have a constant fear of being abandoned. When they grow up, this fear doesn’t decrease; in fact, it worsens for some. If you didn’t have emotionally available parents, you might be clingy with your spouse and smother them, overwhelmed by the unbearable feeling of abandonment.
4. They crave attention or approval.
Similar to needing reassurance all the time, children of emotionally unavailable parents often grow up to require approval and attention as adults. When they get married, they constantly seek their spouse’s approval and revolve their entire lives around achieving this. They might deliberately push their spouse’s buttons to get their attention, or relentlessly ask them for physical affection and words of affirmation.
5. They assume that they’re to blame for everything.
Children of parents who weren’t there for them emotionally often feel like it’s their fault that their parents failed them. This is how they process the emotional absence as a child—there must be something wrong with them to deserve that kind of parenting. Of course, this isn’t the case, but it’s a powerful belief that translates into adulthood.
6. They often cling to relationships.
When did you get married? Was it as soon as you left home? If your parents were emotionally absent as a child, then there’s a good chance that as soon as you left home, you sought out your future spouse and got married quickly. This is because your need for emotional security causes you to cling to people and the security they bring.
7. They fear being meaningfully intimate with someone.
Adversely, some children of emotionally absent parents grow up to stay away from intimate connections as much as possible. Because they have a terrible relationship with love and feelings associated with a long-term significant other, they might have commitment issues, preferring to get lost in meaningless flings.
8. They struggle with other’s emotions.
Guilt is a powerful emotion that carries through childhood all the way into adulthood. If an adult has struggled with parents who lacked emotion in the past, then they might struggle with other people’s feelings. They might take on other people’s emotional issues and feel like they’re ultimately to blame for how they feel.
9. They don’t like authority figures.
People who have grown up not getting their emotional needs met will have a hard time with authority figures. Whether it is college professors, pastors, bosses, or even local government, people like this automatically get defensive toward leaders, even though they don’t mean to. They constantly complain about feeling oppressed and controlled by authority figures, and they’re most likely extremely independent, preferring to go through life as a lone wolf.
10. They overcompensate their parenting style.
Those who didn’t get enough emotional validation in their childhood often try to make up for it when they have children of their own. They are hyperaware of their parents’ mistakes, so they take every chance to show their children love and affection. The tipping of the balance often leads to smothering and helicopter parenting.
11. They are often perfectionists.
Children without emotionally available parents always felt they had something to prove while never feeling like they could live up to their parent’s standards. As a result, in adulthood, many of them find themselves being perfectionists in everything they do. They might stay late at work most nights, running themselves into the ground, because they can’t leave until they’re satisfied that they’ve done the job to perfection.
12. They aren’t very good at communication.
If your spouse grew up without emotionally available parents, they might struggle to open up to you. They weren’t taught what a healthy relationship with good communication looks like, so they won’t have the skills needed to share their thoughts and feelings honestly in a marriage. When you try to broach tough topics with them, whether they’re trivial or big, they change the subject or say they’re too busy to talk.
13. They find themselves getting jealous.
One trait that children of emotionally unavailable parents carry into adulthood that they might not be able to control is feelings of jealousy. Perhaps your spouse has this trait, and you find that even the slightest interaction with someone outside your marriage sets them off. Whether you’re at a bar or work event, if you strike up a conversation with someone of the opposite sex for more than five minutes, you know your spouse is going to become suspicious and accuse you of being unfaithful.
14. They put everyone in the same box.
People who struggle with their emotions thanks to not having emotionally available parents are going to assume that they can’t trust anybody. They’re quickly going to put everyone in the same category. Perhaps when you first married, your spouse showed signs of this, indicating that they felt you were just like the rest, when this wasn’t true. They accuse you of having the same flaws their parents did and that you’re causing them the same kind of anxiety and stress.
15. They have low self-esteem.
When children’s feelings aren’t validated by their parents, they struggle with their sense of self. They develop feelings of worthlessness and always feel like they’re never good enough. As adults, they might have low self-esteem, which affects their relationships with others. They’re constantly beating themselves up, saying they’re not good enough, and questioning why you’re even with them.
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