Why are early family relationships predictive of later marital problems?

Security and roles: Early family relationships provide sense of security and role model for subsequent relationships, including marital relationships. We all have to learn how to get along with each other, based on previous learning opportunities / failures. Marriages are the most difficult due to level of intimacy, time duration, life-stage transitions, and the sheer amount of work involved.

Family relationships: Our early family relationships set the stage for how we view and expect adult relationships to be, after all our parents are the first role models in our lives and we are immensely impressionable as little children. As adults our task is to unlearn the dysfunctional patterns and learn more constructive ways of relating if we were exposed to poor models. Best.

We learn most of how: 2 relate 2 our husbands and wives from observing how our parents related 2 one another. If relationships were healthy in our early lives, we tend 2 have an easier time finding partners and working through difficulties as an adult. If, on the other hand, relationships were toxic, we may b attracted 2 the wrong types of people and repeat our parents' mistakes. Psychotherapy can help avoid this.