Relationship With Parents Indicates Likelihood of Divorce

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in DuPage County divorce lawyer

If you had a bad relationship with your parents as a teenager, chances are you could be headed for (or already in) a bad romantic relationship. According to a University of Alberta study headed by associate professor Matt Johnson, there is “a direct link between participants’ relationship with their parents and the quality of their current love lives,” reports the Huffington Post. The study found that participants who had positive parent-teen relationships were more likely to have “higher quality intimate relationships as adults. Teenagers who experienced rocky relationships with their parents had more romantic problems later in life,” according to the Huffington Post.

This is not to say that parents are solely responsible for their children’s bad romantic lives, of course. Yet Johnson told the Huffington Post that “people tend to compartmentalize their relationships,” meaning that they usually fail to see how one affects the other. “Understanding your contribution to the relationship with your parents would be important to recognizing any tendency to replicate behavior—positive or negative—in an intimate relationship,” Johnson told the Huffington Post.

It is not just a personal relationship with one’s parents that affects the likelihood of a bad relationship, either. A Cambridge University Press study reported upon by The Daily Beast states that “if your parents were divorced you’re at least 40 percent more likely to get divorced than if they weren’t. If your parents married others after divorcing, you are 91 percent more likely to get divorced.” Divorce Magazine publisher Dan Couvrette told The Daily Beast that this could be because “witnessing our parents’ divorces reinforces our ambivalence about commitment in a ‘disposable society.’”

Regardless of your reasons for it, if you are considering either divorce or legal separation in the Chicago area, the most important step is to seek the counsel of a family law attorney. Do not go through it alone. Contact the Law Offices of Matthew M. Williams today.