That could be the reason why your relationships fail

Relationship patterns are learned in the family

More and more people choose the serial monogamy, lifelong love relationships lead only very few. Reason enough for researchers at Ohio State University to investigate why this could be. They evaluated data from more than 7,000 people who were regularly interviewed about their relationship status for 24 years. The results have now been published in the journal "Plos One".

The scientists found a connection between the number of partners of the mother and the relationship behavior of the children. The more unstable the mother's relationships were, the more partners the children later had. In other words, if the mother has a high level of relationship skills, there is a high likelihood that the love relationships of her children will be stable. Because relationship patterns are learned.

Of course, whoever gets to know with the parents how conflicts are solved constructively and how to successfully communicate with one another can usually do that better themselves later on.

The children who do not learn this from their parents are more likely to have difficulties with it. The result: more unstable relationships. "Children inherit and learn such skills and behaviors and bring them into their own relationships," said study leader Claire Kamp Dush.

Previous research has already shown that divorce children are less likely to commit to a lifelong partner than children from so-called intact families. When children experience that their parents are breaking up and making new relationships, they learn that it can make sense to end a partnership to start a new one.

The mother passes on her relationship disability - but what about the father?

"Our results suggest that mothers, for better or worse, pass on their relationship skills to their children ,? so Kamp Dush. "It could be that mothers who had multiple partners do not have good relationship skills, or are not good at dealing with conflicts, or that they have mental health problems? all of which can affect relationships and lead to instability. Whatever the exact mechanisms by which they pass on these characteristics to their children and make their relationships less stable.

So it's the mothers' fault again. And that is a not insignificant clue to the investigation: For the data underlying the study, only the mothers and their children were interviewed? but not the fathers.