You're listening to the Sex and Psychology Podcast, the sex ed you never got in school and won't get anywhere else. I am your host, Dr. Justin Lehmiller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book, Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life. Have you ever been in a relationship where you feel like you've become more of a parent than a partner? If so, you're not alone.
Parentified relationships are a thing, and when romantic partners start to slip into roles that mirror that of parent and child, it can create a lot of relationship turmoil. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to discuss some of the common signs that you might be in a parentified relationship and why this dynamic often emerges in the first place, including how early childhood experiences can shape the relationship roles that we take later in life.
We're also going to explore how parentified relationships contribute to stress, how they impact people's sex lives, whether it's possible to change this relationship dynamic after it is already set in, as well as whether there are proactive steps you can take to prevent yourself from slipping into the role of parent instead of partner.
I am joined once again by Dr. Kate Balistreri, a licensed psychologist and certified sex therapist. She is the founder of Modern Intimacy, a counseling practice that operates in Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago. She is author of the new book, What Happened to My Sex Life? A Sex Therapist's Guide to Reclaiming Lost Desire, Connection, and Pleasure. This is going to be another amazing conversation. Stick around and we're going to jump in right after the break.
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Okay, Kate, you have a chapter in your book titled, Am I a Partner or a Parent? So let's talk about parentified relationships. And let's start with what a parentified relationship actually looks like. So what are some of the signs or indicators that maybe you've taken on a parental role in your marriage or romantic relationship?
Yeah, some of the biggest indicators are that you are doing things for your partner that they can do as a grown adult for themselves. Some partners make agreements like you take over that and I'll take over this and that's the agreement and it works for them. But what I'm talking about is usually an implicit unspoken agreement.
dynamic that ends up building over time because one partner is really under functioning as an adult and the other partner is being demanded unconsciously to pick up the load and they over function. They might be taking care of all the cleaning around the house.
all of the childcare in a really inequitable way while their partner is kind of showing up like a big kid in the relationship. And where this happens the most, I would say, beyond even the domestic inequities is in emotional labor. So you have one partner who maybe grew up with a lot
more demand on them to grow up earlier. They've had to take care of other people emotionally and their partners like, sweet, I don't have to do as much unconsciously, of course.
And they get into this stuck pattern where one partner might be more defensive, more shut down, not able to have hard conversations in a way that feels equitable. So the other partner is doing a tremendous amount of emotional labor to regulate themselves and to regulate their partner. And they end up feeling like they're doing more parenting and creating more scaffolding for their partner to even meet them.
And it feels really exhausting and hard for both partners in different ways. But for the partner who's over functioning, you can expect that they're not going to feel a lot of desire because it does not feel sexy to have to parent your partner.
Yeah, for sure. Now, this concept of parentified relationships has come up on the show before, specifically in the context of people who are partnered with somebody who has ADHD. And in these relationships, it's sometimes the case that the partner with ADHD comes to be seen as inconsistent or as irresponsible. And so their partner, who does not have ADHD,
then assumes the role of kind of like manager or parent in the relationship. So that's one context in which this parentification can come up. But what are some other relationship contexts or dynamics in which we also see this parentification happening? We see it a lot in dynamics where folks have not really done a lot of their own deeper work. They don't maybe understand the way trauma has impacted them in their lives.
They are maybe not as strong in their skills around healthy communication or being assertive. They may shut down more readily or get explosive more readily. These sort of developmental immaturity gaps can really show up in big ways where one partner is doing a lot more emotional caretaking and feeling really alone and unmet in the relationship.
And when we're looking at heterosexual relationships, this does take a pretty gendered path. Of course, not all. It's not every single relationship. I'll put out that caveat. But it is a pretty recognized pattern for anyone who does couples therapy with heterosexual folks to see the way that this has become entrenched.
around gendered lines because of the ways that patriarchy and sexism infuse themselves in, well, are infused, I should say, into people's expectations in their relationships. When you task women with being the caretakers
and you tell men that they're not emotional, what you end up with are adults who are very disparate in their skills around emotion regulation and communication, and also adults who have very different expectations about where their skill sets even should be. So this creates a lot of tension for folks when they're not able to get on the same page.
Yeah, and I think the gendered piece is an important aspect of this. You know, the way that we're socialized, according to gender, with men to not express their emotions, you know, is something that has a lot of long-term implications for their relationships later on. You know, men, to the extent that they sort of subscribe to this idea that they're not supposed to
express their emotions, you know, then when they're in relationships, they're not going to start conversations about emotionally charged topics or other things like that. And then that leads to this dynamic where the emotional labor in the heterosexual context is carried more by women than it is by men. And it's something that I think hurts everybody when you have this dynamic that feels very inequitable and also where you're not having these healthy and productive discussions about emotion related issues.
I'm glad that you pointed out that it does hurt everybody because it does, right? I think people in partnership don't go into partnership, even really understanding the expectation or the necessity for emotional labor. And then when you get there, if you're the partner that doesn't have those skills,
Wow, does that feel humbling? And it's not like you can just flip a switch and magically know what to say or do differently. So it can really exacerbate some complicated dynamics around power, around agency, around shame, around feeling adequate. And I find that the partners who are willing to just say like, okay,
wow, I did not know how to do this. I need some help. I need to learn some new things. They can really restore a sense of parity pretty readily. But for the folks who double down and say, no, I can't or I shouldn't have to or I don't want to do that, they're going to find themselves stuck in a lot of gridlock with their partner. And it is super, super painful and isolating.
Yeah. And you know, the gendered aspect of this makes it hard to talk about because it often gets turned into or twisted into blaming men, right? And it's important for us to recognize that if men are not socialized to be emotionally expressive, then how can we expect them to show up and be emotionally expressive in their relationships? And so I think sometimes there's unfair blame that gets placed on men and having these discussions and saying, you know, this is a problem with
men. No, it's a problem with the way that we socialize people in terms of how they deal with and manage their emotions. And when we don't teach men skills for emotion regulation, you know, we can't expect them to show up in ways that, you know, it's just going to work perfectly when they're in relationships with others. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. No one's to blame really, because we are socialized in very specific ways based on gender and all kinds of body politics. And we're
When you recognize that it's impacting your relationship, regardless of your gender, regardless of all the other constellations that make up who you are, you do have some responsibility in changing that dynamic. And I think where a lot of men really see growth and success and care and eroticism blossom in their relationship is when they do lean in and go, okay, look,
I didn't get those skills growing up. No one taught me how to do that. In fact, people taught me specifically not to do that. And now I recognize that that was not doing me any favors. So what do I need to do to take action here? And those men really see their relationships take such a different form. And man, does their sex life get better. Yeah.
But the guys who don't, and I say guys in a gender inclusive way here, the folks who don't really do see this dynamic become more and more entrenched. And it's hard to come back from that after you've been in that place for a while with your partner.
Yeah.
and they're managing every aspect of our lives. And by contrast, other people come from quite the opposite situation where the kid in many ways has to parent their parent and start taking care of them from a very young age. And intuitively, it might seem that these early dynamics could shape the way that we approach relationships later in life by leading to the expectation that someone is either going to do everything for us or that we're expected to do everything for others.
So what are your thoughts on that? Do you think our early experiences can set us up to kind of unconsciously fall into parentified relationship dynamics later on?
Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, our entire neurobiological system is influenced by the early relationships that we have in our lives. So if you had a parent who was so overprotective that it felt intrusive, intimacy might feel really scary, literally in your nervous system, as you continue to grow and have other relationships.
And I find that folks who had those kinds of parents have one or two kind of extreme reactions to it unconsciously. They either acquiesce and sort of sacrifice all of their identity integrity so that they can keep the relationship intact because that's what was demanded of them growing up, or they rebel and they are so independent and
that they often have a hard time maintaining closeness with people and feeling safe in that dynamic. And then for folks who didn't have that, and they had the opposite where maybe they were even emotionally neglected or kind of on their own, or they had to take on the responsibility of parenting their child or their parent or siblings or something of that nature.
they may end up in partnership with somebody who's under functioning, right? And they may feel like that's just the way relationships are. And then they wake up five years later, and they're so resentful, because no one sees them. No one shows up for them. And they've unknowingly recreated this dynamic in their romantic partnership. So
definitely the way that we are in relationship early sets the stage for repetition in our adult lives because it's what's familiar. And even if it's uncomfortable, it's what we know. So until we start saying to ourselves with more consciousness, okay,
oh, this isn't working for me. I don't like this dynamic. I want something different. Then we can start cracking open what has been automatic and we can start being more intentional around how we show up and also who we decide to keep around us based on how they show up.
Yeah, you know, I definitely don't consider myself to be a Freudian psychologist, but I think there is a lot of truth to the idea that, you know, the early relationships that we have do start to create these patterns of behavior that we unconsciously slip into for the rest of our lives. And, you know, for many of us,
we have this experience of saying, you know, I fall for the wrong person over and over and over again. And, you know, it's a pattern of behavior. It's what you're used to. It's based on these early dynamics that you had. And those dynamics might not be serving you, right? And that's something that I think is important for people to recognize is that you might continue to get into these relationships where you're always taking on the parentified role. And maybe in part, that's because it was what was always expected of you in previous relationships. And this isn't serving you.
And you have to recognize that in order for this to change. Yeah. And part of why it's so hard to make those changes is because that's how we've known relationship, right? And so a lot of folks, when they start taking different steps, feel a lot of terror. It's almost an existential terror. Like, am I going to make it through this? Am I going to be okay if I say no to something that doesn't serve me? Will I be alone forever, right? Am
Am I ever going to find that person? And when you're bumping up against that question, I think it's a really good indicator that whatever you're facing is historical as much as it might be also in your present.
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the implications of taking on a parentified role in relationships. So first, you know, what are the emotional consequences of this? You know, how does it contribute to things like stress or burnout? And then also, what are the sexual implications? You know, what happens to somebody's sex life if they're in a parentified relationship?
Yeah, well, you named it, right? So when you are someone who takes on more than is your share to take on, you inevitably are increasing the allostatic load in your body, meaning that you are going to be holding more stuff, more emotional charge, more stress that can lead to more burnout, it can lead to having less energy. And all of that can certainly decrease desire. If you're tired all the time, it's really hard to feel sexy.
It's hard to have the energy to take care of yourself in the way you would want to. So it can have a really compounding effect. But then we have to factor in all the resentment that comes into play. When you recognize that there are inequities and how you and your partner are showing up to task, if your partner doesn't make changes when you bring that to them, or if you haven't even brought it to them yet, and you're just sitting with all that resentment, then
The resentment adds to your allostatic load, which can really decrease desire. So it really is imperative for your long-term well-being and for your sex life that you really curate restoration in your partnership. And if that's not available, then really start to think about, well, what are some of my other options? Because no one deserves to be in a relationship that is perpetually inequitable and
And if your partner isn't willing to make changes, then it does unfortunately fall on you to make those changes within the relationship or by leaving it. Yeah. And you know, the research backs up this idea that it's important for people to have some level of equity in their relationship in order to have a satisfying sex life. So for example, studies show that in couple relationships where you have a more equitable division of labor, that
couples have more sex and more satisfying sex lives, right? So it makes sense and it's definitely backed up by the research. But when you get into these parentified dynamics where one person is taking on so much more of the load, whether that's in terms of things they do around the house or the emotional labor or some combination of those things, or we're just kind of like managing all the aspects of their partner's life that they could be or should be doing themselves, like making all of their doctor's appointments and other things like that.
Like when you're taking that parental role and the caretaker role, it becomes a lot and it becomes really hard for desire to even set in in those relationships, which is why their sex life often disappears. Absolutely. I mean, beyond the resentment and the burnout in the body, it really can change how you see yourself. And if you see yourself as someone's caretaker, I think other variables come into play, right? Biologically, we don't have sex with our children.
It's not wise. Mama nature doesn't recommend that at all. Legally, of course, all of those ramifications that are sort of outside the scope of this conversation, but just psychically, we don't have sex with our children. And when you feel like you are a caretaker for this other person, you start to feel like a caretaker and then you become maybe more protective of them. And
More emotionally separate because you're recognizing that the emotional output is more one directional like it is between parents and their children. And it's really hard to feel like you can really receive anything, especially if there isn't enough coming toward you in terms of reciprocal effort. It's really tricky. And the person who's in the other role often feels isolated.
They feel maybe entitled to receiving what they're getting in terms of care, but also kind of defensive around it. They might feel inadequate. They might feel like nothing they ever do is right. You might feel like they don't know what to do because their partner's showing up and doing it.
easier or in a way that's seemingly better. So this can, again, like really create a lot of self-perception that makes it difficult for you to even see eroticism in your role with that person, regardless of which side of the continuum you're on.
Yeah, I want to go back to something you mentioned there regarding how sometimes there's a bit of resistance when you bring this up with a partner. Right? So for example, if you tell your partner that you'd like them to put their stuff in the dishwasher, they might say, "But I always do it the wrong way." Or you might ask your partner to plan a date night and they might say, "But I'm always so bad at picking places or things to do." So in other words, sometimes your partner just kind of
turns the conversation around on you and, you know, just expects you to do more because they claim incompetence. So, you know, what do you do in that situation? I'm so glad you brought this up. So strategic incompetence, which is also very popularly called weaponized incompetence on social media, is a very common pushback. And I think it comes from a mixture of
feeling inadequate and feeling entitled. I personally perceive it as I don't want to take the risk of being vulnerable when it's less about the entitlement and more about the inadequacies. And that's a hard place to be if you're the person who's like, man, I don't pick good restaurants or I've tried before and my partner didn't like the efforts that I put in. That's hard. But also it's really hard to be the partner that
to that person always sort of watching their partner collapse, right? And not seeing them take risks and show up for themselves and for the relationship because vulnerability and eroticism requires risk. And if you're not willing to do it by putting your coffee mug in the dishwasher, right? Or picking a new restaurant that translates sometimes into the bedroom in big ways.
Yeah, you know, I can't think of a time when I've claimed strategic incompetence in my own relationship, but I have claimed it in the workplace before, right? Because sometimes that's a good way to get out of doing extra work. You know, strategic incompetence is one thing in the workplace. It's another thing in your everyday relationships.
Yeah, yeah. Rose Hackman talks a lot about this as it relates to emotional labor in her book, Emotional Labor, which is a brilliant book. And she appropriately calls it an extraction of labor, right? When you are feigning ignorance or you're not willing to take the risk or put in effort, you are literally extracting that labor from your partner. And implicitly, your partner can start to feel really exploited.
And that's not sexy. No, it is not. So if you're in a parentified relationship and this is causing a lot of emotional strain and it's killing your sex life, how do you change course? I mean, coming out and saying, I feel like I'm your second mother or you need to stop acting like a child, you know, probably isn't going to be the most productive way to affect change. So is it possible to change this dynamic? And if so, what do you think is the starting point?
Yeah, I think if you're the over-functioning partner, it is so easy to point the finger at your under-functioning partner and say, you're not doing things. You're not doing this. You're not showing up. You, you, you, you, you. And I get it. And honestly, I've been there. It's exhausting when you're in that spot and you are...
doing way more than you need to be doing. But it also is really scary and exhausting when you think about not doing those things, especially if we're talking about things relevant to childcare or your kids' school or not taking care of your pets or something like that. There are real consequences to someone not doing the tasks.
And this is what your partner is betting on, right? Your partner, the under functioning partner is betting that you're not going to let these things slide. And so I find that the difficult choice is often the necessary choice. If you and your partner can't explicitly, you know, recalibrate and figure it out together, then you have to start making some decisions about what you're ready to let go.
And everyone's different in what they're willing to negotiate for themselves. But it might be something like letting the kids wear two different socks to school or put the shirt on backwards and just go, you know, instead of doing all that extra labor to figure it out for them or yelling at your partner to go figure out their kid's outfit. It might be things like not
Cooking a meal every night of the week. It might be things like not buying your partner's family Christmas gifts or holiday gifts or birthday gifts and saying, you know what, I'm going to give that back to you. And if your partner doesn't do it, it's on them. Right. Really looking at where do you feel like you are over functioning and saying it's going to get messy, but it has to because your partner has to feel comfortable.
some impact before they're going to be motivated to step in, if they're going to be motivated to step in and up. And you know what? They might. I find that when I'm working with couples and I'm like, can you not do this and this? Like, let's just see what happens if you go a week without cleaning your house.
or a week without doing the thing that you're complaining your husband doesn't do or your partner doesn't do. Let's just practice that. And it's really an exercise in navigating their own anxiety and sitting with the guilt that comes up around not getting the thing done. But if you are able to hold in that space
Many times the other partners like, oh, wait a minute, that thing's not getting done or we don't have any of the groceries that I like anymore or wow, my laundry's been sitting in a hamper for two weeks.
I remember when when I was married a hundred years ago That was one of the things that I said, I'm gonna stop doing I'm not doing your laundry anymore So good luck and I just did my own and it was beautiful and my partner had to be very frustrated many times in a row Not having clothes to wear to work that were clean and I was like, yeah, sorry that sucks for you Wow
And I had empathy for that. But that was something that they needed to do to sort of realize like, oh, I need some giddy up around this.
And little things like that can make a big difference in freeing up your own energy, your own bandwidth, your own space for who you are just as a human, but also for your eroticism to come back into play. And your partner has a little bit more giddy up that maybe they're motivated to do. And you might actually start feeling attracted to them again when you see them taking initiative. And when they see that, they're like, oh, that's okay. All right.
all right, there's some perks of me doing these things on my own. I see that. And so partners can find some balance again.
Yeah, and sometimes it is about creating that little bit of discomfort, right? Because when you just tell your partner that you want them to do something, you know, that often gets interpreted as nagging. And then you end up having like the same fight over and over and over again, and it never goes anywhere, right? Sometimes you need to disrupt the situation a little bit in order to get your partner's attention so that they can recognize that this is a problem and something that they actually need to take some action to address. Yeah.
And really, it's about sitting with your own anxiety, right? And recognizing that a lot of why you have been parentified in your partnership is likely born out of demands that were put on you when you were young, but also that now have fears around abandonment kind of encoded around them. And there's a lot of fear. If I don't maintain all this over-functioning, my relationship may not last.
And the reality is it might not. If the partner is in that partnership because they depend on your labor, I think it's important to ask yourself if it's really a relationship you want to remain in. Yeah.
Now, getting out of a parentified dynamic in a relationship can be a challenge. So it's probably best if you can avoid getting into it in the first place. So let's say that you're in a newer relationship and maybe you've had parentified relationships in the past and you really don't want to repeat that. What are some proactive steps you can take to prevent that dynamic from taking hold or just establish boundaries early on in the relationship?
I'm really glad you brought this up because there are some things that you can do and I'm going to get to that, but I want to name this. This is one of the ways that women often get blamed for ending up in relationships that turn out to be abusive or exploitative later. You know, this sort of idea of like, you should have seen this coming. But the reality is that people don't often
fall into these patterns until after they've been married and after they've been living together for a while, there can be a big switch because when we make that commitment, especially for people who get married, right? There's something about this idea of marriage and partnership that really does sort of create
a return to what we've known, right, for a lot of people. And it happens very unconsciously and often very insidiously. But there weren't tells before they got married. And there's something about being married and moving in that now the roles are different, the expectations are different. And this is when people see these dynamics really start to show up. But you can before you get married, before you partner with someone, whatever your dynamic is,
you can start looking for things like, is this person generous with their time? How do they show up for me? Are they someone who helps out when they see people in need or people struggling? Do they take ownership of their own life? Are they invested in keeping their own space clean? Are they invested in initiating hard conversations? I think you can be very observant about how they do relationship, not just with you, but
but the other people in their life. Because if they go home to their family home and suddenly their mom is catering to them and they don't lift a finger, that for me would be a huge warning sign. I would say yikes, right? Even though it might feel great to go home and have your parents take care of you, if there is this sort of default expectation, I'd be really curious about whether or not that's going to happen when they're home with me. Because that's the dynamic that unconsciously they're going to be recreating.
Yeah, and I think you're so right that there are things you can do, red flags, warning signs, you can look for conversations you might have about boundaries, but sometimes people change. And, you know, sometimes you end up in these dynamics, even if you've taken those proactive steps.
And so there are things that you can do, I think, in some ways to try and prevent it. But also people change and, you know, relationship expectations can change, as you said, once people enter marriage or move in together. And sometimes people slip back into those previous dynamics.
Yeah, and also look at yourself too. Like, are you going above and beyond? It's not just about how someone else is showing up. You have the propensity to slip back into old behavior too. So are you going above and beyond? Are you showing up in a way that is over-functioning? And are you making excuses for a lack of reciprocity?
Are you doing things hoping that they are going to add to a balance sheet that later you can withdraw from, right? Like don't fall on your sword and recognize if you have a propensity to do that. Yeah, totally agree with that. So thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Kate. It was a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work and get a copy of your new book? Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on your show. This was so fun.
For anyone listening, if anything I've said has resonated, you can check out my website at modernintimacy.com. And my book, What Happened to My Sex Life, is available everywhere. You can get books and you can find me on TikTok, Instagram at Dr. Kate Balistrieri and YouTube at Modern Intimacy. Well, great. And I'll be sure to include links to all of that in the show notes. So thanks again so much for your time. I really appreciate having you here.
Thank you for listening. To keep up with new episodes of this podcast, visit my website, sexandpsychology at sexandpsychology.com or subscribe on your favorite platform where I hope you'll take a moment to rate and review the show. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, please consider becoming a Sex and Psychology Premium subscriber to enjoy ad-free listening for just $3.99 a month.
You can also follow me on social media for daily sex research updates. I'm on Blue Sky and X at Justin Laymiller and Instagram at Justin J. Laymiller. Also, be sure to check out my book, Tell Me What You Want. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.