In this solo‑hosted episode of Stronger in the Difficult Places, Dr. Zoe Shaw opens with a personal win‑and‑fail story about juggling a writing conference, a pitch to a literary agent, and the relentless calls of her 16‑year‑old daughter who has Prader‑Willi syndrome. The anecdote illustrates the everyday reality of playing multiple, sometimes conflicting, roles as a mother, professional, and partner. She then shifts to the core topic: the "parent‑child" or "parentified" dynamic that can emerge in romantic relationships. Dr. Shaw defines the pattern as one partner assuming a parental, controlling, or caretaking role while the other slips into a child‑like, dependent, or rebellious stance. She explains how these roles can develop regardless of each partner’s external competence (e.g., a successful surgeon acting like a teenager at home) and how they can become entrenched, leading to resentment, loss of intimacy, and even relationship breakdown. The episode explores possible origins—whether the controlling behavior or the dependent reaction comes first—and stresses that blame is unhelpful; self‑reflection is essential. Dr. Shaw outlines the unhealthy consequences (the "roommate syndrome," diminished sexual attraction, resentment, contempt, and potential infidelity) and then offers concrete strategies: strive for balance, set healthy boundaries and “healthy ultimatums” rather than punitive control, view interactions as collaboration rather than permission‑seeking, recognize each partner’s strengths, and maintain equal partnership. She also addresses criticism that she encourages divorce, clarifying that ending a relationship is a last resort and that accountability is vital for a healthy marriage. Throughout, she reinforces that women always have a choice: they can choose to stop being the “mom” or the “child” in the relationship by intentionally changing behavior and adopting a quiet, empathetic strength. The episode ends with a call to action for listeners to apply these insights, subscribe, and receive weekly encouragement.
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This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey there, welcome. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and I'm so glad you're here today. The topic today is, are you in a parent-child relationship with your partner? We're going to get to that in just a minute. So first, my win and my fail, which I share every week. My win, I went to a writing conference, the Hope Writers Conference. I've been a member of Hope Writers for years, and finally, after COVID and all the things, they have had their first conference since I think 2019 was their last conference. Being at the conference filled my soul up. I don't think I can say it any other way. It just filled me. There's something about getting with other women who geek out about the same things that you do. The speakers felt like they knew me. It was just so wonderful to just talk writing all weekend long, which might sound crazy to some people, but it just confirms to me that I am a writer. The weekend was amazing, but of course this was also a business trip. I had a meeting set up with an agent. I'm on the market for an agent. I've been on the market for a few months since I let go of my other agent, and so I had a meeting set up with the agent, which is where my fail comes in. I have prepared for months to meet with this agent, and I only had about 15 minutes to pitch me, to pitch my book, and my daughter called my phone, called my iPad incessantly the entire 15 minutes. For any of you special needs moms out there, you will probably get me. I had to leave my iPad on because in the meeting we were talking about specific things that were on my iPad about some publishers and things like that. I had silenced all of my devices, of course, but somehow I guess because Sully is on my favorites, I don't know, I gotta go in and figure this out. Her calls kept coming through FaceTime and she literally just sat at home and just pressed the button over and over and over and the rings kept coming through. I cut off my phone. I couldn't cut off my iPad because we were utilizing it and I apologized profusely. I did tell him my daughter has Prader-Willi syndrome. She's not gonna stop calling me. I actually took the call in the middle of the meeting just specifically to ask her to stop. I put her on FaceTime. I'm like, Sully, I'm in the middle of a meeting. I can't talk to you right now. I'll call you later. Of course, her mouth was running a mile a minute. Sully is 16 years old, but she does not have the cognitive capacity to understand like my 10-year-old would understand that I'm in a meeting, that it's an important meeting, that I can't talk right now. So she was just going on and on and on. I literally hung up on my daughter. My hope was that she would get the message that I couldn't speak to her right then and that she would stop calling. I should have known better, but no, she did not get that message. And so as soon as I hung up the phone, she immediately started calling again incessantly. I'm sitting here in this meeting with this agent and it was so— what's the word? I can't even think of the word. Frustrating. It was— embarrassing. It was— I was disappointed. My mind, you know, wasn't straight as I'm trying to talk at the same time. And, you know, I went away from the meeting just feeling like, well, that's life, right? You do what you do, you prepare for months, and your daughter calls you incessantly during the meeting. What can you do? I figured it just didn't go well. I didn't think that I would hear from him again. And actually, while that happened, he did say, I get it. His Brother, I think, has a son with autism. He said, I understand. I'm like, thank you. But sometimes people say that and they don't really think that. They think, how unprofessional. And ironically, the first chapter of my book opens with me giving birth to Sully. I got back to my hotel late that night and got in bed, opened up my laptop, and I had an email from the agent. And he said that he's interested in my book and he would like to present it to his partners. And he asked me to send a digital copy of my proposal. Doesn't mean he's going to represent me. It does mean that my daughter calling incessantly during the meeting will not be the reason that he doesn't represent me. Her interruptions, although certainly not ideal, did not interfere with his ability to listen to my pitch and hear me, even though that was my biggest fear, that I had just bombed the whole thing. And whether you're a special needs mom out there or not, So many women ask me, how do you do it all? And you know what? Sometimes you just bomb. And sometimes you're in a meeting and you have to be a mom. And as much as I was in this meeting trying to be professional Dr. Zoe, the reality is, is that I play multiple roles and so do you. And we juggle a lot of balls and sometimes we do it beautifully and sometimes they fall and hit the ground and smash us in the face. But we're doing it and you're doing it. And no, I don't do it perfectly. I'm sure looking back on it, I could figure out something else I could have done. I could have anticipated it. I could have called my husband. I could have let him know, listen, don't let Sully call me. I'm getting ready to go into a meeting. But you know, it's just one of those things. And ultimately it's going to work out the way it's supposed to work out. And we roll with the punches and we do the very best we can in the moment. And we just have to know that that's good enough. So there's my win and my fail for the week. So on to the topic. Are you in a parent-child relationship with your partner? I did another episode like this about a year ago. It's episode number 164, which is called Are You Becoming Your Child's Mother? Feel free to check that one out as well. But it's been a year, and I feel like I wanted to readdress this phenomenon that relationships sometimes morph into. So what does that mean? What is even the definition of becoming a parent to your partner or becoming your partner's child? What it means is that the overall ways that you two are interacting with each other pushes one of you towards the role of parent or child, and then the other naturally responds by taking the other role. So if one partner tends to be super controlling and dominant, then the other might become more childlike, more irresponsible or obstinate, kind of in an immature teenager Or if one spouse kind of starts out taking on that teenager role, the other spouse may take on more of a responsible role. They might take on a persona of the nagger, the rule maker, the rule holder. What's interesting though is that both of these individuals might have completely different roles outside of the relationship. So the highly successful surgeon, he can be a child in his marriage and he can act completely irresponsible in his relationship. He might rebuke accountability, he might whine, he might throw tantrums or shirk his marital or parental duties. Yet at the hospital, he's extremely responsible, professional, and dependable in his work. And this can be super frustrating for a partner who can see that on the outside they seem so capable, but then inside of this marriage, all of a sudden they have zero capability. So one becomes the nagging parent and the other becomes the avoidant child. Both partners tend to end up complaining about each other. Oh, he's acting like my father. Or maybe a mother of 2 children will say, I have 3 kids, because she's counting her spouse as one of them. This is often said as a joke, but in many cases it is not a joke. The relationship has become parentified. In relationships, we all have roles, and so there will always be traits of these things. The problem is when this becomes a pattern and then it's unbalanced. So what can this look like? So he might act out on a constant basis. He may do unacceptable things like a teenager. He may throw a tantrum like I talked about before, not take care of things financially. I had a client whose partner would literally just disappear. He wouldn't answer his phone. He'd become completely unavailable. And this, of course, drives the spouse to be in constant adult mode because 2 children don't work well in a relationship. We need somebody to be the adult. And so the other partner may tend to clean up the other's mess, whether figuratively or literally, and they seem to be the overbearing nag. Now, I want to make a point here that it's easy to think, wow, what an awful person to become the teenager in the relationship and leave all that responsibility to the other partner. But let's dive a little deeper here. Let's not just stop with blame. First, we're not even considering which came first, the cart or the horse. Maybe the overbearing, controlling partner's behavior came first, and the reaction from the other partner was to find the only means of freedom in the relationship by exiting emotionally or taking on that teenage role. Or let's say the irresponsible partner's behavior did come first. This dynamic still takes 2 people. The other partner was still acting in a codependent manner and chose to swoop in and become the savior parent, and at some point the roles became solidified. I hope you hear my message loud and clear. Blaming the other isn't the answer. Looking a little deeper at yourself is, and that applies for pretty much everything. Now, sometimes these cases are very extreme, kind of like what I just explained before, but it's also important to recognize that milder versions of parentifying can show up in many relationships. Now, maybe this dynamic only happens around money, or maybe only with alcohol or another addiction. Maybe it only shows up in your co-parenting or your social life or your household duties. Either way, however and in whatever way it shows up in your relationships, it's unhealthy. Darn, you might feel like I'm being a little harsh there, but I'm really about health and I'm gonna speak the truth in the service of health. So why, why is this unhealthy? Let's look at the consequences of parentifying in a spousal-type relationship. 1, it can end up becoming a defining part of your relationship. And eventually one person decides that they don't want to be the parent anymore, they don't want to be the child anymore. And so these roles that have become so solidified, all of a sudden there's an upheaval. And sometimes that can lead to the demise of the relationship, and you don't want to get there. It can also interfere with your intimacy. A parent-child romantic relationship will eventually drive you into a lack of passion or desire for each other in your relationship. That can sometimes be the driving factor of the roommate syndrome in relationships. You've heard of that, right? That's because we have this inherent sexual aversion towards our parents and our children, as we should. Esther Perel talks about this in her book Mating in Captivity. So when we begin to take on these roles, our attraction takes a huge nosedive. It declines severely and it affects our relationship. The last is resentment. Resentment and unmet needs cause fighting, contempt, and even sometimes infidelity. When you guys are taking on roles that are not appropriate to adult interdependent healthy relationship, nothing good is going to come out of it. So what can you do about this? If you see this happening in your marriage, what can you do? Strive for balance. Strive to be your partner's equal and for him to be your equal. So you do this by being very intentional about interacting with him from this point of view. So before you respond to him, ask yourself, does this response act as his equal, his parent, or his child? And you already know the answer to this. If it's acting as his child or as his parent, you gotta stop. So for example, let's say he has a history of alcohol abuse and he comes back home late from work. You've got to ask yourself, what would a parent do? A parent might continue to ask him where he was. A parent might take his phone, attack him with anxious questions, track his GPS. But that's not necessarily what a healthy partner does, a healthy individuated partner who recognizes that she and he need to be on an equal playing field. A healthy partner might tell him what you need him to do instead, and that because of his behavior, now he's leading you to have to make a decision about the status of your relationship if it doesn't change. And make it very clear with him that him continuing this behavior is driving you to make this type of decision. But what you're not going to do is punish him. That's called a healthy ultimatum. That's called a boundary, which is very different from punishing. Now I know this is hard to do because the parentifying behaviors, the controlling behaviors, make you feel safer. It makes you feel like you're more in control. It makes you feel more secure. At least that's what you're telling yourself. Ultimately though, they drive a wedge between the two of you and they create the very thing that you fear, which is losing the relationship. And so while I'm talking about this, I feel like it's prudent to address a criticism that I have had from some people. I've gotten messages People telling me that when I talk about erecting healthy boundaries, it often leads to me being clear that at some point you have to evaluate whether you're going to stay in a relationship or not. I've had people tell me that it seems that I'm always trying to get people to end their marriages or their relationships if they're not happy. I've been told that it doesn't seem like I actually value relationships and marriage. So let me be clear: you don't have to end a relationship. That's always a last resort to any relationship issue, but if you are not willing to end a relationship, then with certain people that becomes a license to act badly because they know ultimately you will never leave. I know that sounds harsh, but I know that it's the truth. When we know that our partner will not tolerate certain behaviors, if we value the relationship, we won't do them. When we know that our partner will never leave us, we have no accountability in our relationship. And some people—not all—but some people will tend to do whatever they want to do because they know there are no real consequences. So once again, no, you don't have to leave your relationship. No, I'm not a proponent for divorce. No, I'm not always trying to get you to get out of your relationship. I've been working for twenty years to help people salvage their relationships, and part of that is working on their relationship with themselves. And part of that is being willing to leave something that you know is not healthy, is not good, is not serving you or the relationship ultimately. And last, be mindful. Don't allow yourself to fall into these roles as parent or child. If you see any part of this in your relationship, stay aware. You have different strengths. Than your husband. He has different strengths than you do, and both of you guys have deficits, hopefully in different areas. Maybe you're more financially aware and responsible, but be careful not to see this as you being better, smarter, etc., than your partner. Refuse to relate to him as someone less than you. Acknowledge his strengths and acknowledge yours and see yourselves through the lens of how You complement each other rather than one of you being the parent or the child. Neither one of you should ever have to really ask each other for permission. When things come up, I want you to think of collaborating. Not, I need to ask him for permission. Not, I need to ask her for permission. But, I need to consult, right? And think about it as consulting. That's mutual respect. That's treating each other as partners. Equal partners. And invite your partner to become more responsible. And that's hard because sometimes you also have to recognize that his way is not your way, and that doesn't mean his way is the wrong way. He's gonna do things differently than you do. Of course he is different than you, but it doesn't mean it's bad. And even if you for sure have this more expedient process of doing it, turn around. Turn a blind eye to whatever's going on. Tell yourself that he's a grown man and he can do it by himself, and you don't have to watch it or micromanage it. And if you are the child in this relationship, step up. You are capable. You do not have to defer to him. You are an equal, and so it's important that you start acting that way. And what do equals do? They have a quiet strength. They have healthy boundaries. They have empathy. They understand the concept of self-sacrifice in a relationship, but not to the extent that you sacrifice your own soul. And last, I just want to address that sentence that I have heard so many women say, and I've probably said it myself: I don't want to be his mom, but he's leaving me no choice. And what I'm saying to you is that you always have a choice, my friend. You always have a choice. You can choose not to be his mom. You can choose not to be his child. It just means being intentional. It means changing your behavior. It means looking at him as an equal, and you can do it. You've got this. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. New episodes go out on Tuesdays. Subscribe to my email list so you can get weekly encouragement from me, and have a strong week.
