While playing with his daughter, a man once overheard his wife tell another one of their children: He can only pay attention to one of us at a time, and he will always choose his children over me.
Never mind the effect that such a comment might have on a child, it also reveals one of the great marital and familial crises of our day: Emotional enmeshment between a parent and child.
Here's how it works:
1) Over time, for whatever reason, communication and affection break down within a marriage. This usually has something to do with the stereotypical problem of women over-communicating and men under-communicating. Men get overwhelmed and women feel ignored or shut down. It may also have something to do with emotional dependency. When one spouse constantly needs the other for emotional support, the other support spouse tends to get overwhelmed and often, less-responsive. In turn, the emotionally dependent spouse becomes more need and will work harder for support. The other spouse then becomes more resistant and unresponsive. It's a vicious cycle!
2) Marital bonds are more important than parental bonds, for this express reason: Our kids suffer the effects from the fraying of our marriages. This is not only because they see mommy and daddy poorly modeling love to them, but also because mommy and/or daddy begin investing their emotions and affection in their children rather than one another. Here are some examples:
*Talking with children about grown-up issues like a spouse's unemployment.
*Talking with children about a spouse, in the same way that spouse's typically talk about their children (i.e. "I just don't know what to do about your father's anger.").
*Expending all gestures of affection on children rather than the spouse. This is what the man's wife was talking about in the opening example: He plays and cuddles with his children; never her.
*Being friends with children, rather than an authority figure. Danger sign: Calling your child "best friend" rather than a spouse.
3) While such patterns are not obvious to those going through them, the effects are obvious to the outsider: A lack of love within a marriage and a parent who is emotionally enmeshed with his/her children. Such enmeshment causes jealousy and resentment in a marriage and does considerable damage to children. How might it damage a child:
*Instead of learning responsibility in accordance with the authority and rules given in a home, the child will be given undue responsibility for affairs way beyond his/her control. This is unhealthy for adult children, let alone those still developing. It causes anxiety, emotional co-dependency with a parent, and often, a lack of respect for the other parent.
*A child's marriage might feel like a divorce. Leaving and cleaving becomes extraordinarily difficult because in certain emotional respects, the child is always married to the parent. Both will feel abandoned and go through withdraw, and the newly formed marriage will be rocked by undue influence of the enmeshed parent.
Of course, there could be much more to say about this. I recognized my own struggle with this when my wife asked why I cuddled with our little girl more than her. Honestly, actively loving children is easier than actively loving a spouse. By God's grace, my wife's words were convicting and I am trying to be more affectionate toward my wife.
Remember, children are required to honor their father and mother in the Lord. As parents, we must prayerfully require obedience from our children and cultivate the heart behind that obedience. As spouses, we must prayerfully maintain our due affection for one another and not misplace it in our children.
In the same way, we are to honor God, our Father in Heaven, by rendering Him our obedience, as well as love Him who first loved us as His beloved spouse. What Christ has ordained with His own blood, let us none of us confuse or tear asunder!
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