The memories of the way you earn praise and are exhorted during your upbringing don’t just fade away as the years go by; they leave an indelible mark on your mind. It silently teaches you the ways through which you endeavor to be loved, to gain attention from others, and what patterns feel familiar enough for you to trust another person. These qualities manifest again in the future when you are looking for potential partners, the ones you are drawn towards and the ones you can get into relationships with. Read on and learn about the subtle ways childhood praise can affect the way you fall in love right here.
You Fall for People Who Mirror What You Were Praised For
Let’s say when you were young, you were usually praised for being strong and athletic. If someone praises you along the same lines as you get older, then you will most definitely be drawn towards them. You will also experience attraction towards those people who embody the same qualities as well.
You Chase Validation that Feels Familiar
You may start unconsciously being attracted to those partners who praise and validate you in the same way that you were when you were younger, even if this extolment isn’t consistent or proper.
You Confuse Approval with Love
Praise and approval can start feeling a lot like love and emotional connection if those were the modes through which you were accorded affection and love in the past. You start being drawn to the ones who impart them to you, even if their quality is superfluous and insincere.
You are Drawn to People Who “Reward” You
You might find yourself attracted to those people who choose to impart affection, praise, and reassurance if you fulfill certain expectations that they might have of you. You do this because this is something that feels normal and familiar to you.
You Avoid People Who Don’t Affirm You the Same Way
Just as you are drawn to those people who praise you in the way you are accustomed to, so are you repelled and repulsed by the ones who don’t express praise and appreciation in an alien or unfamiliar way. You find these people strange and a bit off, even if they are healthy and reasonable.
You Feel Most Lovable When You are Performing
You feel most secure and guaranteed about love when you are performing at your best and doing everything right. This sense of security is tied to your past, when praise and extolment were extended your way for performing well and maintaining proper behavior.
You Overinvest in Earning Affection
You might end up going to extreme lengths in exerting yourself, emotionally and physically, just so the other person might be able to construe your efforts as love and affection, just like it was the case in your childhood.
You are Attracted to People Who Need What You Were Praised For
You might have been praised for being responsible and intelligent in your younger days. This propensity affects you deeply and might cause you to be attracted towards those partners who trust you and rely on you immensely for different things.
You Struggle When Love is Unconditional
When affection, respect, and caring are accorded freely and unconditionally in your relationship without making you feel like you need to struggle to earn them, then it can feel alien and uncomfortable to you. That is because you must have struggled to gain them in your younger years, and now that they are being given to you without any exertion, they might feel undeserved.
You Associate Love with Being “Seen” in a Specific Way
You might be drawn towards and desire those partners who recognize the same, exact qualities that you were appreciated and praised for in the past. These qualities were responsible for making you feel valued, seen, and acknowledged, and that is why you are attracted to the ones who choose to respect and uphold them.
You Overlook Incompatibility If You Feel Appreciated
Sometimes, deeper more grievous issues can be overlooked and ignored if someone makes you feel admired and appreciated. You will be drawn towards them despite their glaring flaws, simply because they make you feel loved and valued in a way that has deep roots in your past.
You Recreate Emotional Roles from Childhood
If you were always lauded for being the one who resolves things, the one who achieved high milestones, or the one who always remained strong no matter how hard things got, then you might unconsciously be attracted towards those people who regard and extol you along those lines and for those roles.
You Feel Unsettled When Praise Disappears
It can start feeling like love is fast fading to you when validation and appreciation vanish from your relationship. You will find it incredibly difficult to persist in it, even if everything else is stable and healthy within the relationship. The very absence of validation is incredibly and profoundly unnerving to you.
You Equate Effort with Worthiness
You might be under the perception that the more you struggle, endeavor, and exert efforts, the worthier you become of love and respect. You do this because that is the ideology with which you have been brought up, the one that makes you feel love as being something that can be attained through singular, not mutual efforts.
You are Drawn to What Feels Familiar, Not Necssarily What is Healthy
At the core of it all, you are usually attracted towards those people who replicate and recreate the emotional patterns that you are already familiar with and can interpret easily, even when they don’t serve you.
Final Thoughts
The thing is, childhood praise can’t be called harmful, because it isn’t inherently so. Rather, it is an essential part of your life. But yes, the nature of this praise and the way in which it was given can alter and shape the way you experience love later on in your life. The key here is to not repudiate what you have learned but to recognize it and find balance in its application as well.
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