How your child influences your romantic relationships

Over the past three years, Janet Muroki, has fallen in and out of love with three different men. Ironically, the three men have all been highly eligible bachelors.

The first one was a branch manager at a local bank, the second owned a high-flying survey and drilling company, and the third was an IT expert with a telecommunications firm.

Although the 33-year-old mother of one felt ready to start a serious relationship that would lead to marriage, she unwillingly ended up dumping one after the other.

In fact, the first two didn’t last three months, while she dated the third for only six months.

“The third was a widower and had an 11-year-old daughter. Being a single parent, I felt more connected to him, but unfortunately it didn’t work out.”

In any case, these men would look like a good catch for her, but neither they nor she was the source of conflict and breakdown of all the three relationships.

Break-up plan

She broke up with them because of her seven-year old son’s influence.

 “He hated them intensely and consciously led me to ditch them,” she confides.

According to Janet, her son would stir up with jealousy and hatred for the men she dated and deliberately seek to consume all the time she would otherwise use to go on dates with them.

“There were times I’d make as if to go out and he’d induce vomit to look sick. When I dated the third guy, he’d accuse his daughter of cursing me or beating him up whenever she came over. At one point he injured himself deliberately and claimed it was her.”

Consequently, in all the three relationships, her partners were left feeling like third wheels.

According to child therapist Damaris Kamau, children are most likely to be influential on their mother’s relationships during their formative years, from birth to age seven. 

“Their influence may very well be a natural instinct to protect their turf, especially if they have grown with only a mother around them,” she says.

Damaris further observes that in many cases, the child will likely have a resistant negative influence rather than a positive one.

Marking his territory

 She continues: “If the mother introduces a new man to her child, he or she could feel insecure that a new person is encroaching on her space.

The consequent reaction will be an attempt to get back that space, and it can be very effective due to the tightness of the bond between a mother and her child as compared to the one between the woman and a potential partner.”

As the child grows into his or her adolescence, he or she may simply fail to see the need for a man to be around or the need for her mother to date.

In the same vein, according to Ken Munyua, a psychologist based in Nairobi, a child will often naturally influence her mother from going into relationships if she has observed previous cases of men abusing the mother. He is quick to note, though, that a child’s influence in his mother’s relationships begins with the mother revealing too many details about her love life.

“Children below ten years shouldn’t be told too much of an adult’s dating life, but there are women who cross the line in an effort to be open with their kids,” he says.

“A mother should have a limit on how much influence a child has in her romantic relationships and the boundaries that aren’t to be crossed.”

Nonetheless, it is not only single mothers whose kids have proven too influential in their relationships.

Take Lisa Ochieng’, a married mother of one-year-old twins.

Since becoming a mother, she has found it difficult to reconcile the image of a mother with that of herself as a sexually attractive woman.

“I feel self-conscious and more of a mother than an intimate partner to my man; I am not interested in intimacy and I don’t think I want to be sexually attractive to my partner,” she says.

However, while some mothers have sub-consciously found their relationships being largely controlled by their kids, others have used their children’s influence as a weapon to push the men in their lives further away.

Zippy Kibe, 35, is one such mother. She says that the man she was dating was only a means to an end. “He was a good man, but I was with him simply because I needed a child.

After the arrival of my child, I deliberately diverted all attention from him to the baby in an effort to push him away, and it worked.”

However, not all influence is bad. In fact, according to a study by Constance Gager for Montclair State University in the US, while a child’s influence on their mother can show a good relationship between mother and child, it could be of great benefit to the child in his or her later dating years.

According to the research, children whose mothers provide them a space to positively influence their relationships tend to have more positive influence on their partners later in life.