Has your relationship with your adult child changed significantly since they got together with their partner? People generally influence each other when they’re in relationships, but positive influences like being more proactive about house cleaning are quite different from negatively influencing their relationships with others.
If your child’s treatment towards you has become more negative — or even abusive — since they got together with their partner or spouse, then it’s possible that person may be influencing them negatively with regard to how they both feel about and behave towards you.
1. Monopolizing their attention (or worse, isolating them).
If you’ve always had a close relationship with your adult child and you used to regularly spend a significant amount of time with them, you may feel sad and discarded if they suddenly stop contacting you as much.
Maybe they don’t pick up the phone when you call, and your usual get-togethers are now frequently cancelled, so you rarely see each other. You’ve noticed this has only started to happen since they got together with their new partner, and you wonder if said partner may be jealous of your closeness and has been sabotaging your efforts to spend time with your child.
Of course, it’s natural for couples to spend a lot of time together, but experts in coercive control report that this can be a red flag when it involves isolation from family and friends. If you think that your adult child’s partner is intentionally alienating them from you and keeping them from interacting with their social circle, that may be a sign that they are being seriously mistreated.
Try to talk to them in a non-accusatory and curious way when their partner isn’t around to see if they’re in trouble. What you might have been construing as alienation or neglect of you may, in fact, be serious abuse that they’re being subjected to.
2. Promoting energetic or financial abuse.
Has your adult child been asking for more money from you since they got together with their partner? If so, that could very well be a negative influence from that individual. It’s not uncommon for people to try to pressure or coerce their spouses into asking their family for help, especially if their relatives are financially well off.
Another way that your adult child’s partner may be encouraging poor treatment of you is if they expect you to take care of your grandchildren whenever they want you to do so, but then keep you from seeing those kids whenever it doesn’t benefit them. Furthermore, they may use your grandkids as a bargaining chip: sure, you can see them on weekends for the next couple of months, but they’ll need you to pay for a new washing machine in return.
3. Playing the victim and demanding that your child choose between you and them.
If you’ve made it clear in the past that you either dislike your adult child’s partner or otherwise disapprove of the relationship, then that partner may be intentionally creating distance between the two of you. Essentially, they’re making your kid choose between you and themselves.
You may have a slew of legitimate and honest concerns about this partner, but your child — although legally and physically an adult — has been too blinded by love and loyalty to see the red flags waving in all directions.
As such, the partner may be weaponizing victimhood as a defensive measure. Basically, they want your child to be on their “side” at all times, even if they don’t deserve it, and they are poisoning your relationship with them at every turn.
Of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that if you’ve expressed strong disapproval or criticism of your child’s partner—particularly for reasons that may be rooted in personal preferences, cultural biases, or unrealistic expectations rather than genuine safety concerns—your adult child and their partner may be rightfully hurt or offended by this.
In these cases, what might feel like “playing the victim” from your perspective could actually be your child’s partner feeling genuinely attacked or unwelcome, and your child may be choosing to support their life partner over a parent who hasn’t accepted their choice.
4. Conflict due to opposing formative conditioning.
This is a scenario that often happens when a couple’s formative years were quite different from one another’s. For example, you may have raised your child in a close-knit family where frequent contact, involvement in each other’s daily decisions, and regular family gatherings were the norm. To you, this represents love, loyalty, and family bonds.
Meanwhile, your now-adult child’s partner was raised in a family that prioritized independence and autonomy, where adult children are expected to make their own decisions without parental input, and family contact only happens on special occasions. As such, they may see your expectations as intrusive or enmeshed, while you may view their influence as encouraging your child to abandon or neglect family obligations.
If your child has started to pull back from the level of involvement you’re accustomed to, this may feel like rejection or poor treatment. However, they may simply be establishing what they now see as healthy independence, influenced by their partner’s different perspective on what adult family relationships should look like.
In circumstances like this, it’s important to have an open and non-accusatory dialogue with your child. While you may genuinely feel hurt by the shift in your relationship dynamics, if your child has determined that they prefer more independence and their partner doesn’t have nefarious intentions, then respecting their autonomy—even when it’s difficult—is crucial for maintaining a healthy long-term relationship with them.
5. Through exposure to a different faith or belief system.
Parents generally raise their children to hold similar values and beliefs to their own. For example, they usually aim to instill their spiritual values and practices because those things are important to them, and they feel that their kids will benefit from them in turn.
If your adult child’s partner is of a different faith or holds sociopolitical beliefs that are completely opposite to your own, this may be influencing your child to believe as they do as well. It’s worth noting that this might not necessarily be because the partner is coercing them (although of course this can happen), but simply because they are becoming aware of a different perspective.
This may manifest in your child challenging beliefs that are important to you. This often happens if the faith or lifestyle is diametrically opposed to your own lifestyle, i.e., if your child embraces keto diet adherence when you’ve raised them vegan, or you’ve raised them with an Abrahamic faith and they’ve converted to Hinduism or Buddhism.
6. Encouraging them to prioritize the care of their family over you.
If your adult child has been more distant from you recently, it may be that their partner is encouraging them to prioritize their attention at home instead. For example, you may have gotten used to your child coming over a few times a week to help with household tasks or simply spend time with you, and now they’re doing that less in favor of caring for their spouse and children. It’s quite possible that their partner may be encouraging exactly that shift in priorities.
This can be genuinely difficult to navigate, as it’s natural and reasonable for parents to expect some reciprocal care and attention from their adult children, especially after years of raising and supporting them.
However, it’s also worth considering that your child’s partner may have legitimate reasons for encouraging your child to redirect their time and energy. If they have young children who require significant care, if the partner is struggling with health issues, or if the household is going through a particularly demanding period, your child may genuinely need to focus more on their immediate family’s needs.
This doesn’t necessarily mean they love you less or that their partner is intentionally creating distance—it may simply reflect the reality that their responsibilities have shifted with this new life stage.
7. What you’re interpreting as poor treatment may be your adult child establishing a boundary that you don’t like.
This one isn’t particularly pleasant to consider, but it’s important to ask yourself whether what you’re interpreting as poor treatment towards you is actually your adult child establishing new boundaries in their relationship with you.
If you’ve gotten accustomed to a certain dynamic in your relationship with your child, and suddenly they’re pushing back against the balance you’ve established, there’s the possibility that they’re trying to stand up for themselves in a situation they’ve long considered unbalanced or uncomfortable.
For example, let’s say you’ve aimed to “help” your child well into adulthood by buying their clothes for them, making health appointments on their behalf, and so on. Although your intentions have been altruistic, your kid may feel like they want to make their own choices as an autonomous adult, but you’ve refused to let that power dynamic shift.
If their partner has been supporting them in cutting the apron strings, so to speak, you may interpret that as a personal attack. But it’s important to be able to draw back and look at the situation in its entirety, without emotional involvement, to see the full truth of it.
So how do you move forward?
As with most situations, communication is the best way to negotiate changes in your relationship. If you haven’t discussed things with your adult child about how you feel that their treatment towards you has changed, then it’s a good idea to have an open, honest discussion about it.
Ask if they’d be open to a family meeting so you can discuss things openly and make sure to avoid being accusatory. You’re seeking clarity and resolution here, not retaliation. Ensure both sides are heard equally, and work together for a healthier dynamic from here on in.
