Unhealthy Ties of Love
(Click here for Spanish Translation) It is appropriate, of course, that sons be predisposed to care for their parents in their old age. But this noble impulse can go beyond the love and honor sons owe to their parents if it interferes with the total, exclusive and perpetual union that married sons must have in their marriages. There are times when many of us grant permission to our parents to dictate or influence our decisions, or to manipulate our marriages in order to supply their emotional needs or self-seeking agendas. This destroys the basis for the covenant in the next generation; because it leaves it open to attack not only from seductive outsiders, but from the very parents of the spouses.
One easy way to test each case is to determine – honestly and impartially – whether both husband and wife are in agreement about how to care together for each others’ parents. If that shared approach is in place, it can be a beautiful thing. However, if there is a sense of guilt, obligation, or manipulation coming from the parents, or if the manner of support or interaction is against the will of one of the spouses, this is in violation of the pact they entered into as a couple, and subverts the marital partnership God established between them as the basis of every family.
The unwholesome domination and influence of one generation over another assures the perpetuation of dysfunctionality in the next generation, because the parents neither mature, nor allow their offspring to grow into wholesome independence. In a healthy family the offspring grow because the parents mature well and allow their children to form their own couples and give their primary loyalty to their spouse.
Be careful with the family ties that link us generation to generation! They can become a blessing or a curse, depending upon whether they reinforce or undermine the loyalty and unity that couples must foster and protect between them for all their lives.
“For this reason, you must leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife and become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:7)