28/12/2025
What to do when you're in love but your partner's parents aren't in love with you.
I’m grateful to contribute to a Channel NewsAsia TODAY article on couples struggling when parents disapprove of their relationship.
In my therapy room, I see this often — partners caught between loyalty to family and longing for connection with each other. These conflicts are rarely about “right or wrong,” but about deep attachment fears, unmet needs, and old bonds pulling in different directions.
Healing begins when we slow down and understand what’s really happening underneath the fights. In my work with couples, I often witness how moments of genuine acknowledgment — after the track of negative cycle, unpacking and deepening — such as “I was not there to protect you when you needed me the most,” can be profoundly healing and reconnecting.
While it may sound simple, this kind of emotional repair becomes possible only when an attachment lens guides therapy. Through attunement to each partner’s emotional world, Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) helps couples access deeper experiences of safety, responsibility, and reconnection. This is the power of EFCT — moving couples beyond blame and conflict, and back toward secure emotional connection.
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Relationship experts said that when parents disapprove of a partner, it can sometimes say more about their own long-standing beliefs and expectations than about the partner.
