Behind adult problems, however, there may be deeper forms of emotional baggage rooted in the experiences of childhood, but continuing to trouble personality and behavior within the adult.[5]
Men and women may be unable to leave the pain of childhood behind, and look to their partners to fix this, rather than to address more adult concerns.[6]
Cultural and parental expectations and patterns of behavior drawn from the family of origin and still unconsciously carried around, will impact a new marriage in ways neither partner may be aware of.[7]
Similarly, as parents, both sexes may find their own childhood pasts hampering their efforts at more constructive child-rearing,[8] whether they repeat, or seek to overcompensate for, parental patterns of the past.[9]
Psychotherapy addresses such emotional baggage of the client under the rubric of transference,[10] exploring how early development can create an internalized 'working mode' through which all subsequent relationships are viewed;[11] while the concept of countertransference on the therapist's part acknowledges that they too can bring their own emotional baggage into the analytic relationship.[12]