Nicola- I read your post all the way to the end. I can hear your anxiety. Especially about doing to your kids what your parents did to you. I read recently that we fall in love with partners that subconsciously remind us of the positive and negative traits of our parents. The negative traits are especially important because we are searching out ultimate happiness by picking a surrogate parent (our partner), who is defficient in the same way our real parents are, and somehow making them give us the loving we were denied in our childhood. So it's like we are trying to relive our childhood problems in our marriages, but right all the wrongs. Of course, we don't usually have the skills to succeed at this.
I don't know if I believe all that stuff. But listening to your post makes me want to give it some more consideration.
