We all crave nurture. Taking good care of your significant other isn’t a bad thing. However, mothering your partner can quickly turn into smothering your partner. It can also lock your partner into a state of permanent emotional adolescence.

Playing “parent” to your significant other can take many forms—coddling him/her emotionally, financially or behaviorally. This pattern may include:

• Waiting hand and foot on your partner

• Regularly getting your partner out of scrapes involving drugs, alcohol or the law

• Emotionally overindulging your significant other (being an unpaid therapist)

• Being the only earner in a household where both parties are at full liberty to work

• Condoning juvenile or immature behavior

“Mothering” your partner isn’t a gender-specific thing. Men can be just as prone to assuming a parent role in the relationship—trying to fix all their partner’s problems or constantly rescuing their significant other from the consequences of bad decisions. This creates co-dependency in the relationship—one partner finds validation in being needed while the other needs help just to get by in life.

Being warm and supportive isn’t “mothering” your partner—that is simply being loving. Neither is helping your partner out inherently an issue—we can and should be willing to lend a hand. However, when one party constantly acts like the parent and the other partner acts like a child, the relationship is out of balance. A healthy relationship is a partnership where both parties listen, show empathy and support each other.

While parenting our partner can make us feel important, it can also make us feel used. Constantly doting on our partner may also prevent us from taking adequate care of ourselves. In the end, we wind up resenting the person we have been so diligently trying to help.

Whether the role of the “parent” in the relationship was forced upon you—or you embraced it a little too eagerly—it is important to set good boundaries with your partner.

Sit down with your significant other and discuss your respective views on the current relationship dynamics, as well as any changes that may be needed. Take responsibility for your role in allowing it happen, but state that in the future you will approach the relationship differently. Let your significant other know that you respect him/her too much to continue treating him/her like a child.

If your partner needs additional support—in terms of therapy, vocational training, addiction recovery, debt counseling, etc.—there are plenty of community-based resources available. You shouldn’t be his/her sole support. You can point your partner in the direction of some of those supports, but what happens after that is your partner’s responsibility. Assure your significant other that you will continue to be there, cheering him or her on, but that you will no longer be acting as the parent-rescuer.

Taking on the role of a “parent” within an intimate relationship is burdensome and problematic for both parties. No matter how much you long to be needed—and no matter how much your partner actually needs you—you can’t be everything to your partner.

You are responsible for treating your partner well—showing him or her respect, affection and kindness. But your partner is ultimately responsible for his/her own happiness, judgments and actions. When you’ve been playing parent for a while, it can be scary to step back and let your partner test his/her wings. But we are unable to carry the full weight of another person for very long; letting your partner shoulder his/her own weight is essential in an adult relationship.