Well, this affair talk will just not die down, ya'll. I had a mess of convos about it the last 24 hours, but one in particular stands out. A friend relayed a story about how they'd been involved in a long term affair with someone who had kids and it was the worst mistake of their life. This person literally woke up one day and got some sense and ended things on the spot. The reason? She witnessed a lot of the same behavior in her family growing up and didn't want to repeat the pattern. MOC said something similar to me early in our relationship, when she was going through an awful divorce. Her mom raised three kids on her own but was always in and out of a relationship with her father. And the relationship was often violent. Because of this, MOC wasted no time in pulling the plug on her first marriage when dude took a swing at her after an argument they had over his philandering. She also decided not to repeat the pattern she'd witnessed as a child. Another friend mentioned that her parents were not always faithful to one another in her youth and she could always sense that things weren't great between them, and that's been a major reason why she's avoided that kind of drama in her own life. As she so perfectly stated, what we witness as children relationship-wise either becomes our norm or our aversion. But is it our choice which one of those we gravitate towards? I'm inclined to say it's at least partially our decision. Sure, there are some seeds planted so deep that we can't dig them out and expel them no matter how hard we try. But as we get older and decide for ourselves what's right and what's wrong, we gain a better understanding of how to avoid such behaviors. And that's when it becomes our choice.
I don't recall every detail of my upbringing thanks to the damage to the old noggin, but there are some things you just never forget. I was about 7 when my mom told us who our father was, but she was very vague about the details of everything. We did know he had several children from several different women, but did not find out until after his death that he'd been in touch with all of them - except the three of us. In my youth, I didn't think much of my father. I knew I had one, I knew what he did for a living, and I knew I'd encountered him only once and after about a month, his phone calls an interest in us waned. To be honest, it didn't bother me much. My uncles and Y's dad were my male role models and most of them were much better fathers than the one I had. Even then, I saw my father's absence in my life as a blessing and not a curse because I'd rather be a kid who never knew my father, than a kid always waiting for dad to approve of me or be a part of my life. If there'd been a crack in that door and always hope that he'd be an actual parent to me, I'd have been devastated that it never happened. But exiting my life was the best thing he could've done, I expected nothing and wasn't disappointed when that's all I got. Because of the situation with my father, I knew I didn't want to be that way; multiple baby mamas, kids I never saw, living the rock star lifestyle without regard for the families I was creating. His absence gave me the resolve to make sure I would be the best, most present father ever, no matter how fatherhood came to me. And it's a resolve that was tested when Miss N arrived the way she did. Even with the unexpectedness and the fact that I was still a man child myself at the time, I was averse to being anything other than present everyday for my little girl.
You'll notice I said most of my father figures were great, but not all. My Prodigal Son uncle was the complete opposite of the rest of the dudes I grew up with. He knocked up a chick, they entered an ill-fated marriage where he cheated left and right, had another kid together and then divorced. She took the kids and moved out of state and, while the rest of our family tried to maintain ties and see the kids as often as possible (these were the family's first grandkids), he saw the divorce as liberation. He spent a few years as a single dude, banging every chick in sight, before meeting someone else, knocking her up and getting married. And guess what? Yep, he cheated left and right there too and she left him, though continued to make him be a part of the kid's life. When I was young, he would come around and visit sparingly and always with a new gal pal on his arm. It was sort of the unspoken rule amongst the rest of us not to talk about the chick from the week before, whom we were all sure he was still seeing on the side anyway. He never had just one chick to run to. I remember being very aware of how I didn't want to end up like that when I grew up. I didn't want to have a parade of chicks in and out of my life every other day. The next two decades brought him several more marriages (like, almost double digits now), all of them ending in shady ways. Most let him go without a fight, knowing he'd cheated the whole way through, but when one cheated on him, he pulled the plug and became an even bigger bastard because of it (it was all very, "how dare you cheat on me!" because his ego is just that big). The second to last chick he was married to was no fool and is still dragging his ass through the courts to get her half of the cash, which infuriates him (or so I hear, we don't speak). Witnessing his antics growing up made me terrified of ending up the way he had. Sure, an endless parade of chicks doesn't seem to bad, but there was something about it, maybe the extreme ego boost it gave him, that just rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't want to become that kind of guy, that arrogant. As is documented here on the blog, I have my fun with ladies, but nowhere near on the scale of PS uncle. I don't like drama, so I don't date more than one chick at a time. I've never cheated on anyone in my life (or, as is the saying amongst my peeps, I will cheat on board games or tests with no regrets, but never on another person). I didn't jump into what would've surely been a short marriage with MOC just because we had a child together, and that saved all involved a major headache. I guess this one is kind of a draw. I don't have an extreme aversion to manwhoring, but I'm not your typical, do anything in a skirt kinda manwhore either. Most people are taken aback when they hear the details of my manwhoring escapades because it doesn't quite fit with their view of a manwhore. The ladies have always been my weakness, and maybe they always will be. That's just part of who I am. But it's my choice to not let it become a matter of a different chick every day of the week.
You know when you become super aware of how much your childhood affected your adulthood? When you have a kid. The older they get, the more questions they ask and the more you realize they see and comprehend so much more than we give them credit for. Most of what I think about my uncle and father, I originally thought when I was just a kid. Miss N is 7 now (or almost 7 and a half, as she likes to say) and MOC and I hope that she doesn't remember most of the drama between us when she was really little. Once we both got ourselves on track, we agreed that the most important thing is raising our child to the best of our abilities. We're a family and even though we don't all live under the same roof, hopefully Miss N knows she has three people who would jump in front of a bus for her. I hope to be all loved up with my lobster sooner rather than later, but if that's not meant to be, I hope my not "settling down" doesn't have a negative effect on her. And I hope MOC and Gio's relationship has a positive effect on her. Someday she'll hear the story about mom's first husband, and mom's childhood and how she turned the whole thing around. I hope the takeaway from that is yes, our childhood plays a part in our adult relationships, but even if our childhood is negative, it does not mean we're doomed to fail as adults. We make our own choices and those choices dictate where our life ends up.
