G and I had an interesting conversation today. She wondered out loud if her aversion to staying put in a good relationship has to do with her childhood. Her dad was divorced with kids when he met her mom and then they had kids of their own. The whole family was pretty tight-knit even though her oldest siblings were almost two decades older than her. But she doesn't recall her parents' relationship ever being 100% great. They didn't often fight in front of the kids but little ears have a way of hearing more than we think they can. She remembers thinking some of their fights were comical and it didn't strike her until they divorced that all the fighting was legit. Once they did finally split up, she and the sibs lived with her mom and saw dad every other weekend. Things remain civil and relatively peaceful between her parents now, mostly because they rarely see one another. The last time they interacted was years ago when G's brother died and everyone went to the funeral. I recall some awkwardness at the actual funeral but it didn't go beyond that because mom didn't go to the reception. Dad has since remarried, gained some grown step-kids and found himself occasionally estranged from his own kids for various reasons, the most common one being that he feels they all favor their mother/step-mother over him.
G considers our relationship to be the only truly functional one she's ever been in (I know, scary huh?). When things were good between us, they were great and when they were bad, they were awful and we were usually apart. I've been looking back on some of my journals from that time and I can see what she's talking about when she says her childhood affected how she deals with men. I didn't know it at the time, and maybe she didn't either since we were both so young, but I was working so hard to hold onto us in vain. Nothing I did, nothing we patched up was ever going to be good enough for her and it's not because I wasn't good enough or the relationship was lacking in some fatalistic way. She just had some sort of block that prevented her from taking it all in. The irony is that I don't know a single person who is more about love than she is. It's something that drives her. But it's also something she can't always accept when it's thrown her way. Fortunately, she is choosing to break the cycle when it comes to her little dude. She's not surrounding him with temporary men or situations, only the best of everything, and I'm so proud of her for that.
G considers our relationship to be the only truly functional one she's ever been in (I know, scary huh?). When things were good between us, they were great and when they were bad, they were awful and we were usually apart. I've been looking back on some of my journals from that time and I can see what she's talking about when she says her childhood affected how she deals with men. I didn't know it at the time, and maybe she didn't either since we were both so young, but I was working so hard to hold onto us in vain. Nothing I did, nothing we patched up was ever going to be good enough for her and it's not because I wasn't good enough or the relationship was lacking in some fatalistic way. She just had some sort of block that prevented her from taking it all in. The irony is that I don't know a single person who is more about love than she is. It's something that drives her. But it's also something she can't always accept when it's thrown her way. Fortunately, she is choosing to break the cycle when it comes to her little dude. She's not surrounding him with temporary men or situations, only the best of everything, and I'm so proud of her for that.
While I agreed with G that yes, our childhoods do play a significant part in how we handle relationships as adults, I felt the need to point out that a crap childhood isn't an excuse to be a dick in adulthood. I haven't been involved with a lot of people who have tried to excuse their ridiculous behavior with equally ridiculous stories of what they witnessed growing up but the one time I was it was quite the education. What we experience in childhood, whether it be how our father treats our mother or how our parents handle conflict, is beyond our control. How we choose to apply those lessons as adults, however, is completely under our control. I could treat women like crap and excuse it with, "Well my dad was absent so I never learned how to treat a woman". There's some truth to that statement since I didn't witness many, if any, functional romantic relationships growing up. But I was raised with respect and knowing how to treat people in general and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you treat someone you're dating that much better. My problems in past relationships have been because I couldn't get out of my own way, or because I was in a selfish phase of my life, but never have they resulted from childhood crap. That said, I do feel for people who didn't have the happiest of childhoods. In my opinion that should be the one time you're able to be carefree and not have any weight on your shoulders. Kids should be kids, even if they end up being smartass kids like Miss N. I feel quite fortunate to have avoided any major traumas in my childhood, fortunate to not have had to navigate dueling parents or being forced to make adult decisions way before I was capable of doing so (cuz let's face it, I'm barely capable of doing so now at 35). That's becoming even more of a luxury nowadays that far too few little ones are afforded.
