God bless my parents, I love them, but man oh man, did they ever skew my views on what a healthy relationship is. For the first seven years of my life, I witnessed them fight like five-year-olds whose toy had been ripped from their hands. There were never civilized conversations or moments where I witnessed them work through problems in a non-confrontational way. And after they divorced, I witnessed dating habits that made me think, “Jesus, I don’t know if I ever want to be in a relationship, let alone get married. It just looks like a lot of hurt.”
The biggest problem I picked up on? Communication. I did not have a clue what communication meant, what it looked like to clearly articulate what I was feeling without going hysterical. I didn’t know how to listen and appreciate where the other person was coming from. I was (and parts of me still are) a mess.
I have witnessed similar problems among friends whose relationship habits are almost mirror images to their parents; or in sometimes dangerous, unhealthy ways, they are complete opposites because they are so afraid of becoming their parents.
I realized I had picked up on my parents’ habits after getting in a fight with an ex. I don’t remember what the fight was about (I was in high school so it couldn’t have been too serious), but I remember thinking to myself, “Holy Shit, this is exactly what my parents do!” I was in a panic. I felt doomed, overwhelmed, scared that I would be this way forever. I thought it would be impossible to have a civil conversation with someone. I felt destined to a life of yelling matches with my future partners.
I continued dating guys who would fight back with me. And when I dated someone who would try to be calm and rational, I got bored because it was too civilized. I needed passion. I needed to fight. I needed to get my point across by acting like some psycho bitch. I didn’t like that I was that way, but there I was, wiping the tears from my face after a huge fight, feeling drained, and thinking to myself, “There has to be a better way to deal with this.”
Like any normal person, I had issues with my parents that I had to reconcile. So, they are bad at communicating. Does that make them bad people? No. What could I learn from them, though? Certainly there was something that made their relationship work during their 25 years together. I thought about it for a long time. It actually took me days to think of one thing that I could appreciate about the two of them together. They loved each other deeply, almost to a fault, but their passion for each other was unquestionable. Part of the reason they fought so much was because they wanted the person that they loved to understand where they were coming from. However, that passion clouded their ability to be civilized with each other.
I realized that, like my parents, I’m a very passionate person, and when I love someone, I love hard. Heck, even when I just like someone I still care for them on a deeper level than a “normal” person probably would. It’s just part of my personality; my job is to learn how to manage it.
Recently, I was tested on how to react to someone I’m dating. From now on, I’ll refer to him as “Mr. Good Sport” because he’s put up with my craziness. Mr. Good Sport had led me to believe he was going to a friend’s house one night. When I got to his house later on, he looked distressed, as if he had just witnessed a puppy getting crushed by a car. “Hi,” I said to him, trying to figure out what was going on. “We need to talk,” he said. I’ve always hated the “we need to talk” line. It just bugs me. Anyway, we go sit on his front porch and I can see that he’s struggling to tell me what it is he wants to say. The old me wanted to blurt out, “Get to the fucking point,” as he continued searching for words. I wanted to jump to conclusions about what he was going to say. I wanted to start crying even though he hadn’t said anything yet. I wanted it to be dramatic, as if I were living in a movie. But I remembered how often that has not worked in any of my relationships, so I did something very hard for me: I listened. When he did say what he needed to, I found out he was at his ex-girlfriend’s house searching for closure. I wanted to get angry. I wanted to say, “You are such a jerk.” But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get mad. Was I hurt that he had felt the need to lie to me beforehand? Yes. But after we talked for a few minutes, and I actually heard what he said and processed it, it became impossible for me to get angry.
This moment made me realize that it is possible for me to not act like a crazy person when dating someone. I’m sure my parents could have learned this at some point in their marriage had they taken the time to listen. I bet they even missed out on a lot with each other because their passion and desire to be understood got lost in translation and was mistaken for ugliness and pure anger.
I talked to my mom about her marriage with my father. I asked her what it was that caused the break down of communication. She replied with a very honest answer that made their tumultuous relationship easier to understand:
I came from a very broken family, your dad came from a different culture. We married one another without knowing if we had common ground that could be built upon. Your dad and I had very different interests in our world, that was almost never shared on my side. Though we shared certain values about marriage and life, it was not enough when the values were finally broke down to an unbearable load. That is what you witnessed as a child, the break down. You never got to witness how we tried to work things out before or anything about our hopes and dreams as a couple. That is totally our fault.
Our parents have a great influence in our life, no matter how hard we might try to reject that. It is useful to understand the stories of our parents before they got married, which enables to us to understand why they operate in relationships as they do. The point is, we can choose what traits we pick up from our parents. Sometimes it will be harder to get rid of certain habits, but habits can be broken. Maybe instead of focusing on all the things our parents did wrong we can try to find positive things about their relationships. And if your parents are completely crazy and there’s no way in hell you’d ever take a page out of their book, try to emulate couples that you admire. Trust me, they are out there, you just have to pay attention. And never be afraid to evaluate your own behavior. Me realizing that I act like a fool sometimes made it easier for me stop acting like one. I guess I can thank my parents for teaching me what I don’t want, forcing me to think about what I do.
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