5 of 100 - Long Loves

Today my 19-year-old daughter and I were talking about some of my past relationships. The topic of my “drug dealer” boyfriend came up and she was shocked that we dated for three years. The topic then moved to my “sober” boyfriend, whom I dated for two years. Knowing her dad had also had a few long-term relationships before marrying, she commented that apparently none of her dad’s and my dating patterns rubbed off on any of our children.

She was alluding to the fact that, with just a few exceptions, neither she nor her older brother had stayed in any relationship for more than a few months during high school and later. She dated a boy off and on for around eight months her senior year, but that relationship was an anomaly. Her brother’s longest relationship lasted just a few months.

And she’s right. While many of their friends keep girlfriends and boyfriends for a year or longer, my children bounce from attraction to attraction like sampling entrees at a buffet. Once, when indicating he was thinking of ending a relationship, my son confessed that even when he liked a girl he was dating, within a few months he realized that there were others just as or even more interesting to meet and get to know.

Did I fail to supply some fundamental ability to bond with another human being? Have I, in my parenting ignorance, deprived them of the need for human companionship? Their father’s and my relationship had not been perfect, but it was never ugly, and even though we're divorced now, we still respect and care for each other. And after years of wondering about this, I have reached a conclusion.

My children were spared my insecurities. For some reason, although I came from a stable, loving, and supportive family, every boy I dated felt like the only one who would ever love me, so I hung on to him as long as I could. Instead of acknowledging or admitting the incompatibilities, the fading attraction, the signs of impending disaster, I would stick it out and hope the initial passion, the initial infatuation, the initial connection would come back and it would all be wonderful again. Imagining no other possibilities of love, I was sure each relationship was the “right” one.

I’ve decided this tenacity I had in trying to make fading love revive and renew stemmed from a fundamental feeling that only a few can care for me, and if I found a man who seemed to do so, I better hang on to him. This basic insecurity is deeply ingrained still, and I’ve found similar feelings as a newly single woman after years of marriage. Apparently, the lessons inherent in these experiences were not learned all those years ago, and now are being revisited. But I’m more aware now. My children teach me today – their self-confidence and willingness to trust that if a relationship does not fulfill all it promises in the fresh innocence of its first breaths, it is okay to let it go. That we are, all of us, fundamentally lovable. That connections don’t have to last forever to be valuable, and that the universe holds promise in its uncertainty.

So yes, Anna, you and your brother and sister are different. You do not believe you need the same things we thought we needed. And I hope you go on trusting that you don’t have to hold onto a relationship that has ripened past its prime and you will welcome new connections and experiences as they come to you.

And I, I will learn from you this time.