It's Parents Weekend, and students are introducing their new boyfriends and girlfriends to Mom and Dad. Instead of writing about the awkward, anxiety-provoking mess that often ensues on this weekend, I thought I would dig in to how our parents?yes, our parents?shape our romantic relationships.
College is where many of us experience our first serious relationships. But from whom do we learn how to be in a relationship? For many of us, we learn a lot about what kinds of partners we want to be, and don't want to be, from our parents.
Like it or not, our parents have played a major role in shaping our opinions and behaviors regarding relationships. After all, theirs have been the only ones we've witnessed on a day-to-day basis for the past 18 to 22 years of our lives. Some of us were lucky?we learned from witnessing a healthy relationship. Others learned too, but from being around the static and tension that came with Mom and Dad's rocky relationship. Those people now know what they don't want their own relationships to be.
With their parents in mind, some friends have confided in me that they would never marry as young as their parents did. Still, others have parents who were high school sweethearts who are more open to marrying at a young age. One girlfriend said, "My parents got engaged after knowing each other for only 12 days. I guess I believe in soul mates and love at first sight." According to the U.S. Census in May 2006, the median age for men to get married for the first time is 27.1, while the median for women is 25.8 (up from 23.2 and 20.8, respectively, 25 years ago). Some say that one in five of you will marry another Bowdoin student, while the nation's divorce rate is at a worrisome 50 percent. Bowdoin, are you listening? I'm not advocating it, but let's face it, could some of us be headed towards another trouble phenomena, "starter marriages?" (Having said that, my aunt and uncle met at Bowdoin 30 years ago and are still happily married today.)
One rather cynical friend said he doesn't ever want to get married.
"I've watched my father get re-married four times, twice to the same woman...I don't think I even believe in marriage," he said.
A bitter, over-caffeinated friend, who has discussed her parents' influence at length with her therapist, said she grew up with what many self-help books call an "absent father."
"My shrink says I choose boyfriends who are commitment-phobic and distant because my father abandoned me as a child. I guess there might be something there," she said.
Many Bowdoin women whom I spoke with said they often find themselves with men whose personalities remind them of their fathers. One jokingly said, "The fact that I'm dating and going to marry my dad is kind of scary."
A guy friend, who experienced the dissolution of his parents' marriage after his mother's extramarital affair, said the importance of being a loyal, faithful partner will always be of the utmost importance to him.
I know that I have learned a lot about relationships from my parents, especially from my mother. I was five years old when my parents divorced and my mother became a single mom. For the next eight years I watched my mother go through the ups and downs of raising two young children by herself, while rebuilding both her career and her personal life. I think I may not have fully realized the effect her experiences have had on me until I came to college and was faced with relationships of my own. In the most fundamental way, what I have taken from watching her throughout my entire childhood and adolescence is the importance of being able to take care of yourself. I've learned that you can't love someone else until you love yourself.
Like many kids of our generation, I've seen what a divorce can do to both the two parties involved, but I have also been lucky enough to experience the making of a new family. Almost 20 years after my mother married my dad when she was 23, she is now remarried to a wonderful man, raising their six-year-old son, and has forged a second career as a TV producer (she's even got five Emmy awards.) What have I taken from my parents' first marriage? Biased as I may be, I don't think I would ever consider getting married at such a young age. More importantly, I have learned from my mother the value of independence and self-awareness in a relationship.
Like any other human being on this planet, our parents are not perfect. They make mistakes just like we do, and God knows they can be annoying. So, we have two options: We can praise them for teaching us how to respect our partners, or we can blame them for totally messing us up. Tonight, or over the weekend, as you sit across from you mom and dad, dad and step-mom, or single mom and boyfriend, ask them: what works for you? We want to know.