By Sarah Murnane
How far should someone else be involved in your relationship? Some people believe that any relationship is purely between the two people engaged, and that any fallout or heartbreak is solely felt by the two individuals romantically involved. I think that I have come to disagree. A relationship affects everyone around you: your friends that are forced to accept this new person in their lives, your colleagues who have to watch you be happy everyday, and interestingly, your family. We fall in and out of relationships with different people throughout our lives, but so do the people around you who know them too. What happens when you really get on with a friend’s ex-boyfriend? Or if an ex-partner was at a family event like a wedding and is in all the photos forever. There appears to be an untapped complexity here about how we should handle this.
The part of this that engages me the most is the dynamic that develops with people and their parents. Of course, some individual’s parents are completely out of their lives and have zero influence over their decisions. But, for the rest of us, navigating parental relationships can be tricky. If you are a young adult still living at home under your parents roof, how do you build a lasting relationship with someone without personal space? As ‘cool’ as a parent can be, few are going to accept a home with no rules.
Besides this, I sense that there is a growing complacency and normalisation of the close parent-child relationship, and now it is potentially becoming too close. I view it as the Gilmore Girls effect; parents went from being an oppositional force in their child’s life, imposing rules and values, to wanting to build a connection with their child closer to that of a friend. In this case a parent is something you tell everything too, generally intended to be without judgement. This can last through teenage years I believe. Adolescence is tumultuous and it is wise to advocate for strong personal relationships. This comes with a caveat however, that there is a distinct line between a parent-child relationship and one that is totally bizarre.
This is not about having a difficult or tumultuous relationship with your family, it is about breaking out of a cycle of allowing another person to dictate your life choices. As a child this makes sense, but by the time you are twenty you should be able to stand on your own two feet to some extent. If you have a particularly bad break-up, of course everyone wants their childhood bed and hug from their parents. Yet, there is a resilience in being able to handle your life and emotions without the safety net of home that I think is underemphasised.
P.S. If my mother is reading this, this doesn’t apply to you of course.