When’s the last time you had a fight with your spouse? Was it the time he left his wet bathing suit at the bottom of the hamper for a week? The time she forgot to mention her 3-day work trip until the day before? The seventy-sixth time he said, “ask mom,” when mini-him wanted Doritos for dinner?
You think these fights are about the fact that you didn’t use your therapist-approved “I sentences”? Hahhahaha, how bourgeois. They are actually about not being able to afford a 24/7 housekeeper. Money planning, and not having enough of it, can get in the way of closeness. Here’s some options for how to think about shared finances, and how to set up those conversations for success:
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Being forced to loosen the parenting reins has done wonders for my child.
I remember when my eldest entered high school four years ago. It was unchartered territory and I felt it was my responsibility to help him navigate everything, from his social life to his homework to the amount of time he spent on his phone. I was never a helicopter parent, but I did have a certain level of involvement in what my son did back then.
Fast forward to this year and my daughter beginning her high school journey. So much has changed in the past couple of years: I’ve separated from my husband, my son is off to college, and I’m working longer hours than ever before. Finding time to micro-manage my daughter’s life just isn’t in play, and honestly, that’s turning into a win for us both.
To sum it up: I am dropping a lot of balls.
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First of all, I can almost guarantee that I’m ruining my child as I type this, so please know that I’m not an expert in anything. Truly. I haven’t even officially logged my required 10,000 hours of parenting to become Malcom Gladwell-certified.
So if I’m not an expert, why write this? Good question. And here’s the answer: Something I am slowly but steadily becoming an expert on, is myself. My reactions, my triggers, my stunningly cavernous gaps in my ability to connect, my lack of empathy, and my sad truth that most of my basic emotional needs were not met as a child. And through that painful process, I have stumbled on some universal truths around what human beings need in order to feel safe and seen and alive. And by “stumbled on” I mean “spent thousands of dollars on therapy to figure out how the fuck to be a good parent.”
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“It’s a girl!” my partner exclaimed, as he gently pulled our first baby from my body.
A girl. I knew it was a girl. I mean I didn’t actually know, but I knew it was because sometimes you just know these things. After nine months of anticipation, ten days past my due date, 67 hours of labor and really my whole life of wondering what it would be like if I had a baby, she was finally here. Seven pounds, six ounces and 20 inches of a being that was half of me, half of him and 100% all her.
But as she lay on my chest, mouth agape and eyes wide, I looked at her and…well…I just looked at her. I’m sure I murmured something like “Hi baby!” or “Thank you for finally joining us!” but I don’t really remember. It wasn’t significant. It wasn’t the elation of a new mother finally meeting her daughter for the first time. It wasn’t baby talk or happy tears or a smothering of kisses all over her tiny, round, slightly birth-battered face. It was just a baby.
I remember being so bewildered when I first laid eyes on her and as I continued to stare at her throughout the next few days. Who was this person? For some reason, I had envisioned birthing this chip off the old block and then immediately knowing who it was. Like “Yes! There you are. Of course it was you. I knew you all along.” But something must’ve been amiss. I must have miscalculated the mom-to-baby insta-bond because this…THIS! This was a stranger. And I was pretty sure I didn’t love it.
Yes. My own child. That I conceived, carried and brought forth into the world. I didn’t love her.
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There is always a trigger event. That’s what it’s called. “The Trigger Event.” The thing that makes you fly completely off the handle. The trigger event could be a plethora of different things. It may be that you’re late for school drop off and your kid can’t find their shoes. It could be siblings fighting over who gets the “good spoon.” Perhaps it’s someone’s nonstop whining about how hungry they are while the baby is crying and you’re trying to just get the spaghetti made. Or maybe it’s just some dirty socks on the floor. Whatever the occurrence, whatever the size — you. are. pissed.
Moms. We are warm, nurturing, accepting and generous human beings. But we are also full of rage. I’m not talking about bad days. About bad weeks even. Or about phases of children’s development that we haven’t yet figured out how to manage. I’m talking about those of us who are pissed off on the regular. Of course, it’s not all of us; there are plenty of mothers with patient, rational brains running the show.
But right around every corner of calm, there is a red-faced mother on the verge of an explosion.
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The other day my mom was like, “Riding has been good for you,” which is her way of saying, “You’re less of a B lately.”
She’s right. I’m 36, and since quitting gymnastics at age sixteen, I’ve pursued various joyless forms of wellness. I muddled through my 20s with hobbies like facials, shopping, wine, bad decisions, bartending, worse decisions, every fitness trend in the book, and even more mind-bogglingly bad decisions. Somehow, I never turned into a better person.
Until I had my daughter.
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“That looks stupid.”
I actually said those words to my seven-year-old daughter before I could stop them from flying out of my mouth. We had an event to attend with people we hadn’t seen in a long time and I really wanted everyone to look their best. But my daughter was insistent on wearing this tacky, hideous headband that she’d fished out of a prize box at the dentist. Or maybe she’d taken it home as a party favor or collected it from some other childhood event that supplies you with all the ugliest crap you never wanted.
So instead of acting like a self-actualized adult, I went in for the kill. Straight for her looks - the jugular of girlhood - and one area I swore I’d never touch. You know how you have those things that screwed you up as a kid that you promise on all of the holy things that you won’t repeat? This was (one) of mine. And I regurgitated it like I hadn’t had thirty plus years to digest it.
I mean I tried to be the good mom when she first appeared wearing the offending accessory. I utilized all the respectful parenting techniques when my patience was still intact. I gave her options of other sequin-free hair pieces. I offered to put her hair in a braid or bun or another style that rational people wear. I asked her if she could accessorize with the flair of her choice the following day and just do me this one favor. But instead she stomped around the house like an enraged elephant until we were late and my head was about to actually pop off. She was hurt that I was challenging her right to fashion independence and I was angry that I wasn’t in control. And so I said “it,” just as a child would. To my child. Then after I simultaneously stunned and gutted her, she yelled “FINE!” back at me and gave in. It was done. She looked cute and sane and I, of course, now had a classy child, not one of those sparkle and shine heathens.
My outburst was never spoken of again.
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I’m not even going to make you scroll to get to what the “one thing” is.
It’s sarcasm.
But sarcasm is fun! It’s funny! It’s easy! People boast about how “sarcastic” they are on their Hinge profiles to show what a great hang they are!
But using sarcasm with your partner during conflict is completely ineffective, distancing, maddening, unhelpful, and turns out to be one of the biggest predictors of divorce.
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Ah, adulthood. Along with taxes, weird morning pain, garbage metabolisms, and sudden changes in hair texture, we also have to figure out how to fully and completely take responsibility for our behavior when we act wretchedly towards other people.
And that usually comes in some form of an apology.
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There is no shortage of articles discouraging constant screaming (or raising one’s voice) in relationships, especially when parenting. We all scream, of course. Why? In a TIME article from 2015 on scream science, the reporter writes, “Screaming serves not only to convey danger but also to induce fear in the listener and heighten awareness for both screamer and listener to respond to their environment.” This we already know. What most of us do care about is when that practice is considered acceptable, normal, or actually abusive behavior. (No one can excuse the latter.) Though it isn’t fair to judge other’s personal relationships without taking into account the context and people involved. Cultural norms vary; what’s considered screaming versus talking loudly, or dare I use the word healthy communication, in one household can be completely out of sync with another’s. Some obviously may gasp at the thought of familial relationships surviving and thriving when a household’s volume is often high, but to them, I say, “Ours has!”
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