WHEN THE RELATIONSHIP IS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP

Freshman Update – people keep asking me how is Taylor doing, are we speaking? Yes, we are. Things are fine. She seems to be engrossed in her studies, at least from what she tells me. She was up reading Tagore at two the other morning; I was very impressed by that I must say. And we just had a back and forth about Hedda Gabler.  That is what a parent wants from a student at college; to make that leap to realizing learning can be fun, that answers to many of our own questions can be retrieved from the minds and works of others.  So all is quiet on the Boston front. We are all going up this weekend for parent’s weekend so I will blog from there.

Most of you reading this are old enough to remember that time when you were dating– or perhaps some of you still are– when you got a point in a relationship when the dialogue about the relationship was in fact the entire relationship. In fact the relationship becomes entirely about the relationship.

It usually comes at the point when the couple is moving from dating to being in a “relationship” — a potentially murky transition. So the female (not to gender generalize here, but it is usually the female) starts talking endlessly about the state of the relationship, the meaning of the relationship, where the relatiohip is in fact going, is it going somewhere?   One  lives inside the relationship through more dialogue about it than actually living it.

Men for the most part despise this – again, some get just as involved, but relationships are not usually men’s favorite topics of discussion.

But at this stage in the relationship they put up with it as it is usually the time they are getting the most sex.

Note to girls  - when you get to this point you have to balance the endless relationship patter with putting out a lot.

Now if a relationship gets past this crucial point, chances are it can move on to the next stage, which is “we are in a real  relationship” and the couple feels secure enough about its stability that the endless chatter about it ceases being necessary.

Well I must say I find in blogging, especially when one blogs the way I do in such a personal way, it is a relationship. I have a relationship to the blog, the blog itself is about relationships, and my readers have a relationship to the material I put out there.

So I have found of late to be in the middle of that place where many, not all by far, but many people have become more involved about talking about the “blog” not in terms of content but like a relationship, will it survive? Why I am doing it?  Should I be doing it? Where will it lead? Are people getting hurt/upset by my being so open and digging so deep? Some people, very few, only one really said it was time to end the relationship.

What’s happened is for some people the content is being ignored and the idea of it, or its mere existence has taken over.

I am many things, some people may find me foolish, but I am not a fool. I know exactly what I am doing.

I started this blog to chronicle a year in the life of a mother and daughter as she leaves home for college, as the first giant step of the separation into adulthood takes place, the emotional effects it has on the mother, the daughter and the family as a whole.

It’s about expectations, patterns being broken, new ones forming and the relationship, what happens with the relationship? Since this is the point  it probably makes the the most radical shift it ever will.

The reason it has had an impact on people is I’m not alone here; millions of families go through this all in different ways, yet many of the same ways apply to all.

But like many things in the world of reality things happen that can not be counted on, it’s why I think reality TV has taken over scripted. You can never script what you actually live, as you don’t get to reshoot when you screw up, you have to live with it and keep on moving froward while dealing with the mistakes.

As Taylor and I adjust to our new world order, other things will crop up.

It’s the relationship between a mother and a daughter.  I am an only daughter, my mother was an only daughter, and I behave certain ways at certain times because of things in my own past. In an attempt to avoid certain land minds, the chord of curiosity had pulled me in the direction of my family’s past to find answers about myself, my relationship with my mother and in turn the only way I can figure out any of those things is to look back in time because as we saw last week these things begin in a time and place long before we come into the world.

I had many of my personality traits, some good,  some not so good in place long before Taylor came into the world. She in turn sometimes must deal with them. Just as her children will be forced do deal with some of the residue from my past.

For me being a student of human behavior mostly my own and my families it is fascinating stuff.  I may find answers, I may not; I felt I did last week, at least the beginning of some.

Someone wrote to me, someone who wants me to stop immediately if not sooner, but they have a dog in the fight and their reason was “looking at the past won’t help.” Well, I don’t agree with that.

And then we find ourselves back talking about the relationship.

I don’t really care about the people who want me to stop as they do not care about me and their motives are purely selfish.
The only person whose feelings I care about in this whole thing is Taylor and that is where I am willing to discuss the relationship aspect of it all and we have and we are and that is fine.

I’m not out to hurt my mother, but by her not talking to me and my family hiding so much of what went on in the past I am forced, being me, to go out there and excavate.  My mother, despite all our problems has many good qualities, and in an another blog on another day I will share them.

But it’s about what I’m doing, not that I’m doing it that ultimately is important to me.

And some people really get it.

I got this from my Tracey.Jackson. (Taylor’s Taylor.Templeton has not weighed in. I wonder if Glenn has a Glenn.Horowitz?)

“You have such a probing, questioning heart and mind – you quest more for

the feeling of the person to see how their truth matches up with yours.

Follow what your heart and mind tell you to do.”
When I get things like that it not only makes my day, but proves to me the relationship must move on to the next phase, that of permanency.

I got this from my friend Justine in the UK.

“If your mother was reading this…well, God, imagine if every daughter dug this deep into understanding the pathology of their family behavior.

And Larry is just the guru man – being able to gather in all the information, and then to realize that we still don’t know – that place of not knowing is about as powerful as it gets, as long as we can sit still in it for long enough to get it. “

Not to sound like Sally Field in one of the most over quoted moments of the last twenty –five years.  They get me, they really, really get me.”

And then there is Larry who as Justine says has turned into the Guru of this blog.

“How honest you are. What an amazing ability to let me feel and visualize actually being you. It would take me six years with the same shrink to be able share what you do with the world.”

So, if my digging into my past and making some people squirm is one result but this is the other, which one would you pick?

If my mother would actually talk to me, I would not have to dig into her past to protect my future. If she and her mother had been more open and upfront with each other, that could be left alone as well.

Familes love to live in the dark, I hear this all the time. They also assume everyone else is having an easier go of it than they are.

This is so not true. I spent my childhood peeking into windows trying to see if others were happier and better adjusted than we were.I ended up years later finding out many for the most part were not.

Our families are one of the major contributors to who we are biologically and psychologically – the mothers I know who had good mothers often times have an easier time mothering, the same holds true with fathers.

At the end of the day we are each responsible for ourselves.
We have to choose the life we want and map out the person we want to be and work hard every day to make sure that happens. If it requires digging into what has come before, so be it.

I want to be a good mother. I really do. I make mistakes, but I try. I want my children to feel close to me and that I am there for them as long as I am on this planet and when I am gone I want them to look back and be happy that they had me in their lives.

I want to be a cool grandma with tons of kids and dogs scattered around the house on Long Island.

It’s my job to make that happen. It’s my relationship if you will and it’s a real one at this stage.

Lesson for the day, sometimes if your family has refused to go into therapy or master self-awareness their kids will end up doing it for them.

FRESHMAN MOM