Comments on: What Did Your Parents Teach You about Relationships? (A Discussion)

By: Learning from Your Parents – a Poll (but first a poem) | Sex, Lies & Dating in the City

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:51:46 +0000

[...] now on to business. Earlier this week I found an amazing post called What Did Your Parents Teach You About Relationships (A Discussion) in Onely: Single and Happy. It really made me think about what my parents taught me about [...]

By: onely

onely — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:51:11 +0000

Interesting that your parents didn’t criticize your relationship status, but rather your friends–and that they eschewed your tendencies towards dating in favor of other hobbies. All while having a very interdependent relationship themselves. Could they have been trying to protect you from something about their lifestyle that they didn’t like, and/or couldn’t extricate themselves from? Or am I making too much of a V.C. Andrews novel out of this?
Christina

By: onely

onely — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:03:35 +0000

Wow, it seems like you all have such varied responses to this question — much like the three of us did! I do think that we all learn something about relationships from seeing those around us thrive — or shrivel — in theirs. I’m no psychologist, but it’s certainly worth remembering so we can better understand ourselves and the decisions we make.

Thanks, also, Simone and Keysha, for linking to us!!

– Lisa

By: Simone Grant

Simone Grant — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:08:45 +0000

Amazing post. Made me think – a lot. Hope you don’t mind but I just linked to it from my blog.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:27:14 +0000

This is a very interesting post because I’ve been puzzled by how I ended up drinking the matrimania cool-aid. Maybe it’s because my parents seem to have a good marriage that it never occurred to me until I was almost 40 that I could just choose to be single! I did have an uncle who chose to be single – at least from what I’ve heard, I never had a chance to actually talk with him about it (he died a few years ago). Or maybe it’s being steeped in matrimania in society. It’s probably “all of the above” and it might be very difficult to sort out what’s what.

I think overall, we’re creating new ways of living, of relating, which makes living single exciting but also scary. The role models for a successful (happy) single life are rare… To me that makes it even more important to connect with other single folks, especially older ones, who can replace our parents as default role models (or add to them).