Parents and attitudes to dating

[Guest]

I wrote something similar to the below in the Random Thoughts thread a while ago, but I've decided to post it here in order to open it up to discussion and feedback.

In my family, dating (and even having a social life of any kind) was always a highly contentious issue. When my older sister was 26, my mother went batshit crazy when my sister dared to start dating online. First she started her usual soap-opera style rants, not even calling my sister by her name, but rather calling her "girl", as in "Don't you talk back to me like that, girl!". After that phase came the silent treatment. Things eventually returned to "normal", which I strongly suspect to be very different in my family than what most other families would call "normal". A couple of years later my older sister got married to the same guy who she had started dating back at 26, and my mother claimed that she was much better about dating.

Yet, a few years later, when my younger sister was 21 or 22, my mother talked about how "I am so glad the only people she knows are on the internet, and they're so far away she'll never actually meet them". Yes, that is to the best of my recollection, the exact quote. A while later, when my sister met a guy online who she wanted to pursue a relationship with in real life, my mother again went batshit crazy, and begged me to find a way to stop her from meeting him. I heard later that the only way my sister actually got to do as she wanted was to threaten to leave and cut all ties with my mother (my sisters and I had already cut all ties with our father, who was his own brand of paranoid batshit crazy).

I keep going over it in my mind all the time, even now that years have passed, wondering what my mother was thinking. If my sisters weren't old enough for those things in their early-to-mid 20s, then when the hell did my mother think they'd be old enough?

When did your parents feel comfortable in you dating and having relationships? Or if they weren't "comfortable", when did they at least accept it? What would be "average" in most families?

[Guest]

Ya know that's a good question. My dad in particular doesn't care; though when he was moving out two years ago, he did ask me once when I was gonna start dating. All I could do was shrug.

My mother... I honestly have never really talked to her about it and she's never asked. I just kinda keep that to myself.

[Wondering]

My parents would have been okay with it when I was 16. I didn't have a boyfriend then and wasn't ever asked out, but that was the age when they became okay with the idea of me going to school dances with a date and stuff like that.

[Enail]

My parents gave any opinions on it and neither me nor my sister dated until after high school, so I have no idea if they would have had an issue at those ages, but they were alright with it when we did. It doesn't really seem like your mother's issue with it was age, though, Pagliacci, so much as just control or something like that?

[Caffeinated]

My parents had a rule of no dating until age 16. They also had a rule of no dating anyone more than one year older or more than one year ahead in school (when I was in high school this was the rule, but when I left for college they couldn't enforce a rule like that any more, although I mostly kept following it anyway).

[Werel]

My parents were surprisingly cool & supportive when I started dating at 13, but I know they spent a lot of sleepless nights stressing over it. My younger brother started dating when he was like 15/16 and that was no problem. If any of my peers had "no dating till X" rules, they were set around 15/16, but most didn't that I knew of.

Pagliacci, yeah, your scenario sounds like it could be more an overall control thing than being specifically about dating ages.

[eselle28]

I didn't start dating until I was 18, and my parents were okay with the idea of it generally by the time I was that age. If we're talking about the age at which my parents were okay with me dating men I find interesting and fun rather than men likely to push me into being closer to the daughter they'd like to have, that would be...well, I'm 35, so let's hope it will be 36.

[Thanos6]

My dad never had any kind of problem. My mom, though, was and is weird. She's a very controlling kind of person. She's not anti-dating or anti-sex, but she seems very anti-me dating or having sex. You know that cliche of the father who very obviously disapproves of whoever his daughter dates? This was like a gender-flipped version. Every girl I had dated would get the laser eyes of death from the start, before she knew them well enough to find any kind of fault aside from "they dared to go on a date with me." She didn't start to loosen up on that until I turned 30 or so.

[reboot]

My parents did not have a rule because it was assumed that I would be very unlikely to date given my appearance.

[Guest]

Let me ask a question, then: if you'd been in my situation, what would you have done? For a long time, leaving wasn't an option, because my mother needed my help just to keep a roof over her head.

This is really getting to me, because at 33, all the things that make life worth living seem completely out of reach, and I can't see a way to change that.

[Wondering]

Honestly, I would have lied to my parents and done it anyway.

Actually, I did do a bit of that when I was older and living at home again after grad school. In my 30s, mind you, but Very Catholic mom not cool with sex or even the semblance of sex before marriage. I mean, back then when I was still teaching, I essentially lived with my now-husband, then-boyfriend in the summers when school was out. My parents may have been told I was staying the guest bedroom.

[Enail]

Whatever you could have done or what someone else might have done in your situation, Pagliacci, you survived and you got out when you could, so obviously you did something very, very right. It sucks that things are so tough for you and you feel stuck, but getting out and establishing your own life sounds like it was an absolutely crucial step - and a very difficult one - towards having the kind of life you want. I think if you were capable of doing that, you're probably capable of figuring out a path to the rest of it, and getting there, even if it's slow, difficult work.

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