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RELATIONSHIPS | ATTACHMENT STYLe
When Your Parents Make Dating Difficult
I had a difficult experience with dating due to my family’s tricky behaviors and had to learn how to overcome these barriers
When you’re raised in a turbulent and chaotic household, dating is the last thing on your mind. I was the mediator and therapist in my parents’ marriage for so long, well into my twenties, that I missed out on dating during my high school years. Hearing my parents argue, and listening to them vent to me about their problems, got me so caught up in their problems that they felt like my own issues. When a 20-year-old daughter thinks she has her 50-year-old mother’s marital problems, she doesn’t have the mental capacity to date. Luckily, I managed to untangle myself from my parents’ mess by my mid-twenties.
Now, I realize that my parents weren’t trying to sabotage my dating life. They were just caught up in their own problems and were trying to protect me. In addition, dating a bit later in life has certain advantages, like understanding myself and what I need in a partner better than if I had gotten married in my twenties.
While many of my classmates started dating in middle or high school, around fifteen years old, I started dating a few years…
