Generally, I don’t like to divulge stories from my personal life, but for this topic I’m willing to make an exception.
Once upon a time, I found myself in a situation where my girlfriend and my mother didn’t get along. My mother, whom I love dearly, didn’t like my girlfriend. She found my girlfriend to be arrogant, disrespectful, and a rude bi%$#. And in the same token, my girlfriend, whom I was quite fond of, didn’t like my mother. My mother, apparently, had expressed her displeasure of my girlfriend on numerous occasions, either within earshot of or directly toward her. Out of respect for me, my girlfriend never responded to these comments, but they incensed her greatly. I later learned through a mutual friend, my girlfriend had made a point to express her displeasure with my mother in more colorful terms. Terms which also can’t be written here in this article.
As if the previous paragraph wasn’t bad enough, the plot got deeper. See, I’d never been privy to any of this information as it was happening in real-time. Meaning, I either got a story from my girlfriend or a story from my mother, but I never actually witnessed any of the “beef” that happened. I spoke to my mother on numerous occasions about my girlfriend and she either casually shrugged me off, or told me she wasn’t petty enough to say anything negative to her. My girlfriend, on the other hand, made it seem as if there was a secret war brewing between the two of them that could boil over at any moment. She wasn’t really one for drama, so the notion that they’d bump heads in front of me one day left me sleepless on quite a few nights. Once, I made the mistake of trying to bring them together to have a conversation about what I was hearing on both sides. The only thing that managed to achieve, was to ensure I’d never jumped between two women in the middle of a secret war again for as long as I walk this planet. In short, it was a painful experience and I witnessed firsthand how women could say everything and absolutely nothing at the same time.
As if to complicate matters even further, my mother had spoken with both my aunt and my grandmother about my girlfriend’s transgressions and they decided they didn’t like her either. I jokingly refer to those trio of women as the “holy trinity.” They talk so much amongst each other that speaking to one of them is like speaking to all three of them. I can tell my grandmother something at 8am and I’ll receive a call from both my aunt and my mother by noon with respect to whatever I shared with my grandmother. I love all three of these women with everything in my being. Without them I would not be the man I am today. I mention all of that to say, the odds were stacked against my girlfriend. CONSIDERABLY. And yet the relationship didn’t actually end until I felt we had ran our course.
Why?
Because while I love my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt with all of my heart, I was an adult. A grown man. I’d left home at 17, graduated college in four years, planned on going back to law school, and had been self sustainable. While I love my family with all of my heart, I could never let them dictate what I do in my romantic life. If I had decided to marry that woman at the time all of that was going on, they would’ve swallowed their pride, grinned, and bore it. My family trusted me enough to make good decisions about my life. In that trust, they also needed to understand their input, while valuable, doesn’t dictate what I do with my life. The only person who could do that was me.
So no, if my parents dislike my girlfriend it doesn’t mean I will cut her off; though if a man is close with his mother (or other maternal figures) it’s equally important for all of those women in his life to get along. No man wants to be caught in beef between the love of his life and the woman who’s responsible for his life. It sucks. Trust me.
