Confused Relationship
By Rummuser. Filed in People, Raves and Rants |Tags: Confused, Familial Love, Father-Son-Relationship, Natural Selection
My post “Do Indians Celebrate Father’s Day” elicited some comments and emails, from which I gathered that that I appear, to at least some people, as though I was some kind of a male Mother Teresa. I am writing this post to put a proper perceptive on that relationship.
It is, to be very pithy, confused.
It has now been more than six months since my father moved in with us. This was a prospect, that neither he nor I, had ever imagined possible. Man proposes and God disposes, and my father’s plans to predecease his second wife, came a cropper and I had to call him to come and live with us. His living with us has brought with us a number of changes to the way our household ran. His presence is affecting my own possible second career, due to his paranoiac fear of something happening to me, every time I step out of the house. To see that he is comfortable and be more or less his secretary and Personal Assistant is quite taxing at times. He has been a great manipulator of people and old habits die hard. To handle his manipulation in a way that he realizes that it will not work and I am on to him is like what a matador in the bull ring experiences.
For various reasons, the relationship between my father and his children has not been very loving for nearly five decades. By and large, he lived his life the way he wanted and pretty much left us all alone, and we wanted it that way. This was due to circumstances about which I would prefer to write some time in the future, but suffice it to say, we were from a dysfunctional home. He lived his life, and we did ours.
The relationship between our mother and the four of us however was on much stronger ground. She finally left an unsatisfactory relationship, when the last of her duties was performed as per our societal norms. . After that and as long as was alive, she spent all of her time in succession with one of us and had nothing to do with him. After that, to say that she was literally spoilt by the four of us and our spouses would be an understatement. Perhaps we were over compensating for what she had to endure during the time she had to live with our father.
Let me take this post forward by quoting from something that I have been reading recently to try and make sense of my life.
“The ever shifting, but almost perennially uneven balance of affection and obligation between parent and child, is one of life’s deepest and most bitter sweet experiences. And it illustrates how imprecise the genes can be in turning on and off our emotional spigots. Though there seems to be no good Darwinian reason to spend time and energy on and old, dying father, few of us would, or could, turn our backs. The stubborn core of familial love persists, beyond its evolutionary usefulness. Most of us, presumably, are glad for this crudeness of genetic control – although, of course, there is no way of knowing what our opinion would be if the controls were more precise.”
Robert Wright – “The Moral Animal – Why we are the way we are. The new science of evolutionary psychology.”
So, what is it that I am now undergoing? An experience of affection or is it an experience of doing my duty as an obligation? Whatever it is, I can vouch for the writer’s observation that it is one of life’s deepest and most bitter sweet experiences. The frequency with which I suffer from ‘whymeitis’, since the passing away of Urmeela, is not something that I ever thought that I would undergo. The mystery of and the turning on and off of the emotional spigot, and the controls not being precise enough is quite frustrating.
The answer perhaps is from this paragraph from the same book:
“In theory, and in fact, the dearness of parents to children also changes over time. In the pitiless eyes of natural selection, the utility of our parents to us declines, after a certain point, even faster than ours to them, as we pass through adolescence, they are less and less critical databanks, providers, and protectors. And as they pass through middle age, they are less and less likely to further promulgate our genes. By the time they are old and infirm, we have little if any genetic use for them. Even as we attend to their needs, (or pay someone else to); we may feel traces of impatience and resentment. Our parents, in the end, are as dependent on us as we once were on them, yet we don’t look after their needs with quite the same gusto they brought to ours.”
If an erudite and knowledgeable person can write like this, perhaps I can take solace from the fact that I am not alone in experiencing this peculiar emotional roller coaster ride. Perhaps there is something to the theory of ‘Natural Selection’ after all!
It also would be nice, if I could get Ranjan to do a guest post on his take on this subject! I shall try.
Saturday, June 27th 2009 at 20:45 |
Well, the ten commandments teach “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Exodus 20:12 The promised blessing of honoring our parents is that we will live a longer life. I know that isn't why you take care of your father, but I do believe that is the blessing you will receive.
Saturday, June 27th 2009 at 22:48 |
That stirred up a lot of feelings! My mother and I were very close because I was her greatest supporter and listener. I learned early in life that talking about things I cared about didn't work, so once I became an adult she was more like a beloved child than a parent. I loved her intensely and was grateful she was happy in her final years and didn't need to live with us. And I was grateful that I was able to help nurse her as she died of cancer.
My father was different. He was a lot of fun when my sister and I were little, but he pretty much avoided us once we started to grow up.
Sunday, June 28th 2009 at 00:48 |
About husband-wife relationships..have you heard this one?
A husband and wife came for counseling after 20 years of marriage. When asked what the problem was, the wife went into a passionate, painful tirade listing every problem they had ever had in the 20 years they had been married.
She went on and on and on: neglect, lack of intimacy, emptiness, loneliness, feeling unloved and unlovable, an entire laundry list of unmet needs she had endured over the course of their marriage.
Finally, after allowing this to go on for a sufficient length of time, the therapist got up, walked around the desk and, after asking the wife to stand, embraced and kissed her passionately as her husband watched with a raised eyebrow. The woman shut up and quietly sat down as though in a daze.
The therapist turned to the husband and said, “This is what your wife needs at least three times a week. Can you do this?”
The husband thought for a moment and replied, “Well, I can drop her off here on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Fridays, I fish.”
Sunday, June 28th 2009 at 01:47 |
It would be very interesting to hear Ranjan's take on this topic.
We all see things from our own perspective. I am sure that if my five siblings and I wrote about our upbringing at home with our parents who remained together for 40 years despite long spells of “Tell your daddy his dinner is on the table!” (read marital silence), the tales would be very different. My only sister the baby of the family, remained with my mother for the 15 years between the deaths of my parents, she knows little about the early life of the family.
@Jean – I love that story.
Sunday, June 28th 2009 at 04:21 |
The discovery of the cancer & my mother's death were a couple months apart. She called me of her 4 children, to come across the country to her. I loved her & sat by her bed but didn't know what to say. We were never close friends–I was her daughter; she my mother–that was about it.
I had a serene & wonderful childhood with my parents & 3 siblings. But after she died I blamed my shortcomings on the way I was raised. She was in pain surely (though not complaining) so I was relieved when she died. I didn't cry even though I cry easily. I cried lots, years later when I really missed her. She wrote long letters every week. She died in 1982 & I miss her more each year.
Sunday, June 28th 2009 at 04:29 |
BHB,
Welcome home!
There are times when words are not necessary. Just knowing that someone who cares is by your side when you open your eyes is enough.
Sunday, June 28th 2009 at 10:59 |
Hi Ramana,
Parent-child relationships are so complex at every stage of life. I learned that “honoring your mother and your father” does not necessarily equate with loving them. Luckily, I got to do both, but realize not everyone has that experience. I am in awe of those who can be caregivers for their Golden Oldies even when they haven't had a loving relationship all along. It must make it that much harder to be a caregiver under such circumstances. My hat is off to you, dear friend! I, too, would love to hear your son's perspective on this. Of course, a grandparent and grandchild relationship is very special, and different than parent child from what I've heard. I'm looking forward to that phase of life for sure!
Monday, June 29th 2009 at 13:17 |
Father-son relationship stories always make me curious. My observations from what I see around me, I sense that even the best father invokes a great deal or respect and admiration but its always the mother who steals the affections. All good deeds done towards the father is out of this sense of respect and admiration and even the affection stems out of the said two roots. This is the case with my own family.
The less able fathers infuse a lot of dysfunctionality into the relationship and sons waste no time in contributing to that. But I guess whatever it is we owe a certain responsibility at all times. I am curious to know what your own son has to say about this topic
Wednesday, July 1st 2009 at 20:40 |
He is planning to write an expose!
Wednesday, July 1st 2009 at 20:42 |
I too am eagerly awaiting the guest post. Want to write one?
Wednesday, July 1st 2009 at 20:44 |
Welcome back. That is a poignant comment. I think that I should persuade you to write a guest post after you become fully operational, unless you would like to try one now!
Wednesday, July 1st 2009 at 20:44 |
Ditto.
Friday, July 3rd 2009 at 02:10 |
lol well as long as its not like the watergate, I am guessing you are not in any trouble sir