This seems like a good place to start. Life before marriage. Life before a kid.
I was brought up in a very sheltered home. And even though I would consider myself quite anti-authority and somewhat a rebel, you definitely wouldn’t know it to look at me. You also wouldn’t know it looking at my life and teenage years.
I have never (nor do I intend to) drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes, taken drugs, been to a dance party (or any other party really) or had girlfriends. Not because of lack of opportunity, but more of an internal feeling that it just wasn’t for me. Even the idea of it grated me. Most kids rebel against their parents because they finally get to do all the things their guardians were ‘protecting’ them from. Its about taking control of your own life and letting your parents know that they’re not in charge any more.
I rebelled in a different way. I would hear my parents argue and it would disturb me so much that I’d go in there and blast them for being disrespectful to each other. When told to do something I didn’t like or agree with, I’d just make an argument to not do it and from my perspective, it seemed like a stronger position that my parents – you’d have to ask my parents if I actually had a better argument.
Ah yes! The single life. The know-it-all phase of life that feels indestructible and insurmountable
I also remember being a spoiled brat and manipulating my parents to get my own way. I felt like I was smarter and better than my parents and so instead of trying to get away from them and ‘party’, I liked being at home and being in control. Yup, I was a terrible child and desperately in need of some loving discipline (in my opinion).
So moving on, as I grew up, I didn’t really ‘grow’ socially or mentally. Not in the way that, looking back, I should have. And this I think, was a problem. You gain a lot of experience in relationships from dealing with peers in lots of different situations, and when you don’t get an opportunity to experience those situations, you become socially castrated, from which it is very difficult to recover from. This particular part of my upbringing actually affected me deeply and how I feel we should raise our little boy, but that’s a blog for another time.
But getting more to the point of this blog post, what I found really interesting about when I was single was the way I used to imagine how it would be when I would be married and have a child. I remember constantly thinking about what things I would talk about with my wife, what we’d do with our lives and how my friends would fit in. I remember practically studying my friends and their relationships with each other and their children. I would think about what they were doing well and what I thought they were doing poorly and how I would be so much better at it, constantly judging and gauging to gain as much information and understanding as possible. Ah yes! The single life. The know-it-all phase of life that feels indestructible and insurmountable.
Wow, those kids clearly are not getting any discipline at home. I would never let that happen if I was the dad
Its interesting because part of this judgemental single life stage was extremely unforgiving. I would look at the way my friend’s kids would behave in a social setting and just think “Wow, those kids clearly are not getting any discipline at home. I would never let that happen if I was the dad”. I could never know in that moment just how wrong I was, but what can I say, that’s the curse of the single life?
Sometimes I like to think how much better my life would be if I had just stayed single (especially during violent 2 year old tantrums), but as I write this blog, I realise just how uneducated and immature I was even into my late 20’s.
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