Posted 17 March 2009 - 05:42 PM
)I was reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Babylon Revisited" when this quote made me pause:
“The present was the thing -- work to do and someone to love. But not love too much, for he knew the injury that a father can do to a daughter or a mother to a son by attaching them too closely: afterward, out in the world, the child would seek in the marriage partner the same blind tenderness and, failing probably to find it, turn against love and life.”
I think that's so insightful, but I wonder whether it applies exclusively to a close attachment or blind tenderness. People say things like "boys like a girl like their mom," "girls like a boy like their dad" all the time, but like many things in life I feel like breaking that up into its parts
. How much of our parents do we really seek out in people of the opposite sex?It's something I've contemplated and even written about that in many ways, wives become like secondary mothers, by
- Making food
- Becoming an emotional backing/defense
- Taking care during illness
- Demeanor in general
I've done things like make soup for a boy when he was sick and away from home or tidy up or even scold playfully, and I didn't think about it at the time but those things comprised a motherly approach(???). Many of the more memorable things I've done for/regarding boys I felt something special for were of the same motherly sort. (Do you think it's meaningful that sweet things people do for the opposite sex often align with things mothers or fathers do, or is it merely coincidental? Or because nice things and ways to take care of someone are universal?) It's interesting that fathers "give up" their daughters because it seems to me that a mother loses a son in marriage more than a father loses his daughter. A husband isn't going to have his wife stand on his toes while they dance around like a father would, or teach her how to play sports. But maybe husbands take on a fatherly role as well, if husbands (traditionally, anyway) take on the protective and financial roles that a father generally takes on in his daughter's life?
That's not really the question I was really intending to ask, though -- everyone has his or her "ideal type" (I find they change as we get older, but everyone's dream prince or princess is lasting and unique in at least some way), but the people we actually end up choosing to involve ourselves with are usually quite different from that type.
To be honest I don't think boys or girls can really be clumped into types, and a boy who is outwardly just like your daddy or a girl who is outwardly just like your mother isn't going to be all that much like him/her. Similar-seeming personalities are often worlds apart -- we've all lived different lives, after all. But do you see many singular ties between the people you are instantly attracted to, or the people you date, and your mother (if you're a boy) or your father (if you're a girl)? Physically, emotionally, in terms of lifestyle or emotional baggage, how they treat you, etc.
Now I'm really making a mess of things, but consider your father (if you're a boy) or your mother (if you're a girl). This is the man/woman your mother/father ended up marrying. How much are you like your own father, if you're a boy, or mother, if you're a girl?
My ideal was always the kind of boy who would be artistic, think a lot, be able to both speak and listen very well, be amazing with dogs and children, love books and be the epitome of a gentleman. He'd treat everyone well but somehow treat me even especially well, and make me feel like the most beautiful girl alive without ever having to say he thought of me that way. However, I find that the kind of boys I tend to get involved with (not for very long periods of time, but intensely nevertheless) OR be immediately attracted to more often than not either 1) treat me like dirt, 2) want me to stop talking, 3) reduce me to my physical parts or 4) use me or bring me close only to push me away, while boys who do the opposite (treat me incredibly well, want very much to hear my side of things, look deeply into my eyes instead of my body and want to be near me) are almost immediately unattractive.
Part of that has to do with wanting what you can't get; I doubt many girls love the kind of guy who adores her too much; and this isn't always the case, especially since people are dynamic and rarely treat anyone in one uniform way forever and ever (I think everyone treats everyone else well or badly depending on the situation); but I find these things interesting? (You know you find yourself interesting too
)I don't see my dad as someone who does those 4 things, but I did when I was little, and something significant about the quote ^ way up there is that it is talking about a child. The child in the quote is a little older (nine) but to state the obvious, it's probably mostly between years 1-12 that our parents directly affect how we see other people. I think that if I were to be with someone in the long term, I would want him to be different from anyone I'd have ever known, because we'd learn so much more from each other that way. But I wonder whether the kind of attraction I've had in the past was based on a certain level of comfort -- when someone treats me in a way that isn't exactly ideal, I know what to do. I love my daddy more than anyone in the world and he is one of the most loving and incredible people I know, but a great deal of being able to recognize that (not to give myself undue credit, as it's something we reached together) has been due to my learning how to accommodate him. I guess I'm wondering how much other people see the parent-to-S/O connection though, because so much of my adolescence was devoted to figuring my dad out that I might be a weird case. (If I had spent more time figuring other guys out, maybe I'd be better equipped to be around those other kinds of guys as well?)
I'm excited to see whether anyone actually felt like reading this through
