We are all products of our parents. We grow up around them, they’re our first love, our first cuddle, our first snuggle, our first person to make us smile and the first person to ever make us cry. They set the boundaries as well as the guide of how we then lead our lives as we become adults. They inform upon us as model clay, a blank slate. We are born little sponges, soaking up every instance that happens in our lives and the lives of those around us. As infants and children we idolize our parents and place them upon a pedestal. As teens we become angsty and try to formulate our own ideas of where we belong until we wise up in our adult years only to realize that we were total sods to the people who loved us the most.
It is our parents that inform our ideas of what relationships are meant to be. Due to this imprinting of ideology on how relationships ought to be, people often hesitate to leave situations that seem good on the outside but behind closed doors are truly a nightmarish hell. Some people are raised in houses that seem like the ideal white picket fence home with the adoring child(ren), loving husband, and swooning wife. Behind closed doors these relationships are at times strained, often enough to the point the child(ren) hear the backlash of an angry mother or father yelling at one another over something trivial or large. This gives young minds an unstable idea of what relationships are meant to be like. It leads to being in abusive relationships, or being an abusive lover.
Sometimes this imprinting can also lead to people thinking infidelity is okay. It isn’t. Marriage, no matter your religious standing, is intended to be done for love. If you cannot keep yourself to your bedchamber with your significant other, then marriage is not for you. I’ve seen countless families broken apart due to some form of infidelity, be it emotional, physical, or even just through the use of words. Yes, emotionally cheating is still cheating. If it is something you would hide from your significant other, then you most likely shouldn’t be doing it at all. When you love someone and you start a family with them, your children need to see that love you share between you and your significant other.
They need to see what love looks like, be it coming home and having a freshly made meal for them or rubbing their shoulders before or after a hard day at work. Even just passing moments where your eyes might catch, kiss one another without thinking about it. Let them see the passion you two have without getting vulgar about it. Play music and dance in the living room together for all I care, just make sure they see what love is like. Have them dance with you if they’re old enough, they’ll enjoy it and feel included as well as loved. We learn at a young age what love is like, if you do it right then there’s a good chance they’ll be able to show their children, your grandchildren, what love is like too.
If you have a disagreement, try not to hash it out in front of them. Especially if there is yelling to be involved. Small disagreements that can easily be resolved without raised voices is good for them to see because they will know that the world isn’t all sunshine and daisies, but it will also set an example of how to conduct a disagreement like people not barbarians.
Whatever you do though, do not cheat. Do not lie to the person you love and expect them to forgive you. Cheating is unforgivable. I don’t care what world you’re from, cheating is never an acceptable answer to upset or outrage. It not only hurts the person you’re with, it hurts your family as a whole. It will bring down upon your family a misery that no individual should ever have to endure.
People have asked me if I would divorce my husband if he cheated on me. I would do worse than that. Just as he would do worse to me if I ever had the gall to think it were okay to cheat on him. Cheating is never the answer. If you’re finding yourself unhappy, discuss it with them, don’t go looking for someone else to talk to about it. The moment you cross that threshold, you denounce any form of love you ever had for the person you’re with. It is a line you cannot come back from.