Family Matters: How To Reveal The Ugly Truth

Imagine enjoying a fabulous first dinner with an attractive date. You can feel the magnetism radiating from across the table as you stare into one another’s eyes and you start to plan your next outing with this person before the main course arrives. Then it happens. The inevitable family questions are asked: “So, are you close to your parents? What do they do?”

Sharing personal information is par for the dating course, but how much should one share and how soon?

“If our lives have been relatively status quo and non-traumatic,” says licensed therapist Deborah Wilder, Ph.D., “these questions might not be as critical to consider as when we have had a more colorful and unusual history.”

My Story
When I was ten-years old, my father left me and my two sisters at a train station in Little Rock, Ark., with our stepmother, Phyllis. We were traveling to Baton Rouge, La., to visit Phyllis’ family while he was leaving on yet another construction job.

Six little hands waved energetically through the small train windows. Three little faces beamed with excitement, this our first train ride. A couple of weeks into our trip, Dad sent someone to tell Phyllis he wasn’t coming back. If he provided an explanation, we didn’t hear it. Upon receiving the dreaded news that her husband had not only deserted her, but saddled her with his three kids, Phyllis performed the only act of decency we would witness from her: she dialed the number for Dad’s sister in Minnesota and told her she had 24 hours to retrieve us or we would be turned over to the state. Off to Minnesota we flew never to see our father again. He disappeared without a trace, leaving his sister to raise us.

The facts are startling, maybe, but the tale is not outstanding—lots of children are left by one parent or the other. But, what if I throw in the part about my father preventing me and my sisters from seeing our mother because of her drug abuse, or that I didn’t come to know her until I was 12 and haven’t seen her since then? Then, there's Phyllis...another story altogether. Perhaps the most shocking aspect to everyone except my sisters is that I have no interest in seeing my father again and I’m undecided about visiting my mother. (Cue the “What’s wrong with her?” questions.)

Naturally, dates, friends, and strangers react to a story such as mine. I expect it; I’m not bothered by it. I understand how unbelievable some find the idea that a daughter has no desire to find and reconnect with her parents, even if those people don’t understand why. Step into my shoes and you will. But, that’s not what a date wants to hear over candlelight and duck foie gras—a guy doesn’t want to share a bottle of Dom Pérignon with an unstable woman. The more I reveal, the seedier the story becomes, which is why I refrain from sharing the details early on.

Focus On The Positive
Typically, when asked about my parents, I tell dates only that I grew up with my aunt and uncle. I leave out the grizzly details. Some accept the information and move on to another topic. Others eye me quizzically, either forming opinions about my emotional well-being or debating about asking more questions. The impulse to know is part of human nature. I have an interesting story to tell, and I don’t mind telling it; however, I hesitate to reveal the saga on a first or second date because, while the listener desires to feed his curiosity, his reaction puts me on the defensive if he alludes to any “issues” I might have. One guy said, flat out: “You must have a lot of emotional baggage.” Must I? No second date for you, buddy.

I put in a great deal of effort to overcome the emotional repercussions of my childhood that stem largely from my father leaving and my mother’s absence, but I, and others with challenging histories, shouldn’t have to wear emotional stability like a badge on dates in order to be accepted as something other than abnormal.

Dr. Wilder advises discretion when it comes to “sharing certain personal family history, the kind of information that will most likely be perceived as dysfunctional.” Start with the simple approach of telling your date the basics: in what state your parents live or your parents’ occupations (if you know them and feel comfortable sharing) or that you are not particularly close to your parents. If your date presses for more information or if you sense a red flag has appeared, Dr. Wilder suggests heading off the conversation by acknowledging your colorful past and talking about what you learned from the experience: “You might say that, yes, you have lead a pretty interesting life, and under other circumstances you could have ended up unhappy or misguided; however, because you always knew in your mind and in your heart that you wanted more out of your life, you made making good decisions and leading a healthy life a priority.”

His Story
Cheyenne took a different approach to sharing the details of his sordid childhood. His father was absent for most of his life and, for a time, incarcerated for drugs and guns. Cheyenne admits he kept information about his father a secret for years, going so far as to change his last name on his 18th birthday; however, when the time came to reveal his past to his girlfriends, Cheyenne says he was very open about his father. He threw out the information like a bomb in order to disqualify women, rather than qualify them.

“Being very open about Dad upfront actually worked as a pretty effective wall,” he says. “I was willing to throw it out to people immediately upon meeting them and then they wouldn’t think they needed to ask more questions, questions maybe I wasn’t prepared to answer, and they would assume I’m a pretty open book.”

The women who didn’t scamper from him after he revealed details about his father and his childhood were the ones he dated: “I figured if threw a ton of stuff out there and the girl didn’t run and I couldn’t find any immediate reasons not to like her, then there might be something worth pursuing.”

Cheyenne and his girlfriend of nearly three years, Kam, agree that many of their relationship problems stem from how differently they were raised. “What I believe to be the biggest factor impacting our relationship is his fear of acknowledging how important I am in his life,” Kam says. “I know he loves me, but I feel like he holds back in case I leave, then he’ll be able to brush it off and say ‘she wasn’t a big deal in my life, so I don’t really care that she’s gone.’”

With Kam’s help, Cheyenne has identified some of the emotional issues that result from his upbringing, and, together, the couple works through them.

“I always strove so hard to live a life that had no daddy issues, which, in fact, is a daddy issue,” Cheyenne says. “It’s a dirty trick, I tell you.”

“The more he learns how it affected him to not have a father in his life,” Kam says, “the better our relationship becomes.”

Who Defines Normal?
“Just because a family is intact and the parents are still married does not automatically mean that the family dynamics are either normal or healthy,” Dr. Wilder says.

Still, the dating world is full of people who think otherwise. “What best describes your parents' relationship towards each other” is included in eHarmony’s list of questions subscribers can send and receive during the “get to know each other” stage. The question offers four multiple choice answers: A) married and loving, B) married but distant, C) divorced and civil, D) divorced and abusive. The question and answers surprise me, but the fact that users actually send the questions surprises me more. Adults are still judged by the sins of their parents.

The ideal of dating someone from a “normal” family isn’t exclusive to online dating. I have met several men who desire to only date women from married parents (ironically, not all of these men have married parents) because they assume an intact family is a “normal” one. Excluding those from “broken” homes is yet another way daters think they can achieve the unattainable perfect relationship, except prefect relationships don’t exist; perfect people don’t exist. As Cheyenne observes, “You don’t have to dig far into anyone’s background before you find full-on dysfunction and those pains of growing up.”

Unfortunately, as Dr. Wilder notes, “those people whose lives have been touched by toxicity and dysfunction may bear the burden of their histories.” While that is the case in some instances, the important lesson for those people (myself included) is that your background does not automatically resign you to relationships in which you must prove you are worthy to date. Anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself because of circumstances beyond your control is not worthy of your time. If you need assistance dealing with hurtful or painful issues, Dr. Wilder advises you to seek help professionally or through a strong support system of friends and family. “Sometimes, when people don’t feel so good about themselves, and don’t deal with it, they tend to gravitate toward others who perpetuate these feelings,” she says.

Don’t pile hurt feelings onto hurt feelings by dating someone who makes you feel undeserving of love. Listen to the good doctor: “What we do and have done with our lives in spite of our experiences is far more meaningful than the experiences alone.”

---

Deborah S. Wilder received her B.A. from Emory University, her M.S. from Georgia State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. She has been in clinical practice since 1994, working with adult individuals, couples and families