Thursday, April 05, 2007

Boundaries

So today was going great. I got my hair did. I went to lunch with my father and talked to my uncle for a few minutes. Then I went inside with my father to try to ask him some questions about his life since I am trying to write his biography. Well out of no where he wants to talk about his love life. So for 45 minutes he tells me about all the trials and tribulations of his life. He talks about the ladyfriend he really loves, the one who needs validation by meeting me and another one with issues. For 30 of the 45 minutes he was digging around for some piece of paper to show me. So after a while I asked him what he was looking for and he told me it was a letter he wrote her on valentine's day. I told him to stop looking for it . I sat on the couch and I damn near cried because I was incredicably uncomfortable with him telling me about his love life. There are boundaries that I need to maintain with him. You can't wait until I am 28 years old and all of the sudden you want to talk about relationship yours or mine. I didn't reallly talk to my mother about these things either. So at about minute 45 he switches gears and starts to tell him what love is. He does this by asking me questions about Brent. I pretendend they were rhetorical and didn't answer anything. At about minute 48 when I really thought I was going to start crying because I wanted him to stop. I just said, "you are belaboring" the point. Then I made an excuse and said I needed to leave.

I havent seen my dad in 6 months and I hated to end my day long visit on this note not knowing when I would see him again. For my sanity I needed to leave the situation. I think I'll call him right now and apologize for my abrupt departure.

2 comments:

rashad said...

man..something happened to my dad about 6 or 7 years ago, because it was at that point our relationship officially switched from father/son to friend/friend, and there were some very uncomfortable moments as a result. we had to establish new boundareies, and i'm not even joking. i know my father needs a life, but damn if I need to know the details. just show me the end result..

i hope you all find a happy medium

A Beautiful Life said...

it's good that you apologized. I probably would have threw up after hearing my mom talk about her love life and cried. Last year she started telling me how she wants to be married again and that she is starting to go out more. I want her to remarry and date, but I don't want to hear about it. It's gross!!!! Although parents want us to see them as people with needs for love, we can't see them as anything more than a parent.

Like Rashad, I just want to see the end result. I don't want to see some man who is not her husband chillin at our family home. LOL!! I really don't want to see him until they are very serious and about to be married soon. I think she gets it. LOL!