A Different Kind of Love Triangle

My husband was mad at our daughter for the dent in her car. (He said it was about responsibility.)

I was mad at my husband because he was mad at our daughter. (I said it had nothing to do with responsibility.)

He was mad at me because I was mad at him. (He said I didn’t understand.)

I said he was being unreasonable.

He said I was being mama bear.

Our daughter was mad at both of us and tried to broker the peace. (She said forget about it and let’s get on with our lives.)

Such is the life a family who fights out loud. Bob and I have never hid our arguments from the children. Not by principal, but more by emotion. When we’re mad, we’re mad. Although we are both dang good at playing passive aggressive, so that’s probably how we got away with it in the early years of our kids. Hopefully not too many emotional scars, but one never knows. (As host of Garage Logic radio show, Joe Soucheray, says, “When my kids turn 18 I send them out into the world with my best wishes and $1,000 for therapy.)

These days our daughter, Amanda, is 17-years-old and has become quite adept at mediating drama. She has learned this skill through a myriad of employment, school, and extracurricular experiences. At 14 she worked in a downtown bakery with both the cool and the crack pots. At 15 she started adjusting to a half dozen coaches with a broad range of maturity levels ranging from uber awesome English lit teacher to super bummer teen-wannabe, who single handedly decided Amanda would not be the captain in her fourth year of varsity all-academic, all-conference because she had a favorite (grrrr, mama and papa bear come out at this one, but that’s another blog post).

At 16 she worked in the principal’s office, managing chaotic student ID days, analyzing staff gossip, and handling angry parents. She also honed her child psychology expertise, teaching Sunday school, tumbling, group games, and art appreciation to children of all sorts of backgrounds and attention spans. She’s babysat, nannied, and helped her boss with his children. For four years, she’s participated with honors in not one, but two (simultaneously) cheerleading programs, an activity that requires extreme teamwork from a complicated network of diverse personalities. (She’s often the one mediating conflict, whether with students or coaches or both.)

All this has led to Amanda’s greatest achievement: refereeing her parents, aka me and Bob.

Before I go further, I need to put this in context because I write grants to support services for those who experience domestic violence, a public health crisis according to the Centers for Disease Control. I see statistics and hear stories about children who witness domestic violence. About men who beat/rape a women (80% of it works that way) in front of her children. About guns wielded by the abuser in front of the children. About children who blame their mother for being weak, and confuse hugging with kicking in a matter of seconds. About children who witness their mother being murdered by her intimate partner. About children who grow up thinking violence is the normal way to express intimacy. This is blog post is not about that. That would be a whole other issue. (Call 1-800-942-0333 for confidential, non-judgmental counseling, as needed.)

I’m talking about kids who witness a medium grade disagreement that rubs two extremely stubborn people who live together, that stews into the silent treatment, that blasts into angry outbursts, that gnaws into the psyche of existence. You know, the ordinary stuff of marital relations, sharing space with another human being.

But still, no kid wants to see mom and dad angry with one another which is probably why every time the topic of the car dent came up this past week Amanda would try to sooth tempers with, “Now let’s not dwell on this,” and “Can we move forward now?” To which I would grumble and harrumph. To which Bob responded in a way I don’t even know because I refused to engage him. Part of me did want to get over it, but another part of me wanted Amanda to know that it’s OK to be mad. She needs to know that she doesn’t always have to smile and play nice, in spite of what the evil mass media tells her and other girls. I don’t want her to enter adulthood believing that it’s her role to be the peacemaker, unless she’s, say, a diplomat, a senator, the supreme court chief justice, a CEO, or at some other high level job whereby she could positively impact a whole lot of people, which she totally should be.

Meanwhile, I wish I had better advice to give about marriage, especially when the reptilian brains crawl out of their respective holes. I have no guidance, except to choose your partners well because the underside of y’all’s will come out from time to time, no matter who you are or who you're with. There are probably many other ways to find love but that was the approach both Bob and I took – choosing with extreme caution – and for the most part it’s worked, dents and all. If you’re lucky you’ll get a great kid out of the deal who triangulates huge doses of sunshine and reason into the mix.

Oh yeah, and one other thing, forgiveness helps too. 

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