Marrying your parents? - revisited

A long time ago — gosh, it was more than eight years — I posted on the idea that we "marry our parents," or (more exactly) that we choose to fall in love with people who are like one or the other of our parents. At the time I used this model to understand what were till then my three most obvious romantic relationships. I wrote:

As I listened [to the talk that proposed this theory] I thought about myself and decided that this is a pretty easy case to make for me: Wife and D are both like my father (loud, opinionated, narcissistic, always the center of any gathering, outwardly domineering but with a surprising lack of self-confidence beneath the surface), while Debbie is a lot like my mother (quiet, comfortable in silence and solitude, deeply ethical in an unobtrusive and tolerant way … they even look alike physically).

But at the time I said nothing about Marie. Of course, back in 2013 Marie and I were not in communication. Back then she represented just a confusing and awkward part of my past. So it was easy for me to leave her out of the reckoning. But today that's no longer so easy. Today she's my girlfriend. So how does she fit into this theory? Or does she disprove it?

I've spent a while trying to think through an answer. In many ways she's not a good fit. On the one hand, she's shy, quiet, and chronically (almost neurotically) self-doubting; so she's a poor match for the loud, Falstaffian extroversion of my Father (or, mutatis mutandis, of Wife or D). On the other hand, she seems a lot more complicated and damaged than my Mother or Debbie — not that Mother or Debbie have had life unusually easy, but each of them seems able to respond to its trials with a calm and simple common-sense. And those are never words anyone would think of using to describe Marie.

So does she fit? Or not?

I was puzzled about this for some time, but recently I began to see a way forward towards an answer.

The last few times I've visited Mother, she and I have talked for hours. Days, even. And back in the past we never used to do that — meaning back when Father was alive. Back then he and I might talk for hours, but Mother always sat quietly in the background. And a couple of weeks ago, she explained how it was for her back then. She said, "Back when your dad was alive, I didn't feel like I needed to talk a lot because he took care of all that for me. It was easier to let him do all the talking and not compete. It was obvious that he liked to talk, so I just let him. Because anything that I needed to say, he was pretty sure to cover sooner or later. So it was easier to let him do it."

Then, last week, Marie told me that she lets her friends steamroller her in conversation because "it's easier" that way. And I could not help but to hear the echo.

So maybe that's it. Maybe Marie corresponds to Mother because they are both quiet, and they both find it easier to let someone else take over the conversation. It's still not a perfect match. Mother still has way more self-confidence than Marie. Mother ran the family business back when Father was fecklessly avoiding his responsibilities. Marie tells me that when she is responsible for something at work she can be a real "bitch" [her word] about getting it done right, but I don't see it. Maybe I'd see it if I worked at her store. Also it feels to me like Marie is still carrying more damage from her early life than Mother is. If nothing else, Mother married and had children, while Marie never did either.

But no theory like this is ever perfect. Always they are just ideas to give you insights that might help you understand your life. Maybe that's enough.