Little Pitchers Have Long Memories

The Sexuality You Warp May Be That of Your Own Offspring.

Do you remember when you learned or had it confirmed that your parents were sexual beings, at least on occasion? I do. Depending on how intimacy is addressed within a parent-child relationship that realization can be a difficult pill to swallow.

I can’t speak for the generations behind me, but back in my day, The Flintstones slept in separate beds and so did my parents. Hell, they slept in separate bedrooms. I moved out at 21 so I could finally have a room of my own because I’d had my mom as a highly annoying roommate for at least 19 of those years.

This means that on those rare occasions when my mother would grudgingly bestow her marital favors upon my father, I knew. Not just because mom wasn’t in the room with me but because she was loud. In her complaining. And complain she did. I can’t imagine keeping a hard-on through some of the passive-aggressive and sometimes downright creepy protesting that was directed in my unsophisticated farm boy father’s way. On the other hand, I can’t imagine enduring a sexual relationship that caused as much resentment and spiritual unhappiness as my Good Catholic Mom did.

These are the people I learned about sex from, mostly via a lack of direct communication and their leading by bad example. When I say that one of the last things a teen girl needs to hear from her father’s bedroom is her mom threatening to bring her in to “see what you do to me,” I speak from personal experience. That shit sticks with you for life. It affects how you choose partners, view your personal value, establish and maintain boundaries, engage in self-care, and, of course, see yourself and any partners sexually or romantically. It took me a while to get some of that toxic sludge out of my psyche and set myself on a path of healing.

So, don’t do this shit to your kids, okay? If your relationship has unresolved issues in or out of the bedroom, resolve them. Don’t think your kids don’t notice the tension in the household and between their parents. You don’t have to make withering comments to your spouse in a loud voice while in the act of intercourse to communicate your discomfort with your own body, that of your partner, or various degrees of contact between them. Kids may not have words, but they have emotion receptors and brains that can rewire accordingly.

Dysfunctional sex and relationship patterns are often inherited as part of unconscious emulation of those we grew up with and are therefore comfortable being around, even if we were frequently out of our comfort zone as part of that. For some, that discomfort is mistaken for love. For others, a conviction that something is fundamentally wrong with them, especially if they crave a more gentle or at least less brutal approach to love and desire. Toss in a desire for unconventional sex or relationships and the weight of the world’s judgments join to insist that this is the result of damage and not a sign of restoration or that traditional romantic and sexual relationships aren’t sustainably constructed for most of humanity’s happiness.

My thoughts turn toward these sorrowful contemplations because I am in a sorrowful mood. My mother; whose large, firm breasts I once wrote about in a piece of autobiographical erotica, is increasingly a prisoner in her dwindling mind and body, the youthful plumpness of her flesh entirely gone, the strength in her legs uncertain at best. A maiden for a third of her life, an unsatisfied housewife for another third, and a widow for the final third, I mourn the passing of my mother even as she still breathes but releases her grip on memories. Perhaps some of them are worth letting go of.

How to pay proper homage to a parent whose relationship has been filled with pain and yet has been so transformative? Instead of focusing on the fire, my goal is to focus on that which it has forged. My mother’s tragedies have not been mine. I have been a creative creature and spun my own tragedies, romances, and comedies; all informed and influenced by those of my parents, who were informed and influenced by their parents, until Infinitum.

I don’t have a daughter who will tearfully speak words that feel alien to her mouth when I age out of this existence. It’s been a battle for me to reach the point where “I love you” doesn’t burn on my tongue. It comes naturally to those in my circle as we build new concepts of family, community, individuals, love, and sexuality into our lives.

Let there be change and let it begin with me.