How To Not Meet The Parents

After over 6 years of dating, NUMEROUS relationships, and both some long and short distance flings, I have finally managed to stop dodging the bullet, and put my Big Girl Pants on and met a guy's mother. Mostly, I managed to accomplish this tremendous feat of chicken-shit-ness by either A.) Dating guys without parents (read: orphans, foster kids, or extremely independent children of nasty divorces who moved out early and aren't really "family guys"), B.) Dating guys whose family's live far enough away that it wasn't an issue or even topic to broach (read: Vermont to Virginia, hundreds of miles, etc.), or C.) Dating men who had no interest in either keeping me around long enough to deign meeting their parents a possibility, or dating guys who just didn't give a shit about the whole parent/family/girlfriend/girl-he's-sleeping-with equation. Mostly, it worked for me. The closest I actually ever came to suiting up for parental battle was agreeing to go to a potential dinner with TGIS's dad after we'd been together for 5 months, but mostly, that was because he was a foodie as well and I thought he and I would have no chance in hell that we WOULDN'T hit it off over our steak frites and vino.

Now, other than the occasional foodie daddy, I feel a couple ways about meeting parents, and in particular mothers, because when you think about it, fathers are just really grown up men, and I tend to do really well with men. We get each other. We have similar senses of humor. In general, I tend to know what a guy is looking for from me in terms of behavior, conversation, attitude, etc. Women, however, are a whole different barrel of slippery eels. Women are fickle, fickle creatures (and I should know, being one of them,) and if a woman decides she doesn't want to like you, not even an injunction from GOD is going to make her suddenly change her mind and give you the time of day. But with mothers-- MOTHERS-- here's the deal:

Mother-Law #1: If given the choice between meeting someone's mother or a psychotic ax-murderer in the darkness of my apartment hallway late at night while home alone, I would take the ax-murderer GLADLY, because one of those, you can kill in self-defense, where as no matter how badly it goes with the other, you can't.

Mother-Law #2: Now, if (god forbid,) I were to ever have a son, and he were to somehow make it to the appropriate ages for dating and copulation himself, and if he were to be charming and intelligent and pretty much all-around my child, and were to bring a girl home for me to meet, as she would be telling me how nice it was to meet me and how much she's heard about me and what a lovely home I had!, all I would be thinking is, "yeah, yeah, and all those nice words are coming out of the same mouth that sucks my baby boy's dick."

In two bulleted points, THAT sums up how I feel about mothers, and why, in general, I've tried to avoid them. But, after being told, very gently, that I might as well get it over with in a no-pressure situation, I actually entered under the threshold of a mother's front door with her son. And made it back out alive. She was lovely. She thinks I'M lovely. And since then, I've met nearly the rest of his family, including my first over-night stay at a parent's house, and he's met MY immediate and extended family. And Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, everyone seems to be doing just fine. Who ever knew-- I am really capable of growing up and getting over my emotional bullshit.

XOXO