Leaving Your Parents

Marriage, Part 5: 

The first time I became ill after Cathy and I were married, can you guess who I wanted to comfort me? Yup. I wanted Mom! She was the one who had nursed me, and nursed me well, for 20 years. When I was home sick, she would bake chocolate chip cookies and change my sheets frequently and say all the appropriate words: “Oh, I’m sure you feel awful, honey.” On the other hand, Cathy had not had any practice in taking care of a sick person. After a day or two of being sick, her attitude was something like: “Don’t you feel better yet?” Today we are thankful that we lived nearly 1000 miles from our parents so that we were forced to learn how to care for each other “in sickness and in health.”

 

Our experience was not unusual. One of the first challenges for newly-weds is to “leave” their birth families: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Gen.2:24,25.  

Even when the newlyweds have a healthy perspective on their biological family, some parents still try to hang onto their former roles. One mother who had habitually critiqued her daughter's choices, didn't change after the wedding -- “You’re not going to buy a dog, are you?! That would be foolish since you both work fulltime.” After observing a pattern of inappropriate advice, this young woman’s wise husband gently talked with his mother-in-law about new boundaries between Mom and her daughter.

Does this mean that parents can’t help their children financially? can’t offer advice? can’t live nearby? Not at all. But parents must give the couple enough space so that they can become their own family, making their own choices, making their own mistakes. 

President Thomas Jefferson lost his wife when his daughters were young and never remarried. He apparently transferred the emotional bond with his wife to his married daughters. On one occasion a lonely Jefferson wrote to Martha: “I am chilled by my solitude. It makes me wish the more that you and your sister were here to enjoy it. I value the enjoyments of life only in proportion as you participate in them with me.” His possessive love was apparently reciprocated. After Martha had been married for nearly a decade she wrote to her father that no “new ties can weaken the first and best of nature.” No wonder Martha’s husband had severe mental problems! He was in competition with his father-in-law for the love of his wife.