All The Mistakes I’ve Made: The Perils of “Meeting The Parents”

Are you in need of some honest advice? Have you been facing a life, relationship or career dilemma? Write to Katie HERE for a future edition of All the Mistakes I’ve Made.

Dear Katie,

I have a new boyfriend. It’s going really well and I’m so excited for our future. We are doing the whole “meet the parents” thing soon and I’m nervous. My dad is… a lot. Any advice? 

Disclaimer: If you’re in an abusive situation, I cannot give you advice, and urge you to seek professional help. If your father is the non-abusive kind of complicated- read on. 

I hear you. My father is a character. He’s a scene stealer and a star.

He’s difficult. He’s inappropriate. He’s a genius. A  lot of people will tell you that but no one believes it more than me. He marches to the beat of his own, very distant, drum. He is unconcerned with what everyone but my brother and I think of him. 

My mom’s best friend, my Aunt Joanna, died of breast cancer when I was a little girl. She used to tell my mom, “he’s a diamond in the rough, but he’s a diamond.”

My father has demons. 

So do I. A lot of what I like about myself I get from him. A lot of what’s difficult about me comes from him. I love words. I’m horrible to fight with, a Philadelphia lawyer. Like him, I get lost in my own mind. The depressive episode I am crawling out of comes from him. He sees auras. I can tell you the end at the beginning. 

Let me talk to you about one of my greatest regrets.

I was fourteen and starring on a children’s television show. I was very smitten with one of my co-stars. He was at my parents’ house and I remember holding my face a certain way, trying to look as pretty as possible. The crush was so all-consuming. He was the center of my universe. I had never kissed a boy.

My dad came and joined us in the kitchen, wanting to talk.

After a few moments, as my dad was doing up his shoes, I said, “you can leave now.” My father left, I thought nothing of it. 

Evening came. My crush left. I came across my father in the living room, shoeless. The way he looked at me had an irrevocable quality,  the emotion was so lucid, sharp and raw. 

“Why are you embarrassed of me?” he asked.

I felt so bad I cried. I wasn’t embarrassed of my dad, not really. I was just a teenager who wanted to be alone with my crush. But I learned a valuable lesson that day.

My father was a person that I could hurt.

Here is my advice to you.

Family, in all their shades, are not to be embarrassed of. You can’t erase the people who made you. You can’t dress them up like dolls either. Letting the person you love know your unvarnished legacy is a privilege.

Do your due diligence. Warn your partner that your dad might be “a lot.”  But don’t hide him. Who he is, for better or worse, made you. No one will ever understand the nuances of your family, not like you. All the difficulty and dysfunction are so intimate. 

Make peace with how your dad let you down. The peace will never feel perfect, or like a cure. In difficult moments, remember your father is a product of when and how he grew up. He is an imperfect person with private joys and heartbreaks you will never know anything about. 

Instead of worrying about what your partner thinks of your father, these questions are more productive. Will we do better than our parents? Did they do better than theirs?  Did they do the best they could? Did they try?

One day, if you’re lucky, you will be someone’s reason to be embarrassed. Your wife’s best friend, facing an untimely death, may call you a diamond in the rough. 

When your father is gone, think how fortunate you will feel that your partner met your dad at all. Knowing your father, the person who loved and hurt you, is an essential way of knowing you.

People are frustrating and they will let you down. That’s a rule and that’s love. But remember this:

Cast out the devils and the angels go, too. 

Katie