Sometimes the frankness of children puts us in a difficult position: their choice may seem to us an absolute mistake, and we refuse to accept this. How to overcome irresolvable differences and maintain mutual trust?
“My daughter is 26 years old. She categorically does not want to get married and have a family, and this worries me a lot. From the age of fourteen, I noticed her craving for girls, but did not attach any importance to this. From the age of 19, she had “strange” friends, but I turned a blind eye to this, I thought – pampering. She dated the boy for 5 years. About a year ago, my daughter told me that she had fallen in love with an older woman. She stated that she was going to live with her and would never marry. I cannot put up with this state of affairs. I want my daughter to have a family and children. I really want her to reason, to return to normal life. Is there a chance? What needs to be done for this?” Natalya, 53 years old
Lucy Mikaelyan, family therapist:
“Choosing a path that runs counter to social foundations, with the opinion of a loved one (your mother) is a difficult choice. I think, Natalya, it’s not easy for your daughter either. It is not known what is behind her words that she fell in love with a woman and will never marry: a balanced decision or momentary emotions. It may turn out that everything is not clear to her in connection with her new relationship, that she is experiencing a state of uncertainty.
Very often, people of non-traditional sexual orientation ask: “How to tell your parents? Friends? Familiar?” Behind these questions is the desire not to lose the social circle that is dear to them. They are worried about the understandable fear that the family and society will not accept them. To avoid the pain of rejection, they may cut back on their social contacts. This creates a painful isolation that reduces a person’s personality to his sexual preferences. A person himself begins to perceive one of the sides of his identity as his whole self. In such a situation, life choices are unlikely to change.
Read more:
- “Homophobia is the desire to assert one’s superiority at the expense of another”
If you really want to help your daughter, it is important to make sure that she accepts your help. This is possible only if the daughter sees in you a person who empathizes with her, acting in her interests and on her side. How to be supportive for your daughter if she really fell in love with a woman, given that you have fundamental disagreements about the permissibility of same-sex relationships?
The answer can be found in your own family. Has it ever happened that people close to you both had different points of view on something important (albeit not as fundamental as it is now) and at the same time they maintained emotional contact and trusting relationships with each other? What makes trust possible? What then helped family members to go beyond the conflict topic? How did they do it, what did they think, feel? What family experience could be useful to you now?