My mum is single and 42 years old. I recently discovered she is dating a 27-year-old man, my age-mate. This man was hitting on me a while back, but I turned him down. Now he is going out with my mum. At first, my mum denied the relationship when I confronted her. Then I caught them together. I can’t even face her; I feel so much hate towards her. What should I do? I am 25 years old.
Dear reader,
If she begins parenthood before developing her personality, there will be consequences. One of the consequences may be that she will never self-realise.
When a person never achieves self-realisation, they live as if a part of them is missing or asleep. The part that brings dignity and honour. The part that brings boundaries and self-respect.
There comes a time in your life when you analyse your parents like human beings and not just as your parents. This will help you to understand them better. Where are they coming from, and what struggles and choices have shaped them?
I say struggles and choices because life gives us the former, and we pick the latter. Life throws struggles at everyone. The way we navigate through those struggles is by making choices. Those choices shape our lives.
For example, what was happening in your mum's life when she was 17 or around the time she conceived you? Did she naively get into a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship where she got pregnant without expecting it?
What followed after that? What kind of parental response did she get? Was she supported or left alone? Did the family feel ashamed of her deed and try to keep it a secret?
The event of a teenager getting a child can be the most defining moment of her life, a T-junction from where her life will either go right or wrong.
Two things are different about the mistakes of youth. One, they're disruptive in that they interfere with the young person's development. Someone may, as a result, miss out on milestones like attaining career development, discovering themselves, and forming important relationships.
Did you know that the longest-lasting relationships are those we form during our college days? What if during that time of college, someone had confined themselves to a romantic relationship?
The consequence of such a bad choice will silently ripple throughout life. It's like bending a young tree. The bend grows with it, and it grows bigger as the tree grows.
The second element is isolation. When a teenager gets pregnant, for example, it isolates them from their peers. This isolation can become a source of stress and depression by itself.
The same applies to other blunders, like getting into gambling or alcohol addiction. This person will become so lonely that feeling rejected and avoided will become a source of pain by itself.
Did your mother suffer from delayed milestones that she has never recovered from? Did she, for example, achieve career development? Did she resume school and finish it?
Did she reconnect with her peers after returning from maternity leave, or did the shame keep her away?
We come into life through age groups, and we tend to travel across the terrain of life in those groups.
Generation Z, your age mates, has recently caught the attention of many because of their fearlessness and a sense of justice. Developmentally, they're now leaving college and getting into careers.
What happens when someone falls off the wagon of their generation and gets left behind? There's a sense of being misplaced that comes with it. The person will find themselves around people with whom they have no conversation because of huge age gaps.
Some people will try and catch up with their age mates, but others will make this misplacement their norm. They may start dating very young men or women, sometimes as a way to feel bigger and more accomplished in comparison.
A younger lover will see them as very successful because of the huge age gap, but it may be the only kind of compliment they can get to bandage their weak self-esteem.
I'm simply suggesting that your mom's development may have been hampered by teenage pregnancy, and the psychological effects have since rippled.
Heal on your part. Undertake psychological counselling to accept yourself and your fate in life. This is the mother you have to deal with, and she's not okay. She has unfinished business, and she doesn't welcome correction.
Some of her behaviours may be too embarrassing, but you can't take them personally.
You can afford to give her the grace without getting resentful. Appreciate the fact that she brought you to the world, didn't abort you, and so forth. After that, just step away from her personal life and let her behave as she wishes. At least from her story, you know what to do differently in your own life.
