By Tanisha Naik
It’s a complex thing for parents to watch their children fall in love. Parents watch with happiness and nostalgia as their sons and daughters embark on a new romantic journey that may lead to marriage. It can also be hard to see.
I spoke with Rev Allen and Ms. Switzer, who both have children who got married in the past year.
One of Rev Allen’s sons got married this past Labor Day weekend.
”Well, it’s interesting,” Rev Allen said when I asked him to tell me what it was like. His son had a girlfriend in high school, but then when they went to college they broke up. “He didn’t date anybody for nine years after and he didn’t seem even interested, so we were like, well whatever,” he said. Then, “he texted our family group text in June a year and a half ago saying he went on a date for coffee with someone that he met at a wedding.” Two weeks later, his son flew to Austin to see her. Then she flew back to Atlanta, he flew to Austin again, and fast forward 15 months and they got married.
So what was Rev. Allen’s approach to his son getting married?
“We actually tried to stay out of the advice-giving business,” Rev Allen said. He realized that as his kids get older they need less advice and more of “just our listening ear.” He said he kept his questions more open-ended. He said he asked his son, “Does she feel the same way? Does she know this?’”
He’s learned over the years that giving advice to adult children (really children at any age) is always tricky. “Advice is always fraught with, if they don’t do what we suggest, then they might feel judged. If they do do it, they might be doing it just because we said that because we’re their parents, and that’s not good either,” he said.
Advice aside, Rev Allen took great pleasure in the way his son’s relationship had affected him. “He started growing in ways that I hadn’t seen before,” he said. “I think he’s really transitioned from just kind of a happy-go-lucky, easygoing, I don’t care what bed I sleep in and what car I drive[guy] to wanting to be a little more responsible.” And that has reminded Rev Allen of himself at that age.
I also wanted to get a mother’s take on this experience.
Ms. Switzer’s son and his wife have been together since ninth grade. Ms.Switzer even taught her. She has the utmost respect for her. “I love his wife,” she said. “However It was hard for my oldest son to get married. I know I’m not his number one anymore.”
She acknowledges that it’s a part of growing up. “She’s his center of gravity now, and that’s completely right,” she told me. She loves it when he comes to visit and sends her text messages “about motherhood and sons.”
Ms. Switzer is pretty sure the marriage hit her harder than it did her husband “because it doesn’t really change the relationship with him as much,” she said.
As far as advice goes, she did have some early on in terms of the way he treated people. “I had an expectation that he would treat anyone he dated with the utmost respect and always let his partner take the lead on things,” she said.
Ms. Switzer could relate very well to the high school sweethearts aspect of her son’s marriage because she and her husband have been together since 11th grade. “We had a long-distance relationship, so [her son] kind of grew up hearing stories and he took it to heart,” she said.
Long-distance relationships notoriously don’t last. However, one of the most profound things Ms. Switzer’s husband said to her when they were younger, “We will not be happy as a couple and we won’t flourish as a couple unless we’re strong as individuals and so we have to make this work.”
She took that message to heart. “I was not expected to sacrifice everything and follow him. He wanted me to be my best self. And so I know that that really impressed my son,” she said. Ultimately, she didn’t need to give too much advice and preferred to let her marriage with her husband be a model all by itself.
She has also always made it her mission to welcome her daughter-in-law into her family’s life. “I feel like it’s my responsibility as a mom to just say ‘ ‘welcome,’’” she said. “And so I made a choice before they even started thinking about dating, that whoever they brought home, I wanted to be able to be welcoming.”
Ultimately, watching your kid fall in love seems to be about gaining some things and letting go of others. “I used to have control over those things and now I don’t,” she said. “And that’s appropriate and I have to accept it.”
