Is what I am doing criminal? Part 2
Dear John,
My daughter is 16, dating a boy who’s turning 20 in a month. He drives a muscle car and lives with a roommate. My daughter who is sometimes mature beyond her years, wise beyond her years, is also emotionally a 16 year old.
The thing is, I trust her!! I feel ok with it. I met him and feel she can do worse. My wife says that seeing a boy over 18 should be a hard no. I’m judged by my friends for allowing this. But I’m not actually even second guessing my decision. But I do wonder if that’s being a bad father? Should I not allow this? I know what he’s doing is technically criminal. Is what I’m doing criminal for condoning it? (Part 2)
Continued from last week...
The fact that you know and trust your daughter is imperative. Integrity is hard earned and easily lost. If you and your daughter have a foundation of trust and open communication, you will be able to intuit her needs and safety far better than questioning every one of her actions and choices. However, trust is not a one and done experience. Trusting your daughter and her choice to date somebody, not only older, but also at a different maturity level than her poses many challenges. An adolescent girl compared to a young man, while only 4 years apart, can be at fundamentally different places in their lives. This 4 year difference is not so significant when we are talking about adults after college, in midlife, or in their second half of life. The relative difference is actually quite small when you aggregate their total life experience on earth as we get older. At this point today, your daughter’s age difference represents a fourth of her lived experience and a fifth of this young man’s. In order to support your daughter, and by extension her relationship, it will be imperative to have frequent conversations with her so you can stay attuned to the ebb and flow of their relationship, their obstacles and joys, and make sure that this relationship provides fertile ground for her to get to know herself better. Ultimately, that is what relationship does for us. It provides a mirror and opportunity for us to better understand ourselves and how to nurture our interdependence, not codependence, in a healthy way. Regardless of the outcome of this relationship, the boundaries erected or required, and the feedback given, solicited or not, the most important thing for your daughter is to learn to trust herself. You are in a position to help her with that.
There will never be a shortage of people with opinions offering unsolicited advice on what you should or shouldn't be doing as a parent or with your own life. You will encounter - if you haven’t already - judgments about you and your choices, your parenting style and family decisions, and many other things. As important as it is for your daughter to learn to trust herself, it is most important for you to trust yourself and your parenting intuition. If something seems wrong, it likely is. If you have and/or maintain an open line of communication, honesty, and transparency with your daughter and things feel right, they likely are. However, you can only know this if you are whole yourself and come from a place of integrity. For many parents, showing up and doing your own deep inner personal work is the only way to show up as a whole, attuned parent and not project our baggage onto our kids.
The dynamic gets a little more complicated once you factor in the discord between you and your wife. I am assuming you love and trust your wife. You now have to balance the trust you have for your wife when it is in conflict with the trust you have for your daughter. It is important to know and explore what is coming up for your wife. What are her concerns? What is triggering her about the relationship or age difference? Is there something in her past that needs to be honored and acknowledged? Did she experience a relationship with an age difference that was concerning? Relationships are an incredible opportunity for us to explore and expand our consciousness, our history, and our own traumas. This is no exception.
At first glance, it may be easy to hold onto the age disparity and focus on that as the primary issue. But, I feel strongly that this is only the superficial level of the matter. Beneath her hard “no” is a story. Create time and space to honor and explore that story. It is important to be attuned to your spouse/partner; to ensure everyone feels seen, heard, and witnessed. Perhaps there is something in her past, an experience, a hurt, that needs to be spoken truth to and witnessed. Your daughter's relationship may be an incredible opportunity to deepen your own attunement and love map with your spouse. Also, if your wife has a good relationship with your daughter, I would encourage your wife to create time and space to explore this with your daughter as well. You and your wife may not see eye to eye, but it is important to have a cohesive and collaborative plan on how you want to support your daughter. You can support your daughter without creating a rift between you and your wife. Making sure you and your partner have buy-in to the parenting decisions is extremely important. You do not have to have a consensus, and you can agree to disagree on aspects of this relationship, but nobody should feel marginalized or alienated in the family.
To be continued...check back next week for the finale, Part 3 of this exploration.
With love and light,
John Moos, MD