My daughter caught me and my boyfriend kissing the other day. When we finally ‘came to’ (as it were) and realized she was watching us, we both turned and looked at her and…. and she immediately bust out laughing. Greeeeeat.
But in her eyes I saw a twinkle of something. At age nine, I saw recognition. Appreciation. Joy.
A few years back, that kind of love – the love shared between a man and a woman – was, sadly, a totally foreign concept to her. Primarily because my ex and I were… well, let’s just say we were not affectionate. She might’ve seen the occasional hug, or glimpsed the rare cursory peck on a cheek, but nothing beyond that. Nothing that couldn’t be classified as clearly and obviously platonic. Ever. The kisses my ex and I shared were the kind of kisses shared between siblings, or good friends – not the sort that should be shared between a couple in love. They were not, in a word, romantic.
And that was obviously a problem – that the love wasn’t there. And it wasn’t something we could put on, though I’ve seen other married couples do that successfully. I was never any good at hiding my true feelings, and neither was my ex. So the reality was, Mommy and Daddy were kind of like brother and sister, to her mind – at least that’s how we behaved and appeared. And I don’t know about you, but that seems downright depressing to me. It was one of the reasons I eventually left my marriage, to be perfectly honest. I didn’t want my daughter growing up thinking that what my ex and I had, what we were, was in any way ‘normal’ or all she should expect from a relationship with a man. I wanted her to know what real love looks like between a man and woman – passionate kisses and all – so that when she got older and started dating she would never accept anything less. And of course when I found myself thinking these things about what I wanted for her, I knew I shouldn’t accept anything less either.
So when my daughter catches me and the boyfriend smooching, I don’t mind so much. We’ve been together for a few years now, and I think it’s good for her to see what healthy, happy, romantic love looks like. I want for our relationship to be a model – something that she can use to guide her in her own future dealings with men, so that she never has to reach the point where she find herself stuck in a loveless, passionless marriage, going through the motions. As a mom, that’s the last thing in the world I want for my daughter.
How do you feel about PDA around the kids? Do you try to sneak kisses, or are you openly affectionate in a (ahem) non-platonic way with your significant other around them (with boundaries of course – there’s a limit to how much any of us want kids to see, obviously)?
Read more from Tracey Gaughran-Perez at her personal blog Sweetney.com