What is your relationship like with your parents and how does it affect your dating life?

I don't know my father. I used to have a terribly strained relationship with my mother, because she was an emotional abusive alcoholic.

Turns out, the alcoholic part of that was critical. She stopped drinking a few years ago, and our relationship has slowly, but dramatically improved. And honestly, the limiting factor to that recovery is me: I'm distrustful; I'm reticent; I'm being overly cautious.

I want to say it hasn't affected my dating life at all. But it has. Previous partners have judged me for having a poor family life. I'm pretty sure one girl I was dating for a while in college broke things off because she wanted a nice second family to complement her nice family.

My ex from years ago had to deal with me going through the only time I ever did encounter my father: when he found my number in the phonebook and started calling me, drunkenly asking for money.

The relationship I've had with parents, and the envy I've felt towards those who really love theirs, led to the single worst part about my last relationship ending. I bought into the idea that I was going to be part of that family. I believed in a future with people who didn't just accept spending time with their relatives, but sought it out. Losing that was like losing a future I never knew I wanted desperately.

Since things ended, my mother's been surprisingly helpful with some things I needed to get done to get on with my life. Hell, she's coming up here the weekend following next to take my cat back to her house (out in the woods, with no one around for miles, where Annie can do her thing without fear of traffic) while I work things out here.

I can't even imagine that happening two years ago.

I wonder what it'd be like to have had someone I could have depended on throughout my dating history: someone I didn't dread bringing a new girlfriend home to see, so that I didn't have to load them up with disclaimers, partly because every trip up there was a disaster, and partly because she once drunkenly berated a girlfriend on their first meeting.

A bad relationship with family affects you in all kinds of ways. I can see how the obvious ones shaped my dating life. I often wonder how else it might be different.

/r/OkCupid Thread