Emily and Terrance have the perfectly awful habit of attempting to have conversations through me.
I detest this, and have told them both a million times to just. converse. with. each. other.
The truth is that my daughter and husband are more similar than either would care to accept, and as such, they are both squeamish about certain topics.
Neither are squeamish with me, mostly because there is very little in life that I am squeamish about and because I rarely hesitate to have conversations about anything, even if the conversations feel weird at first.
On Friday, Em tells me that she would like me to tell her father to make sure that he takes care of his condoms because it horrifies her to see them. Terrance tried to flush his condoms- even though I have been telling him for 25 years to knock that shit off. He does not listen to me. He flushes them.
They do not flush well. Emily comes into the bathroom in the morning to take a shower, looks down and sees floating, used condom. Becomes horrified that her parents have sex....adds this to list of things to discuss with therapist.
Em complains to me. I tell her father. Terrance denies that he has left a condom in the toilet and/or gets horrified and promises to stop flushing the condoms ( until a week or two later when he reverts to his same old procedure).
Both of them freak out at me: THE ONLY PERSON WHO IS NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN EITHER END OF THE HORROR.
On Saturday, I tell her again that if she wants to have the most direct impact on her father that she needs to convey how uncomfortable seeing the condom in the toilet makes her. My telling him hasn't changed his behavior, so perhaps she should address this herself.
Later that afternoon, she walks by him and lays on my bed. He is in the hallway. They can not see one another:
Em: "Dad?"
Terrance:" Yeah"
Em: "I'm tired of seeing the things in the toilet. So can you just not do it anymore?"
Terrance: Silence
Terrance: More Silence ( I watch his face go through the horror of having his condom usage indirectly addressed by his 17 year old daughter)
Terrance: Ok. But you have to take care of your situation. Because I don't want to have to see that in the laundry. ( He is now referring to her leaving her menstrual pads in her underwear which he never finds until they've been through the wash. And yes. I've communicated his horror to her before.)
Emily( from bedroom) : Ok.
Terrance ( from Hall): Ok.
It's a beginning.
I detest this, and have told them both a million times to just. converse. with. each. other.
The truth is that my daughter and husband are more similar than either would care to accept, and as such, they are both squeamish about certain topics.
Neither are squeamish with me, mostly because there is very little in life that I am squeamish about and because I rarely hesitate to have conversations about anything, even if the conversations feel weird at first.
On Friday, Em tells me that she would like me to tell her father to make sure that he takes care of his condoms because it horrifies her to see them. Terrance tried to flush his condoms- even though I have been telling him for 25 years to knock that shit off. He does not listen to me. He flushes them.
They do not flush well. Emily comes into the bathroom in the morning to take a shower, looks down and sees floating, used condom. Becomes horrified that her parents have sex....adds this to list of things to discuss with therapist.
Em complains to me. I tell her father. Terrance denies that he has left a condom in the toilet and/or gets horrified and promises to stop flushing the condoms ( until a week or two later when he reverts to his same old procedure).
Both of them freak out at me: THE ONLY PERSON WHO IS NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN EITHER END OF THE HORROR.
On Saturday, I tell her again that if she wants to have the most direct impact on her father that she needs to convey how uncomfortable seeing the condom in the toilet makes her. My telling him hasn't changed his behavior, so perhaps she should address this herself.
Later that afternoon, she walks by him and lays on my bed. He is in the hallway. They can not see one another:
Em: "Dad?"
Terrance:" Yeah"
Em: "I'm tired of seeing the things in the toilet. So can you just not do it anymore?"
Terrance: Silence
Terrance: More Silence ( I watch his face go through the horror of having his condom usage indirectly addressed by his 17 year old daughter)
Terrance: Ok. But you have to take care of your situation. Because I don't want to have to see that in the laundry. ( He is now referring to her leaving her menstrual pads in her underwear which he never finds until they've been through the wash. And yes. I've communicated his horror to her before.)
Emily( from bedroom) : Ok.
Terrance ( from Hall): Ok.
It's a beginning.
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