What My Jealous Toddler Taught Me About Long Term Relationships with Anyone or Anything
Family flower ritual with Zinnias
My three year old son lies on the floor kicking his feet in the air, “Beh !” he cries. He flips over and starts to crawl and then sits on my lap bouncing on my leg. He asks to breast feed. “No!” I say while impatiently pushing him from my leg. “I think you don’t know how big and strong you are!” I groan.
“Beh, he repies, and flutters his eyelashes at me. I feel disgusted. “Oh baby” I say, exasperated then turn and pick my actual baby up from near the top of the stairs. I inhale her smell. She turns to me, “Beh!” she coos. “Yes baby,” I coo back, totally in love.
My son, like many kids with baby siblings, likes to play baby. He sees and more importantly FEELS the type of love I have for my daughter, who is 11 months old and he wants some of THAT. He wants EVERYTHING she has and wants. Baby food pouches, riding on the leg games, to be picked up and carried everywhere. One time my wife let him ride front forward in the baby carrier which was an outrageous mistake and he continues to ask to this day to do it again which I totally blame her for.
Of course I feel guilty and ashamed – I DO feel a love for my daughter that is different, mostly because loving a baby is TOTALLY different than loving a kid. When he plays “big baby” I feel many many things towards him, none of them loving or good. Disgust and annoyance usually which can turn to anger. While I know he developmentally can’t understand this - I just want him to know that HE ALREADY GOT THIS LOVE. I try and show and tell him that he and I too played and he got tons of attention without even a big brother around interrupting all the time. I tell him stories about being a baby and what we did, show pictures and video and PROOF. I loved you like that, I’m trying to say. But watching you try and get me to love you like that now makes me really not like you. Of course I can’t tell him that, but I’m sure he feels it on some level. And I’m giving her this kind of attention in FRONT OF HIS FACE.
And then I realize the ways that I did this same thing to my wife in our relationship a few years in. There is the beginning of things and relationships – the baby stage. There is so much tenderness and excitement and very special smells and feelings and moments of being in love. And of course there is the anxiety of – am I doing it right? Was that okay? And then whatever it is – a relationship, a house, a job, a career, a city – you develop a relationship that is long term. You know each other way better. That’s awesome – this is that fun part we do, or go to, or the yummy part of our connection – and also annoying like the way your partner snores or dog throws up or the way the garbage in your city heats up to a very particular smell every summer. You know each other better. You aren’t in the baby stage. You’ve smelled each others farts. You’re in the kid stage, middle childhood even. But why is it that we feel like in our culture that we should always be in the romantic baby stage of something???????
Like it’s a problem that my wife doesn’t want to smell my head anymore? Or sex isn’t the way it was in the beginning? Or the romance or the adventure of meeting someone/thing/place new isn’t alive in our relationship of 8+ years. But of course that’s how it goes. And I’m sorry that I yelled at my wife a few years in for not treating me like the baby I was to her when we met. Because that is NOT realistic. And isn’t that the case for all of us? The way American culture wants us to keep a perpetual baby experience going on. As if none of us are growing and maturing ever…
So, Doro, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I essentially around years 2- 4 of our relationship kicked my feet in the air and said, Beh! And was upset you didn’t find it compelling, just like my son does. Because we’d already been each other’s baby’s and now we were each other’s kids. We were more relaxed, more parallel play was going on – opening up businesses, and getting engaged and married and going to couples counseling. You know, kids stuff.
Are there things in your life you are expecting to have the glow of the baby stage despite much growth beyond that? Can you let yourself feel the jealousy of that, and even want to try and get it, but also recognize the ways that you’ve grown beyond that? Hey, you’re a big kid now.