Oedipus Rex

Dunno if you've noticed but my titles are all song titles. This one comes from Tom Lerher. It's about the Greek tragedy, told with amusing lyrics.

I wanted to talk about family and how we learn to relate to other people. We learn from example. It's no wonder my mother hooked up with violent men, that's what her father taught her.

I'm grateful to my dad. He might have had many problems, but he showed me love. I picked men more like him than other examples.

I started to wonder, lately, about my mother's mother. She always seemed quiet and calm. Maybe with a little pep here and there. When my sister asked her if birds have a penis, without skipping a beat, grandma said "No, they eat with their peckers. "

What was she like as a mom I wonder? What was she like as the wife of a violent father? I bet she was stuck in a troubled life. Mormons marry for life. My violent grandfather died just a few months after my mother gave birth to my oldest sister.

The man I called grandfather married grandma after her children were grown and didn't appear to be violent. At least I didn't hear it spoken of if he was.

If I had pigment, I'd probably look like my mother. We have similar features. Murry looks like his mother, with her thick lips and oval face. I saw a picture of her and mistook it for him. He laughed at me, but he really does look like her.

I think Freud was on to something, but I think he took the correlation a bit far. I think we use the examples we see when we choose a mate. I also think we move away from those examples if we don't like them.

I saw a study on monkeys where they had replaced their mother with two replacements. One was made of metal that had the bottle of milk. One was furry. The monkey preferred the company of the fuzzy mother. Researchers would scare the poor little thing and it would ALWAYS run to furry mom.

Sometimes I feel like I've been experimented on. It's been a challenge to find the furry mom. It's been a bit easier to find the furry dad.

Even the man who molested me didn't cause me a huge amount of physical harm. His sexual abuse left me with a greater confusion as he made a point to make it pleasant.

Years later, another man tried to touch me. He said "you want to feel good, don't you?" I told him not like that and never went near him again.

I watch people and how they relate. How they interact with their spouses. Just recently I saw George Takei's documentary Being Takei and saw how he and his husband loved each other. They bickered and chided at the same time as they cooed and flirted with each other. I saw my own marriage in theirs.

Love is love. I wonder which parent gay couples model? Both maybe? I guess we all model both.

But we all run to fuzzy mom or fuzzy spouse.

Thoughts? Kind comments welcome.