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Mother's way
You are turning into your mother. Yes, you. You may laugh (or, more likely, shudder in recognition) but the bald fact is: you can't help it. The moment I realised it was happening to me was last night, during a spat with my husband: It's all self, self, self! I roared. He had committed the mortal sin of placing his dirty plate on the carpet, by his feet, instead of washing it, drying it and placing it neatly in the cupboard.
Let's not get into this, he muttered. But I wasn't listening. I realised, with horror, that I'd nicked the self-self-self line from a similar bust-up, sometime in the late 1970s, between my mum and dad.
I'm so like my mum it scares me, admits my friend, Laura. All the daft, anally retentive things I do, like ironing tea towels so they sit neatly in the drawer and washing out that day's knickers in the washbasin. I know what she's saying. I bleach coffee cups. On a more profound level, Laura says she behaves just like her mother in relationships. On the plus side, I'm stoic and self-sufficient like she's always been. Less positively, I bottle up resentments until I finally blow a gasket like mum does with dad. Hearing her words come spouting out of my own mouth always shocks me. I find myself thinking, Oh, hi, Mum! Wonder where that line came from?
Yet we should hardly be surprised when mummy dearest puts in an uninvited appearance. Sue Quilliam, Couples Counsellor for iVillage, observes, You learn the life rules of love from your parents. Which means we glean the good, bad and (sometimes) ugly bits of being grown-up from the very people who created us. Human beings tend to repeat what they are familiar with, whether it makes them happy or not, simply because it is what they are used to, says Sue Quilliam.
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