For those who choose to marry (something I highly recommend doing), finding the right mate is the single most important decision that a person can make. A close second is having children and then raising them well. Based on my lifeâs experience, I would say about a quarter of my âdotâ was derived from my role as Cocoâs husband, partner and companion, and another quarter from my role as the father, counselor and later counselee and friend of Katherine, Rob, and Sophie. Laura did not live long enough for us to become friends â but through her journals, which I read several times through, I gained significant spiritual insight and wisdom.
I recognize that people are different. Each person has to make choices about what works best for them. No doubt, there are people who never marry and/or never have children who have very meaningful and significant lives. For me, though, as a heterosexual male who wanted to be a father to a son before he had met the woman who would be his mother, my life would have been greatly diminished had I not filled those roles. Someone with different wiring may do best in life by taking a different approach. What follows are my thoughts on finding the right mate and raising children well.
Finding the Right Mate
Simply relying on oneâs âheartâ to make the call on this most important of all decisions is reckless. Judicious wisdom is essential. Where to find it? From the people who know you the best, who have extensive experience in such matters, and who care more about your wellbeing than almost anyone else: your parents (provided they are worthy.) The first story in Section 4, âFinding My Lifeâs Companionâ relates the important role Cocoâs and my parents played in our connecting and deciding to get married. There was no girl that I dated after graduation that my parents approved of, other than Coco. And I think Coco can tell you that her parents were very opposed to her marrying the fellow she was seriously dating when she and I first met.
In considering a mate, among the important questions to ask oneself are: will this person fit well in our family; and, do I believe this person will be a good parent? Unless both answers are a solid yes, dump them and go find a better choice.
The parents of the âmate seekerâ have a very important role in guiding their child in this endeavor. Our three surviving children all brought home candidates that would not have been good mates for them. Coco and I did not have a conscious pre-mediated process that we followed for discarding unsuitable mates. But looking at it in hindsight, there was a pattern that we generally followed. I recognized that Coco had more emotional intelligence than me â especially where our children were concerned. There were several times where, after she had spent time with one of our children and a prospect, Coco would come and share her concerns and misgivings with me. That would cause me to be more observant and discerning of the prospect. One of the main things Coco considered was whether the prospect brought out our childâs better qualities. Was our child kinder to others, more relaxed, and more joyful when with the prospect? If not, or if just the opposite, then this was not the one. Eventually, I found that I always agreed with Cocoâs perspective on such matters and our hope was that our child would discover the same themselves. If the child did not seem to be figuring this out and the relationship with an unsuitable suitor was becoming more serious, then it fell to me to find a way to step in and say âNo, this is not the one.â Before taking such a serious action, I always consulted with the other children and got their buy-in that their sibling could and should do better in finding a mate.
I wonât go into any details about particular experiences when we rejected a suitor. They were unpleasant and typically accompanied with many tears, yet very necessary. In time, each of our children found excellent mates. Their spouses all fit well in our family, they bring out the best in our children, and the two that are parents as of this writing, are excellent parents.
As a parent, the only way that you will be able to persuade a child to cut ties with an unsuitable prospective mate is for you to be a person that your child sees as genuinely caring about them and as someone they see as having wisdom. You also might want to advise them before they leave home that you will be there to help them decide on a mate when the time comes, and that their siblingsâ buy-in is very important.