#IntimacyCode: “My 11 year old wants to have a boyfriend”

Competence: As a follow-up on the discussion yesterday, permit me to share a conversation I witnessed between a mum and her daughter.

“Mum, why can’t I have a boyfriend like Clara?”

“Will you shut up your mouth, you want to have a boyfriend with your poor grades in school. What do you know about boyfriends at 11?”

If you were in the position of that mother, what would you do? How would you handle the situation?
While I sat by the edge of my chair in a park, enjoying the cool of the evening, I couldn’t help but listen to the screams from the young girl’s mother about 3 yards away. All I could do was shake my head in amazement. I shook my head because as an intimacy catalyst, I could see that in the bid to preserve moral standards, the mother was creating another problem, perpetuated by her lack of skills.

A friend of mine said many years ago, “every man would pay for his ignorance”.

By shouting and overacting, the mother of the girl was ‘sincerely’ shutting down the doors of intimacy with a reinforced steel padlock.

Back to our discussion yesterday, another reason our spouses are not opening up is probably because we demonstrated incompetence in managing the information they shared. It takes vulnerability to share, hence over-reacting sends the signal that says to the person disclosing, “you made a mistake, this person can’t handle it”.

There are things we must rehearse for, this does not mean that we want these experiences, but being prepared for them increases our chance of managing them effectively.

Victor Akunna
Romance & Intimacy Catalyst
www.foundationforfamilyaffairs.org