The Torture Test

This past weekend was a big weekend – or so I’ve been told. I brought the SO home to spend two days with my beautifully loud, chaotic family. I never really got nervous about it (minus the whole ceramics thing my mother insisted on making for him) though I was a bit anxious to see how he would hold up. The last time I brought a guy home for the parents, my freshmen year of college, we broke up driving down to see them. The family still hasn’t let me live down calling from a gas station bathroom carelessly stating “we just broke up so don’t be nice to him while we’re there.” Needless to say, that weekend (and that relationship) didn’t end so well for the poor guy.

But to really understand the demands of this weekend, you’d first have to understand my family.

My parents are getting ready to celebrate their 29th year of marriage. My sister and her husband just celebrated three years – after dating seven years since high school. My point being that my family is all about longevity in relationships and, well, my dating record of several light-hearted, painfully meaningless relationships thus far has cast me as the black sheep. It came to my attention this weekend that my family (mom, dad, sister and grandma) are incapable of speaking of relationships in the short-term. They would never dream to put pressure on me but they just simply aren’t programmed to think in terms of months instead of years, boyfriends instead of husbands. But you know what? I’m actually kind of thankful for that – it’s constantly kept my standards high.

So, after two days of playing too much golf and drinking too much beer, I’m happy to report that we left Florida with my mom and sister glowing with approval. My dad leaned over and told me he wanted to play golf with the SO again soon (which is his way of saying he approved, too). And grandma, well she’s just happy she has another boy in the family to brag to her friends about – those grandmas are really competitive like that.

And the best part? As we drove back home after a long, trying weekend – he still was able to laugh and hold my hand the whole way. I guess its going to take more than a psychotic family to scare this one away.