I just can’t get along with her.

I recently read an arti­cle that talked about how Michelle Obama gave woman dat­ing advice on how to find a good man. One of the points she made was pay close atten­tion to how a young man treats his mom. This got me to think­ing about an ongo­ing debate I have with a few of my female friends who are in the dating/courting process.

It is a fact that myself and my mom are not shall we say the clos­ests. I rarely share very per­sonal things with her and we may talk once a week. Due to fam­ily events, we have no choice but to stay in touch but I wouldn’t say we are close. In fact, it is a chore to speak with her at times and there just has never been that warm fuzzy feel­ing. When I was younger, my mom and I would get into numer­ous argu­ments and I ended up on pun­ish­ment many, many times. Other times, my mom would be “selec­tive” in terms of which mes­sages I would get from my friends. The selec­tive­ness was due to the race of the per­son call­ing me. Of course, this infu­ri­ated me. Sim­ple as that. One time, my mom didn’t approve of a young lady I was dat­ing and we ended up not speak­ing for a year and a half which coin­cided with the length of time I was dat­ing this young lady. When I say we didn’t talk, I mean I saw her for the Christ­mas hol­i­days and that was the only time we talked. No phone calls or any­thing for 540 days. Of course I played a role in this, but the fact is that we just aren’t that close.

Would you judge me because of this? I would hope not. Many times I am wary of even intro­duc­ing my mom to poten­tial young ladies I may date. I have seen it time and time again just ruin the whole dynamic because my mother is just a tough per­son to get along with and get to know on a gen­uine level. Keep that in mind when I don’t talk about my mom often or speak in length about our his­tory before you do get a chance to meet her. I say all this to remind you not to judge me because my mom and I aren’t close. You could be dis­miss­ing a good thing for a poor reason.