No One Told Me.

This morning, I came across a video where someone was talking about how marriage is difficult and how no one told them this while they were growing up. I found the topic very interesting, so I decided to watch it to the end. I agreed with everything they said until the 20th minute. The person mentioned in passing that when they were growing up, they watched their parent go through something very similar.

I found that very strange.

They had just told us at the beginning that no one told them this was how things worked, but they admitted that they had watched their parent go through the same things. From then on, I couldn’t concentrate on the video because I kept asking myself how a person can grow up in a dysfunctional dynamic and yet claim no one told them when they found themselves in that same situation.

When I thought about it more, I realized that this was not just a them thing; it was something that I found myself in in different facets of my life, especially while parenting. When I talk to my mum and my husband, I never fail to tell them how exhausted I am. I even wrote a whole essay saying the same thing, and while I am venting, I always say that no one told me how relentless parenting is. Every time I say it, I believe and mean it, and it’s only now while I am sitting here writing this that I can see that that is not entirely true.

My mum raised my siblings and I mostly alone, and I watched her do so from inside it. There were times that I made parenting so hard for her that when I think about it now, I hurt on her behalf. I watched her do with grace what I am doing now, and I still ended up being the person venting daily about the same thing and saying no one told me.

In my vents, I have always blamed Disney, movies, social media, and culture because they sell us easy love, perfect babies, and happy endings. It’s true that that’s what they do, but as I am sitting here now thinking about this, I feel that explanation absolves us of some responsibility because when you think about it, the TV playing those fairy tales was in the same house alongside the imperfect marriage, ordinary disappointments, and people making sense of life as they went. Looking back, I think I absorbed the fairy tale version of parenting and marriage because it was easier to accept than the version I was living, which was heavier than I had the capacity to carry.

I wonder if the person in that video went through something similar, and maybe that’s why so many of us say we didn’t know when we find ourselves in the same situations and blame Disney, movies, or social media when we are explaining ourselves. Because pointing somewhere outside ourselves is easier than sitting with what was already inside the house we lived in. If that’s the case, then what are videos like this one actually doing? Are they teaching us something our own lives somehow failed to teach us, or something else entirely?

At the beginning of the video, the person said the purpose of making it was to enlighten and educate others to not repeat the same mistakes they made and to do for them what no one did for them. I believe this is a noble cause, and the contradiction I noticed didn’t mean what they said failed to land as intended for others. A different person might have watched it from inside a toxic marriage looking for language to name what they were living because they couldn’t find the words themselves. Another person might have been watching it while going through or contemplating divorce, not to learn something new but to get permission or for someone to say out loud what they already knew but couldn’t yet say to themselves. Another might have been a young person sitting somewhere quietly doing their research so they could make an informed decision. For all these people, the video landed in a way it never could for someone who is already deep inside it.

So maybe what the videos are doing is not introducing new knowledge but making existing knowledge conscious and vocalizing experiences that have been lived but have barely been spoken out loud.

Does that close the gap, though? Because even when something that was submerged gets surfaced and named, it can only go so far. If a person only has information and lacks the capacity to imagine themselves in that position, then they could watch the video to the end, absorb everything being said, and still fail to understand until they are in it.

So, how do we bridge the gap between knowing and imagination that will help us build understanding that will save us from repeating the same cycles?