March | 2015 | Single Mom Out Loud

Growing up I remember my mother talking to me about drugs and alcohol. She warned me repeatedly about the dangers of smoking and getting drunk at parties. She spoke, and spoke, and like a sermon I would hear her preaching every time I left the house.

But my mother failed to talk to me about the most dangerous drug known to mankind: Passion.

When I was 23 years old I learned the dangers of passion for the first time, the destruction it can cause and the powerful addiction it can create. Passion will draw us in with its alluring high. It will consume every part of us and when we find ourselves addicted, it will spit us out and leave us to die under the hot sun. I know it might sound like an exaggeration, but anyone who has experienced such passion knows that this is exactly what it does.

Do not fool yourself. Passion is not love. Passion is its evil twin. The one who likes to fuck with our heart and play with our emotions. Passion is that intense irrational feeling we get that makes us act like complete lunatics just so we can secure another dose of its high. It makes us addicted to the most vile people because for some inexplicable fucked up reason they are the ones holding the last drop of what we think is life itself. Passion makes us addicted to the drug dealer.

So how does passion become such a powerful evil force in our lives? It comes down to biology and psychology. Science has proven the affect of sex on the human brain is like a drug. That cloud nine feeling we get during sex is the body flooding the brain with neurochemicals, which create emotions, feelings of attachment, and even… argh..love. And this is where things get fucked up: During an orgasm, the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (whatever that is) SHUTS DOWN. This region is considered to be the voice of reason and controls behavior. During an orgasm the brain of a woman is said to look much like the brain of a person taking heroin, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

How fucked up is that?

So this is how passion forces itself into us. Through really good sex.

Most of the time we know that charming person we met at the bar is not good for us. We’ve all heard their stories of bad luck, lack of money and crazy ex girlfriends. By the way, have you noticed how every asshole has a crazy ex girlfriend or/and 100 ex wives who monstrously keep his 100 kids from him? They are all unlucky victims of the world and mean women. Just poor souls with bad luck. We all know those men. They are charming, exciting, sexy and extremely complicated. They fit every characteristic of a sociopath but we don’t care. They are the famous bad on paper men. The ones we end up choosing over the boring good on paper men our mothers try to set us up with. We know they are bad for us the moment we meet them, and our brain warns us to keep a safe distance because it knows attraction is not nearly as destructive as passion.

But most of us don’t listen to our brain, we listen to its slower friend: the heart. Most of us believe that the charming soulless wanderer is just a victim of society; a poor soul misunderstood by the world. And we decide to sleep with him. If only just to know what it feels like to sleep with someone so sexy and exciting. And that’s when all hell breaks loose. The passion will take over our mind like a San Francisco fog in the middle of July; leaving us completely blinded by its high. The sex will be so good that we will start to fantasize a relationship and start to project upon him all these great qualities that he never cultivated in himself.

Way too often, a person will find herself completely devoted to this poor soul who in reality is nothing more than a destructive self centered baby, not capable of loving anyone but himself. Passion will literally suck the rationale out of us, turning us into delusional beings who blindly believe that one day this baby will magically turn into an adult capable of leading and raising a family. We put them in a pedestal and we idolize them. Passion convinces us that they are good souls who just need to be rescued. Passion turns us into those rescuers. And once we officially became a rescuer, passion turns us into even bigger addicts. We start to believe we can fix them and we turn the challenge into a reflection of our own worth, which makes it even harder to quit. After all, by quitting we are admitting our defeat and our failure.

But passion is not all about the bad, otherwise it would be easy to set ourselves free. There needs to be good. A reward. A high. Because just like every other drug, passion’s addiction lies on the cycle of the ups and downs. The good and the horrible. The pain and the reward. Passion thrives on those rare moments of calmness and connection. It’s those rare moments that make the drug even more addicting than it is. Those rare compliments and those rare calls shoot you through a rocket trip through the solar system. You forget all the bad and you start to live for the good, like a junkie. And you crave that moment forever. Long enough for it to come crashing down on you for the hundredth time, leaving you even more depleted than the time before.

And that’s passion. It’s highly seductive and dangerous. And I know this because I am a recovering addict, struggling daily to overcome my addiction.

When we have a child we tend to be very aware of our surroundings. I personally, tend to focus on kids everywhere I go, and I tend to observe a lot of other parenting styles. Its involuntary. It just happens. Its impossible not to observe the way some parents are raising their children these days and its even more impossible not to judge some of them. And don’t even try to tell me that there is no right or wrong parenting. Because there is. And its pretty simple. It comes down to one basic concept: Don’t raise an asshole. Apparently this is very hard for a lot of people, because in the last 16 months I have noticed something quite depressing if you ask me: the raising of a generation of self centered kings.

Let’s go back to a few days ago, to a hotter than usual February Saturday when I decided to go kayaking with Kaio. When we got to the marina there were three mothers in their mid thirties with their babies. They were all waiting outside the marina restaurant in the patio/play area. When they saw that I was renting a kayak and putting Kaio’s life vest on the conversation went something like this:

“Oh wow is your baby going kayaking with you?”

“Yes. We do this all the time. Weather is perfect.”

“Aren’t you afraid he can fall over or something?”

“Not really. He is wearing a vest and its a marina. Its calm.”

“Won’t he get tired and hungry?”

“It’s inly a couple hours. He will be fine.”

“That’s crazy. I could never do that. If my prince ever hurts himself I will die. Plus he can get a sunburn or get hungry. My son is my world. My little king.”

At that point I just smiled. I figured it would take too much energy to explain to those women how they are actually damaging their little highness.

But I couldn’t help but ask myself: What are the chances that little king will grow up and find a woman that will idolize him and fulfill his every need the way his mommy does? And what are the chances that little king won’t grow up to be at the very least, narcissistic?

Women are constantly complaining about men’s selfishness but they refuse to change the way they raise their sons. They raise these boys thinking they are princes and mini kings whose existence is the reason the world goes round, and they complain that these same boys are failing to become caring and nurturing men.

And this is not only a boy problem. Girls are being raised just as bad; As shallow princesses of imaginary castles waiting for one of those kings to marry and spoil her. Just like mommy and daddy.

We are living in an era where kids are more spoiled than ever. They are more entitled than ever. And they are more out of control than ever. I always hear moms complaining that their bundle of joy are dictating their lives and how they don’t feel like themselves anymore. But none seem to understand that kids are just a reflection of them as parents.

Kids are being assholes, because parents are being enablers.

It would take me the whole eternity to write down all the times I have seen mothers idolizing their children. Treating them like royalty with total discard for the world around them. Raising them with the best toys, the most expensive brand clothes and teaching them that they are entitled to the best of the best. Always. No need to earn anything. And spoiling them is just one fraction of the problem in my opinion. The bigger issue lies on the lack of discipline and limit most of these kids have. They are calling the shots at home and in public. They choose what they want to eat, when they want to eat and where they want to eat. They kick, they yell, they misbehave and disrespect everyone. Parents have become the ones following orders from these under developed mini dictators; sometimes even walking on eggs so it doesn’t set off a shit storm of tantrums. It’s frightening that this is the next generation of men and women.

I am not saying we shouldn’t treat our children with love and tell them how important they are. Kaio is definitely the most important person in my life. No doubt. He is the reason I wake up every day and decide to be a better person than yesterday. No doubt either. But he is not by any means the epicenter of my life or the world. I am still me. I still have a career, friends, and school. Kaio is the most important part of my life, but he is NOT my life. And he needs to learn that. He needs to show respect towards me and others at all times. He is not entitled to the best of the best nor he is entitled to act however he pleases. Kaio is not King. Nor prince. He is just a boy. A beautiful boy extremely loved by his family. But nonetheless, he is just a boy. A flawed human being like every other, with no crown to carry and whose life does NOT trump the life of others. And that is one of the most noble and valuable thing he can accept about himself.

Single Mom Out Loud

The joys (and desperation) of raising a boy without a man

Monthly Archives: March 2015

The Dangers of Passion and Great Sex

The Next Generation of Entitled Kings