She told me not to marry him — in code

My mother never directly criticized any of my partners. She had a code instead. The pieces of the code were small enough to deny later, and I am only now — fifteen years and one divorce later — cracking them.

When she liked someone I was dating, she said his name often. She said his name in stories, in passing, in toasts at dinners. When she did not like someone, she did not say his name. She referred to him as ‘your friend’ or ‘the one with the boat’ or ‘that man.’ She called my first husband ‘that man’ for five years. I noticed. I told myself I was being paranoid. I was not being paranoid.

When I asked her later why she had not said anything directly, she said — and I have written this down word for word — ‘I was not going to be the woman who told her daughter who to marry. My mother did that to me and I never forgave her.’ She had been raised by a woman who said it directly. The reaction had been to encode it. It is a small example of how each generation overcorrects against the one before it. The next generation will overcorrect against ours. There will always be something the daughters wish their mothers had said and didn’t.