This is number three of the top 30 reasons for why normal people should not date a superhero(ine). Remember supers! This is all in good fun, BUT if you see yourself in these reasons you should consider altering your behavior in order to keep your beloved!

[In no particular order, except for number one because that’s my #1]

Note: This piece will be written using gender neutral pronouns (ze instead of he/she and hir instead of she/he and him/her) in order to make this non-heteronormative. I consider “bro” and “brah” gender neutral. I use them in my day to day life to refer to people of all gender identities.

3) Mommy/Daddy Issues

OKAY MICHELLE, you may say, EVERYONE has issues with their parents. Well, okay, yeah, but have you SEEN the mommy/daddy issues with these people!?!? Peter Parker – mom and dad dead, blames himself for the death of his Uncle Ben. He tortures himself over the death of his uncle and spirals into crazy martyrdom over this. Bruce Wayne – parents killed in front of him, traumatized for life. Tony Stark – his father was abusive (you can pick if you think it was emotional, mental, or physical, but it was definitely ONE of them) and then he spent almost his entire life thinking his father killed himself and his mother because he was driving drunk THEN he finds out they were actually murdered by the Winter Soldier….SO MANY DADDY ISSUES. Steve Rogers – Daddy not in the picture, mom died when he was young, had to grow up fast and learn to take care of himself. Clint Barton – father was a drunk, abusive asshole who killed his mother. Oliver Queen – his dad killed another man and himself to ensure that Oliver survived. And Barry Allen – mom is killed and he can never seem to save her, and his father is wrongfully imprisoned for her death and he can never seem to get him out of prison (I stopped watching after the first season – so SUE ME).

I can go on, but I am going to leave it there.

My main point is, yeah, we all got parental issues. We are born and handed over to imperfect people who were raised by imperfect people and have a ton of baggage. It is impossible to avoid having some of that baggage heaped onto us. I definitely have some parental issues, but I don’t go running around NYC trying to be a vigilante or superheroine. I am also in THERAPY (see post #7), which means that I am trying to deal with these issues in a healthy way. Everyone is allowed to have problems with their parents (dead or alive), but you have to DEAL with them. Swallowing it down and being a martyr about it is one of the quickest ways to kill a relationship and turn people off.

I am not saying that there aren’t a plethora of people who would love to sweep in and “save” one of these superhero(in)es, trust me, I would love to save Tony Stark, but look what it did to Pepper Potts. If they don’t want to save themselves and would rather sublimate all of these issues into saving people, that is their prerogative, but it also means that no one is obligated to put up with it.

Sort your shit out and then find a significant other, or at least be in the process of sorting your shit out before you try to offload it onto another person.