“In addition, she has to value family, and to have been raised in a loving family, if you weren’t raised with love, how do you know what it is, and if you don’t know what it is, how can I expect to be loved.” That was a quote I read on someone’s OK Cupid profile regarding what he wanted in a woman. Apparently, he believes that a person who was not raised in a loving family can’t know how to love. What a crock of shit.

I’m sorry, but I have to say that this guy really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There are plenty of women, and people for that matter, who were raised in loving families but they, themselves, don’t know what real love is or how to actually care about another person. There are also plenty of people who were raised in horrible homes who grew to be amazingly loving and caring people.

You can’t ever assume that because a person had a certain kind of upbringing that they are going to grow to become a certain kind of person. There is so much more that goes into who a person is than how they were raised. Their family, friends, intimate relationships, religion, society, biology and a slew of other things come into effect in a person’s life to shape who they become. More than that, a person can change, literally from one year to the next, and be a person who’s totally unrecognizable from who they were before.

Just speaking for myself I can say that upbringing does not necessarily have an affect on a person’s ability to love. If you’ve read this blog then you’re more than aware of my horrendous childhood. I was never shown love. I didn’t know what it was. I thought that at best, love was obedience from me and not being hurt by someone else. However, over time I learned and grew and changed and realized all the love and caring and compassion that was in my heart, and I learned how to share that with others. But by this OK Cupid guy’s standards, I would be unworthy of love.

I’ve also seen the flip side. I knew someone who was raised in a good home with plenty of money, a good school, parents who would have done anything for her and plenty of friends. She was loved. And yet, she grew up to be a manipulative bitch who used men but never loved them. By OK Cupid guy’s standards though, she would be worthy because she grew up in a good home.

You simply cannot judge someone by these kinds of standards. You have to judge a person by who they are now, not who they were or how they’ve lived. You can never tell from such things. And as I said, people can make complete transformations. I was once a person so bad that I didn’t even like myself, but I chose to change, and I succeeded. People can and do change. People can and do overcome tragic pasts. People can and do come from all the best and become the worst.

It’s one thing to want to know about the past of someone you want to be in an intimate relationship with, but it’s another thing completely to make any judgements based on that, without knowing every single part of the story. People are not simple, black and white creatures. We are amazingly complex and usually in a constant state of flux. It’s only important to have someone who can love you, but you can’t gauge their ability to do that from their past or upbringing.

Briana Blair

Briana Blair is an author and artisan. She has published more then 30 books and thousands of articles across multiple sites. After practicing Paganism and witchcraft for 25 years, she's now on a journey as an atheist and skeptic. She's eclectic, unpredictable, and always evolving. Facebook - Twitter