And my personality was set.

My mother is a clinical social worker and my dad is a psychiatrist. They spent years and years of their lives studying psychology (insert apple-doesn't-fall-far comments here, yeah, I've heard them).

My mother, when describing how they fell in love and decided to get married, has on more than one occasion explained that they had something crucial in common: they both loved (LOVED) the psychological theory of Object Relations Theory.

Suffice it to say, she has compared how she and my dad feel about object relations theory to how I feel about Christianity. As in, "You know how it's really important to you that you marry a guy who's a Christian? Well, that's how Daddy and I felt about object relations." (That is verbatim.)

Getting into exactly what object relations means is long and not really the point. But in class today, our professor explained it with this sentence written on the Powerpoint:

"Object relations theorists propose that the need for relationship is a basic human need."

Object relations: the need for relationship is a basic human need.

I was raised by two people who believed so strongly in this theory that they married based on it.

Do we all understand how I work now?