Along with playing patty-cake, tying our shoes and drinking from a cup, our parents teach us something else — something far more important. They teach us what marriage is all about.

SHARON: I honestly believed no husbands and wives love each other, and that marriage is something a woman has to do and a husband is something she has to get, and the sooner, the better.

I also believed that all parents fight long, drawn-out screaming battles during which they call each other the filthiest names they know, right in front of the children.

I believed it is perfectly normal for mothers to tell their daughters the most horrible things about their father — like he never wanted them, he was having affairs, he barely made enough money to feed the family — and turn their daughters against him.

I believed once you get one of these necessary evils (aka a husband), you treat him with the utmost disrespect, barely acknowledging him when he speaks, ignoring him whenever possible, ridiculing him if the opportunity arises.

I believed the major relationship in your life is with your mother. Your No. 1 job is to make her life better no matter what the cost — financially, emotionally — to anyone else. Your children, friends, siblings and, of course, your husband all take a back seat to your mother.

I also believed your loyalty is to your mother. Thus it is perfectly acceptable to share the most intimate details of your marriage with her, invest all your emotional energy in her, go to her for comfort and share the highs and lows of life with her.

And you wonder why my marriage ended in divorce.

GRETCHEN: Domination and subjugation were the hallmarks of my parents' marriage, the building blocks of family life, as I observed and experienced the situation during the first 18 years of my life. Love had no place in marriage. It was childish to marry for love. Marrying for convenience or survival was the mature thing to do. All those thoughts had been drummed into my brain long before I said yes to the first man who asked me to marry him.

I'd already lost my first love, and I was sure I'd never find another. So I did the "wise and mature" thing at 18 and married a man I didn't love, following in the footsteps of my unschooled mother, who had married her uncle because she couldn't support herself. He offered her three hots and a cot, and she gratefully grabbed it.

Then, he — my father — proceeded to dominate her. She fought back by dominating me. I fought back by escaping into a wrongheaded marriage to a wife-beater. Things went from bad to worse. Seven years later, I somehow managed to get a divorce.

However, three years after that, I was forced to move back home. But living with my mother again, the narcissistic harpy, wasn't as bad as living with my ex-husband, the jealous rapist. At least I didn't have to sleep with her.

What was your parents' marriage like? How did it affect your relationship? Send your tale, along with your questions, problems and rants to [email protected]. And check out my e-books, "Dear Cheryl: Advice from Tales from the Front" and "I'll Call You. Not."