How complex are your feelings for your parents? (mother, father)

[ajzjmsmom]

Originally Posted by Scooby Snacks

Excellent post. I agree. Many people have supportive parents, but too many of us don't. Parents are only human, and we can't expect them to be perfect, but it is fair to expect them to be loving supportive role models in our lives. But we as children, also have an obligation to them; to be caring and loving children who take an active interst in our parents' well being. The parent-child relationship should be a mutual one, as are all normal human relationships. Parental relationships with adult children should not be parasitic. Abusive or neglectful parents don't deserve our loyalty and respect. Giving us life isn't a get out of jail free card which allows parents to treat their kids shabbily.

Such a good post, I struggle with the thought process that just because parents brought a child into the world that they deserve respect and loyalty.

[gordo]

I'm another one that has very mixed/complicated feelings toward my parents. In my case when I was a kid I had generally positive feelings towards my parents which turned more negative as I got older.

For things I'm happy with my parents, these include a number of things. They provided for essential things like clothes and food, and I never felt I went without. They raised me in a home filled with lots of toys and love. They made great care to make sure me and my brother had a childhood and treated us equally. Unlike many others my age parents, they didn't divorce and usually got alone.

My parents, well mostly my mom cared about how I did in school. When I was little I was a slow learner and a bit difficult in the classroom, but my mom made sure that I got the help I needed and I gradually improve in the school environment. I also had a speech impairment back then, and my mom made sure I had a good speech therapist. Both parents were invested in raising me with morals and religion. They took great care to make sure I didn't become bad, or do things like drinking, smoking, taking drugs and partying. And they raised me in a low pressure environment with lots of room and time to play and be a kid.


For the bad, I will say that when I was little there didn't seem be anything thing negative in my upbringing, at least until I was about 11 or 12. But once older I realized that my parents were taking a lot of things overboard especially their efforts to make sure I had a childhood. The problem with their asurance to make sure that I had a childhood was that I had always been young for my age, unsure, skinny, small, had little self confidence and fearful of trying new things. And I say this as a guy. I needed to be pushed out of my comfort zone, to be prepared for life as adult.

Then there was the fact that I wasn't socialize properly. I know that as well as being a slow learner when I was little I was also slow socially. Unlike with academics my parents did not ensure that I learn to become more social and interact with other kids. In the later elementary school grades I did make friends but once in middle school these friends shot ahead and I was behind in my age group.

In middle school while it was clear to my parents that I had no friends, but they or particularly my dad didn't think it was a problem because they felt that teens my age were bad kids, had permissive parents, and weren't like the kids when my parents were young. Another harmful effect that my parents gave me in their quest to have me stay on the right side of the track was that I continued to be fearful of trying new things bad and good.

A third problem is that my parents did little to get us involve in things like sports and other activities outside of the house. When I was in the lower grades my mom did introduce me to swimming and skating but I had trouble learning these and tended to give up the same thing happened with swimming. I was in cub scouts but I quit by grade 4. After this I didn't do any activities or sports until late in high school and my parents did not push this. Usually I just sat home, did things and had little motivation to try new things.

My parents were often warning me on the dangers of teenage rebellious behavior but they never mentioned how important being confident and having social skills is, and neither did they promote extra-curricular activities. Their parental philosophy seemed to be that as long as I was well behaved, did good in school, all I had to do was hold out my hand and I would be given a good job with benefits. Well when I first looked for a job I fell flat on my face as I did not have the social skills to pass an interview, plus I had a very hard time motivating myself. I did eventually get a job which had no interview involved, but the job while entertaining is not the best.


I've lately been interested in the difference between poor and rich parents, and I can see how my parents had more of a poor parent mind frame, although we weren't poor but lower middle class. It's just that they made discipline a big issue to keep myself away from the typical poor parent problems.

I think that my parents would have been fine for a kid having behavior problems and in need of a secure, loving home. But for myself I needed a fire lit under my ass. I needed to be bold, confident, competitive and have a wiliness to just go for new things. All of this wasn't important to my parents, or something negative.

[JrzDefector]

Originally Posted by cindersslipper

Jrz,

A couple of thoughts

Firstly, your parents raised a wonderful, kind, sensitive and intelligent individual. They nurtured her to the absolute best of their ability and you are a walking talking display of their best intentions, to all of us here on CD. They have Succeeded At What They Set Out To Do, in style.

Secondly, every single negative emotion you have will *vanish* like it never existed when that parent passes.

Only then do you realize the true quality and value of the (clearly) unconditional love you received.

It's one of life's unpleasant little jokes.

But I hope you take this advice - your parents will not be there for ever. Value them while they are.

All the best
Cinders.

Thanks, CS. I do know I'm very lucky in a certain sense.

But I swear, I just got off the phone yesterday with my dad after listening to how he'd screwed someone over. I had to explain just how he'd done wrong and why he was probably going to get sued (and lose). He thought he'd been perfectly justified in his actions, when anyone with a normal moral compass would have seen the issue. This is far from the first time. Love and appreciate him to death, but I pity those who encounter him out in the world.

Le sigh.

[forum_browser]

Maybe you feel unnecessarily responsible or even guilty about your father's actions toward others. I don't know, but perhaps it would help to remind yourself that you have no control over him and conduct yourself with integrity, and this is all that you can do.

[49ersfan27]

My mother is the greatest woman in the world to me. Never met my father.

[think.reciprocity]

I can relate to having a complicated "relationship" with my parents, yes. But, unconditional love & support? Value of education above all? No. Never had any of that.

I wonder if you tried practicing the level of unconditional love & support you received from them, on them, if things might shift?

Some people are complex & a very clear mix of darkness & light - others, like your friends - are easy breezy. They each are who they are.

It's one of the greatest lessons I have learnt over the years (my parents have been gone since I was 19/20 & I am now 47) - anyone can love the light, it requires no effort. We want others to embrace our darkness - it'd be nice if we afforded them the same.

Originally Posted by JrzDefector

I feel such a weird tangle of emotions for my parents. It's often hard to sort out.

On one hand (the bad one) they are both either narcissists or have strongly narcissistic tendencies. We also don't agree on politics or values for the most part.

My mother was emotionally abusive (and mildly physically abusive) when I was growing up, which worsened the depression and anxiety that are a side effect of the severe ADD she refused to get me evaluated for. This was despite the fact that as an educator with a masters degree, she had the resources to understand what I was struggling with even if I didn't understand what was going on and thought I was just a giant freak show. She constantly made me feel not good enough, to the point that my own friends treated her criticisms as a meme long before the Internet was a thing. She would build me up and tear me down according to her moods, which swung back and forth because she was so unhappy in her marriage to my father.

My father is a terrible person in many ways. He can be arrogant, offensive, incredibly selfish, etc. He's incredibly argumentative and often insulting, just because it amuses him. He holds grudges for decades. I've seen him lie, cheat and screw people over to get what he wants. He cannot grasp the concept of empathy unless it is laid out for him very clearly. He's capable of great cruelty and indifference (though almost never towards me). Let's just say that I've been legitimately ashamed of him fairly often in my life, and have often had to clean up his messes.

Both of my parents contributed to my depression issues and sometimes worsened them. I never actually became suicidal, but I came very close.

On the other hand (the good hand), my parents - neither of whom has an intellectual bone in their body - invested heavily in my education. I went to private school and an expensive top-tier college (though i paid for a lot of that through loans and scholarships). My education was prioritized above all other things. They told me they loved me every day. There was always someone at my childhood events to support me. There was never a moment in my childhood when I felt unsafe. I wasn't indoctrinated obsessively in their beliefs, even if there were some round hole/square peg elements to my childhood.

Bless their hearts, when they thought their adolescent tomboyish daughter might be gay (I'm not), these conservative Republicans who couldn't manage a stable marriage or open minds, still agreed that they would present a unified front in supporting me and embrace whomever I might love.

And my father, now a very old man and a little mellower, has ALWAYS had my back, despite all his flaws. He's my strongest supporter in a lot of ways.

I grew up with quite a few people who didn't have those things, so I appreciate them greatly. Moreover, that environment that they provided to me allowed me to develop my own system of values and build the happy life that I have now. As I get older myself, I appreciate that happiness more and more.

So I often don't like my parents. I wouldn't spend time with them if we weren't related and didn't have the shared history that we do. And keep in mind that I'm famous among my friends and work colleagues for being able to get along with almost everyone. I find most of my parents' values appalling and terribly self-centered, if not destructive. Conversations with them about certain topics can leave me feeling exasperated, angry and icky (for want of a better word), and occasionally like I'm from another planet.

But at the same time, I feel immense gratitude and love towards them, not to mention obligation. When they need me, I drop everything to help them out - heck, I even bought a house that's two rooms too large for me just so that I would have instant room for them if they ever couldn't live on their own.

And a lot of that is because I would not have the things that I have in my life if it wasn't for them. All this happiness wouldn't be possible.

I guess the reason I've been thinking about this is because my two best friends since high school are just as important in my life, and my feelings for them are absolutely uncomplicated. They are my favorite and most beloved people in the world. And even though there has been the occasional squabble or cooling off period, they really do bring me nothing but joy and feelings of being loved and belonging.

So I guess I'm just wondering if anyone can relate.

[49ersfan27]

Whoever left me that reputation comment. Just know my relationship issues are none of your business.

[Amelie90]

My dad and I get along pretty well, but we don't spend a lot of time together. My mom can be very unpleasant at times, but we do spend a lot of time together. Weird, I know.

[cyningKnut]

OK, largely. I have no major complaints i guess.

[kevxu]

My parents only knew each other six weeks when they sneaked off and got married. They came from very different backgrounds, and from families with a historical heritage of conflict and hatred. My mother was a very pretty, spoiled youngest daughter, who nevertheless had a score to settle with her widowed father who had remarried. My father had been asked to leave school without finishing because he was a troublemaker, and he too had a grudge against his widowed mother. They were eighteen and nineteen. Their marriage, of course, was a blatant FU to each of their parents. Both were headstrong and arrogant. They were the proverbial recipe for disaster, and it did not fail to occur.

They grew older, but they never grew up. My father was a brooding, silent bully at home much of the time. He was absolutely paralyzed by any close emotional relationship...wife, son, mother, and some others. My mother was vain, angry, depressed, spendthrift, sex-hating and virtually lacking in compassion for others. Unsurprisingly, she sexually molested me for a period of about a year, year and a half at around age ten. That cast of random characters was quite a wonderful group of people...and they would have fit beautifully into one of those gushily sentimental and sometimes wacky 1940's Judy Garland movies.

They were both certainly capable of normal, decent parental actions; but as their personalities were so tense and they were constantly at odds these were fleeting and totally undependable manifestations. They could turn on a dime and become just the opposite, a "normal" day was a roller coaster of moods and conflicting conduct all around. They should not have married each other, they probably shouldn't have married at the ages they did, and my mother should probably never have married and had children as she was an early-adolescent all her life.

Essentially I grew up afraid of my parents beginning in my early grade school years and this intensified in late adolescence and even beyond.

My feelings about my father became so defunct that I could come to respect those good qualities that he showed outside the family situation, and respect his accomplishments. He died when I was thirty, and the fear and hostility that lingered at that age went right into the grave with him. I rarely think of him, and when I do I only see a hard-working, but intensely emotionally frustrated and smothered individual. I do not see a parent.

My mother lived to be loved, and became more and more devoid of compassion the older she became. She was an emotional sponge, a manipulator and a chronic liar - a lifetime 13-year-old. Fortunately, she remarried and I began pushing her out of my life. Finally I did not see or communicate with her for the last thirteen years of her life, except for one communication three months before she died. When I think of her it is always as an emotional and sexual leech.

My parents seem to have reached late adolescence in damaged (or uncompleted) shape, and their own relationship became a kind of grudge match, and their parenting became angry, capricious, contradictory and even evil. The collapse of pretense and the specter of bitter disappointment as my father was dying was gutting. Their marriage and their attempt at a family were miserably unsatisfying. And - I think, very surprisingly - I eventually was able to unlearn some destructive emotions and habit patterns, and make the kind of balanced life for myself that mature parents wish for their offspring.

Fortunately, there were good people in my childhood and adolescence, and in a small town many chances for other supportive contacts and roles than that of browbeaten and used child. I learned to take advantage of every opportunity not to be in the home environment. My parents provided the basics for my life: an egg and a sperm, a roof over my head and food in my mouth. But most of the rest, that made a life living, came from other people and other things for which I am very grateful, and I often think of them seven decades later with warm affection and humour, and even joy. And that random cast of characters would fit right into one of those gushily sentimental and sometimes wacky 1940's Judy Garland movies.