Is it normal not to love your elderly parent who is not abusive or mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP seems to be changing the narrative to a more negative childhood when people didn’t support her original statement.

My parents are elderly and sometimes is it taxing to hear the same stories repeated or stressful to help them do things they’ve never needed help with before? Yes. But it’s also difficult for them to lose some of their independence and experience some cognitive decline. The expectations that some posters have for the elderly is ridiculous.

I am grateful to still have them in my life and appreciate everything they’ve done for our family over the years. As parents now, my siblings and I have a much better understanding of the things our parents juggled and sacrificed for us and how they’ve been truly wonderful grandparents to our kids.

So if we hear the same stories or listen to them as they complain about ailments, we accept that it’s part of the natural life cycle.

Seems that your parents have been great grandparents, which is a strong signal that they were actually pretty darn good parents themselves. The fact that the OPs father has no relationship with his grandson, OPs son, speaks for itself. Often parents who are really not that good are not able to have functional relationships with their grandkids, because they actually cannot relate and never have. This is not something that happens overnight, it's always been there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did he treat you badly as a child? I don’t mean actual abuse but not great treatment?

I had few issues with my parents in my 20s and 30s, but once I had children I began to despise my mother. I think she was terrible and I find her behavior strange. She didn’t treat me well at all. I didn’t figure out any of this until I got older.

Because of how she treated me, I dislike her deep down and her presence triggers me. I feel awful about it. It makes me feel like a horrible person.

Here’s an example of her behavior. Every night she served a salad with a radish and would bully and yell at me until I ate the radish. This went on for years. Not a huge deal, really, but now that I have kids I think this is so odd. I was an adventurous healthy eater and one of the few things I disliked was a radish. But she didn’t care. I was going to eat that radish! I hadn’t thought about this in years or maybe ever, until I had kids and she started treating them similarly. I observed the tone of voice, the smug attitude and the way she seemed to get off on making a seven year old eat a certain food. Now I can’t stand her. Couldn’t she see how she was making the seven year old feel, and how she made me feel? My entire childhood was like this and I am thankful there was no actual abuse, but I still dislike her.

But overall, she’s probably not that bad?

My mother beat me, called me names, berated me, belittled me. I was made to drop classes in high school because I wasn’t smart enough for her even though the school certainly thought otherwise. She used to make me act out scenarios to manipulate my father when they were getting divorced. She made me participate in very deep lies about having boyfriends to make him jealous. Years later (decades) she actually tried to make me complicit again by bringing up said fake boyfriend in my dad’s presence (they actually got back together. He has his own psychological issues!). Luckily I had already talked to him and he knew it was a lie. She once beat the hell out of me for losing a piece of paper with a prayer on it that she thought was going to bring him back like a spell or something. Turned out she’d misplaced it.

So yeah. Your mother making you eat a radish doesn’t sound so bad.

We don't need to have our parents beating us and manipulating to oblivion to have dislike of them. Obviously the other poster whose mom made her eat radish and took pleasure in it (yes, it's a form of control) is not a good mom. We don't need to start comparing whose mom is worse. It's important not to do either to our own children: no form of manipulation and control is "good enough" to tolerate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember reading somewhere that kids want to love their parents. They do bad things, and kids still hold on to the hope.

I don't think it's normal to not want to love your parents. My guess is that you believe that too, otherwise you wouldn't be asking here.

You might get curious about it. Why are you withholding? Are you afraid to say I love you to him for some reason? I think pp's may be on to something when they say you're afraid of being the same. Also, it's curious that you say your conversations are uninteresting, but it takes two people to have an uninteresting conversation. What about asking him to tell you about the past.

Therapy might help if you journal/try new tactics/sit with the feelings and no progress.

He’s already told me about the past, we can’t talk about it every week.
He also tried to tell me how he was bullied as a child and his parents didn’t protect him, but I think it’s inappropriate to tell this to one’s daughter and I don’t want to hear it.

You are wrong. It’s not at all inappropriate to tell this to one’s daughter.

Fine, what if I don’t want to hear it? I want to see my father as weak

So, you are avoiding getting to know your dad because he might say something doesn’t fit with your idealized narrative about your dad?
You sound very immature. You need therapy.

It’s not idealized anymore.
I know he dropped out of school and went back and it’s fine by me. He wasn’t some outstanding person.
But, I don’t need to know about embarrassing moments in his life

Being bullied is not embarrassing.

I know that.
Still, I don’t want to know.
This is trauma dumping to me
-OP

No, that’s you denying humanity to your father. You want to see him as a resource, not as a fellow human. I bet you are deeply touched by the sob stories of the complete strangers you see in the media, but you are not willing to extend the same compassion to your father.

This.
OP, you suck. But don't worry, the time will come, and pretty quickly, when your now teenaged kid starts avoiding your because of your 'trauma dumping'.

Omg I’m never going to tell any stories where I was “weak” to my kid! Maybe I’ll tell him about my needy father one day tho

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did he treat you badly as a child? I don’t mean actual abuse but not great treatment?

I had few issues with my parents in my 20s and 30s, but once I had children I began to despise my mother. I think she was terrible and I find her behavior strange. She didn’t treat me well at all. I didn’t figure out any of this until I got older.

Because of how she treated me, I dislike her deep down and her presence triggers me. I feel awful about it. It makes me feel like a horrible person.

Here’s an example of her behavior. Every night she served a salad with a radish and would bully and yell at me until I ate the radish. This went on for years. Not a huge deal, really, but now that I have kids I think this is so odd. I was an adventurous healthy eater and one of the few things I disliked was a radish. But she didn’t care. I was going to eat that radish! I hadn’t thought about this in years or maybe ever, until I had kids and she started treating them similarly. I observed the tone of voice, the smug attitude and the way she seemed to get off on making a seven year old eat a certain food. Now I can’t stand her. Couldn’t she see how she was making the seven year old feel, and how she made me feel? My entire childhood was like this and I am thankful there was no actual abuse, but I still dislike her.

But overall, she’s probably not that bad?

He didn’t treat me badly, no. But I felt like he refused to support or protect me in certain situations. I am not sure if I have a right to be upset about it though, so I decided not to mention it.
-OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP seems to be changing the narrative to a more negative childhood when people didn’t support her original statement.

My parents are elderly and sometimes is it taxing to hear the same stories repeated or stressful to help them do things they’ve never needed help with before? Yes. But it’s also difficult for them to lose some of their independence and experience some cognitive decline. The expectations that some posters have for the elderly is ridiculous.

I am grateful to still have them in my life and appreciate everything they’ve done for our family over the years. As parents now, my siblings and I have a much better understanding of the things our parents juggled and sacrificed for us and how they’ve been truly wonderful grandparents to our kids.

So if we hear the same stories or listen to them as they complain about ailments, we accept that it’s part of the natural life cycle.

I am the OP. I try to give my dad the benefit of the doubt. He certainly didn’t treat me poorly. He could have done more for me (I feel like) but I am not sure if my expectations are reasonable. I think he did what he could, given his personality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP seems to be changing the narrative to a more negative childhood when people didn’t support her original statement.

My parents are elderly and sometimes is it taxing to hear the same stories repeated or stressful to help them do things they’ve never needed help with before? Yes. But it’s also difficult for them to lose some of their independence and experience some cognitive decline. The expectations that some posters have for the elderly is ridiculous.

I am grateful to still have them in my life and appreciate everything they’ve done for our family over the years. As parents now, my siblings and I have a much better understanding of the things our parents juggled and sacrificed for us and how they’ve been truly wonderful grandparents to our kids.

So if we hear the same stories or listen to them as they complain about ailments, we accept that it’s part of the natural life cycle.

Seems that your parents have been great grandparents, which is a strong signal that they were actually pretty darn good parents themselves. The fact that the OPs father has no relationship with his grandson, OPs son, speaks for itself. Often parents who are really not that good are not able to have functional relationships with their grandkids, because they actually cannot relate and never have. This is not something that happens overnight, it's always been there.

OP here, I have to say it’s not entirely my dad’s fault he has virtually no relationship with grandkids (he has other grandkids too).
He lived far away from his children and barely saw his grandkids as they were growing up, for many reasons.
It’s really hard to say who is to blame here so I decided not to fault anyone for it.

[Anonymous]

Op again. I actually came back to say that I thought about this a lot and I’ve had a revelation that there’s a lot of underlying current in what looks like “elderly father’s love for me”, so I shouldn’t feel bad if I can’t reciprocate his “love”.
I don’t want to go into details but usually when there’s guilt… there’s some sort of undercurrent and it’s not a great relationship and it’s ok to scale back on it.
Thank you for helping me realize some things.