Does anyone have a genuinely good relationship with their parents?

[Anonymous]

Interesting that a number of people have/had close relationships with one parent but not the other, even when the parents are married. How does that dynamic work?

[Anonymous]

My relationship with my (adoptive) parents is fairly neutral. I see them a couple times a year and don't have strong feelings for them. I kind of regard them as people that I roomed with for the first 17 years of my life.

My relationship with my birthmom though is very strong, however. We call and email frequently, and see each other 1-2 year despite being 3k miles apart. I felt an immediate bond with her upon reuniting. We're very similar in the way we look, act, interests etc.

[Anonymous]

I have a phenomenal relationship with both my parents/step parents And paternal grandparents. I speak to all of them
At least three times a week, my grandma I speak to daily.

I could tell them anything. I realize this is not the norm at all for people my age (early twenties) but I'm so glad that I have these kinds of relationships with them.

[Anonymous]

Father and I have had a very close relationship my entire life. Even now he'll call me almost every day just to see what is new, etc. We'll text/email frequently. He lives out of state.....but if he were closer, I'd have him over at least once a week for dinner.

Mother and I have a good relationship too. My parents were divorced and I only saw her every other weekend. But she was the one that would take us clothes shopping, go to conferences, etc. I talk to her once a week maybe and we've always had a healthy relationship. Never argue. And she is a great grandmother to my DD.

[Anonymous]

I had a terrible relationship with both of my parents all throughout my childhood. As an adult, I've rebuilt a decent relationship with them, though we are not close and they are the often the last people I share personal information with (and certainly not people I ask for advice or input, ever - that's a bright-line hard boundary). I do, today, call both of them up just to talk, and they've learned where the boundaries are and respect them (because they respect me).

They were ridiculously immature when they had me - I only sort of got confirmation of what I'd suspected for a long, long time: it was a shotgun pregnancy wedding. I hadn't realized just how much their families had rejected them - my grandmother refused to even see me as a baby apparently. So yeah, came into not the best situation.

My parents did a lot of shit wrong - most of their dumb moves and mistakes hurt them, mostly, but a few left me with a lot of shit to get over, and a profound sense of being unloved and unwanted. I got the fuck away from them as young as I possibly could.

HOWEVER....I also came to see I'm not a special snowflake in this regard. There are a ton of people just like me, and my parents were neither evil nor malicious - most of their mistakes were just that and completely unintentional - they were often just a 'cycle of child-rearing' where they dished out what they'd gotten themselves. They also kept me fed, clothed and schooled. Both my parents were cultured and well educated and they provided me with that. This is a shortenend list, but I didn't lack for a lot of the basics of a good childhood.

I met other people, with truly fucked up families, and truly awful parents (for example, the father of one of my friends was molesting his daughter - my friend's sister - got her pregnant 2x). I dated a woman who had grown up neglected and abused (half-starved, broken bones) by a truly mentally ill mother. My parents were fantastic saints and very very decent human beings by contrast.

I'm not sure everyone can have a relationship with their parents - some people are just so toxic the only answer is to get them out of your life. But for me, I've learned that my problems are my own to fix - blaming them on my parents does no good, and that with effective and clear boundaries, I can have a nice relationship with them. I learned to forgive the past (really, pretty easy) and to set the tone for how things are gonna be in the future.

My sister was the first in our generation to have kids, and I watched my mother pull the same obnoxious undermining crap on my sister with my nieces as she pulled on my dad when we were kids, but my sister didn't set the appropriate boundaries and then enforce them. I pointed this out to my wife very clearly before we had kids and pointed out the tricks my mom gets up to - not to slam my mother, but to explain why my "love" for my mother came with it's own set of "conditions" (boundaries) - and how important it was that we maintain a unified front there as well as with our kids. After she observed mom's stunts a time or two first hand, she believed me, and when it came to our kids, she backed me 100% on setting the boundaries.

The bonus of this is, my kids get to have a relationship with grandma - and grandma has some great things to offer - she's not some toxic evil witch. My kids love grandma and grandma gets what she wants. And it's ok that it doesn't involve me telling grandma "I love you" or being super-close.

I would advise people to forget (if not forgive) past wrongs so long as the patterns are ongoing.

My wife, OTOH, has a great relationship with her parents, and they are lovely people. Oddly, you don't need to enforce boundaries or appropriateness with people who already have them. How refreshing!

[Anonymous]

PP - I forgot dear old dad!

Dear old Dad doesn't really like children. He didn't "connect" with me until after my divorce (first wife). I was in my late 30s. My little sister got divorced that same summer, and she reported the same thing: suddenly dad thought we might understand him (not judge him?) and opened up to us. We also weren't small children anymore...which he never liked and still doesn't. That's OK too. We have a pretty good relationship and he will enjoy spending a couple of hours a month (on average mind you) with the under-ten crowd...and perhaps if everyone lives long enough, he'll get to know them more in depth when they are more interesting to him.

The moral of the story with dear old dad was: don't expect from people what they aren't capable of giving/doing...accept them as they are, and you won't be badly disappointed.

[Anonymous]

I have a very good relationship with my parents, and DH has a very good relationship with both sets of his parents (his parents split when he was in preschool, both remarried and had 2 more kids each, so there are 2 sets of parents and 4 half-sibs). And even more miraculously, I get along well with his parents and he with mine.

We both reach out to our parents regularly to check in, and go visit when we can with the kid (so far the only grandchild, so everyone wants to see her). And when they can visit they do. Earlier this year we had my parents and his mom & stepdad at the same time, and it actually went really well which surprised me, since my dad isn't the most social person.

So it's possible to have a good, stable healthy relationship with parents that the kids continue because they very much want to, not because they feel they have to or they need something. But from reading DCUM you'd think it never happens, which kind of makes sense, because the people who feel like they have things pretty good with their parents are not going to weigh in on all the tough threads and say "Sorry that's happening. Not a problem for me."