Has anyone out there dealt with parental abandonment?

[Anonymous]

If so, how has it affected your personality and your relationships with other people?

My family was abandoned by my mother. I was 7 years old and my father was very cold, critical and emotionally unavailable. I've been in therapy many times throughout my life and I feel I've made improvements. However I do notice that with new people I tend to default to this feeling of being disliked/unlovable. I can be very guarded and I think sometimes it comes off as cold or snobby but in reality I feel wary of new people and afraid of being hurt.

Can others who have faced parental abandonment weigh in on how it has affected them?

[Anonymous]

My mother chose her third husband who was sexually abusing me, over me. I have not seen her since I was 15. I have had it pointed out to me by my husband that I do not let myself get too close to older women who are around my mother's age. I held my MIL at a distance for a long time. Before she chose her husband, my mother was never very warm towards me and always held me at a distance. I was raised by nannies. She fired them routinely and so I was never able to get close to any of them. She never took me on vacations. She never wanted to be around me unless she was trotting me out to show me off to her friends. I remember hovering her her doorway watching her get ready to go out.

My kids have had the same nanny since they've had a nanny at all. I have not yet traveled without them. I am much closer with them than I ever was with my mother. If the nanny and I are both in the house they come to me. I am really glad to not be creating a cycle. Granted, my oldest is only three, but it's already so different from the relationship I had with my mother.

[Anonymous]

Yes, 100%! I am very slow to warm up to people. I always assume they don't like me, am paranoid that others talk about me, etc. In college, girls on my dorm floor said they thought I was a total stuck up snob because I didn't seek them out and initiate conversations. At work, I tend to open up to less attractive, less successful people first-- they just feel safer sometimes.

[Anonymous]

I wish I was abandoned for good by my parents early on. Instead, I had to deal with both coming and going my entire childhood through my early adulthood and treating me callously, until I cut them off. I remember coming home at age 5 to find my mother gone. It was weeks before I knew that she had left the country to escape my abusive father, leaving me completely at his mercy. My father was always getting put out of the house, or voluntarily leaving with whoever his latest mistress was, for years at a time. And then he would return and my siblings and I would be forbidden from talking about his absence or acting as if anything was wrong. He beat my siblings and I, beat my mother. She beat us. We beat each other. Just an unstable, violent childhood characterized by both parents coming and going. They both meet the criteria for a couple of serious mental illnesses each.

Like the other posters in this thread, I am verrrry wary of people. I take a long time to open up and am always waiting for signs a person is untrustworthy. I am especially standoffish with women because my mother hurt and disappointed me the most because I loved and needed her more. People think I am stern and cold, but in reality, I am just hurt and cannot take any more betrayal. I have many acquaintances, but few friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish I was abandoned for good by my parents early on. Instead, I had to deal with both coming and going my entire childhood through my early adulthood and treating me callously, until I cut them off. I remember coming home at age 5 to find my mother gone. It was weeks before I knew that she had left the country to escape my abusive father, leaving me completely at his mercy. My father was always getting put out of the house, or voluntarily leaving with whoever his latest mistress was, for years at a time. And then he would return and my siblings and I would be forbidden from talking about his absence or acting as if anything was wrong. He beat my siblings and I, beat my mother. She beat us. We beat each other. Just an unstable, violent childhood characterized by both parents coming and going. They both meet the criteria for a couple of serious mental illnesses each.

Like the other posters in this thread, I am verrrry wary of people. I take a long time to open up and am always waiting for signs a person is untrustworthy. I am especially standoffish with women because my mother hurt and disappointed me the most because I loved and needed her more. People think I am stern and cold, but in reality, I am just hurt and cannot take any more betrayal. I have many acquaintances, but few friends.

My childhood was very similar and i think it has impacted me in much the same way. Letting people get close is just too dangerous, or at least that's how it feels.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Oh, yes, it has affected my relationships with other people.

My mom died when I was young and my dad chose his girlfriend(s), repeatedly, over spending time with me or even seeing me on holidays. I do not like or trust women because I learned early on that these women (dad's girlfriends) saw me as a threat and endeavored to establish themselves as the important one in my dad's life...and they (all) succeeded. When my dad finally married one of them when I was in college, we had almost no relationship left. I only met his wife once, for a few minutes, when she inserted herself into the first face-to-face conversation I'd had with my dad in years, then rolled her eyes at him and flounced off when I didn't return her hug. I haven't seen her in ten years, and I haven't been to my dad's house in over a decade either.

I am very bitter and very cynical about human nature, and I believe that I see the dark truths that most people are allowed to avoid (seeing). However, I wish I didn't have to know these things. I wish my dad had pretended to care about me or put me first when I was young to keep these things hidden from me. And I really, really distrust other women. I'm as misogynist as it is possible for a woman to be.

[Anonymous]

This is a really sad thread. Sending love to you all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a really sad thread. Sending love to you all.

+1

Tears for you all. Sending love and hope your way.

[Anonymous]

I was largely abandoned by my dad. He was an alcoholic.

He was either out drinking somewhere, or home getting drunk or passed out. I learned to avoid him or face down his rage. He checked out of family life and was emotionally and physically unavailable.

I keep everyone at a distance. I'm easily hurt and sensitive to others' moods and tend to take everything personally. It's very difficult for me to trust people and sustain relationships with other women, yet I was intensely focused on dating/boyfirend relationships as a very young teenager and adult. Married for 25 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a really sad thread. Sending love to you all.

+1

Tears for you all. Sending love and hope your way.

On the surface, your reactions are sweet, but I just want to let you know that such responses can actually be very unhelpful. The people here who have had difficult childhoods are commiserating and sharing in way that can be cathartic. Pity cheapens the process and can also be very silencing because no one wants to feel as if they are an object of pity. Reactions like these are why I rarely speak about my childhood experiences to anyone who is not a sibling or my spouse. I am actually more bothered by pity than by being stigmatized for not coming from a "perfect" family.

FWIW, I do not feel that I need anyone to cry for me. The past cannot be changed, but in the years since leaving my parents' house and distancing myself from them, I have created for myself the kind of life that I always wanted. I chose to break the cycle by selecting a loving, loyal, stable man to marry and he is an excellent husband and father. I have a child whom I lavish with the devotion, dedication, and care that I was never shown. I am also successful in my career. The past does not have to poison the future. Scars remain in that I am still reticient to open my heart to new people and I keep my circle small to protect myself. But I also have better judgment than most people and am an excellent judge of character. I am also getting better with age. I am only in my early 30s and I am confident that, as I continue to make good decisions and select the right people to share my life, my trust in people and life will return.

- 18:28

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a really sad thread. Sending love to you all.

+1

Tears for you all. Sending love and hope your way.

On the surface, your reactions are sweet, but I just want to let you know that such responses can actually be very unhelpful. The people here who have had difficult childhoods are commiserating and sharing in way that can be cathartic. Pity cheapens the process and can also be very silencing because no one wants to feel as if they are an object of pity. Reactions like these are why I rarely speak about my childhood experiences to anyone who is not a sibling or my spouse. I am actually more bothered by pity than by being stigmatized for not coming from a "perfect" family.

FWIW, I do not feel that I need anyone to cry for me. The past cannot be changed, but in the years since leaving my parents' house and distancing myself from them, I have created for myself the kind of life that I always wanted. I chose to break the cycle by selecting a loving, loyal, stable man to marry and he is an excellent husband and father. I have a child whom I lavish with the devotion, dedication, and care that I was never shown. I am also successful in my career. The past does not have to poison the future. Scars remain in that I am still reticient to open my heart to new people and I keep my circle small to protect myself. But I also have better judgment than most people and am an excellent judge of character. I am also getting better with age. I am only in my early 30s and I am confident that, as I continue to make good decisions and select the right people to share my life, my trust in people and life will return.

- 18:28

I disagree with this. I also posted upthread but just with a quick "yes, me too" response because I don't even think I could post a lengthy description of my life in an anonymous forum. Maybe because I was also treated cruelly by peers growing up, I just can't past the idea of people mocking me and sneering at me. The idea that people could (and do!) respond with compassion is really nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was largely abandoned by my dad. He was an alcoholic.

He was either out drinking somewhere, or home getting drunk or passed out. I learned to avoid him or face down his rage. He checked out of family life and was emotionally and physically unavailable.

I keep everyone at a distance. I'm easily hurt and sensitive to others' moods and tend to take everything personally. It's very difficult for me to trust people and sustain relationships with other women, yet I was intensely focused on dating/boyfirend relationships as a very young teenager and adult. Married for 25 years.

But you did marry and have done so successfully for 25 years? What helped you to overcome your distrust and get married?

[Anonymous]

I don't have first hand experience of this but I know two women who were abandoned by their mothers when they were pre-teen aged. These two women are unrelated and don't even know each other. It may simply be a co-incidence, but they share a kind of "hardness" and each of them takes a very, very long time to warm up to other women, starting out with a competitive, challenging attitude to any new woman socially. Again, this could just be co-incidence but somehow it seemed to me related to not having a mother around during some important life stages (neither got a step mom etc)