Reply to Parents who don’t foster healthy relationships in childhood yet expect them in adulthood?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Unless you've had a parent like this -and I have (not OP)- no one on here has any business lecturing OP on what she should do. Full stop.

If you're responding, you should state the perspective you're coming from so OP can evaluate it's relevance. Folks from happy, close relationships with parents simply cannot understand the trauma of dysfunctional, cruel, difficult (or worse) childhoods as a result of their parents. [/quote]

My background is different from OP's but has some important similarities -- parents had children very young, never overcame their own traumatic childhoods, and that had predictable consequences on their parenting and their relationship with their children. I have had two major epiphanies regarding my parents in my life:

1) When I was 13 and my dad was threatening to take a belt to my younger brother over lackluster efforts in cleaning the kitchen (a threat that he'd followed through on many times before) and I realized that when our parents punished us like this, when the screamed and yelled, they were behaving like children. Because they basically were children. I realized in that moment that I had better emotional regulation and control than my parents did, that I could see these situations more clearly than they could. I don't know how I gained that awareness but it hit me all at once and it was both empowering and desperately, desperately sad. I remember calmly telling my dad that whipping my brother wouldn't make anything better, wouldn't get the kitchen cleaner or calm his rage. I expected him to hit me instead, but he just walked away. Neither of them ever hit us again.

2) When I was 37 and had my first child, and my parents were a total mess. Just peak emotional manipulation, acting envious of the attention the baby was getting, alternately raging at me and begging me for access to their grandchildren, again just acting like unregulated children. That's when I realized it would never get better. I had before that though that with the right therapy or medication or the right boundary setting from me, my parents could improve and mature. That's when I realized it would never happen. My focus would be on my own kids, and my parents have still never reconciled with their own pasts. They will be like this until they die, and then I think there will be a release for me. I know it sounds terrible to say that. I know I will also be very sad when they die. But I also know it will liberate me when it does.

So all I have to say to you OP, is that it's okay. It's okay for you to be upset with your mother and to resent her expectations for a close relationship now. And it's okay for you to set boundaries with her, to say no. It's okay to form closer bonds with your ILs if they offer you what you need, and you should not feel guilt for that. I feel sad for your mom and I wish she'd had the support and skill set to be a better mother for you. But even though I empathize with why she struggled, that doesn't mean you must continue to suffer to make it better for you. This is your one life and you should live it as well as you can. I have resolved not to pass this generational trauma onto my own kids, and that means keeping my parents at arms length in a way I know hurts them. But my responsibility to myself and to my children is greater than my responsibility to my parents. I cannot give them now what they never got in their own childhoods, and it cannot be my responsibility to do so.[/quote]
What a fantastic and insightful post, PP.  I’m sad that you and OP and others with similar parents have had to deal with this. I hope your brother is at a place of peace too![/quote]

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