Reply to AMA: I am a high achiever raised by awful parents

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Me too except 3 of my siblings have substance abuse problems, one is dead from an overdose and the other is in jail.

So ... there is the other issue that most kids don't really survive that sort of environment.[/quote]

Similar story here (no jail).  My bet is about 50/50, a little higher than your estimation.  Because some people want to be better than their parents - given this kind of situation.  Then, there are those that will never be good enough, so they give up.  Not to sound trite or dismissive, because there is much more to this type of environment. Thanks for sharing, OP.

Does anoye know about this, in your day to day life?  I am curious, because no one knows about mine.  [/quote]
OP here (not PP). No one in my life apart from my siblings and my parents has any real idea.  My spouse knows a bit, but only enough to think that my parents are run of the mill jerks. I have never let my spouse meet them because they know an easy target when they see one and would target my spouse.[/quote]

I thought I could walk away from my past.  I've always been the sane one and the survivor.  But for me, even though I'm much more successful than anyone ever thought I would be, my problems with trust and emotional intimacy are a big factor that led to the end of my marriage.  Maybe it's easier for men because there is more of a cultural model for being a man who is emotionally distant?  Which is the long way of saying that even when you think you've walked away from your past, it can come back and bite you in the ass.[/quote]

I am actually very warm, effusive, and demonstrative. I[b] am mostly an open book to my spouse except for my childhood[/b]. I do not hide that because I am trying to keep my spouse at arm's length; I just don't even know where to start telling the story and digging all of those feelings up is needlessly painful. [/quote]

This really jumped out at me.  It actually made my arm hair stand on end.  Your story reminds me a lot of my own mother, who apparently had a truly terrible childhood (vague details only given to her spouse and kids) and set about to create the "perfect" family where we had everything and were smothered in love.  And we were.  She loved us and I had a great childhood and I think this was very fulfilling to her.  BUT...as I grew older, I started to have questions and I started to realize that she had some pretty deep-rooted issues.  Stuff you don't really notice as a kid.  She clearly has a lot of baggage that she never really dealt with and I think it really did catch up with her.  I am not close to her and I almost think now that our close and loving family was a bit of a façade.  The part that has always just shocked me as that my father, who she's been married to for 50 years, doesn't know anything about her childhood.  I believe you can't be fully intimate or have full trust with someone that is missing that big of a chunk of information about who you are and what makes you tick.

I am telling you that your children will want to know who you are and where you came from and I think you need to be in a place where you can share that with them on some level.  I'm not saying the gory details.  But do not punish them or brush them off when they ask the questions.

Just food for thought.  I am not close to my mother at all as an adult.[/quote]

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