op: Their lives are all about pleasing themselves, while I work FT and have 3 dcs, one with serious medical problems and behavior issues due to the seizure meds. He's on the ketogenic diet, not potty trained at 5, has a feeding tube.

I realized that my parents are not going to change. That's the first thing you must internalize and accept. Nothing you can do will change them or fix anything to make up for the past.

Second, I understood that they are human, fumbling along as much as I am, doing what they can with what they have. You have to accept that, to have compassion for them and for yourself.

Third, I realized how important it is to allow and acknowledge that whatever negative feelings you have about it all are valid, but aren't going to change anything about them or anything they have done.

All you can change is how you handle things, how you accept and then are able to let go of things.

Building healthy boundaries makes it all easier.

OP, your mom sounds like she's stuck being pulled between your dad's needs and yours. And what about her needs? How hard was that for her? Are you and your dad similar? She did her best to help you out two years ago, but why is it still an issue now? I do hope you find a therapist to help you sort it out.

op: I really appreciate your thoughtful responses. My son (now age 5) was in the hospital for a few months 2 years ago, and I begged my mom to help with my other kids (now 8 and 12). She had just retired a few months earlier. She reluctantly came and stayed with us during half the crisis (2 months out of 4) but I had to beg her every day to stay, and my father told her every day to come home. I am still very angry at him. I have thanked her many times for helping me, I've written her letters thanking her, but she and I still have some tension. She left when things were still very bad, and she was angry at me for not being grateful enough. I've been to therapy but it was expensive and I don't know how to choose someone from the list of therapists who take my insurance.

My mom was a very good mom-- not perfect but nothing to complain about-- but I don't really like her as a person, so I try to balance not wanting to spend time (esp. vacation time and money) with her with getting together with her because I know she loves me.

Anonymous wrote:op: To the 22:37 responder - are you a therapist or an author on this topic? Your response strikes me as exceptionally insightful and beautifully put.

No, not either. I lost my parents 6 years and 1 year ago, and in that time had much to consider. I wish I had even a small amount of whatever insight I've acquired 25 years ago. I just doesn't work that way.
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I can't say that my relationship with my mother was strained but I felt like she was anxious and controlling and I resented her anxiety which was always in the background. At some point, I learned to set limits with her and told her I didn't want to hear her complaints about my father anymore. I learned not to tell her things about my life she could use against me later. I learned not to take money from her because there were always strings attached.

This helped me get enough space from her so it no longer felt as if her anxiety threatened my well-being and I was able to have compassion for her - just like you would for an elderly neighbor whom you can tell is difficult but she doesn't run your life so you can afford to be comforting and reassuring.

My mom passed away 14 years ago and in the years since I've been seeing more and more how both she and my father (also passed away) came into parenthood without a lot of emotional skills or support from their families. My heart goes out to them.

But, I wouldn't be in this place if I hadn't learned to set limits with them and to disentangle emotionally from them. You can't force yourself to be compassionate if you don't have the space for it. Good luck, OP, I wish you the best!

op: Thank you to all responders. I appreciate you taking the time to answer this. There is still time for me to change my behavior - my parents are 68 and 70, both in good health. I don't know if they will change.

op: To the 22:37 responder - are you a therapist or an author on this topic? Your response strikes me as exceptionally insightful and beautifully put.

I got along with my mom as a child/teen/20's. Then in my late 20's I pulled away from her, and then saw who she really was and created much stronger boundaries.

In my mid 20's I finally started getting along with my dad after not getting along with him at all as a child. Moving out was great for our relationship. Then we got less close as he stuck up for all the shitty things my mother did/does.

All this happened in my 30's.

Having lived through a sexless marriage, I understand why my parent cheated.

My father died 15 years ago. At first I really grieved his loss. But a few years ago, the clouds in my brain began to clear and I saw what a total jerk he was and what a bad parent he was. Yes, I loved him, but he was a truly awful parent and an all-around mediocre human being. I miss a few things about him, but mostly, when I think about him, I think about what a jerk he was, and how he screwed me up when I was a child by all the awful, stupid things he said to me and the idiotic things he did.
My mother, on the other hand, I feel more sympathy for. She made a mistake when she married my father, and because of her era, she felt she had to stay with him. Today, she might get more support for getting away from him, but back then, she was pushed to stick it out with her terrible husband. She died fairly young, so they never got divorced, which they ought to have.
She was always yelling at him, and he was the "calm" one, so I always thought he was the "good" one, and she was the "bad" guy. In time, I've realized how wrong my assessments were. She was a victim, and he was an a**hole.
It feels good to see clearly, even though it took me a long time to get there. My mother's main fault was that she was a weak person. Had she been stronger, she would have left her husband, a seriously flawed man she never should have married.

Ummmm...good question. Both, I think. It becomes too late to take back the relationship we haven't nurtured because we were too involved with ourselves and trying to set ourselves apart while establishing our own family or adulthood. We are all so sure that we aren't going to do things a particular way,namely the the way it was being done when we were being parented, that we forget that our parents required some nurturing, too. We take too many things personally in trying to do this that we push them away, or become resentful for any number of reasons. For some people, it is all consuming, and for others it's very mild, but still there as an undercurrent. It's a developmental thing- much of it is normal.

After they pass, we go through the tangible remains of their lives in pictures,letters,mementos- connecting them to strong and vague memories and then realize what we are looking at were the lives of two people, not our parents, per se, and realize all the things we didn't realize when they were still alive...some of it very surprising. If we are older when they pass, we realize that we behaved and thought the same way they must have when they were around our age now- disenfranchised.If they die infirmed and quite old, it becomes even more muddled as we try to navigate the myriad of health needs they have all the while still weighing them from our own perspective and needs. If we are younger when they pass, we become resentful for the time lost to still try and fix things.

Those that maintain a relationship, after all is said and done, realize that these were people with the same fears, needs, thoughts, and actions as everyone else even though all that time we thought they were more one dimensional as our parents. But the largest thing we realize is how quickly life passes by- it is staggeringly short.

Too late because they have passed, or because the distance becomes the new normal and can't be bridged?

You have to start looking at situations through their worldview without taking whatever it is personally. So much more makes sense as you age, but often it is too late.

If you had a tense/strained relationship with one or both parents, did things improve later in adulthood? Did you make up before your parent/s died? Or did you bring about peace by creating distance?