What is it like to be a wanted and loved child?

[UnwantedChild]

What is it like to have been a wanted and loved child? What does being hugged feel like? Did you go onto have a successful career? Your own family?

Sunshine, your post made me well up. What a lovely family you have. I hope you and your DP are really happy.

@UnwantedChild

What is it like to have been a wanted and loved child? What does being hugged feel like? Did you go onto have a successful career? Your own family?

Come from a very loving and supportive family. Great childhood memories.

I have a job that I love though it only earns an average salary, and I don't have a spouse or children, but I don't consider either of those to be markers of success.

Don't think that you've 'lost out' because that's what society teaches you that you have to have.

Being happy and having good mental health are for more important, and you don't need those things in order to achieve that

I don't know either. My mother had me in order to "trap" the married man she was having an affair with, but that didn't work.

So she was left with me. I have never been told that she loved me, never hugged or praised. Just a constant stream of criticism and manipulation. I do feel sad for myself but as PP have said, you have to move on and do your best. I have made many mistakes in life because of my background, but I am now successful in my career and have two great young adult DC who are told regularly how much I love them.

I used to be jealous of friends with normal loving families because I could see that extra layer of confidence it gave them, but since having my own DC that feeling has gone.

Things improved vastly for me once I went NC with toxic mother.

I don't think you even think about it, because you just take it for granted, and don't even consider that your parents could feel any different.

The problem with parents, even those who are loving, is that they're fallible humans with their own flaws. Even within loving families, family members don't always click or understand each other and in those situations parents are unable to give their child what they need.

I was until my step dad showed up and they had a child if their own
Then i seemed to become a burden

No idea. But I know that the people saying don’t let it define you or use it as excuse are talking shite.
My mother was a diagnosed narcissist. dad had the sense to leave.
Everything was about Mother, even as a child whatever I’d done she had done it better and I was never going to be good enough. I remember crying at the dentist and getting a beating for showing her up. Alll her clothes fitted better than mine, although she didn’t know I had a secret wardrobe at my grandmother’ s house.
I spent a long time wanting her to love me, then an equally long time wanting her to like me. I spent a while wanting her to respect me. I gave up at about 45. Life is better without her in it.
It did have an impact, I married an abusive bastard just like her whom I have now left. But my children love me and we talk and tell each other we love one another daily. They don’t talk to their grandmother or their father.

Sorry should have said- I wasn’t unwanted but had some bad experiences as a youth. That technique of “giving you the life you deserved” is really helpful. The past is just thoughts. It can’t touch you or hurt you.

I really don’t know.
I’m heading for 60 now, both parents recently died and so many unanswered questions including why didn’t I get the inheritances left to me by my grandparents which would have made a huge difference to my life? Why was I never good enough even as a small child and right up to my mother’s death?
Why was I walloped for money going missing when it was the favourite child stealing it?
I just hope for a happier life now.

I spent my childhood waiting to be an adult so I could leave.
What a sad waste.