Do you love your parents?

[MyNextMove25]

I am wondering if I am in the minority here. I do not love my parents. Never have. I am mid/late forties. No abuse but neither parent was particularly emotionally available much (I think it’s just how they were raised). I have a friendly relationship now with my father and I like him. I have a complicated relationship with my mother and I don’t think I like her very much. I think my mother only cares about what I can provide for her financially and nothing else. She probably cares a bit, I don’t know.

The above used to make me sad until I had my own children. I love my children and I make sure they know this every single day. I sometimes feel sorry for my mother that she missed out/continues to miss out on the kind of love I share with my children and wish for her sake that it could have been different. Does anyone else have something similar with their parent(s)?

It’s very sad anyone of us should have to feel that way, but I would feel the same.

I think about this a lot. My dad died when I was young, so I have quite idealised memories of him, I was a daddy's girl and went everywhere with him, but I was so young that I don't remember loving him exactly.

My mum...it's complicated. She wasn't a great mum when I was younger (there are reasons that as an adult I understand, but means that in reality there was never a particularly strong bond between us), and she remarried in my teens to a man who couldn't stand me, I left home young, and we have had a fairly distant relationship (both emotionally and geographically) for the past 30 years.

I am fond of her and we speak fairly regularly, but it's more the kind of fondness you might have for an elderly neighbour or distant aunt - you'd be sad if anything happened to them, but you feel no fierce love for them. She'd be devastated if she knew that. It's become more difficult since her husband died and she has expectations of me being the loving daughter looking after her little old mum. She seems quite sad and puzzled about our relationship in general, but won't talk about why and how it's ended up like this.

My stepmother was a monster and my father allowed her to be, as well as join in with the physical and emotional abuse. I despise my father and haven’t seen him for years. He’s living the lonely miserable life he manifested for himself by his own actions.

I love my parents very much and I'm sad to read about so many of you who don't feel that way.

Definitely.
I distinctly remember being about 4 years old and 100 was the biggest number I could imagine, and I used that to describe anything I thought was the biggest thing - a huge sandwich was 100 “big” for example. From then on until I moved out at 16, my mum would say goodnight and tell me “Love you more than 100” 😂 We’ve always had a good relationship even though the closest I’ve lived to my parents since I was 16 is about 90 minutes away.
My dad has always been and still is my absolute hero. He’s always shown up for me in every single way.
I now live on the other side of the world from them, and when the time comes for visits (usually once a year), the floodgates completely open and we are all sobbing at the airport!

Never thought about it but I don’t think i do. Mum has passed and it’s a relief. She was a terrible mum although I do get upset I’ll never have a mother/daughter relationship.
My dad was a bully and still is .
Really hope my kids don’t feel this way about me!!

Same here. I really did used to love them, and loved spending time with them, but now I can’t stand being around them. They are difficult, very negative, quite racist, and not at all the people I thought they were. The bicker all the time and are totally miserable. They still treat me as if I were a child and my mum in particular is hypercritical to a point where my 15 year old will tell me afterwards how bad she thinks it is my mum says things like that about me.

We live quite far away and I used to make sure we visited often, stayed there etc but now we are at the stage where we just don’t enjoy staying at their house. We choose a hotel nearby and visit for an hour or two instead.

I feel awful about it. I’m grateful for what they did in raising three decent kids (even my dick of a brother) but they have the entitled boomer mentality down to a tee and I get really angry when they start kicking off about how terrible things are for them (they really aren’t) how it was much better when women just stayed at home raising kids and my daughter’s generation are lazy and stupid. All that makes it hard to love them.

You pose an interesting question @MyNextMove25 . I certainly respected my mother (my father wasn't in my life for the last 60 years). And I sincerely mourned her when she died. I certainly loved the way she loved my child. And I recognise she may well have found it difficult to show love for me, her upbringing and my uncanny resemblance to my father who left her in the 60s must have made it difficult for her.

But I recognise similar traits in myself. I love my adult child beyond reason, but I rarely say so. My "love language" is doing, not saying .
But that's just an excuse, isn't it?
Do they recognise my love? Who the hell knows.

No, not really. DF didn't care about anyone much. DM told me from birth that she had really wanted a boy and still does tell me, 60 odd years later. They weren't loving, they gave us the basics, bed, food. Were much kinder to my dcs though, who they really did love for a time. (Not anymore).

Even as a child I didn’t like or love my birth father or his extended family apart from two great aunts who were very much from the same mould as my mums family. I loved those aunties very much.

I loved my mum very very much and I love my (step) dad who is the only father, grandad and great grandad me and mine have ever needed or wanted.

I do. It’s been a rough ride and they have not been perfect, but I have always loved them.

I’m not sure I do. They are not bad people and my younger childhood was fine but they are quite selfish and they checked out of parenting a long time ago, as soon as we were old enough to leave home really. Little interest shown in their adult children or their grandkids beyond from the token birthday and Christmas gift. I don’t feel I have any parent support, I never ask for their opinion and they don’t provide any practical help with the kids. I don’t wish ill of them. But I can’t recall a time where they told me they loved me. Those lyrics “you’re on your own kid, you always have been” really resonate with me!

No hate no love no like there just not important to me.
Same goes for a lot of things.
I dont get attached to people or things.
Even as a child i felt the same.

I would say they don't understand because they lack emotional intelligence and can't understand that their experience is not yours or that it's not a given that you love anyone.

Both my parents are dead now, but we just weren't close. They divorced when I was 10. I don't doubt that they loved me very much, they were never cruel or abusive and I had everything I needed materially, but it still wasn't enough to forge a close relationship. They both let me down in many ways, crucially when I was a teenager actually now I come to think of it.

It was a turning point in my life when I realised I didn't like my mother, let alone love her.

I did love my Dad though he should have left her.

Yes I do. They made mistakes but I’ve also made some as a parent and probably will go on to make more.

My mum is incredibly passive. She blames my dad for everything and cries at everything I've done, even at age 8.

My dad has a drug problem and has been involved with serious criminals including multiple gangster types.

I love my parents but I don't think they've been great parents.

Interesting question that I've never really considered before. I definitely love my dad, and I do love my mum in my own way. My mum is very closed off emotionally and very matter of fact, don't ever remember her hugging me or telling me she loved me as a child. Emotional support was non existent and my parents threw me out at 16 as I was too much hard work.

However, they are essentially good people and if I asked for help they would help me if they were able. I never would ask though as because of my upbringing I've become very independent and hate relying on anyone else.

I've been totally different with my own DC, making sure I show them lots of love and that I believe in them.

No.

I have never loved them.

I did not go to my father's funeral and I am no contact with my mother and don't miss her in any way.

They were cold, aggressive, critical and controlling people and I never had a genuine and heathy bond with them.

As an adult I realised they only brought pain and toxicity into my life and always had limited contact or no contact at all with them.

Being related to someone does not always mean that you love them or can connect/relate to them.

I love my children and I make sure they know this every single day. I sometimes feel sorry for my mother that she missed out/continues to miss out on the kind of love I share with my children and wish for her sake that it could have been different

EXACTLY the same OP. My mother had an awful emotionally neglectful ( and physically) abusive childhood. I have no memory of her saying she loved me or hugging or cuddling me, or even having any conversation with me. Now I have my own kids I think how sad that was for her.

My Dad was almost certainly autistic. He was a difficult and painful father to have and I went no contact with him in adulthood.

Love was never talked about in my family and I don’t think I ever loved my parents or felt loved by them. I knew they would feed me, buy me presents at Christmas and give me a plaster if I fell over and scraped my knee, but I don’t remember feeling loved. I think love was an absent concept in my family. I remember laughing at teenage mag agony aunts who advised teen girls to talk to their mums about their problems. I thought the agony aunts were ridiculously out of touch to think girls would talk to their Mothers. I was genuinely astonished to realise I was wrong.

No, but then I don't think either of them would say they love me, a teen pregnancy from the first time they had sex, I was supposed to be adopted but my Nan changed her mind and made her keep me. Moved in with my Nan permanently in early childhood, didn't know my Dad until I was 13. Don't have a relationship with either of them. I've always chased my mums love, wanting to be as important as the one of us three kids she kept and raised/.

I think I will cry when she dies, but it will be because I'm mourning the possibility of what could have been but never will.

That does make you sound cruel, yes.

Your poor Mum.

I love my father very much, but it’s complicated. He didn’t bring me up, they divorced when I was 5 and he worked abroad for most of my childhood. So my feelings towards him as a child were mostly hero-worship and longing (mother and stepfather were abusive and we were very, very unhappy children). He’d turn up like Santa Claus and take us on exciting trips and buy us presents…he was very immature, irresponsible and quite obviously neurodivergent, but very intelligent, funny and interesting. He is naturally very kind and generous and, within his limitations, would do anything for me.

My dad and I properly connected through a shared passion for folk music, in my teens we used to go to folk festivals and play gigs together, we were in bands together and DH was too when he came along (when I was 18) so we had a sort of adult relationship based around music (and drinking, and dysfunction…we used to have terrible rows that shocked other people). Now he’s 85 and has Alzheimer’s. He moved in with us a year ago after his partner died, and I realised the other day that this is by far the longest I’ve ever spent with him. We never really lived together. He’s always been nomadic, barely house-trained, mercurial and difficult…he still is. I love him to bits, but he drives me round the fucking twist.

I don’t love my mother. I adored her as a little child and tried for decades to please her. She’s a selfish, mean-spirited bitch with a real sadistic streak. She genuinely enjoyed terrifying her children. I haven’t spoken to her for 19 years (I finally snapped when she started on DC1) and I have never had a moment’s regret.