To realise I sort of stopped loving my parents when I grew up

[lovebeingonthetrain]

Did this happen to anyone else? I adored them as a child so it's sad really.

Triplets?! No, we have 3 dc, but had them very close together which was hard(er).

When I said "the three dc together" I meant our three dc are exhausting in terms of noise, bickering, physicality, etc etc when they're all together. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

When you're a child you're programmed to love your caregivers because without them you're not fed, cleaned or nourished in any way. So you have to adore them to ensure your own survival. (cynical I know but pretty much true...)

As an adult with your own independence you don't NEED to love them anymore because you no longer need them to survive. So it's a choice actually. It's either something you naturally feel because they're loving, kind, you get along etc or it doesn't come so naturally because of things they did in your childhood or just a massive clash of personalities. You're not forced to love anyone. If you don't love them, you don't love them. People think just because they raised/created you that love is a given but it just isn't. DNA does not equal love.

As it goes I was very close to my father growing up but since I've grown up and had children of my own I've realised the relationship was built on money. The only way he knew how to show affection or love was with his money. He wasn't really there for me at all. He got away soooo easily. Whereas my mum I loathed entirely as a child and now I see just how much I put her through and what she had to deal with day in, day out so have a lot more respect for her. She wasn't perfect (far from it) but it was her that did the lions share of parenting whilst my dad swanned about as an 'actor' 250 miles away in London.

We're totally different people so on a personal level we don't get along much. She's not the sort of mother to go for dinner with or shopping, we've never done things like that. We don't have much in common either so conversation is sparse. But for all her mistakes I do love her and she's made up for a lot of what happened in my childhood helping me out as an adult. My dad, on the other hand, I don't really love. If he died tomorrow I would grieve for the father he was when I was a child and the memories we had together then but as an adult I haven't really known him, I haven't seen him for about four years... We don't know each other now. If that makes sense.

Mousefinkle "When you're a child you're programmed to love your caregivers because without them you're not fed, cleaned or nourished in any way. So you have to adore them to ensure your own survival. (cynical I know but pretty much true...) "

I don't think it's cynical I think it's a fair comment. I get confused when people say they really like the unconditional love of their baby because it's not love, as such.

My mum was an outright cunt to me when I was a tween/teenager. It was a pattern with all three of us that weren't her favourite - nice when we were kids, cunt when puberty struck. She's nicer now, but our relationship is best kept shallow. We can have nice chats, but if I was having major personal problems I would never confide in her. I don't know if I love her.

AbermathyFringe, Try to see how short life is - that is a reason to STOP loving my mother, and not to keep spending more of my life trying to focus on her redeming qualities and the calms between the storms, when ultimately being around her makes me feel shit.

My mom 'died' a while ago, well she didn't actually die, but the mom part of her seemed to. She is just Sue now (not real name) rather than my mom. Sue is nice enough, I meet up with her a few times a year and we can converse on a superficial level easily enough. I don't really feel all that much for Sue though.
She wasn't the most attached mother a child could wish for but she did the job well enough, just without too much emotion. there was a clear change when her youngest left home. I genuinely felt bereaved when this transformation happened in her. I feel like my mom died a long time ago, and so did my love for her.

My dad on the other hand, I cant imagine ever being without him, its too horrible a thought. We are really close, he knows my life inside out, we speak daily and I see him at least once a week. I would do anything for him and he would for me. I love him so much.

Like many others I worry about which one of my parents I am more like, I try to emulate him, but I hear her sometimes when I deal with my own DC and I hate it.

Screen I hear you.
I actually find life very long but it's also full of obligation. I don't enjoy time with my folks so I prefer not to do it, took me a while not to see it as obligatory though.

Does anyone else ever read these threads and worry their DC might say the same about them when they're older?
Me. We've had a lovely day, but when it's got to bedtime it's ended in a shouting match. As per usual.
I only shout when it's got to the 90 millionth time of asking, but lately it seems t be a common occurrence.
I hope they know they're loved. They get tucked in, a goodnight kiss and I say "love you" at bedtime.
I'd try and sneak kisses in during the day as well but they're slightly older nowadays and I'd only get rebuffed!
I'm there for all the school plays, concerts, sports days etc. Really conscious of shouting too much though when they play up and won't do as they're told and answer back. Don't want them to remember me for something like shouting at them for not getting dressed in time or something, or about getting wet in the rain like OP!
I'm so lucky, so can't resonate with not loving parents and family. Mine are great, and have an extended one. We're like the Waltons, lol

It's not about a bit of shouting. Its about not feeling "at home" with your own parents/parent. Family can drive you nuts and be a bit shouty but they're also your safe place… usually.. but sometimes they're not. that's what it's about, not being shouty

That's really helpful Screenshotting. You're right.

I was absolutely besotted with my father as a child - my brother and I visited him every two weeks. Sadly over the years he demonstrated his blatant favouritism for his second family and my brother, and his total lack of interest in me, over and over and over again. It wasn't until I was crying yet again at a family get together when I was over 30, snubbed by him again in front of everyone (so much so that my stepsister had to push him towards me) that I thought - why am I wasting my life trying to be noticed by him?

So I let it go. All the angst about how he hadn't wanted a second child, hadn't wanted a girl, didn't think I was his, had no interest in me at all as a child, less as an adult and still doesn't - I had to let that go. It was like a weight being lifted from me, I gave myself permission to withdraw.

I love him, he's my dad, but I feel very little affection or respect for him. I was lucky enough to have a lovely stepfather, sadly dead now, and my fantastic mum who is the best person in the world in my eyes. I adore her.

All those pages and still don't know how old you are.

candycrusher. That's how I am with mine. Good, honest shouting is fine providing it's accompanied by absolute and unconditional love. My mother rarely shouted; it wasn't the occasional smack that hurt but the constant criticism and totally conditional love; if it was love.

Its about not feeling "at home" with your own parents/parent. Family can drive you nuts and be a bit shouty but they're also your safe place… usually.. but sometimes they're not.
That's reassuring, I know I'm sometimes a lot shouty. Feel I'm getting it wrong. I know we're always, ALWAYS a safe place to come home to though.
to anyone who hasn't got that. (My first flowers)

So true Screenshotting,

"Family can drive you nuts and be a bit shouty but they're also your safe place… usually.. but sometimes they're not"

If only someone had asked me that a long time ago, I'd have felt less guilt and angst about knowing something was wrong but not being able to phrase it in a way anyone else could understand.

From the age of, oooh, 7 ish the answer to that would have been a resounding, 'no, family is not my safe space AT ALL'! Although even if someone had swapped the word 'family' for 'home' it would have got confusing, I felt such a strong connection to the bricks and walls and dirt and grass. But the adults in that space... They were the reason I was clinging so hard to the space.

Very different from a loving family who shout sometimes.

NC for this, as I totally get you, OP. My parents were in many respects very loving - middle class, stately homes visits, the lot. They had a terrible, mutually abusive marriage, though, and it poisoned both of their personalities and was spread around the family and my siblings until we all were contaminated by it. They played my siblings and I off against each other, so that even now huge family fights break out with one sibling being absolutely vile to another, and despite any veneer of cordiality we all know we don't like each other really :( I don't love my siblings. Which is awful. I wish we had a proper bond.

Now I can see exactly what my parents did in creating favourites, using each of us to score points, taking out their frustrations and inadequacies on us, and so on. It was a very shouty house where even in an apparently calm period a screaming row could erupt out of nowhere. My dad is cold and often verbally abusive, and my mum, who was very loving and easy-going when we were little, sort of became like him, and when we were adolescents she started to treat us as if we were versions of him. They were both often emotionally abusive to us in small ways - my dad specialises in apparently minor but curiously cold and hurtful below-the-belt comments; my mum likes to blow up and say horrible, really horrible, things, then pretend those didn't matter because it was all just in temper. But anyone who has ever lived like this (and I bet on this thread, lots of people have!) knows that if you live a life where people randomly blow up in temper and behave abusively and appallingly, then everyone has to pretend that everything's nice and normal for the rest of the time, it is incredibly, incredibly emotionally damaging.

As a young adult I began to keep my distance because they were so emotionally confusing and hurtful to be around, so I carefully rationed the time I saw them, but I think I still loved them. I still believed that they would do anything for me if I ever needed it. It was only when I had a family myself and was very emotionally vulnerable that I really needed them - I had a traumatic birth and a lot of other awful things happened to me around the same time, I was a mess and really in need of help and love. And they not only let me down, but my dad in particular was totally vile to me in a way that would make you gasp if I told you all. I have never quite recovered, because I realised that not only were they not there for me, but they had the capacity to actually hurt me when I needed help. I don't know if they were always like that, or if they grew to be like that, but at some point after that I realised after that that I didn't love them any more. Just felt detached and sad, like other posters on this thread have said. (It's a wider issue, though, for me, as since then I feel emotionally numb about everything to be honest, I don't know if my sense of love will ever really come back.)

I don't know if I will ever love them again. My dad in particular has just behaved so badly towards me in the last few years that it would be hard to love him again, because he's so readily demonstrated that he doesn't really love me; or rather, that his love for me is totally overwhelmed by his own love for himself and his own ego issues. An object lesson in how you can't expect to treat your children horribly and then be surprised if they don't love you any more. I can't help it, there it is.

I do worry that I am going to become like them, especially when I am irritable with my DC. I don't want to be hard to love :(

My DP caused me have a physcosymatic illness at 21 and ended up on a psyciatric ward for a while. I had internalised everything they said about me. Felt guilty that my DD had married my DM because she trapped him by getting pregnant. She was abusive and the only time he stepped it stop her was when she was beating me so hard the neighbours could hear me screaming. I think thats reason enough not to love either of them!

I think I stopped looking for my mum's approval when I was 30. It was quite a conscious decision and one that needed therapy to reach.

Like some previous posters said, I was in two minds about my (physically and emotionally) abusive childhood, until I had dc of my own.
Then I knew hell would freeze over before I treated my children the way I was treated. My childhood and all of its nastiness became obvious to me.

I went very low contact and my dc have no real relationship with my mum. We talk about shallow stuff, she doesn't know what's really going on.

I knew from when I was very little that I was treated badly. My earliest memory is one of planning to run away. It's heart breaking and I know I need to look after my little part whenever I'm in a vulnerable position. Lots of compassion and self care needed, because I didn't get it when I was little.

So, no, I don't love my mum, but I don't hate her either, she has no hold over me anymore.

I have memories like that, I keep going back to (like the PP with the headband.) I once tripped and dropped and smashed a plate and she looked at me and said 'you stupid bitch.' It was filled with such loathing and contempt though.

I have many similar memories.

I think what people from 'normal' (ha - normalish, maybe) families struggle to get their heads around is that when you grow up in a dysfunctional home, you start from a point of assuming everything around you is normal (it IS normal in your house for Mummy to completely lose it all the time and to sneer at you and for Daddy to hide in the shed and the office and only appear on Saturdays to be vaguely affectionate, or whatever flavour of madness it is ) and only very very slowly, over years and decades, like layers of onion do you lose that misapprehension. It can take well into adulthood and actually you have to realise it over and over again.

I don't think I expressed that very well; if you start with a Mummy who screams and sneers constantly. Or a father who drinks incessantly. Or parents who never speak to each other despite sharing a home, then your initial understanding of the world is that that is what Mummies and Daddies ARE and it takes a good 4-8 years to get to the point where you understand that some parents do some things differently. It's a very long climb up from there.

These things are so little discussed and it makes me so sad to see that as soon as someone tries they instantly get smothered with platitude, minimization and dismissal.

Not on this thread though, Just5mins, I hope you're not suggesting that?

Closingeveryhour - your very awareness that you don't want to be like your parents will stop you from being so, even if you do copy some of their behaviours - you know that you're doing it and you'd rather not, so when it happens, you're shocked and probably try that bit harder not to do it again next time. If you were like your parents you wouldn't care, or possibly even notice - and there'd be no awareness of the "wrongness" of it.

EVeryone is allowed to be irritated by the sometimes incredibly irritating behaviours of small children - it's how you proceed afterwards that matters more, IMO. As I said in my long post, I know I copy some of my own mum's less-than-great behaviours - but I apologise to my DC (she never did) and I do try to forewarn them that they're reaching the end of my patience (again, she never did) to minimise the effects. I still lose my temper, but I hope the effects aren't quite as shocking on them as they used to be on me and my siblings.
And we have LOTS of cuddles. They are well-loved, and they know it - and at the moment, I know they love me too. Hopefully that will last another few years yet!

I meant the first couple of pages Thumb. It did get better as it went on.

Ah fair enough - I had forgotten there were a few shitty comments at the start, you're right.

This thread is so therapeutic... My own childhood mirrored in so many other posts.

Explosive and emotionally damaged mother, a father who adored me as a young child and started to turn on me as I grew up. Cold, lying and mild sexual grooming. The examples of how things were fucked up would probably number into the hundreds if I started to list them.

As the favourite child (they had banished my older siblings one after the other for calling them out on their bullshit) I imagined we had a close relationship and that I loved them very much, they had a hard life etc. However it was only when they started to turn their bile onto me and my lovely DH and his family that I finally snapped.

I too was so very very scared of turning into them, for a long time I didn't even know if I wanted children. DS' birth and aftermath was traumatic and I came close to suicide because I thought I had failed already as a mother. DH and HCPs pulled me back. When I bonded with DS though, it was the tonic that finally healed my broken heart. My parents broke my heart, and my children fixed it again. I realised I could never ever EVER treat DS and DD like I was treated. All my sympathy for my parents was gone. I am grateful to my beautiful baby boy and later his sister for finally helping me fully heal. My number one goal in my life is to do right by them and earn their respect.

But if you spoke to anyone I went to school with, or even PIL (who only met my parents a handful of times) they'd say: "but they seemed so nice.... Quite posh, and a bit strict, but very nice"

Thank God for the internet and authors like Susan Forward for blowing open the doors on this pervasive abuse.

I've been NC with my parents for about 10 years, with occasional attempts by them to suck me back in (I was the last person in their lives at the time I broke away). My mother died a few years ago and I felt relief and sadness at all the waste. My father didn't bother telling me that she had died, I found out through a family friend and later weird letters from my father's solictor. He can fuck off. I am free.