Confident Families

[ShrikeAttack]

My husband was wondering why me and my siblings are unusually confident. I think it was because we were exposed to lots of people from a young age. I think our parents had many and varied friends that were interested in us.

We also lived abroad for any years.

We were all very satisfied. We were all very pleased with ourselves.

He probably has a post somewhere about arrogant, entitled in laws and partner.

This sounds like a classic troll thread. OP will never be back

@ShrikeAttack

My husband was wondering why me and my siblings are unusually confident. I think it was because we were exposed to lots of people from a young age. I think our parents had many and varied friends that were interested in us.

We also lived abroad for any years.

We were all very satisfied. We were all very pleased with ourselves.

I think there's a lot of truth here. My experience was basically the opposite of the OP's and I suspect as a personality I am her opposite too.

I am late 40s and still unconfident (better than I was as a child/teen, when it was awful, but I have to work at it).
I had very unsupportive parents, emotionally speaking. They were also always at each other and used me in their arguments and I was always caught in the middle, so I think I got used to staying quiet and head-down and that's become my default.

They didn't really have friends or people who came to our house and we didn't socialise as a family really. I didn't come across many adults who took an interest in me.

I am acutely aware of how different I am from friends of mine who had busy, mixed, sociable childhoods/family homes. I would love to have been brought up differently.

@DelusionsOfGrandiflora

Do you have a brother called Boris, by any chance?

OP won't come back now that you have her rumbled!!

Sheesh I'm sat on a busy train laughing like a drain behind my mask and people are wondering if I'm contagious.

@Ylvamoon

What is a Confident Family?

Or are you one of those families that is noisy and will take over any space without regards to other human beings in your vicinity?

Yep. I know a couple of these families. Totally unaware of anyone except themselves.

Had a good laugh reading OP’s previous posts about men … and drugs 😂😂 hard to take seriously

Are you Shiv Roy?

Being "pleased with yourself" is not usually a complimentary expression. I tend to hear it used when the person is an arrogant show off!

As to why some people are more confident though, I think it's a combination of nature/nuture. Some people are just naturally positive, robust and resilient. Family life will have a bearing of course. My parents were very critical and not very accepting. They also made sure we led very sheltered lives. Leaving home for uni was such a shock and I lurched between loving the new found freedom and being totally overwhelmed. I'm a natural introvert anyway but my upbringing did not help my confidence levels.

My husband had parents who were not critical in that way but they had children very young, several close together and there was (I get the impression) an atmosphere of benign neglect. Not sheltered and led a much more cosmopolitan life. He is more self assured than me but not very confident.

Both our children are very outgoing and confident. I think they are natural extroverts but we have a very open supportive family life. We are strict when we need to be but they can always ask anything (answer isn't always yes) and confide anything without judgment. There are no grudges and the message I try to get across is that mum and dad are "on their team".

Just a snapshot of how it might explain things. Maybe your family was a good "team" and it paid off.

I’d be interested to see what he really means. DH’s sisters are outwardly very confident, the first to get up at a party (usually to say how wonderful they all are, no room for anyone else) and great public speakers. Behind the scenes they’re narcissistic and all their adult children children are medicated and in counselling for depression and anxiety. They are the star of their show.

How on earth do you get your big heads through the doorway on a morning?

Are you expecting a round of applause 👏🏻

Hoping that the OP comes back to clarify some points because I suspect that English isn't her first language.

I am wondering if the husband meant arrogant/cocky/loud too

Honestly, you sound very pleased with yourself.

its difficult to know from just one post OP if you are all confident and well raised or if you are a bunch of narcs as a result of poor parenting.

@50ShadesOfCatholic

I am imagining loud, self-assured and opinionated people who talk more than they listen.

Haha! Yes!!

Good for you, OP, well done!

@Redjumper1

its difficult to know from just one post OP if you are all confident and well raised or if you are a bunch of narcs as a result of poor parenting.

Omg. 😂 This cracked me right up.

Excellent, I was raised around a lot of interesting people, I was also raised abroad partly. I'm just normal. Some things I'm confidant in and others less so. I don't particularly feel the need to shout about it as I know plenty of confidant people who have always lived in the same place and am self aware enough to know that announcing you are terribly satisfied with that sort of perspective is a sign of narcissism or repressed low self esteem.

I suspect you may have forgotten the old mantra, confidence is knowing you are as good as anyone else in the room and arrogant is thinking you are better than anyone else in the room (mainly because I am preempting the ascerbic reply attempting to laugh that this was all a silly joke and look how OP has got everyone frothing...aren't they so terribly funny and edgy)

My ILs can be like this. Thankfully dh the least like it.

They're totally convinced that them arriving means everyone is delighted and the party starts. They're quite convincing at times.
I remember dh commenting that his sibling had gone somewhere and they had (in my eyes) treated him in the same way as they treated the other 199 people who went through the doors over the course of time. He said "yes, but he is X!" and I fell about laughing and said "yes, he's one person to them, no more, no less than the other 199 people". I think that was the first time he realised that actually being a member of his family didn't entitle him to be treated in a special way.

I will also note that for someone who tells you how everyone is falling over themselves to be their best friend they have a remarkable difficulty getting things like babysitters.

I don't think that actually the "confident" look translates into actual friends when it matters, which is quite sad when you think about it.

That’s nice, dear.

I often wonder why I was born with this perfect bone structure and so really really ridiculously goodlooking.

~~blue steel~~

Fair play to you...confidence is sadly not something my folk instilled in me.

Be careful that silver spoon doesn't choke you!

You sound like the kind of family that push through everyone else to get to a viewing window at the zoo because 'we are so vair important and confident dontchaknow.'

Are you all pushy parents as well?