Do you like your parents more or less with each year?

[AntHedge]

So, I've never been my mum's favourite person, Golden balls brother dynamic.
I think it's gone from unquestioning love to surprise and processing, to grey rock and now at 51 a lot of anger.

I'm decluttering letters and photos and am just not finding the good times. My dad died last year and honestly, I'm not bothered except I've felt I've had to support my mum more.
Any tips for refinding the good?

Yabu - I find myself loving them more each year
Yanbu - our relationship got better with every year

I could have written this.

I neither like nor dislike them more or less but I appreciate them more as they're getting on and I'm mindful of that.

They're not easy to be emotionally close with but they've really tried in the last couple of years.

I expected my DM to get worse and my DF to remain wonderful.

In reality they both have their moments but by far my mum is the good one having worked for through a lot and my dad is becoming a nightmare. There are still flashes of the old dad but he has become selfish and angry as he gets older. Would have never guessed it.

Since having children of my own, I see DM through a totally different light. It made me question A LOT. The smacking I guess, was still mildly acceptable in the 90s ...but it was more her taking her temper out on me for things which (now I see) were nothing at all to do with me, I just took the brunt of it. The mental abuse was worse though and the fact her and DF used me as a weapon throughout their divorce. It all seemed normal to me as a child but after having my first DD I realised this was not the case and ended up in therapy.

My therapist told me it is perfectly ok to love your DM with a 'little L' and whilst we meet up for birthdays/one every few months and she is pleasant to both me and DC, often over the top with gifts and grand gestures... there is no way on this earth I would let her have my children overnight or for any extended length of time alone. She took eldest DC to theatre once and I was a nervous wreck. DD had a great time but I found it very triggering.

So in answer to your question, I love DM for bringing me into this world, so that I can have the joy of being a mother to my own DC and pity her for the guilt she must feel looking back, knowing that her temper has cost us our relationship and my trust in her with own DC. However, as DH once said 'she needs to work on being a mother before she can be a grandmother'... and the fact she showed almost zero concern or empathy for me during my depression/therapy shows that my feelings are justified.

My parents... where to begin.

I wouldn't have a morbid sense of humour and a writing career without them. Something about being ignored your whole childhood and left to be brought up by a public library does WONDERS for your literacy.

I am guiltily relieved that one is dead and the other pointedly focused on my sister these days.

I had a very difficult relationship with my parents as a teenager especially my mum. Since having children 20 years ago we have become closer and now we have a very good relationship.

I’m an adult in my mid 40s and people are still telling me my sibling was the golden child. I thought for years I was just the bad child, the naughty one. I have no recollection of love from my perfectly middle class childhood. I have moved from anger to apathy and now I feel the child that was given the car, got free bed and board, ferried around and shopping trips can be the sibling that does the care for the elderly.

Lost both my parents now but my happiest years were the last ones, once my mother was in a nursing home due to dementia and my brother the golden child was stuck in Spain due to covid. Dad and I enjoyed the peace and quiet and lack of drama. Sadly he died just a year after my mum. Looking back I realise just how crap my childhood was and how she favoured him over me throughout our lives and created a monster I never really twigged how bad it was until I was almost 50. She died in 2020 and I'm still trying to process all this. I keep remembering things....

I’m not my mums favourite either, her son is. She remarried a few years ago to someone I feel is abusive and just not a nice person so we have grown further apart and my brother has grown closer to her (she does a lot for him and his dc but not mine).

I am closer to my father despite my mother slagging him off (yes he’s not perfect and possibly on the spectrum), I see him at least once a week and feel our relationship has improved over the years.

Worse unfortunately.

My dad has always been selfish with no patience around his own children and short tempered. He is now like this with DD. He can just about tolerate our presence for an hour.

My mum is a lovely person but has always been impractical and scatty. Now she never listens, never finishes sentences and you can barely have a decent conversation with her.

Of course I love them both but don't see them very much.

My mother said to DH once " I don't know why my daughter has such a great relationship with her children because she's much to soft with them"

I went grey then NC when she started on the youngest age 6. It wasn't easy we were stalked even after we moved.

You can't fix a narcissist

As time goes on, I maintain and strengthen the boundaries I put in place years ago to protect myself and my wellbeing and are necessary to have any sort of relationship with my mum.

When I was a kid, she told me that she ‘had to love me, but didn’t have to like me’, and that’s been the basis of our relationship since.

Do I like her? No. Do I expect her to change? Not anymore. Do I share my life with her? Not in a meaningful way. Do I love her? Yes, in the way that you can’t help because you are their child. Would I help her if she needed help? Yes, within the limit of my abilities given the our relationship.

I don’t see this changing much in future, unless by some miracle she goes to therapy!

I would have voted 'Worse every year'' but your choices are both for better?

Anyway - my mother drives me more and more insane every year. I simmer with anger and resentment.

I've made some peace with it, in so much that for ages it made me feel sad and guilty, but that's lessened lately. I'm just left with the simmering.

What annoys me most is when well meaning folks assume she's a 'lovely old lady'. Why i don't know. Everybody gets old. Getting old doesn't turn anyine into a fucking saint as far as i know?

I loved my Mum more as the years went by.My Dad died when I was in my 20s and was old enough to be appreciate them both.
My children appear to love their mum as well. They are adults now.

Oh - and i very much agree with the 'When i saw her start doing it to my kids it dawned on me/changed me/made me stronger/made me realise i had to stand up to her/saw it clearly for the first time ect ect.

Also seeing my DH go from 'ah she's ok she's just an old girl, ha ha' to 'fuck! she's really unpleasant isn't she!' after a couple of years of knowing her helped me straighten it out in my mind.

I'm an only so no one else shares my memories or experiences. I had to wait until another adult was involved and to see her behave the way she does to my kids. Hence worse every year.

My parents are ace, and I've always thought so. Since having my son I'm in awe of their patience and stamina - I will never be as good a parent as they have been.

Even the fact that I can now see their weaknesses much more clearly than I did when I was younger makes me love them more. Although they can still drive.me around the bend at times obviously.

My sister was the favourite and that was made abundantly clear; in all my 68 years I never once did anything right. My mother became more vicious and unpleasant as she grew older, it got to the point where I wouldn’t visit unless DH was with me to deflect the spite. She died at 93 and not once did my father ever say or do anything to defend me so I can only assume he felt the same about me.
I haven’t grieved for one minute since they died, I feel indifferent about them.
It’s wrecked my self-esteem, I see myself as a nobody.

Worse. As each year has gone by I've realised more and more that an awful lot of the things that my parents said were "normal" or due to me being too sensitive were toxic at best and abusive at worst. Plus they are now behaving the same way to my children and whereas I can put up with it for myself, I won't put up with it for them.

The thing is, all of us who are parents will be the topic of this very discussion one day. How many of our children will like us more as time goes on? None of us are perfect and our parents weren’t either. I’m talking run of the mill families where people just did their best (not excusing or including abusive parents here at all though). Where your parents made mistakes, and may continue to do so, cut them some slack and importantly learn to admit your own flaws and then come back in 30 years to see what your kids are writing about you.

@Daz57 that's so sad and poignant, I wish I could chat with mine over a cup of tea now, while they are alive. I think that's the big difference being shown here, that sadly I and many others have no choice but to keep being damaged, or to insert boundaries to limit their parents damaging behaviour.

I used to chat over cups of tea with them, but it's like a false memory, because it was never the love and affection I deserve, and only time has proven this to me. They just aren't normal people.

No one here is saying people don’t have flaws. But when you have grown up around people unwilling to admit or deal with their own issues and instead take them out on you as children - you have every right to be angry and unforgiving.

I don't like them any less - they're both lovely and I still adore them. But they've certainly got gradually more infuriating as they've got older. More set in their ways, more stubborn, less relaxed. I like them just as much as ever, but they still drive me nuts. Same with DP's mum, who is also lovely, but increasingly stubborn and increasingly likely to have really odd opinions/perception of things.

I do love them but don't like them. They've done and said a lot of hurtful things to me. Their behaviour has been questionable the last 20 years.
Now I have 2 DD's I can see them for what they are. 2 very selfish and strange people. My brother was the favourite and he died couple years ago, have they bothered with me since he's death? Have they heck

Good relationship with my mother and father and they had a great marriage.
My father has passed away, but mum is still here and we are eachother regularly. She would do anything for me and DD- and she’s 82 soon. Has more stamina than people half her age! Very strong woman.

aren't your voting options the same thing??