Wish I had different parents

[Sayingitstraight]

I know I shouldn't compare but it's hard not to when I see SM posts on mothers days, fathers day, birthdays and Christmas of my friends with their wonderful parents. I wish I had wonderful, loving and kind parents but I don't. Anyone else struggle with the parents you have?

My parents are a pita. They are incredibly judgmental and constantly believe that they know everything better. My mum's a racist and vocal about it. She has been going on about my figure/weight since I was about 12. I had a baby 6 days ago and she told me yesterday that I need to lose lots of weight now...I've got a pretty face after all. (D)H left shortly before I went into labour and it's surely because he's got someone else and if I just had a better figure, this wouldn't have happened.
She told everyone what has happened (including all of our neighbours...and no, she doesn't live here) and is now constantly going on about how she has to support me. I'm apparently really ungrateful and have to learn to accept help. I don't want her help. It's just her trying to bully me into doing what she thinks is right and proper so that she can tell her friends how amazingly supportive she is. (While I was going through fertility treatment, she also decided she had to inform everyone and basically have everyone tell me how it'll all be fine if I just relax and go on holiday....at Christmas, two weeks after I had a mc.)

She moaned at me for not watering the garden (I had) and that my bedroom is messy (who cares??). I hadn't unpacked my hospital bag, yet. She was worried the midwife might see it. Even if she did, she wouldn't care. She had told me explicitly to not bother about housework right now and focus on my recovery.

I'm currently considering grabbing the kids and moving to Denmark to live by the coast...

My mum passed when I was young. My dad has been with his partner since I was in primary school, we (My brother and i) don't get on with her. I moved out over 2 years ago and my dad has visited once and only because he wanted something. We have strained relationship with all of my dads family. But I've just come to accept it.

Honestly! Most of the stuff you see on SM, is what people want you to have not what they really have.

It's just not true.

When my father died and I went to his funeral, the eulogy was about how he was an amazing dad to his two children.
He probably was, but I was his oldest by his first wife and he actually had three children.

Yup. Mum is a self centred arsehole who screams and cries if you try to challenge her. And by challenge, I mean have an opinion.
It’s been exhausting since we were children.

Sorry your mum is not very supportive.

I’m NC with mine, my childhood was abusive and I won’t have them anywhere near us.

im often sad not to have better parents, I’d love to be close to them (not the ones I have!) Mother’s Day/father’s day are rough. Sorry you have the same OP

My condolences. Poor you. This is the last thing you need at any time and certainly not immediately post partum.

How are you feeling? Has your mum left?

Having shit parents does effect you and it's not something I'd wish on anyone

When the people who are supposed to be your rock, to guide you, to comfort you and help you let you down it makes you question your self worth and everything that goes along with that

My parents are raging alcoholics. I've had it out with them in the past about how they did nothing for my life and was told by them that they weren't shit parents because

1)they celebrated my birthday every year (by going to the pub)
2)they barely physically disaplined me (because they were never there but when they did hit me it wasn't just a little tap)
3) I was fed (yes I was chicken nuggets, micro fries, beans on toast was my staple diet)
4) they didn't feel the need to attended school events or parents evening because school was for me not for them
5) they never asked me to tidy my room ( there wasn't anything to tidy in my room apart from some clothes and a bed because all their money went on booze)
6) I never had a bedtime or forced to have meal times or any routine (that's because they were either out, passed out on the floor or bloody forgot about me)
7) they never forced me to study or forced me into work( because whenever I asked them what do you think I should study or should I try to get an interview for this job I would be told 'why you asking me for it's your life' so literally zero support or guidance
8) we praised you ( when I passed my degree I rang my parents to tell them and was met with 'oh well done , I've got awful back pain' and the conversation just went back to them and how they are

This list just goes on and on

Do you know what heeled me? Having my own children and literally doing the absolutely opposite to what my parents did to me

Yeh, I've always had to play the part my mother wrote for me, reflect back her view of herself, but the very first time I asked to be heard, she shut me down, played the martyr, was the victim of my request to be considered, smeared me to extended family, excluded me, drafted in other family members to exclude me too.
Then gaslighted me deny it all.
The only version of events that can exist is that - I hurt her. She is the perfect victim. My dad backs her up.

I was so angry for about 4 years and then I met my dad on his own, and it was like explaining a complicated maths problem to him he sort of understood, for a moment, but the bottom line for him is that mum cannot be hurt. Now om just so sad. It's worse.

I'm sure some extended family members think that if I said "sorry" for being a raging ungrateful brat that my parents would try to forgive me.

For a long time I longed to get through to them. Then I realised, their ego is what they love unconditionally.

I have to stay away. I feel eroded and erased and I'm trying to draw myself back in.

It is hard I agree, I sit between two women at work who both have good relationships with their mothers.

Yes I am sad that when I think about my parents all I remember is how shit they were. I sometimes feel upset and envious when others speak lovingly of their parents but there is nothing to be done.

That's a bitter pill to swallow. I'm sorry. Men can be extremely good at doing this, it seems, moving on and forgetting their firstborn.

That’s awful and far too common.
When my bil’s df died I found out that the df had a dd from a first marriage and bil and family were worried she may claim something in the will.
I was shocked that their first thought wasn’t how to let the dd know that her (d)f had died.

Thanks. I'm trying to get everything sorted but currently just focusing on being home alone with two kids. We're doing OK, considering.

My parents live about 30 minutes from us. It's one reason why I consider just moving away and getting a fresh start somewhere else. My parents would have an absolute fit, though. My mum thinks this is the best house ever and I will certainly have my children inherit it. That was never the plan...just hers. I'd happily pack my stuff, sell the house and move today if I could. (I like my job, though, and would miss my friends and colleagues.)

@Summerbreeze456 ugh I feel SO angry on your behalf. Your mum doesn't see you as an adult or an equal. Like mine, actively dislikes me.

I would stop giving her ammunition... Put her on a severe diet of any information about you and your family. Yourself and your children are your priority, and she is not even trying to be nice or supportive, so honestly I would reduce how much she's allowed to be in your life. You are allowed to do that,in fact, putting yourself and family first is the best thing to do..
Because how DARE she come and spoil your first precious days with your baby?! You'll never get those days back, and she's shitting on it all so badly that you've been forced to seek help online. Tell her to fuck off, lock the door, block her on your phone. She doesn't automatically have any right to make your life actively worse. Ignore her tantrums, remove yourself from her circus, protect your peace, and your healing (from birth and from her awful bullying!).

And then, when you feel stronger, put in more real measures to protect yourself. Move, if you truly want to. It's literally none of her business, in the real world ( not her controlling work of make believe,)Never see her, if that helps you feel better. We wouldn't tolerate all this from a friend or colleague, so our parents should be held up to the same level of basic respect, and she's falling very very far short of that.

I hope you find strength! Seeing mine trying to do all the shit things to my own kids helped me break the cycle. It's YOUR life, I hope it gets better.

Some of your stories are heartbreaking, it makes me so sad.
For me having my own DC especially my DD highlighted how rubbish my own childhood was and how my parents were are still are incrediblely selfish and toxic. I'm LC with both of them as I'm not exposing my DC to them. My mother likes to ruin every special occasion and play the victim which I no longer stand for, she puts her own feelings first with little thought how her actions effect anyone else.
I've had to fend for myself since a teenager with no guidance or support.

I don't think my parents were emotionally capable of being parents. Still aren't. I'm sorry you're struggling.

Yes I feel the same. So envious of people with lovely mums who are now lovely supportive grandmas. My mother is an alcoholic who is incapable of empathy or seeing anything from any perspective other than her own. I wish I had the confidence to go NC but sadly I don’t currently.

For years I glossed over how unpleasant my parents were.
They disliked me as a teenager and in my 20s, I thought having kids would be a fresh start but it wasn't. So I put them on an information diet and the biggest thing is I'm honest to colleagues & friends.
Because I'm generally quite nice, most people understand it's a parent problem rather than me.
My dad died a year ago, I honestly haven't no sadness or regrets, and if anything am getting a bit harder of heart!

I've been struggling for awhile, I have wonderful in laws and I'm close to my aunt which my mother hates. I definitely need some therapy.

I’m NC with my DM for being emotionally abusive and my DF is NC with me due to his manipulative DW. Neither of them were suitable to have DC, nor wanted them.

My DM is terminally ill and while I have mixed feelings they are mostly that I grieve for the DM that I wish I had. The hardest part is my friends’ and relatives responses - they cannot understand why I wouldn’t be devastated that she is dying or not jumping on the next plane to see her.

I’ve learnt never to speak of her and I’ve never told them the history because what would be the point (plus I’m a private person)? People just don’t want to understand why because it’s the last taboo to turn your back on a dying parent. It makes me feel terribly alone and when I was turned down for NHS Talking Therapies it was the last straw for feeling like I don’t matter.

I'm NC because my mother ghosted me, that's painful. It's a bit different when it's not your choice but i was the one begging and pleading with her to listen to me. I was the one who kept banging myself against a locked door until ........... I understood that her bottom line is that nothing needed to change, there is one perspective; hers, and my expectation that she hear me out is AGGRESSIVE, how DARE I? she's furious with me. My perspective is ''detached from reality''.

So, we're NC I guess. I didn't want that and she would claim she didn't want it either. But she has NO MOTIVATION to fix things. She doesn't miss me.

So, NC doesn't always ease the pain or the rumination. Or maybe it does if it's your decision ? Sometimes I think if I'd had the strength to just accept that she is a toddler and say ''hello weathers nice, lunch is nice, you're nice, everything''s nice, ok bye now', see you next month that would be nice' then it'd have eaten in to my head space less.

My dad was a violent bully and I shed no tears when he died. My mum is selfish, mean, unkind and lacking in any kind of self awareness. She always plays the victim. I’m very LC with her.

I’m of an age where friends mums are passing away and I see how devastated they are, but it’s not something I can relate to. It saddens me that these wonderful mothers who will be so missed are dying when mine lives on and on! As absolutely awful as it sounds, I will only feel relief when she dies as the charade will finally be over.

It really hits home when I read from posters who are grieving the loss of their mum or dad. I have an envy for their suffering. I felt nothing when my parents died, they were both dreadful.

I drew a line under them when I was in my late 20’s and realised it was never going to get any better.

I try not to give them any headspace, but I’m 70 now and through every stage of being a mother and grandmother I’ve compared my behaviours to theirs. It’s still hard to believe how cold and evil they were.

An abusive childhood is the opposite of a head start in life; it never goes away completely.

I'm low contact with both my parents but you wouldn't know that if you saw my narcissistic father's Facebook page. He is constantly posting things depicting himself as an amazing father and his friends comment about how lucky my sister and I are to have such a great dad. It's all absolute bullshit and makes me so angry. He abandoned us as children and only uses us to stroke his ego and provide some company now he's old and lonely. I've had to put strong boundaries in place.