Stark realisation that my parents have always disliked me.

[BlueLegume]

Just that really. I have had several threads covering a very difficult few years with my elderly parents and had a great deal of support to help me navigate it on here.

I have stepped right back recently and reflected on my relationship generally with them over my whole life. My overriding take away is that they have never really liked me, I have always been a disappointment to them. For the record they have told me how much of a disappointment I am many times. Not pretty enough, not clever enough - simply not enough.

This really makes me think why I have striven so hard all my life for their approval. It might be in the wrong thread but I can see now what a slog life has been trying to get a tiny bit of approval from them.

As a mother of a daughter I’m heart sore for you. Your DM is severely lacking, this isn’t on you, it’s her. I’m glad that you are starting to realise that, live your best life in the knowledge that your life is authentic

One of the last things those of us in this situation realise, I think, is the need to parent ourselves.

That’s when we start to be able to protect ourselves, to ensure our needs are met, and to -eventually- give ourselves the unalloyed approval we weren’t given in childhood.

So well done you for getting there. Their inability to love anyone except themselves is all about them. The dream they had of how their life should look is all about them and had no room in it for other whole sentient people. They’d have been happy with a doll.

DM is still affronted that I don’t share her values. It’s a real struggle for her and she had to face it a couple of times in recent years. It was painful for her. But she soon recovered 😉

I am so sorry, OP, and I am glad that you've actively taken steps to remove yourself from a lot of their crap. And objectively, yes they are dreadful.

I myself am the daughter of a mother who only wanted boys, so you can imagine how well that went.

@PrizedPickledPopcorn the comment about the ‘doll’ resonates. From a very young age I recall her saying how she wished I was still a baby as she liked that bit. Took me along time to realise she meant she liked the stage where I had no voice to stand up to her.

@neveradmit17 I do think my mother struggles with any women - daughters, sisters anyone who poses a risk to her not being top dog. She adores almost hero worships my male sibling whilst at the same time knowing he is quite awful to people as he ‘says it like it is’. Thanks all. Wobble saved by your lovely lot.

You have described my mother to a tee, @BlueLegume who knew there were two of them? Actually I am sure there's thousands of women like that: partly through social conditioning, partly through dodgy personality type.

@neveradmit17 so sorry for you. It is quite a journey working out that we are not the problem. You have my sympathy.

It sounds as though they're not really capable of loving anyone. Only objects that give them status. This must make it impossible for them to gain any real satisfaction from life.

Sweetheart, you make sure you love yourself and got someone who loves you. Don't take on just any man.

Such threads only reveal how phony money is

Try one of the stately homes threads; bloody hundreds of them just on there.

Actually, I had a bit of a shock when I realised that I had not liked my mother very much since I was a teenager. You sort of brush the feeling aside because it seems a crazy and dangerous thing to think, but that feeling in my stomach sometimes when she was behaving in a certain way was actually dislike from me. I really pity her, and my father actually, and that sort of stands in for love.

JFC that is an horrendous thing to say to your daughter.
I would describe her as spiteful and wicked; perhaps you should tell her that.