I hate myself for it but I'm ashamed and embarrassed by my parents

[overdone]

They have just been to stay for five nights and I couldn't wait for them to leave.

I have felt embarrassed by them for years to the extent that they have only met my MIL twice for the twenty years that I have been married. However, they show no interest in her or DH's family, never ask after them, have not even bothered sending Christmas/Birthday cards unless prompted. If they call me, they never ask after DH and never ask to speak to him.

I always go out of my way to avoid meeting anyone I know when they are with me as they are useless with other people and my mum has hardly any social skills.

Other things are:-

1. Appalling table manners. They never wait until everyone is sitting down before they start eating. I am frequently still dishing up while they sit down and immediately start eating. At lunchtime today, my mum had finished her meal before I had even sat down. She hunches over her food with her elbows on the table. She shovels far too much in her mouth and talks with her mouth full. Sometimes I can't even understand what she's saying.

2. They drink loads. They both fill their glasses right to the top and often fill their own glass/finish a bottle before offering any to anyone else. They get drunk and talk nonsense-my mum will slur and my dad will get argumentative.

3. They are greedy with food. If I take chocolates to their house my mum will open them straight away and not offer any to anyone. I hate eating out with them-a lunchtime example was my dad had two beers, starter, main course and cheese course with red wine. My mum had two courses, three large glasses of wine and a liquer coffee. DH and I had a main and one glass of wine. This is lunchtime we are talking about-I thought it was a bit excessive esp. as we were with DS who finds it hard to sit for very long.

4. My dad is always going on about his "guts" and how he feels "blown up" and his health problems. His took his sock off to show me his swollen foot when I was eating my lunch today. He farts and burps constantly-doesn't attempt to hold it in around us even though I've told him I find it offensive. He calls gay people "poofs" even though his own nephew (my cousin) is gay and very much part of the family.

5. My mum has a screechy "fish wife" voice and shouts and points her finger when talking which really makes me .

6. They profess to be christians but talk as if everyone else is wrong and my mum will say she "can't stand" someone-usually because they are gay.

7. For the last two nights, I've had no help with clearing up the dinner dishes. My mum sat on the sofa finishing a bottle of wine after I'd had one glass. I finally sat down at 9.30pm after making them coffee.

8. They are really messy and my mum is clumsy. She is always spilling or breaking things in our house and they leave mugs/glasses/plates on the top instead of putting them in the dishwasher.

9. My dad puts on a ridiculous fake cockney accent esp. when he's had a few to drink and talks a lot to me a "baby" voice which makes me want to vomit.

10. My mum has hideous dress sense. My eyes almost pop out of my head when I see what she's wearing sometimes.

Seeing all of this written down, they sound hideous. Yet, I know they really love me and apart from a few things in my childhood, I didn't have an awful time growing up.

I just feel so that I don't have the kind of relationship I would like with them. I feel so envious of other people when I meet their parents and they are so normal. I feel like my love for them has faded. I hardly ever go and see them (they live a fair distance away) and never want to speak to them on the phone. I would be happy not to have contact but I know they would be heartbroken.

I just can't take another 20-30 years of this. I have a tension headache the whole time I'm with them and just feel really cross with them.

Apologies for such a long post. Well done if you've got to the end. There is more to say but I've gone on long enough. I just needed to get this out of my system.

Please tell me if I'm being a snob or is this unacceptable behaviour?

Good point Framey and remember, guests are like fish, they go off after two days

I did a seven day stint with mother in law last year and was ready to hack my foot off with a spoon.

Another one here with a similar sort of father - I can relate to the drinking(although he hasn't been an alcoholic) and the greediness, the offensive opinions and lately an obsession with God that is mind boggling. He doesn't and never has gone to church though - apparently church people don't know anything about God and he does so he doesn't see the point.

I can't cut him off although I would quite happily not bother seeing him again, because my poor mother still lives with him. So I got round and see them twice a week and put up with it. Thankfully, now we live close to them again I don't have to have them to stay but Christmas lunch can be a trial and other occasions. I can guarantee that when my parents come over for one of their rare visits here for DS2's birthday next week, my Dad will ask will not wish DS a happy birthday but will ask what we have bought for him (him being my Dad himself not DS).

I am another one who has visited the toxic parent thread and I have come away feeling a bit pathetic for being annoyed/irritated/embarrassed/sad when it isn't that bad by some standards. We could do with a toxis-ish parents thread. They still do your head in and I too have had counselling although probably at the time I didn't realise that it was him that was making me anxious. It did help put things in perspective and realise that I don't have a 'normal' relationship with him.

To top it all he is now in the early stages of dementia and has lost all inhibitions when it comes to saying what he thinks so I regularly get told that women are fat, stupid and smelly and quite often evil. But he loves his family you know. Couldn't ask for a better one apparently. Again, my poor mother is stuck with him so I carry on gritting my teeth and going round for her sake.

Ops, sorry that was a bit long. I think this thread might have struck a cord.

Hm yes. my parents are also strict Christians who are horrified by the sex outside marriage thing.
And my father is also without inhibitions about telling people his intimate health problems, or if they're fat. He is not really interested in other people including grandchildren, only in himself and when his next meal is coming, or in his minor health issues.
He particularly likes to tell my mother how stupid she is, when she's getting him his dinner or something, and she'll agree and apologise. That's particularly hard to listen to, my mother putting herself down to placate my selfish father - it's one way to produce two raving feminist daughters I suppose.

All quite trivial things in themselves except they are not. They are unpleasant things to live with/listen to/have to put up with on a regular basis.

It is the relentless drip of the bad behaviour that gets to you isn't it. As you say Fennel, it is trivial but the fact that nothing changes, that you can't reason with these people or make them understand that what they do or say is not considered acceptable by most people and they are unpleasant thing to live with. I try desperately hard to ignore it all now, to let it all drift over my head but it doesn't always work.

overdone - it would be easy to say you sound snobby but I don't think you are for one minute. They do sound like selfish people who think the world should accept them as they are without them making much of an effort to fit in with what most people consider acceptable. Actually I think they sound childish and you feel more like the parent of two unruly old people rather than their child.

How old are they by the way? Have they retired yet?

I'm seeing a fair amount of toxicity here! One of the most insidious things about growing up in a crap family is that we all think ours isn't "that bad". The reason's obvious when you think about it - they were your parents. When you're little, you just assume they're right about everything (how could you know otherwise?) When you get a bit older, you might not like what they do but you still assume it's normal. A lot of that sticks.

It's always easier to see it in other people & their families. That's the chief value of Stately Homes imo: you get feedback from people who know what you're on about, and can see it from an outside point of view.

Oh, and very few parents are 100% bad all the time ... which is why the original thread was entitled "but we took you to Stately Homes!"

I don't think the OP is being snobby. When my father starts telling my new neighbour, who he;s never met before, all about his catheter problems at the village boxing day drinks party, yes I cringe and wish the ground would swallow one of us up, but I could live with that, in the end I am an adult, and people should be able to distinguish between me and my parents.

But as Iseegraceahead says, all these accounts do have levels of toxicity in - and I haven't even started on the bits of my childhood that I think my parents were toxic about, and the OP says there's much more she hasn't said too.

I think it's harder to tolerate odd/embarrassing behaviour in ageing parents - like my father's propensity to describe his bladder issues in great detail - if you also resent their parenting, and dislike their company at the best of times. and have issues that really can't be resolved with them - I could go to counselling, I do think about it, but in the end, there are things my parents are not ever going to change on, and I disagree strongly with those things, and these things are deal-breakers in terms of ever having a good relationship.

Mine try to come and visit for a 'weekend' every few weeks which turns into about 5 days if I am not utterly firm to the point of being nasty to them. if I am not ruthlessly direct/horrible to them, they just keep coming. and then I am horrible and depressed for the week before and after. We - my siblings and partners and I - have all told them repeatedly that we can't cope with the super-long weekends but they don't listen, you have to basically boot them out of the door....

that is one of the most stresful thing IMO, the constant taking of a mile where an inch has been negotiated

my mother used to pop over for a cup of tea, then stay all day, ignoring the blatant fucking-up of any plans we might have dared to have, then when it came to time for my stepfather to pick her up (eg when were were putting the kids to bed, or about to have dinner) she would announce that she was too anxious to be driven home in the dark and end up staying the night

she did it several nights in a row sometimes

and I hated it because I didn't have the means to stop her from doing it without precipitating a massive shitstorm

and she bloody knew it as well, the manipulating cow, she knew exactly how everybody was feeling and I think she just enjoyed having the power

I don't think my parents have any idea how awful they are. We set ground rules, they break them, they don't notice. Or they don't think they are important. My sister and I are generally known as pretty assertive people, and we do assert ourselves with our parents, we say things quite clearly, even nicely sometimes. and nothing changes.

but am not trying to take over the OP's thread, honest. It's just that I can recognise quite a few parallels from the OP's posts with my parents.

I agree with perfumed life - if you have already gone to councelling and see them as little as possible etc - it sounds like you have made every conscious efforts to resolve your feelings. So could it be possible that you DH's needling about them is what provokes this feeling of shame? Perhaps you need to discuss it with him and explain that it distresses you. If they are not going to change then the only thing that can change is how you both support each other when faced with this difficult situation

I'd be right there on a 'not quite toxic enough' thread.
My mother has a repertoire of small but utterly irritating things she does, that with knowledge of our family history make them totally unbearable to me. So I could type out a few of them and you would think 'you daft cow, get a grip, she loves you, that's what matters' and then I'd tell you the family history and you'd begin to get it.

Nearly a year ago she laid into my small ds in such a way that I now feel no guilt in not seeing her. She made it easy for me. Of course, it's not easy in the middle of the night, but ykwim.

Anyway...one of the things is that she doesn't understand that she isn't 'presentable'. She cannot stop talking (Daily Express level), she burps a lot, she's very greedy. She tried to invite herself to my ILs for Christmas a few years ago. The idea is insane. Of course I sound snobbish but there it is. So I sympathise with the OP quite a bit.

My father cannot stop talking (The Times level). Is that better?

We could be playing semi-toxic embarrassing parents top trumps here...

My father can't stop talking at any level - he doesn't read the papers. They don't know anything. Nobody knows anything except him. Experts of any kind - they know nothing. Teachers know nothing. No book is worth reading and you are a fool to believe anything you read or hear that has come from anybody but him.

I win!

at Fennel and Niecie
I am unabashed

Do you think 'not being able to stop talking' is a symptom of something? I've often wondered about my mother whether she 'has' something. There are so many oddities.

UnePruen -I have often thought in the last few years that my father has Narcissistic Personality Disorder but it is complicated now by his dementia. (My poor poor mother - she is bidding her time now until she can respectably put him in a home)!

Narcissists are completely focused on themselves as my father is, as overdone's apparently are and from the little you mention, perhaps your mother is to? They have no thought for anybody else except as a reflection of themselves and how good they (think) they look to other people. I think the inability to know that they need to shut up is probably another symptom.

I don't think my mother has NPD
One of her massively irritating traits is that she asks me all about the minutiae of my life.

Example today: I have toothache, am on antibiotics and painkillers. She wanted to know which painkillers and where I'd bought them and then if they were nice to me in my local pharmacy, oh good, they were... We don't live near each other so gawd knows why she wanted to know all this. 'Which painkillers?' I can sort of understand, but not the pharmacy stuff, how far away it is, etc.

I realise a lot of people are probably like this and I am just massively, massively oversensitive to it because I cannot stand her.

My Dad's very vocal hated of people disturbs me. He has no concept of how offensive and rude he is. When he was in hospital recently there was a 90 year old man in the bed opposite - he told this man's family "they should ship him off to Dignitas and save the NHS some money"

He then wonders why he sits on his own with no visitors

My Dad's very vocal hatred of people disturbs me. He has no concept of how offensive and rude he is. When he was in hospital recently there was a 90 year old man in the bed opposite - he told this man's family "they should ship him off to Dignitas and save the NHS some money"

He then wonders why he sits on his own with no visitors

That's an interesting idea about Narcissism, my father is totally focused on himself but I hadn't considered NPD.

Actually I am pretty sure that my father has Aspergers. undiagnosed, and my brother too. They tick all the boxes. Very mathematically and verbally able, total inability to understand other people's point of view, reduction of emotional issues to logic ("she must know she's fat, so why would she mind me commenting on it?" is a typical comment from my father). Unawareness of how to act in social situations. Difficulties in making friends.

But I feel awkward saying that cos I do know some likeable, sensitive, thoughtful people with Aspergers, and I don't think there's anyone in the world who likes or gets on with my father except for my mother, and that's a whole other thread probably.

Someone once suggested Aspergers as a possibility with my mother, too (actually I think it was Jimjams!). I'm not really qualified to say (obv) but honestly nothing fits except a total inability to read people's social discomfort with her, and the tendency to talk talk talk. (It's not nervous chat. It's verbal diarrhoea.)

I wonder if it would be better or worse if she was bright?

Constantly being talked at is not pleasant. With my father, if you leave the room while he's still talking, he will follow you to continue. On and on and on. About himself, usually.

My parents are bright, and well educated. I find that makes me less forgiving, I feel they should know better. They were at university in the 60's, fgs, I work with lots of feminist academics of my mother's generation, but my mother managed to go through a 60's university experience, and a 70's masters in social science at in a fairly radical department, and she worked as a social worker so she must have come across all sorts of issues and theories and alternatives.

And yes she still lives her life utterly subjugated to one selfish man who belittles her constantly and publicly. If she's making too much noise cooking his dinner while he's talking, he'll tell her off for being noisy and stupid, and she'll apologise. If it were me he'd have the dinner pans and contents on his head at that point....
Other people's mothers maybe didn't have the chance or knowledge to walk away but I do feel my mother has knowingly made the choice to stay with a man so appalling that she can't have friends because noone can bear him, though people do generally like my mother.

anyway, back to the OP and her problem, never mind me and my inability to shut up about my parents, it's inherited....

My DS has Aspergers and there are certain similarities between him and my father, I must admit. DS is equally self centred although not in the same way - don't ask me to explain what I mean though, it is just a feeling.

DS isn't nasty and he doesn't tend to make unkind and unnecessary comments about people so in that respect he is very different. He's not your typical aspie though as he isn't good at maths and isn't logical but he also has dyspraxia which would explain that away. He does however just keep on talking even when told to be quiet.

My dad does the following thing - no regard to personal space whatsoever. He also doesn't like being interupted. In fact if my mother and I are talking in normal voices and he is watching the telly he will turn up the volume up to drown us out. My mother has another remote and just turns it down again. (It's good fun in their house). I don't know why she has stayed with him. She could have just walked away but I suppose it a generation thing. She doesn't apologise either, she will just stand up to him. I suppose she feels responsible somehow, like we all seem to even though we can't sort these people out or help them.

Off to face the old bugger man again. I shall be thinking of you all as I spend the next 2 hours biting my lip, or not as the case may be.

I've just put two posts in the Stately Home, especially for the lovely people on this thread.

Depending on the combination of other influences you had in your early life, a repulsively toxic parent can be little more than an annoyance after you grow up (so not that toxic - to you). I think the big question is: How has it affected you? If most of your grown-up decisions turn out wrong, your relationships are troubled, people say you're your own worst enemy and/or you suffer from mental or nervous ill-health ... then it's worth looking at what you learned from your parents. And how to undo it.

Sorry, I sound preachy Off for a walk in the rain, as it doesn't look like stopping!