"Cuckoo in the nest": is that you?

[Waltraut]

Where does this feeling of not belonging in a family come from?

I've always considers myself a cuckoo with my paternal family, my dad isn't my bio dad but he has always been my dad and we are very close yet his family were distant with me. My grandad died very recently and I actually feel like I've grown closer to that side of the family as a result. It's a shame it took his passing away for them to actually tell me and show me that they love me.

Let your past make you better not bitter

i don't really fit with my bio-dad's family either.

to be honest i don't care now, my conscience is clear and i stand by my principles and morals. it's taken me a long time but i am happy with who i am. And i'm also determined my kids won't grow up in the atmosphere i did.

DS told me a while ago that he feels he doesn't belong anywhere, that he feels he has nowhere he can call home.

He has different taste in clothes/music/films/books to me. I just hope he believes me when I tell him he is truly deeply loved, and although he may feel that way, there is always a home here for him, for as long as I am drawing breath. He is my shining star!!

Awhh. Was he able to explain why he feels the way he does? I once read a book about Earth Angels, there was this lovely little piece in it about Earth Angels feeling they don't fit in, that they are different so rather than feel abandoned by my family I choose to believe that I am an Earth Angel

My younger sister was the cuckoo and it just broke my heart. I was the elder, 'good' girl, eaten up with anxiety and the desire to please and eminently more bullyable than my sister. My sis was apparently a noisy baby whereas (again) I was 'good' ie quiet, and I don't think mum ever forgave her, as she constantly referred to my sister keeping her up all night. When I confronted her and asked her why she blamed a baby when she should have been blaming my lazy arsed father who 'never heard' his daughter crying, my mother made a joke and refused to engage with the question.

As we grew to adults, my mother openly referred to me as 'the favoured daughter' (as long as I was quiet and good) and my sister developed a hard shell to protect herself from this crap, unsurprisingly.

We weren't close growing up but as adults we bonded. My sister recognised that my being 'favoured' was the flipside of the same coin of bollocks. I was favoured as long as I was quiet and good and she was the cuckoo because she refused to be quiet and good.

You learned coping strategies then *Frizzbonce. You may have found yourself to be a cuckoo too if you hadn't. Falling from the end of the rainbow can be as harmful as being the cuckoo

I have a very big extended family, and it's only been in recent years that I've got to know a few of my cousins much better and realised that some of them are on the same wavelength as me and that has helped.
My relationship with my sister is not brilliant, and a lot of that is because of the way my parents have shaped her personality.

My late teens were awful, and I left home at the first suitable opportunity. I distanced myself from my family. I met my bio-dad when I was 33. I get on well with him, but he lives abroad so I don't see him often. It has taken a long time and lots of soul searching to reach the stage where I can look and see that it is them and not me. There are still flare-ups (mum caused one this year) and it does upset me because I am an emotional person but I now find the 'getting over it' stage is much shorter for me.

My twenties were hard when I was getting a lot of grief from my parents about my lifestyle, and yet I knew my sister had rebelled at Uni but of course made sure they never saw the evidence of this. I wasn't about to be dragged into the mire of trying to point it out to them, they have blinkers where she is concerned.
I was vilified for my appearance (nose pierced, brightly coloured hair) and for smoking cannabis. My sister was doing way more drugs when at Uni but she'd been such a meek thing they wouldn't believe it, she was a hideous drunk - i rested my head on the table in the pub one night because i had a headache and she grabbed my hair and bounced my head off the table, despite wtinesses my parents insisted i must have provoked her

My mum has actually said 'it's ok for you, you're a strong person. you can cope with life'......yes, I can....and because they made me that way. I suppose in a round about way they did me a favour....

Frizz this is interesting, as I was also the quitet good one and my sister the screaming demanding baby and child. And teenager.

The similarity ends there though - as I was such a nice one, never got into any trouble, never demanded attention - I didn't get any either. My sister has always been the favourite one that everybody fusses over and helps in any way, while I was supposed to take care of myself. I often just felt forgotten and invisible.

Timeforme He didn't explain. I don't think he knows why tbh. I felt very sad when he said this, but that wasn't why he said it.
He left home when he was 16 and has been back and forth since then, but I suspect he feels he doesn't belong moreso since I had DD.
DS has high functioning aspergers, so I don't know if that has anything to do with his feelings. He can be quite difficult to get along with, he is logical to the extreme normally, which can be difficult, he doesn't relate to 'feelings' IYSWIM.

That's why I was so surprised he felt that way.

I still feel sad when I think about it now, we used to be very very close, until he got to 16. He was a loving cuddly child, who cared deeply for his family, although I always suspected there was something not quite right IYSWIM. He had difficulty making friends/socially amongst other things.

If I could go back for a day to yesteryear, when we got on and knew each other so so well, I would do it in a heartbeat, but you have to keep moving forward don't you? The past is gone.

littlemisssarcastic I am almost sure that the aspergers will have something to do with it. How terribly sad though. The thing is, there is nothing you can do to make him feel any different, it is out of your control. I would say that by just being there, being a constant for him to keep coming back to, you are doing your very best for him.

My ex was a little like this too. He is a very closed person, hard to reach, unemotional, finds friendships and social situations difficult but also like a little boy who is lost. He is never happy, always looking for something to fill the obvious void he feels he has in his life. He just never seems settled yet he has a good job, a lovely house, nice cars and our beautiful DD. I once asked him to tell me how he really felt, he thought for a moment and then replied flatly "dead inside, I just feel dead inside". That made me very sad. I did suspect throughout our relationship that he had aspergers, still do actually.

You do have to keep moving forward littlemiss, you have to make sure that you keep yourself afloat too.

Yes I feel it. It's something that is just 'coming together' in my head at the mo, still working it out really. My parents were good and loving but my mother and I are fairly oppositional. I could just shut up I suppose but I do have opinions and it's not on to dismiss another adults' perspective. I feel a bit lonely I suppose even though I do have a loving family, but I'm not really in the inner circle of my own bloody circle!