My mum and daf

[Summersunandflowers]

Not sure if here is the right place but here goes. My mum is selfish. Never helps/never been there. Lives for herself. Her partner (remarried 2 years ago) is her number one. She comes over when it suits her. If kids are ill no support ( even though she retired 6 year ago). Never visited when I was at uni (4yrs), I had to come home on the coach if I wanted to visit. It was made clear that as an adult I wasn't welcome to live with her. She has some strange habits, for example if mum comes over she sometimes completely ignores me, not even saying hello.
Dad is also very selfish. Always been v into exercise and always put himself first. When he visits he always says how fantastic mum husband is, how I should make sure my husband has a break, that my husband is a star etc. He's never phoned on my birthday.
Both a bit funny. My sister has manic depression and lives in another country to get some distance.
Usually I can just about handle these relationships. Mum had a birthday recently and spent most of the day playing with my cousin's daughter, completely ignoring me and my daughters. Dad visited this weekend and kept saying how fantastic my husband is and ignoring me. Feel a bit overwhelmed at seeing them both in a short space of time and just feel worthless. I am such a people pleaser and just feel so rubbish.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

So sorry they are like that, but glad you came here for a bit of support. You did well to get through it - give yourself a good long break from them you've done your bit for now.

Have you heard of the Stately Homes threads for toxic families. Could be helpful?

It's them love, not you.

Look at your poor sister. That's what these people did. :(

Please don't go out of your way to be with them, they are poisonous. To you, and your family.

She sounds like my grandmother. Not good news.

Keep your distance, particularly your emotional distance.

Some counselling may help you with the distancing.

I have seen my mother emotionally dependent on my grandmother well into her 70s, and it's not healthy.

I am sorry, what a thankless task, staying in touch with these two. Some people just aren't cut out to be parents. Your DSis got away, now maybe you can start to look at distancing yourself, if not geographically then emotionally.

Oh, you poor thing. It sounds horrendous!

However, I do think that one practical thing that you can do - indeed, that you need to do - is to look at your own motivations. You do sound like you've always been the victim of parental behaviour that is narcissistic to some degree, and that you've responded in what is quite a normal way - by trying harder and harder to seek their approval and respect. At some level, this means that you're likely accepting the view that you are in some way 'deficient' and if you were only better, more patient, more caring then they would love you as you deserve. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that this is an illusion - you already know this rationally. But uprooting that feeling that you're 'not good enough' emotionally, particularly with a deep-running relationship like that with parents, is very, very tough and takes years and years of hard work.

I do think that it's time for you to look inside, and realise that you're a wonderful person with so much to offer - and if they can't see that, well, that's their problem. I second the recommendation about counselling, because opening up about such fundamental feelings of rejection is unbelievably tough.

It's a dirty trick Nature sometimes plays, that some people who would make absolutely fabulous parents are denied the opportunity to do so, whilst ghastly toxic people are depressingly fertile. Sadly you have been born to the latter. Please take comfort in the realisation that you are not missing whatever it is that they are in their personalities, because you can love and take joy in your own children. You are breaking the cycle of bad parenting so your own daughters stand a good chance of becoming confident adults, secure in their parents' love.

I don't know whether it helps at all to pity your parents a little for their deficiency; maybe not, if they seem quite happy in their little empty world. But in any case, they're the ones with something missing, even if they are incapable of realising quite what it is they're missing out on.

Thank you so much for the replies. It's given me lots to think about. I am feeling a bit better today, as I always do as time passes!