My parents loom so large in my conscious and subconscious mind that I feel like they thwart me without even being there.
When my sister and I were teenagers, they were solidly overprotective. We kept boyfriends and all kinds of other things secret from them - to the extent that I bought a musical instrument (a bass guitar, I was always musical) out of my own saved up birthday money and hid it at school to avoid their disapproval. I never felt OK to ask them about boys or sex. They waited til we were 13 to have the facts of life talk and it tells you plenty that I refused to hear it (a: I already knew, obviously, and b: sex was never ever ever discussed). When I came home from uni at 19 with a new nose stud my mum refused to let me stay in the house until I took it out. It healed over. I never got it re-pierced. At the same age I once overheard my mum saying in a panicked voice to my dad "But young people today get up to ALL SORTS" when they were discussing if I should be ALLOWED to go away for the weekend with my then BF. When my sister dumped her first serious BF my dad actually PHONED HIS FAMILY TO SEE IF ANYTHING COULD BE "WORKED OUT". When I failed to get into Oxbridge, my dad ACTUALLY WROTE REPEATED BEGGING LETTERS TO THE COLLEGE against my express wishes. That kind of thing.
They're good and nice and sweet people in almost all ways, and our family was affectionate and close. But as you can see, they never let us off the leash. My sister was the good girl and conformed and has grown into quite a spiky and resentful adult. I was badly bullied for years at school, never told them, rebelled but then conformed hard in my 20s - I think I wanted to show them I was OK now and nothing to worry about.
Part of that was marrying at 23. He's a wonderful man - clever, kind, calm - and I've never loved him. It's really sad, but I've had to accept I can't live like this any more. I want to be kind to him and I will be, as much as you can be when you're leaving someone. That part is worked out: it's not coming out of the blue, we both know full well the relationship is faltering and failing badly.
The blocker for me is that my parents still represent a huge terror for me. Does anyone have any experience of defying controlling but loving family? The thought of telling them makes my heart thump against my ribs. Why?! How can I get past this?