I have no feelings towards my family apart from my children. What is wrong with me?

[Frazzledfiona]

Sorry if posting in wrong place. Ive been doing some thinking over the past few days and I've realised that I feel nothing for my parents /extended family . Why would that be? I find this quite strange and upsetting.
I have 2 kids and a husband who I love and adore tremendously. I am nearly 40 years old. I have a nice life generally. No worries or stresses at all.
Over Xmas I've been seeing lovely videos on social media of people celebrating with their family and I felt so detached from it.

I am an only child, my parents are mid 70s. I see them twice a week and we are very close. They are brilliant grandparents to my children. But I don't really feel anything for them? They have been good parents to me. But I don't feel like I have a connection with them? Why is this?
When I'm having a conversation with them I just want it to end and for me to leave. I have no interest in what they are saying. (this sounds awful I know). I feel like I don't want to tell them things.
I have one remaining living grandparent, she is 94. I haven't seen her for a while. Again I don't feel anything for her but I don't know why?
Please understand that I don't want to feel this way and I would never show my true feelings. I would do anything for them and I hope I am a good, loving daughter. But inside I feel nothing? A few of my friends have very sadly started to lose their parents and have obviously been devastated. I've sat and thought about this and again I don't really feel anything about them not being here at some point in the future.
Opposite to this I have extremely strong feelings of love for my husband and children. I can't even bare to think of anything happening to them. Its as if my mind can only love these 3 people and no one else. Can anyone relate?

Oh god, my people. I've felt like this for years but never said anything to anyone because I thought I was some kind of heartless freak. I'm genuinely heartened to find that it's not just me.

I don't have any contact at all with Dad so if not for my half-brother wouldn't even know if he were alive or dead, much less care.

I've lived a flight away from my Mum for 18 years and see her on average once or twice a year. We WhatsApp back and forth, only speak on the phone on special occasions and not always even then. There were some issues during my childhood when she was a young single Mum, consistently choosing Men over my welfare, an affair that led to me being bullied for years, little respect for my boundaries as I got older. She was (and still can be) selfish and it soured our relationship. Now we get on fine most of the time, can have fun together, I tell her that I love her but I just can't imagine being distraught if she suddenly wasn't around, like my DP would be over his Mum. She wouldn't be the first person I go to in a crisis or with bad news, largely because I know from experience I'd end up having to be her support when I needed it myself.

Other family I'm fond of to a greater or lesser degree but again the thought of losing them isn't overwhelming like I know it is for some.

On the other hand I love the bones of my DP and a couple of close friends, and I adored my Grandad and miss him very much. It makes me really sad that my DP never got to meet him.

Perhaps 18 years of living out of easy reach of all my family has hardened me a bit. I don't fear missing them as they're already only a small presence in my life.

Thanks for the opportunity to get this out.

[quote EvilPea]@JudyGemstone

Oh my. For complicated reasons I also spent the first few weeks / months not with my mum or immediate family. I was with my grandmother who I adored.
I’d not linked the two.[/quote]
It may or may not be connected, I just kind of feel that it’s is.

I completely withdrew into myself and became quite dissociated from how she describes it.

She’s told me a few times I was the only baby that wouldn’t make eye contact/smile with the nurses like she was annoyed about it.

I imagine that it was awful for her too, it’s a shame we just can’t connect with it.

I feel quite relieved reading this. I'm not terribly fond of either of my parents. They've done their best, I think, but we are very different people and neither of them have made any secret of the fact that they think I am 'difficult'.

They found me a difficult child and teen and now I am late 50s and they are well into their 80s they still make little 'jokey' but belittling comments to me. They are both fairly critical. The thing that really infuriates me is when my mother makes comments about we're such a close family and I look at her sideways and wonder what fucking planet she lives on.

It has dawned on me over Covid that I didn't miss visiting them, that they don't make me feel welcome and actually I don't think I'll miss either of them when they die.

Which is a bit sad, really.

I feel a bit like this too and I wish I didn’t. I am also an only child (now 50) with parents in 70s.

I am very low contact with my DF as we are so different and he is not interested in me/my life and never has been- well not since my parents divorced when I was 8. I think he just didn’t know how to be a Dad and I am a bit resentful. I feel I have already grieved for him tbh for the parent I should have had.

I am in touch with my DM but again we are so different and I can only tolerate her for so long. She does care and is generous with her money butI do wish I was close to her. She also is very negative and critical and treats me like a 14 yr old mostly . Nothing I do is right in her eyes but I have to bite my lip often or we would fall out. We only talk once every couple of weeks.

We live 2 hrs apart so I think I would easily cope with her not being around. I feel sad at saying that but she’s not really my kind of person- not a Mum you can have a laugh with at all.

So you are not alone OP!

It’s ok to not like people who are shitty to you.

What I find hardest is that my relationship with DM gets in the way of everything and trickles into every ounce of me and my other relationships.

I think I had to put her feelings above mine so bloody much that I now have no ability to put myself first, yet am totally drained and have nothing left to give to others so am a bit switched off.

The thought of someone, outside of DH and the DC, needing something emotionally from me feels a bit overwhelming and exhausting. Like I don’t know how to do it, nor have I got the energy to.

I don't think it's that unusual OP.
If we step back and think about how emotions arise, and what purpose they serve, evolution-wise - it's kind of understandable that your kids (your genes heading into the future) and your DH (good dad, therefore protector of kids) are your focus, but your parents (sounds like they wouldn't be brilliant substitutes for you and DH should anything happen to the two of you and the kids need looking after), well, not so much. It's all biology and biochemistry and hormones and neurology - feelings don't come from some random non-existent spiritual plane.

We feel about people the way we feel about them. We can see them in new lights, find out new stuff about them and sometimes then the feelings change, but it's not something you can force with "should" or "ought".

But I think, as long as you act like a decent person, as long as you can sleep at night, what goes on in your head and heart is your business alone. Feelings can't be forced, but as adults we are (more or less) in control of how we act, and if judging happens, it's the actions that are subject to that.

So don't worry. Just be a semi ok person in how you act and that's good enough.

I feel the same way too, op.

And I completely agree with @EightNationNavy. These ‘feelings’ (or lack of) have very unlikely been plucked from thin air, they are a product of something that likely did or didn’t happen as you were growing up.

My family members aren’t deplorable people and I’m not an unfeeling sociopath, they just didn’t give me what I needed and therefore there is no connection between myself and them. It took me a lot of time to realise what was ‘wrong with me’ and to make my peace with it all, though.

I weirdly have the opposite problem almost.

I love my parents, my brother and my child so much.

I have affection for my partner of 13 years but I don't see him as "family"

Do t know what to do about that tbh

Wow, so much of this resonates.
I have no contact with my Dad any more, and more recently, very low contact with my Mum.
I've realised that I no longer feel a desire to let them into my life, I feel detached from them. I think this is due to years of being let down and unsupported by them - particularly during one crucial stage of my life.
0riginally I was devastated by their lack of care, but gradually I suppose I've detached myself, to a point where it no longer hurts me, and the result is that I no longer care much for them either.
My mum professes deep love and hurt at the current situation but it has no affect on me anymore. I'm a little bit sad about how little feeling there is now, but mostly i just accept it. It was their own making really.

Would like to add, I love my husband and children desperately. So I can feel love. But for my parents there's just ----

OP, I could have written your post almost word for word! I am also an only child, although almost 50 now. My childhood was fine, my parents loving. I had a great relationship with them until I moved away and I lived in a different country or State for almost 20 years. For most of that time I felt like you.

I moved back to my home town 6 years ago, thinking it might get better, but it hasn't. I hide it well enough but they obviously know on some levels. Also like you, especially when I got back they treated me like the 20 year old I was when I left rather that a middle aged woman with kids, a husband and a busy career. When I first moved back, they made 1 decision with a huge impact on me, without consulting me! They were so shocked when I pulled them up on it!! That didn't end well and the relationship (or what's left of it) hasn't really been salvaged. I do what I can though, because it's not fair on them that I feel this way.

So anyway, I'm glad you posted this so we know we are not alone.

This resonates OP.

One silver living of lockdown was not having to pay duty visits.

I felt far more sadness when my beautiful FIL passed away in November than I did when my own father died the year before.

It's not unusual to feel detached from one or both parents.

Resonates a lot with me too.

Partly I think it’s me - I’ve always only had a very tight circle of people who mean a lot to me, which has changed over time - it’s like I can only cope with a small number of emotionally close relationships and if a new one enters an older one gets pushed out. My children and DH have all my love and I don’t feel I have much leftover for anyone else.

Partly it’s my family - we have always had quite an emotionally distant relationship, and with my parents we never really moved out of a parent-child dynamic and reformed and adult-adult one. My brother and I were close as children but took different paths as adults and for various reasons no longer have much contact.

I do worry about patterns repeating with my own children - I see quite a lot of my mum in me and live in fear of ‘losing’ my children in the same way she has lost hers.

Because they bore you?
You may like them, love them but find them boring?

I'm not fond of my parents.

Sometimes they get the odd letter for me and I go and collect it, they'll ask me to come in and I'll say no. I don't even lie, just say I don't want to.

They are boring.

They didn't show interest in me as a child so they don't get to know the adult me, my family or friends or career or colleagues etc
(Education interest they did, but that's standard for Indian families)

They don't get to enhance their social life via me now
You reap what you sow

We put up emotional walls, and even disconnect/shut down emotionally to those who hurt us. Parents who still treat you like a child at 40 clearly don't have an interest in seeing you for who you really are, just who they imagine that to be. That sounds like a very difficult relationship to authentically emotionally engage with. They might not have been as great of parents as you think (at least not in every way). I would certainly hate to feel constantly infantilised and not seen as the adult I am.

FWIW I have gotten to the point with my DM of having no emotional connection - because of her unstable behaviour - and it's hard because I feel so so guilty but I can't help it. I am definitely emotionally done with our relationship.

'I am definitely emotionally done with our relationship.'

I feel the same about my parents, after spending the Christmas break with them and having everything I said ignored, minimised or undermined. I'm just done. I don't even feel particularly sad about it. I have spent years grieving my relationship with them, the relationship I thought I had and wanted to have, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. A big part of me feels quite liberated that I have reached the end of the road with trying. I will still have them in my life, but on my terms and at a great distance. I'm taking the 'never complain, never explain' approach

Yes I am a “never complain, never explain “. Over Christmas I tried to be in a mindset of appreciating who they are as people with no expectations of change. It’s the only way I can enjoy their company. They are very good grandparents so I am lucky in that respect. However because I have left their religion they cannot show me any real approval or interest. It’s all manageable for now but I know when the children get older it might get harder. They generally don’t interfere with my patenting but I know if my children make choices they don’t approve of it will be hard. In the end they will end up with another distant polite relationship with the grandchildren because they can’t approve of choices outside of their own!

I feel the same, and ashamed to admit it. I love the bones of DH (no DCs), and whilst I don’t have many close friends now, I have in the past, and have felt fiercely about them too, so I know I’m capable of it. But when it comes to DM (DF died a long time ago), I feel kind of emotionless. I speak to her regularly, I’m kind and thoughtful towards her, as she is to me, and on a surface level our relationship is fine, now.

But as a child / teen, she was just, well, not a very good mother. Looking back I strongly suspect some kind of depression and / or other undiagnosed MH issues. She was unpredictable, quick to lose her temper, and full of resentment, I never felt safe, or loved, or special, and I could never work out why she wasn’t like other mothers, and why she didn’t actually seem to like me, or like being a mum. As an adult, I can see rationally that she had a number of traumatic incidents happen to her that no doubt shaped her, but although I can acknowledge that it and allow for it doesn’t ‘fix’ the lack of bond/attachment that should have developed between us at an early age but clearly didn’t.

I feel terrible about it, as now she is genuinely loving and caring (she’s like an entirely different person), getting older and needier, and she wants a lot more from me emotionally than I can give her - I struggle with visits, and with physical affection and declarations of love. It’s much easier for me to maintain a good relationship on the phone, and we live at opposite ends of the country – I’ve not seen her in a few years which I know upsets her a lot, but is better for me.

She won’t discuss the past, and just says things like ‘I made mistakes let’s leave it at that, but you turned out ok didn’t you’. I just don’t think she is capable of reflecting on the past and how that has affected me / our bond on a really fundamental level. It’s sad, but I keep having to remind myself it’s not my fault, and at this stage it cannot be actually fixed. I have considered counselling, but it would cost me a fortune and in the end, it wouldn't really benefit me, as I'm actually quite happy with the way things are, it's DM that isn't. All I can do is be kind and supportive, but with boundaries and in a way that protects my own MH.

Sadly I feel the same - my family were utterly awful to me over a long period (I’m the family scapegoat despite having been the one to look after everyone all my life), culminating in them all ganging up and being very cruel to me after my DD was born. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from that, and I’ve gone kind of numb as far as feelings are concerned.

I go through the motions but I don’t feel anything for them any more. It was a shock to me to realise I no longer loved my family, but I can’t do anything about it. My DD asked me recently if I loved my mummy like she loves me and I had to lie, which was dispiriting.

I feel like this, I've done autism screenings recently - I think that's where my answer is.

To clarify - my parents are wonderful as are extended family, I just don't 'love' them.

I feel the same. I'm not detached from my parents, we get on okay but in all honesty, they don't add a lot to my life? I'm not close to siblings either. We were just never that sort of family. I don't love the situation I'd love to be one of those people with a really close family, but mine just weren't like that.

It's made me more determined with my own children though and I have a much much closer, supportive relationship - and friendship - with them than I have ever had with my parents.

Feel the same with my family. My late Dad was great but my Mum just seemed indifferent to who I was and never thought to find out. I wasn’t planned and she was older when she had me and I’m sure that has some bearing on the situation. I was fed a traditional role of being female so have ended up as a wife and mother though I do feel like a square peg in a round hole. I am closer to one of my brothers but he mansplains a lot and still treats me in a childish way. The other brother is like a stranger to me. We’ve not fallen out, again it’s indifference. Lookup childhood emotional neglect and see if it resonates. It did with me and I’m still trying to process it all.