Anyone Here Not Talk To Their Parents?
behemoth
2,189 Posts
my parents were divorced when i was younger and throughout that time i lived with my mother because my father traveled.i lived with him the first few years out of high school and it drove me crazy. he really was an awful person...of course he was loving and looked out for my interests but he had a horrible anger problem and couldnt control his voice. over the last few years we kind of drifted apart!i dont want to be one of those people who doesnt see their parents...i see my mother all the time.but i have nothing in common with my father and we dont share any interests and he is very short with meso im just wondering anyone here kind of have a falling out where they dont see a parent?just curiousity
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I didn't speak with my father much for several years after I moved out. Just holiday gatherings really. He wasn't a horrible father by any stretch of the word but was certainly detached from my upbringing. He was a workaholic and always provided for our family but as a result was rarely home. I never felt like I really knew him and, as a result, didn't care much to remain in contact with him once I moved out and he never seemed to show any interest in what I was doing. Our relationship has gotten better since he retired but he just moved to Chile so we only speak via email now. We communicate a lot more now. I get the impression he's trying to make up for lost time.
I'm sure a lot of people have horror stories about their parents and would gladly have traded places with me but we all have our problems to deal with.
My parents never divorced but my mother died in '99 shortly before I moved out.
[/therapy]
Pops got an Alcohol, Womanizing, Gambling and Ego problem to the max. The school loans he told me he would help me out with if i took out in my name when I was 18 and now its biting me in the ass, big time. He was too much in debt with bookies and paying off fines for multiple d.u.i's/ child support for siblings at the time so his credit was bad. All in all it made me a better person but ill be damned if i'm not a little jealous when I meet friend's parents that are really understanding and supportive. I always give him the benefit of the doubt if he's in town on business or a horse race, It always ends up in arguments. He always has to one-up me no matter if the subject, and for some reason he thinks I owe im an amazing amount of respect just for being alive and is trying to gain it by miserably failing at trying to be hip. It's really pathetic.
Mom is cool, Remarried to a nice guy. A little batty from going through so much stuff in life. Always trying to push religion on me but she's doing fine. We talk once a month or so.
I have tons of amazing friends and feel grateful for them.
It went well. Maybe one day they'll get to meet their grandchild after all.
Exactly. I know it???s hard to deny the gut-feeling connection, or desire to connect, with family, but I am a firm believer in you don???t have to like them or be close to them just because you are related. Especially if they do (you) more harm than good.
I didn???t talk to my Dad for almost year when I first moved out and when we did get together, it was arranged by my Mom and ended up in a very loud and public fight.And then no contact again for a little while more. It wasn't because he's no good, but that we were no good at getting along. I don???t regret it or feel sad about those months, maybe we needed even longer rather than force trying to get along. Sometimes it???s necessary to have that space. It has taken a long time to build a good relationship ??? with occasional blow-outs still ??? and it has a lot to do with age and all that???s happened between then and now.
you can't pick your family. if people don't deserve to be in your life, as an adult, there is nothing wrong with eliminating negative people from your life, family or not....in my opinion.
I can totally relate to this thread. I've always been extremely close to my father, but my mother and I are like gasoline and a match. I love her dearly but she is controlling, manipulative, dogmatic, judgmental, and lacking in empathy, so we've never connected. I was a precocious and difficult child (unlike my older brother whom she's close to) and I never felt she accepted me as I was (or am, even to this day). Carl Rogers said unconditional positive regard is so important for a parent to convey to a child, to boost esteem. She never provided this for me, in addition to betraying my confidences (even my wife's once, despite my warning her not to confide in my mother), which causes me to mistrust her. She never supported my musical pursuits, and instead, ridiculed them (especially hip-hop), despite the esteem boost musicality provided me. Then, when I've tried to mend the fence over the years, she gets defensive and attempts to blame me for my feelings (ah, I was a child when this ish started). Essentially, I barely go home because I'm so ill at ease around her due to her judgmental nature. Who wants to go home a feel like a 12-year old boy when you're a 39-year old man? I can't be me when I go home and it feels like I'm walking on eggshells. She has never come to know me as a man which wrecks our relationship. It's sad.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
Now my inlaws? That a whole other story... total morons, have not seen them at all for over a year.
My parents divorced when I was young (8) and I was never very close with my dad. I don't have many memories of him. THough the ones I do are quite fond. When he left, that was the last I really saw of him. He made no effort to remain in my life.
A few years later he moved to Barbados to evade child support. I was raised, along with my younger brother, by my mom. Luckily she had a successful business and could afford it, though it rarely left her with any time for us or her own life.
About 2-3 years ago my brother, who remained in some small contact with my dad, got a picture of him. Eventually I saw the picture and it blew my mind.
He managed to marry Miss Barbados 1984, grow his hair out, buy a motorbike (complete with chromed skeleton hands holding the rear-view mirrors), wear a bandana, and POSE WITH THREE 18 YEAR OLD GIRLS, two of which had their butts in his palm.
He also had hella hairy chest and gold chains.
He was a jewish dentist form a well-off family in Toronto.
Dude, are we half-brothers?
Your descript (the full one) of your relat w/ your mom is very similar to mine. I do have to say, I've mellowed (i.e. become less defensive) now that my daughter is the picture because my mom tends to be less aggro for whatever reason with a grandchild around and frankly, I just give a F*ck less now that I have my own family to worry about.
Didn??t answer the phone for almostthree years. Then, I just finished my work at the club (4 at night), phone rang, my father was on the way to hopital with mom, she had had massive blood clod in the brain. Coma for three months, she survived, but she??s not the same anymore.
2 years since then: I got a littele girl now, and I want good grandparents for her so badly, but I can??t give her to my parents because they cannot even take care of themselves. sad. mom started drinking again.
Now we're on decent terms and I kind of regret cutting them off for those years but I kind of had to make a point to them that I didn't need them all up in my shit. My mom still bugs me to finish school though. They've mellowed out a bit though, especially after my younger brother moved out. My dad though finally got in touch with his own father and it had been over 20 years since they spoke.
The thing that I've come to realize is that, while my parents are my friends, for them there will always be a glass ceiling that they are above, and I am below. It's all about making concessions, swallowing my pride, dealing with being uncomfortable, and accommodating them. Ultimately, the satisfaction that I get from having a healthy relationship with them, and the piece of mind that it creates (long term) outweighs my desire to let them know how wrong they are. Plus, they've given me and my sisters a lot so I have a tough time rationalizing my way out of giving them all that I am capable of.
I know that its different for everyone, and some don't need/want to make it work. However, if you have it in you to diffuse your emotions, it's usually a good look when dealing with parents. Anyone else can get the gas face, but for me family is entitled to the most outrageous transgressions with no recourse on my part.
This may seem like an obvious point but now that I have kids of my own, I think a lot about how my relationship with my parents will translate into my relationship with my own kid. Much to the surprise of both me and my wife, I've turned out to be the disciplinarian of the family, with a somewhat short temper and that is very classically "my dad." It's all a bit weird, however normal it likely is to pick up your parenting traits from your own.
Like Stacks & Odub I grew up with a Mom who was controlling and overbearing. I never let it split us apart but there were times when it was annoying as hell.
When I turned 17 I left home and traveled around the country for a year. One stop was in my Mom???s hometown down south and I got to hang out with relatives from her side of the family. I was treated to stories about my Mom???s life I had never heard before. Growing up she had a horrific life of abuse and abandonment. Things were done to her that quite frankly should have resulted in people going to jail. That day I had an epiphany of why my Mom was the way she was and did the things she did. All of a sudden it made perfect sense and having that understanding made it so much easier too accept her the way she was.
It???s made my relationship with her stronger although she can still annoy the shit out of me???.I just cut her more slack these days.
I hope all of you can reconcile any bad parent relationships???..even if you have to act the adult to their child.
Rock-A-Logic Rule Of Women #1
"Most women don't know what they want, they just know they don't have it"
This is especially true of women who marry young and later on think they must have missed out on something.
All the best to you and your daughter Harvey.
I think that is just a definition of mom.
My mom and I had a fight last year. One of the out comes of the fight was she told me that saying "thank you" and "I love you" make her feel phony. She tells me that in Austria parents (adults) never said "I love you" to children. The truth is she grew up in a loveless household and assumes that all Austrian children did, which of course is false. [She was an unwanted late in life child to bohemian/artist type parents.]
She loves to micro manage. There is no way you can do a simple task, like putting away the dishes or backing out of the driveway, to her satisfaction.
We have remained close anyway, she is an extremely intelligent, involved, interesting person, who can support my life choices and compliment me behind my back to other people, while criticizing the way I fold socks.
I have some cousins I hope to never see again.
Here is a long story about one of them.
My mother left Austria in '38 or '39 after anschluss.
Her Older Cousin left about the same time to Palestine where she married a British officer.
Her Beloved Aunt spent the war in the closet of a farm house belonging to friends of her late husband.
After the war Beloved Aunt being homeless traveled around visiting relatives scattered by the war.
She was staying with Older Cousin in England. Older Aunt failed to tell her husband she was Jewish and that BA was a relative.
Husband said he was sick and tired of all Older Cousin's Jewish friends hanging around the house so she kicked Beloved Aunt out.
My mother didn't talk to or about Older Cousin for about 40 years, until a bounty hunter tracked my mom down and told her she was owed a pension [reparations] by Austria. Bounty hunter asked if there were other living relatives. My mom said all she knew of were dead, but there was one in England she didn't know of.
Bounty hunter tracked down Older Cousin. Mom and her visited each other a few times. Mom didn't like her, but kept in touch.
Here is where I come in. About 8 years ago my mom took my wife and I too Spain. [Where on a daily bases I told my wife You deal with her before I kill her]
My mom insisted that we spend 2 days in London so we could visit Older Cousin.
Why we asked, you don't like her. She is family.
We met for lunch at a small cafe near that ferris wheel. She was charming over lunch. A spry 85. And Vain! She told my mom "Can you believe we both are 60 now!".
Then we went for a walk along the Thames there. As we walked and discussed what tourist thing to do next she kept up a constant muttering of "It was so much nicer here before they moved in" and tsking and rolling her eyes when ever we would pass a person of color.
I said "I'm not feeling well I'm going back to the hotel room, but you all have fun". My mom and wife said "We will come with you!" faster than the time it took for the sound of my words to reach their ears.
None of us have talked to her since.
I could go on and on, but I???ve come to the realization to just deal with it.