And for some reason, in real life I seem to be surrounded by peers with successful jobs and picture-perfect families.
So yeah, curious to know about you folks.
I've noticed this as well, with comments like "wow, it's amazing you turned out so well!" after I tell them a bit about my youth and parents. Ehh, okay? What did you expect me to do? Sit in a corner and cry all day about my lost childhood?
You see the same when some people talk about disabled people (either by birth or accident). "Oh he's in a wheelchair after the accident, but he's still enjoying life, how brave!" Yeah mate, you don't really have a choice do you?
Anyway, I don't feel particularly lonely or alienated about it; as far as I'm concerned it is what it is. I can talk to my brother about it (and do sometimes) but it's not really something I "need". I'm sorry to say that I don't really have any suggestions on that part except maybe seek out a therapist if you're really struggling with it.
Talking about it with intimate partners or close friends is hardest, total strangers I'll never see again is easier. I don't want to be coddled in a relationship and I get icked out when people seem fascinated by it or admire me knowing I went through this stuff. There's also no way to ease into it, it's too abruptly concerning if I'm honest about it, it's like someone says "oh I had this challenge growing up" and wants me to mirror them emotionally and I don't have any true stories that are mild enough for that early level of intimacy? And given how normal I seem, if I do get honest, I worry it seems like I'm lying
In my case my sibling was spared the bad experiences, wasn't present for the worst part, and has some issues that would prevent them offering emotional support. I think I also still resent them for having been spared these bad experiences, even though I know they're not to blame for that. I was sorta scapegoated
I'm definitely "is what it is" about it in some ways, yeah, no desire to confront anyone or get any kind of resolution, it just left me with a lot problems not relating to other people or trusting them easily, and disliking myself
Thanks for your comment. I really do need to find a way to feel less alone about it
> either I think their issue is too mild for them to understand my experience or I feel like my issues aren't bad enough to count
I totally resonate with this struggle. Not saying my problem is like yours, but being in this in-between place and not feeling like there's anyone out there that gets it.
From my experience, the feeling of loneliness isn't something that can be "fixed" by simply finding a community, or even by having friends that care. Yes, feeling validated and heard are important, but there comes a time when we need more than that.
That is where intimate relationships come in. The paradox here is that, it is exactly because of the closeness and vulnerability and potential hurt, that makes these relationships critical for healing. Many people we meet are not going to get us because of the depth of our wounds. But it's important to keep searching for someone who can meet us at our level.
Intimate relationships, when done right, can be tremendously powerful in helping us heal from our wounds. They allow us to be fully ourselves, especially the ugliest parts that we couldn't face alone, and in providing that love, we start to learn to love ourselves and reconcile with our wounds.
But as you said, it's hard to find these people. You never know how much to reveal, for fear of revealing too much and it's consequences. But I do believe that, you should keep your heart open and go into the world. If you hide too much, no one will see you for your depth, and you may miss out on opportunities that were right there in front of you.
It's a balancing act, to be vulnerable enough for people to see the real you (or at least a hint of the real you, that there's something behind the curtain), and to maintain enough boundaries to not spill yourself over everyone you meet.
If interested I'm always open to talk (email in profile). Relationships are hard and good advice is practically non-existent.
Best of luck. :)
EDIT: Basically, attachment problems can only be resolved by replacing it with healthy attachment. No amount of friendship or even therapy can heal that kind of wound. They help, certainly, but they won't heal it from the core.
I started getting along with my parents after I turned my life around in my late twenties. We talk more often now. During university we never talked. They probably wondered if I was even alive.
Keep talking to your parents though. Make the effort. They won't be here forever.
> I seem to be surrounded by peers with successful jobs and picture-perfect families.
I understand this feeling. I have a massive chip on my shoulder about people who seem to have perfect lives. I tell myself that everyone fights hard battles, but I don't believe it.
My dad has some of the worst self-esteem I've ever come across, and he's also rife with anxiety. I have a hunch that he has un-diagnosed Aspergers, which would explain the countless examples of him missing social cues, saying things that are really off-color, seeing many situations as black and white, and seemingly having a lack of empathy when it comes to certain things that I've experienced first-hand. Do I love him? I guess, but over the years I've had to keep my distance from him.
I graduated college, with their praise, I had kids, with their love and praise, but since leaving the church that they are still devout to, things fell apart.
I try to maintain a relationship, I video call once a week, text some in between, but I'm always greeted with my mom's "phone voice", which lets me know that she's not as close to me as I want to be with her.
I love the Mormon church, and it will always be part of me, but there's so much pressure on parents to have their kids remain, and I knew it would let my parents down. I disappoint my mom on a daily basis, and that's a hard bridge to cross for a relationship.
She's very freed by the idea of not having religious "exercises" to go through and measure herself against. I am, too, but I still have this massive weight of self-loathing that I need to figure out. Phantom guilt that has no cause or reason, but still looks like it needs addressing, things like that.
But I love being the captain of my own ship. My religion is whatever brings me lasting joy.
Exiting my religion was a fate worse than death. I grew up on the culty side that had a ton of hero worship, I was always proselytizing, I gave money I didn't have to the church, and was so deeply embedded (or it was so deeply embedded in me) that it was excruciating to exit.
I lied for a long time after I stopped believing. A little to myself, and a lot to everyone else, but my devoutly religious partner knew from day one, and thank goodness we were able to talk about it (kind of). But I sang the song and danced the dance, but I couldn't keep up the "multiple identities" aspect of it all.
I'm not going to pretend that I understand what it's like to be queer, as I'm not - but I for the first time had an experience that turned some of the sympathy to empathy as I struggled with the way people saw me and them loving me for something I haven't let them in on.
I was diagnosed with PTSD last year from the whole thing, and am treating it with antidepressants and Ketamine therapy, but I have a lot of work to do before I can say that I'm happier after leaving.
Would I leave again if I had to? Yeah. I don't think happiness is a solid metric to base your life after, so I measure on "was it worth it" and the answer is always yes.
And bro, the earth was 7000 years old, get your facts straight /s.
I can bring some perspective.
I'm a father myself and although I often send out the "disappointed" signal, it's just a learned trick (so effective!).
Ultimately a parent notices that a child is a separate equal person.
If I got permanently offended, not because of intentional harm, but simply because of child's independence... It would just mean I don't like the child.
Which is not a crime.
As a father, I have made it clear to my children that at some point they are responsible for themselves and of course they will get support if they get into trouble, but not for every mischief they get into.
They know I have had to learn my lessons in life the hard way and place a high value on freedom and self-sufficiency, and am willing to pay the price.
Just like my parents, I don't need power plays out of character mediocrity to bolster a weak ego.
> As a father, I have made it clear to my children that at some point they are responsible for themselves and of course they will get support if they get into trouble, but not for every mischief they get into.
Maybe you already know this, but I also have to point out, with regards to our children, sometimes they really do need our guidance. Not the controlling/imposing type of "guidance", but the gentle, open type of encouragement. Especially as fathers, our love can often be detached, and some children will feel unsupported because of this. (Not sure if this is you, but your comment sounded kinda serious, hence my point.)
It's one thing to teach them our values (which is another way of imposing our worldview, to be honest), it's another to give them the love they need.
:)
My relationship with my mom was really strained, during my transition from living at home to college. Improved dramatically soon after.
I was still living at home in university and got caught in the crossfire of their really messy divorce. I wound up not talking with my mom for years after. I stayed living with my dad for a bit, moved out with roommates for a bit, moved back in with my dad. While I was living with roommates I started talking with my mom again, and a bit after moving back in with my dad I left again and moved in with my mom. During all of this, I was failing classes. I wound up taking six years to do a four year CompSci degree and moved to a new city as soon as I found a programming job elsewhere. Took another 5 years (and another move to an even further away city) to slowly get out of my depression after that.
I'm mostly ok with my parents now. Call them every couple of weeks or so to chat for a while. Visit once in a while. The relationship is much healthier at a longer distance.
I could blame them for a lot of crap during my university years. My mental health was a dumpster. I did really poorly for a while there and it was a big struggle to finish my bachelors, but I'm glad I did in spite of every. I also think my mental health problems dragged on for years after, which really affected my job performance in my early career and held me back a lot. I've mostly righted the ship by now but it's been a long road.
Granted my parents have changed over time and their values and beliefs now aren't what they were when we first immigrated to America. I count myself very lucky that they were able to adapt and leave some of their antiquated views behind.
This isn't always true of Asian families; I have a friend in the same boat as me but I also have one who has an extremely strained relationship with her parents due to their conservative and unchanging views on things.
The short version of the story is that at this point in my life, that conflict eventually dissipated at some point. Perhaps my parent(s) arrived at a new inflection point. Perhaps they became more mature. Whatever it was, it seems they've at least come to terms with the fact that I'm going to pave my own way regardless of their thoughts and feelings on the matter. Ultimately, acknowledging that if they want a relationship with me it simply looks different than how they originally envisioned it.
If you ever care to share your story, I suggest doing just that. Therapy and simply talking through the issues that my experience cultivated allowed me to see things from a birds-eye view a bit better, and dissolve my ego from the situation. I'm all ears, FWIW, and I wish you the best of luck in finding peace somehow in your own sticky situation.
I'm sure they aren't. People show the things they want you to see and hide the ones they don't want you to know about.
They had baggage which I ended up carrying a bit. Folks, don't "stay together for the kids" as the kids know what's going down. Balancing sux.
People and even friends coming off as enlightened and/or allowing political differences to divide key relationships.
Family used to mean more. I have like a six sense that it still does. Perhaps that's why so many developers are depressed and/or feel isolated. It's really hard to know as there are many dynamics.
It would be interested if -- say you had a minor heart attack -- if family became suddenly more important?
We've never been super close. We are pretty vastly different w.r.t. politics but I've been the type of person to let it slide. With COVID and our newborn, the anti-vax approach they've had pushed us even further away. I haven't seen them in years because they won't vaccinate and I won't (knowingly) let un-vaccinated, high-exposure (as in, going out to eat all the time, taking no precautions) people interact with my daughter until she can get vaccinated.
We just don't see eye-to-eye on almost all things and I don't have the patience to deal with it.
That's probably a better description than I could come up with for dealing with my mom. Sooo much patience is needed, and it's usually not enough to keep the frustration at bay. It results in talking to her infrequently.
It sounds terrible but she's one of those people that is "too nice". My wife didn't believe me until we stayed at her house for a couple days, but now she gets more annoyed than I do. So it's not just me.
I honestly don't care. I didn't even want anything. I'm in the middle of stuff. Can we play 20 questions later?
It sounds like your mom is yearning for affection and probably overdoing it (and treating you like a kid) - and not knowing it had the opposite effect on you.
From what the commenter (giantg2) described, their mom sounds like someone who has pretty serious "attachment" issues (may not be the formal word for it), in the way she over-does her care and niceness. It seems like something that stems from a core wound deep inside, from her upbringing/environment/generation/etc.
From my experience, sometimes these honest conversations make the person even more hostile and freak out to insane degrees. Especially for an older generation, their understanding of love and the language around it will be basically set in stone. So being honest can often trigger them in ways we cannot predict.
Of course, not everyone is like that. But I would be very careful about this, because there's a chance it might make things a lot worse.
So what are we to do in a situation like this? It's possible to tend to her tendencies indirectly. Instead of directly responding to her gestures (which will likely trigger her -- it is her love language after all), maybe there are things you (giantg2) can do at other occasions that will make her feel loved, so that she's more settled in general, if that makes any sense. Worth a try I think.
Basically, from my observations, people who over-do niceness often have a profound fear of criticism. That's exactly why they over-do nice in the first place, and keep asking questions to make sure they "get it right" (and thus, avoid criticism). So giving them honest feedback may backfire.
At this point I just try to leave it alone, be patient, and be kind.
Basically - being out on my own, getting married, and having children let me understand my father much better.
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Dad can't stop lying to me.
Mom can't stop trying to annoy me to relieve her misery.
They raised me in a High-Control-Cult (Jehovah's Witnesses)
Both love me, both messed me up.
My parents did the best they could with what they had available to them at the time. But it still messed me up, and I've decided not to have kids myself.
> But don’t even get me started on my total inability to form committed relationships!
oh hey it me!
When I was a teen, I used to think about having kids so I could do a better job. Once I became an adult I couldn’t even consider or conceive of it.
I used to think the same thing when I was a teenager! I would daydream about how I would be so much better of a parent.
Now I realize I wouldn't do better at all. It's incredibly hard. So I understand my parents much better now, but it's still hard for me to feel love and affection for them after everything that happened.
I think you might be able to do better but it’s not really a black and white comparison. Maybe better for some things, and worse for other things. I look at my own parenting today and am proud that I am NOT doing some of the things my dad did, but I don’t think of myself as better or worse overall. I’m just happy that what I’m doing makes sense to me, and produces pretty awesome feedback from my kids and especially my wife.
In an odd way it's made me more empathetic to my parents, even though the memories are challenging. In my case it wasn't that they wanted to be emotionally unavailable, it's that they were dealing with their own immense internal turmoil, while still being essentially children emotionally.
EDIT: I just checked, I highlighted 116 passages.
She asks me about my job and my salary, I think because it comforts her to know that I've "made it" and that she made good decisions in my upbringing. She doesn't really ask me about how I feel about my work - if I like it or have difficulties with certain elements.
When I moved (closer, then further away) the only conversations we had about it were about how nice it would be to have me closer, and how sad they would be for me to leave. She never wondered why I chose to move, or what I liked about living in one place or another.
And then there are certain things that she never asks me at all. I'm married, but she never asked me about what I like about my wife, or what our relationship is like. When me and my wife told her that we were thinking about having children, her reaction was that "she didn't feel old enough to be a grandparent".
It's strange because she obviously cares about me in some capacity. It's very important to her that we keep up communications and that I'm near... but she just seems to have this total blind spot about the total lack of connection in our relationship.
I think one of my goals as a parent is to make sure I take a genuine interest in my children and try to understand what kind of people they are.
What really enlighten me, however, is reading this site: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/index.html
This is about the world of estranged parent's forums, how they react, how they write about their children when they don't want to contact them, or when they make it clear why they treat them such way.
If you care enough to learn about this behavior more (although, I've to admit, it's hard to accept what is said there on the site), I strongly recommend giving a read of this site, it takes about one/two evenings to go through all the stories there.
Tl;dr is that some people are just wired this way, it's like they literally have a blockage somewhere in their mind, that doesn't allow them to express themselves any other way, such as more compassionate people do it. Once you learn that, talking with them becomes easier once you recognize the patterns.
Which brings me to another point that I've come to believe, which is that, people shouldn't have kids without having first dealt with their own egos and grown significantly through it. Otherwise, we end up power-struggling with our children and take away the only thing they need most, ie genuine love and affection from the parents.
A lot to unpack, but that's the gist of it.
It would probably help to read that book itself to see if you notice any of those behaviors in yourself. If you do, seeking out therapy could help you learn to handle those issues in a more healthy way.
And all that being said: being a parent is incredibly hard. Be forgiving to yourself when you're not perfect. Even the best parents in the world find it challenging, and even their kids probably resent them while they're teenagers.
You're way ahead of some other people (see my other comment in this thread about estranged parents). The fact that you try to understand, that you're able to conceive that you might do something wrong, even if not on purpose, puts you miles ahead in being a good parent. Just try to be aware of your emotions, how you talk with your children, and that you're able to understand what they're trying to tell you (this is the most important IMO). Do that, and everything else will work out.
Source: Raised by family of high-functioning narcissists.
PS: I am from the West.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-ver...
though I disagree with the conclusion.