My mother was never really that abusive; but she has suffered mental illness all her life and doesn’t really have good insight how her own behavior has hurt her relationships with other members of our family.
That being said, I can also say from dealing with my family that some people don’t have good insight that they aren’t really good children to their parents. And that their problems are their own fault and not the result of anything their parents did to them.
Do you think that parents who do the minimum they are “required” to and no more qualify as “good”?
I am dead certain that my mother had undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder - undiagnosed because she would never in a million years entertain the notion that she had any flaws. She was constantly manufacturing conflicts with absolutely everyone, from her own family to hapless cashiers, and it was ALWAYS everyone else’s fault. If anyone called her out on her behavior, they were being mean to her, prompting still more histrionics.
She was narcissistic, self-centered, and manipulative on an epic scale, and verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive. She was the most wretched excuse for a human being I have ever had the misfortune to know. Yet to her dying day, she was genuinely baffled as to why her kids didn’t like her and had as little as possible to do with her.
Sometimes I wish I believed in Hell so I could believe the miserable bitch is finally getting what she deserves.
(My bold) - yup.
My reaction to WOOK’s comment was a more extreme WTF than yours, Inigo. Even setting aside the extremes of abuse, there’s huge variation in effort, commitment and quality of parenting. A lot of people are just shitty, selfish, manipulative, nasty human beings, and many of those shitty human beings are parents. Far more frequently than grown-up kids who don’t make the effort to spend time with deserving parents, I’ve encountered the opposite situation, where grown-up kids who have been treated shabbily their whole lives can’t cut off ties with nasty manipulative parents through a misplaced sense of duty. If people are third rate human beings, you have no obligation to dedicate any time or effort to them just because they happen to be your parents.
Varies by location. Within countries where being gay is legal I expect it’s a lot higher in the same places where you find offerings for gay-conversion therapy.
Given the selection bias likely not. Probably more who weren’t so horrific feeling regrets over the well intended mistakes they made. Anyone who is looking back and reviewing their past for what they did wrong is pretty likely not someone did as much wrong as the op’s person likely did.
Very likely the persons of the op are persons who have been self-absorbed and of little ability to understand or be concerned about the needs of others their whole adult lives. Whether they met the criteria for any specific diagnostic category or not they’ve spent decades without much true intimacy and have over those years developed very secure defense mechanisms explaining to themselves and anyone who would care to listen why none of this is their fault.
Suddenly in their 80s they are going to change that basic personality structure and thought patterns of 60 plus years? Be able to even if they somehow decided they needed and wanted to?
Pretty dang unlikely.
Whether or not their children, grandchildren, or other family, decide to have compassion and empathy for them is an individual decision.
Seems to me that if I was in that place demonstrating some compassion for that person would be in my own interest. I would need to be able to demonstrate to myself what sort of person I am, that having had that parent does not mean that I am doomed to being that sort of selfish person myself. I sort of feel that an adult’s relationship with a very aged parent is kind of a reverse of the childhood parent child one. The child wanted unconditional love, and may not have gotten it. Are they able to give it anyway?
Maybe I did want “unconditional love”, but what I remember wanting is clarity. Fairness was a plus, but not even the main requirement. If your parent(s) have spent decades driving you crazy, rejecting you and blaming you for all kinds of things including some that didn’t even happen except in their imagination, and specially if they still do it… maybe it behooves you to stay on the healthy side of masochism.
Ephesians 6:4: parents, do not exasperate your children (the English translations I find say “fathers”, the Spanish word covers both and I don’t know what does the original actually say). My relationship with my mother didn’t happen to start getting less bad until I got exasperated; it got less bad once I’d lost all hope that if I kept twisting myself into knots it would improve. I’m not sure if that counts as sarcasm, irony, or Mother Nature’s sense of humor being that of a complete bitch.
I judge not, just sharing a seems to me for me. But what I am thinking would be something that came after accepting that their behavior is their behavior and not my fault, that it would not improve, on the heels of knowing I can expect only shit from them, accepting this person as the very flawed individual they are, not needing anything from them to know who and what I am. What I would get back, would expect to get back, from giving to them is nothing good from them. It would be a gift to my own sense of who I am from myself to myself. That’s just me. Maybe I need to prove that to myself by my actions, more so than others who are more sure. Dunno.
What I would not do though is to risk that person’s pathology harming my spouse or children or my relationship with them.
But again, to the op - no that person is not going to suddenly have some epiphany.
I think the “hurting my family” line is murky, though: if spending time with a truly toxic parent leaves you emotionally devastated and a total wreck, that means you are not going to be a responsive parent and spouse in the aftermath. My grandmother wasn’t particularly toxic, but the 5 years of her decline took a ton out of my mom: the constant NEED of a person in decline is pretty all-encompassing. Even with a “good” elderly parent, that was five years where she was very much more in need of emotional support from her family than capable of offering it. Which was fine, of course–that’s what family is for. But if her mom had been a raging bitch that left her even more devastated with each visit, I would have felt like that toxic grandparent was taking something from me, even if I never saw her.
It’s not the same as letting your mom berate your kid directly, but it does take a toll. There’s also the sheer logistic issue: if you are spending time with a toxic parent at a nursing home, you aren’t spending time with family. Is it “harming your spouse or children” if you miss bedtime weekly, or don’t go volunteer to be room mother in their classroom, or any number of relatively innocuous things that you’d have to sacrifice to “to be the better person” than a toxic parent? That sounds like pride to me, more than anything.
(disclaimer: my parents are awesome. I’m imagining.)
Agreed.
This statement is literally inconsistent with itself.