Does anybody here NOT get along with their parents?

The BBQ Pit
21

To those of you who’ve had truly abusive families, my heart goes out to you. My parents were also emotionally abusive, although not on the scale of some I’ve read today. Basically, they left me with the belief that no one will ever defend me, and that I do not have a legitimate reason to complain or a right to ask for help. As a teenager, if I was crying because I’d been bullied one too many times, I’d be told to go to my room if I couldn’t keep a smile on my face. I think they loved me, and they did the best they could but they made a real hash of it, especially in light of one incident which I’d prefer not to discuss here.

The good news is they have changed. The same mother who sent me to my room 20 years ago because I was miserable is now asking me to come out and visit if I get too depressed. No, I haven’t quite adjusted to that yet.:confused: We’re not going to agree on politics. We’re not going to agree on homosexuality, although I haven’t quite given up there. They’ll never understand my need to speak up about things I consider wrong, just as I may never understand why they didn’t. They have, however, come to acknowledge that there might be something to this psychotherapy nonsense because it’s helped their daughter.

Ouisey, high school was the worst time of my life, especially the last two years.
How much a person loves you is under their control, not yours. Loving them more simply doesn’t work sometimes, and it hurts like hell.
Sometimes when you grow up, you realize your parents are still idiots, but, if you’re lucky, you understand that it’s not your fault.

I walk a delicate line sometimes. I love my parents and I do know they love me. I also know they made some major mistakes and we can still slip into old patterns. If they knew how much damage they did, it would hurt them terribly, especially my father. Now, at least, I can see them for who they are, and walk away when I need to. Who knows? Maybe one of these days I’ll even be able to call my mother when I’m feeling down. And we’ll achieve world peace, and non-fattening chocolate.

Take care of yourselves, please,
CJ

22

well, I can’t say my parents were abusive. What they were was indifferent. And let me tell you, I’d have rather known that they gave a damn.

Now I have thrown that indifference way back in thier faces.

I didn’t speak to my Father for the 2 years before he died because everytime I did he asked me things he knew the answers to. I got tired of it. To merly walk into the same room with him gave me the oogies.

As for my still living Mother? we still live in the same town, but I havn’t talked to or seen her in over a year, and it will probly be another year before I see her again.

my whole family suffrers from the “why give a damns???”

Too many years of not giving a damn has been payed back in spades. I’m still making her pay. I will untill she dies.

23

“Hate in your heart will consume you, too.” Smartest thing Will Smith ever said. I’m certainly not saying that anybody who was mistreated by their parent(s) should just forgive and forget and pretend everything is sweetness and light, but I personally feel a lot better myself when I stopped hating my angry, emotionally (and rarely physically) abusive father. I can’t say I forgive him, but he is a broken person himself, and I don’t think he ever intended to hurt us as much as he did - I think he just didn’t know how to behave any better. Not having any contact with him for the last three years has sure helped, too. He hasn’t even met my husband, and probably never will. That’s not because I hate him, but because I refuse to participate in his dramas anymore.

(ps - I thought it was a typo when I read the title of this thread - I thought that nobody on the Straight Dope got along with their parents. And as for high school being the best years of your life, that is usually said by people looking back at the past wearing the rose-coloured glasses of a couple of decades of distance.)

24

I last spoke to my father 19 years ago, just long enough to tell him what a sickening failure he was as both a parent and a human being. He died a few years back and only one of his five offspring bothered to attend the funeral.

There were problems with my mom when I was young but I’ve worked through all that anger and just got the hell over it. We get on quite well these days and I make an effort to call every week, if only to say “Hi.”

25

I don’t hate my mother or her parents.

I would have to care to hate them.

The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy.

In fact, after her parents die, I would like my mother to move closer to my sister and be near her only (for her) grandchild.

26

My story isn’t as bad as some of the other posters, but I never got along with them. I realized that they did what they thought was right and got over some of my anger. We get along much better now that I live far away. I don’t think all of us should be pressured to form close relationships with our parents. If you didn’t have that relationship as a child, it may not be worth trying to form one now.

27

Neither one of my parents give a shit about what I say or do. They’re too busy spending their time dead…

28

Amen.
Now try telling that to the rest of the world.

29

Well, my story isn’t NEAR as bad as some of your guyses, but what the hell.

My mom got knocked up with me when she wazs 18. she had me a month after she turned 19. The father of the child(ie, me) was her boss at a fast food resturant that she worked at. Burger Baron or somshit like that.

So anyways, she had me. She wasn’t with my father. I heard something along the lines that he had tried to take me back to lebanon(he was lebanese, I’m half lebanese(duh)) with him, mom sad no, and then she shunned him, and he hasn’t seen me since.

We lived with my grandparents, in the basement suite of thier ouse in calgery, until I was about 3-4, and then Mom got a boyfreind, and then we moved in with him. James, I think his name was. Then we moved to yellowknife when I was 4, and I started Kindergarten in french immersion. About halfway through Kindergarten, mom and james broke up because james was cheating on her with michelle, a room mate. They still lived together though. Then she met another guy, D’Arcy, and they got into a relationship, and then they got married right before I was done Kindergarten. The got married on the top of Pilots Monument; its a big rock that has some historical signifacance… I was the flower girl. I had a pretty dress. D’Arcy adopted me, and loved me, and he’s my dad. He always will be.

Anyways. in about grade 5, they divorced. mom and I moved into an apartment. She started going out with her boss. She got layed off, went to a different job, and then we moved in with him. Mel. I hate him so much, I can hardly stop from screaming at him whenever Isee him. They got married one day, eloped in fact, while I was at my grandparents house(they moved up here when I was in grade 2-3) and I didn’t find out until 3 days later and mom showed me her drivers licsence with mels last name on it. I didn’t speak to her for a week… I knew that If I did, I would say some pretty hurtful things.
Mel has made my life miserable since the day I saw him. It didn’t help that 3 years a go when I was in grade8 we moved out to this cabing that we built on an island that is half an hour away from town(we drive in a boat for 15 minutes and drive on a road for 15) and so that hasn’t really helped my life any either. My mom insists on not letting me meet my biological father; to bad for her, I have his phone number, I’ve already made contact with his brother.

My life is pretty much hell. I have no relationship whatsoever with my mother. I am barely civil to mel.

sish being 15 doesn’t help either.

30

This thread should be required reading for all those who have problems with their parents. It will help put said problems in proper perspective, and give some people the opportunity to see that there are other people out there who can understand the pain that comes from having such dysfunctional childhoods. The paradox there is that pain shared is pain lessened.

My folks were great, but I sure put them thru hell. That’s a whole different thread, tho.

QtM

31

Well, I’ve posted my story here before. Let’s just say that my parents were (and still are, at times) emotionally abusive, and my dad used to be physically abusive. I’d like to get along with them, and sometimes I do… but only if I behave in a way that’s acceptable to them. Which is fine with me, but sometimes I don’t know what will set them off.

My mom wonders why I never call her… well, maybe it’s because I’m not sure I can talk to her without seriously getting mad at her for soemthing. Whenever I’m at my brother’s, I make sure I don’t have to see them by spending all my time downstairs in the computer room / with my brother / outside. The only time I see them is when I eat and do the dishes. That’s just fine with me.

F_X

32

Here’s why I don’t get along with my parents:

In short, they stole $18,000 from me.

33

Here’s why I don’t get along with my parents:

In short, they stole $18,000 from me.

34

I should add that I also have to see my parents whenever they drive the family to church and all of that, but I don’t usually make any other effort to see / call them unless there’s something going on that I feel like knowing about. It sounds bad, I know… but if that’s what I have to do to save my sanity…

Here’s the link to my story that I posted here before.

F_X

35

Flamsterette_X, that really sucks. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.

My mom (she’s actually my step-mother, but since my own mother took off when I was four, I’ve always called her “mom”), I know she tried hard to raise my brother and I, but I’ve come to the conclusion that she doesn’t know how to love us.

It seems that our relationship consisted of long periods of neglect punctuated by spikes of wild behavior, either incredibly loving, or horribly abusive. God, that woman had a temper! I’ve never understood it. I’m still flabbergasted to this day that she called me a “filthy whore” when I was eleven years old. She was also a kicker and a hair-puller. I can remember being huddled on the floor while she kicked and spat at me. She admitted to me a few years ago that she felt like I looked down on her because she’s not as smart as me. She’s right in a way, and I wonder if that’s what prompted her to behave the way she did. She’s still incredibly defensive around me. Everything we disagree on is taken as a personal attack.

This thread has made me think a lot about my relationship with my parents…I’ve come to the conclusion that its OK not to like them…the whole “honor your father and mother” was hard for me to get over. I just really hate it that it has to be this way.

36

snort.

That should read “She admitted to me a few years ago that she felt I looked down on her as intellectually inferior.”

thx

37

Daaaym. Where do I even begin?

Let’s see, there’s the vicious, violent, gangster biological father I’ve never met.

Then there’s the crackfiend, drug-dealing, evil, manipulative, abusive, hoary ass-licking bitch that spawned me from her withered black womb. She’s the one who kept shoe boxes filled with cocaine laying around the house. She’s the one who took my bedroom door off the hinges when I was ten because I kept locking it to keep my evil molester stepfather out. She’s the one who picked fights with my bipolar, paranoid, cokeheaded half-brother that tore apart the entire house. She’s the one who uprooted me every few months to drag me half-way across the country in a vain attempt to keep the cops from busting her ass. She’s the one who hid illegal pills in my clothes when I was eleven to smuggle them across the Mexican border. And currently, she’s the one who is rotting in a comfortable steel-and-titanium cell in Florida for her crimes.

Good ridance to bad rubish, ma!

.:Nichol:.

38

My parents are not very nice people.

I can still remember my mother telling me that I had “been nothing but trouble since the age of three.” I‘d ruined her life. I still have the small round burn marks on my arms. For when I was bad, and had to be “taught a lesson.”

I remember the time my father got so drunk, he hit me so hard, he fractured my jaw. And I remember him bitching to me that he had to pay $600.00 for an emergency room visit. Funny, funny guy. My aunt ended up paying the bill.

I decided I’d leave home and never return when I was twelve. Hell, my best friend said she knew I’d do this. I didn’t get the courage to leave till I was seventeen. I haven’t seen or spoken to them in almost ten years. They don’t know where I am, or if I’m alive or dead.

It’s very strange. I always thought that crying myself to sleep every night was normal. It wasn’t until I was out of there that I realized it wasn’t. I always thought I’d have a very bleak future. But instead, I’m married to a great guy, I own my own business with my husband, I make a decent living.

39

This is the way I try to think about my father too. We are a lot alike in our neuroses and I know now how he was when he treated us the way he did. What bugs me though is if I am smart enough to know I wouldn’t treat my kids that way, why didn’t he take the leap to try to change? He should have known better, even given his weaknesses, and want to do better by us. He should have known better. So I am not at peace with this, but I am almost at the point where I am not cowed by his behavior (e.g., the silent treatment or the disdainful expression) and can almost treat it lightly and not as controlling everything around him.

40

I want to give everyone who survived horrible parents a big hug.

If you didn’t survive and are still dealing with the aftermath, you still get a big hug.

If you’re too young to escape yet, also a big hug.

(((((((((((((((((Everyone))))))))))))))))))))))