Relationship with parents

[Burnt Offerings]

My relationship with my mother and father isn't very good. I only notice it when I'm around them, which I usually am during the thanksgiving/Christmas season. It isn't extremely bad or anything, it's just...kind of contentious, kind of tense. Especially my mother and I, we will argue with each other over the most pointless, trivial matters. Sometimes I'll recognize this behavior on my part and will be able to check it, but it always seems to come back...I've read that one's relationship with their parents is one of the most "hard coded" of human behaviors & is very difficult to change meaningfully...but I don't know.

To be clear, this doesn't really have anything to do with drugs...I'd bicker with them before I tried my 1st drug for the 1st time.

My mother told me once that her mother once said to her, "I love you but I don't like you". That seems to describe the present dynamic pretty well. Can anyone here relate, and how did you improve your relationship with your mother and/or father?

 

[Cosmic Trigger]

Let's look at this from another angle. We all meet lots of people and make decisions about them as to how or if they deserve a place in our lives and if we want to take up our precious time with them. I think the same would apply to our relatives. The best move I ever made in my life which allowed me to actually have some sort of life was to leave my relatives and find a better family for myself. Blood is not thicker than water unless you believe it.

 

[theMerovingian]

Blood is not thicker than water unless you believe it.

Agree completely with you mate.

 

[Darksidesam]

I think that many of us here do not get on with our parents in some way or another. It may also contribute to our 'need to get fucked up' to not feel connected to say the people who brought you up...

Can kinda relate to the arguing over stupid most pointless things, but most of the reason the relationship between me and my parents and family is a bit off is that im only drug user out of me and my siblings. (Although 3 and a half years only weed on and off no more rave drugs)

"I love you but I don't like you"

there are people on this forum that if you paired them together in the same room, they will simply not get on lol. i think it may well be the same for the relationship between people and their parents.
You have to remember as well when you growing up you are a highly impressionable constantly changing young being where as when you turn into an adult from being a child, you are less easy to sway usually and by then you have an opionion of your own, thus throwing you into the situation that person A may not be able to get on with person B due to differences in personality.. behaviour.. likes.. morales ... the list goes on

I hope this helps

'The black sheep of the family'

 

[CfZrx]

"I love you but I don't like you".

I think someone who says this to their child is not able to integrate the idea that they actually don't love the person they made when society tells them they must love their child. My mom is the same. Tbph, maybe I am wrong on this.

I think that many of us here do not get on with our parents in some way or another. It may also contribute to our 'need to get fucked up' to not feel connected to say the people who brought you up...

Can kinda relate to the arguing over stupid most pointless things, but most of the reason the relationship between me and my parents and family is a bit off is that im only drug user out of me and my siblings. (Although 3 and a half years only weed on and off no more rave drugs)




there are people on this forum that if you paired them together in the same room, they will simply not get on lol. i think it may well be the same for the relationship between people and their parents.
You have to remember as well when you growing up you are a highly impressionable constantly changing young being where as when you turn into an adult from being a child, you are less easy to sway usually and by then you have an opionion of your own, thus throwing you into the situation that person A may not be able to get on with person B due to differences in personality.. behaviour.. likes.. morales ... the list goes on

I hope this helps

'The black sheep of the family'

True

 

[RedLeader]

It was bad for me for a very long time. Neither of my parents (they have been divorced since I was ten) understand addiction and have never wavered from seeing it as a type of moral weakness. "You must not love your family if you'll embarrass us like this" and such. It wasn't until they found out about my struggles that things got really bad for me and I really felt alone/abandoned.

Things are better for me now, both with regard to family and with my sobriety. My mother came down with Alzheimer's and I stepped up to take full care of her (and still do). She seems to have dropped her judgement and is now simply grateful to have someone taking care of her in her old age. My father and I pretty much interact like businessmen on a golf course. There's no real tension but also no real emotion. It's just an implicit understanding, I suppose, that we don't want to make relations any worse.

My parents were always the "go to college, get good job, make money, strengthen the family name" kind of people. And I mean, I got my degrees and such, but just was always miserable and self-loathing inside. I knew from a young age that I wanted happiness from experience before euphoria from money and material possessions. And it does seem that as death becomes a reality for my parents and they do their reflections, they are figuring this out a bit as well.

 

[ShroomySatori]

I wish I could be with my family during my oxycodone detox, but I am seen as the druggie failure of the family. There is no real love, everything is very formal. I cannot share secrets or talk to them about anything important without feeling harassed or ganged up on. I was kicked out very young for smelling of weed, and things have never been the same since as it really fucked my life up being on the run from place to place. My parents decided to wage war against my cannabis habit, meanwhile ruining my self esteem, sense of stability, and initiative as a young adult, while closing my relationship off with them forever. It's just never the same after they kick you out, and that attitude only led me to smoke more weed and abuse other drugs. I mean if I got kicked out for smoking weed at night once a day... I may as well smoke it all day every day right? I mean, it cost me my family. It's their loss, really. I think if they would have accepted that it is common for young adults in university to experiment with marijuana and be stoned from time to time, things between us would never have gone sour. I find that almost embarrassing it is so stupid - but their generation is brainwashed by propaganda, so what can you do but go along with it and move out? It is their choice of course.

I am presently detoxing in a place I would really rather not be. They have a beautiful home with a room for me, but there are constant stipulations and means to control me if I decide to move back in. That's cool and all, it's their choice... but being ganged up on just isn't for me, and that's all they do. I'm not going to rehab for marijuana, by the way mom. I don't even smoke it anymore, but there is a big chance of 'relapse' as she puts it - lol. They have no idea I use anything else. I wouldn't even go to rehab for my oxycodone habit as I'm kicking it just fine on my own. I'm a grown adult male at this point, and my mental health is my own business in my opinion so long as I can be nice and respectful around them and keep drugs out of the house. Again, their choice...

My parents have always been under-appreciative of me. I'd graduate from my engineering degree and if it wasn't all A's, I would be 'partying my brains out' to them. It was never enough. I always felt like shit about myself, they always focussed on the negative. If I got a new girlfriend, it was all about what was wrong with her, not how she was making me happy and the positive aspects. If I got a new job, there would be no congratulations - only questions about what might be wrong with it. Like a fucking interrogation. Nothing whatsoever was ever accepted and everything I have ever done was questioned to the point that I even began doubting myself about decisions I was certain about.

When I was younger, I swear they had me on GPS. They would track me down everywhere, drag me home from parties, and photograph me while sick or puking from being drunk to show me later. All the while celebrating their success.

I don't blame them. I still love them. I just, for the most part, stay far the fuck away from them. It really fucked me up not having a supportive family environment. It was all about control - what they wanted for me, not what I wanted for myself (which really wasn't all that unreasonable)

That's just my view as an adult male. I feel very awkward around them now, and there is always that formal tension. If I have any problems in life, my parents would be the last people I would ever talk to about them. I would immediately be ganged up on and attempted to be controlled the way they see fit, which really doesn't mesh with my very different personality from theirs. And I think that's just wrong... you should be able to talk to your parents about stuff that is on your mind or bothering you. Just my opinion... I have yet to be a parent myself. It's just pretty obvious when you see such bullshit going on.

This probably has a lot to do with why I'm borderline now... I mean I don't blame them, they only 'love' me apparently, I just feel like they were dumbass authoritative parents who raid their kids every time they walk in the door. I've been totally abandoned at this point unless I would like to agree to an outrageous authoritative regime, and I'm simply not willing to have personal aspects of my life controlled like that.

 

[herbavore]

It all comes down to the hardest thing we humans have to deal with which is the self-acceptance required before we can truly let go and accept others for who they really are and not who our own insecurities about ourselves demand them to be. I have a friend that has a horrible relationship with her mom and from the outside it is so easy to see that each one of them feeds the feelings of judgment and lack of acceptance for the other, continuing the cycle. My friend has so much valid pain from feeling like her mother has never "liked" who she is due to constant criticism of every little thing. But the irony is that my friend cannot see how she in turn talks about her mom the same way. She faults her for being overweight, for being politically unaware, for being unsophisticated and a host of other judgments that make her mother feel devalued and attacked. I have often asked my friend if they would ever consider going to a therapy session together--just one--where each of them might express the hurt in their hearts and truly be heard by the other. That's all any of us want--to be heard and understood. But it is a two way street--you also need to know how to give that to another person. Family members can be a very challenging training ground for this!

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Let's look at this from another angle. We all meet lots of people and make decisions about them as to how or if they deserve a place in our lives and if we want to take up our precious time with them. I think the same would apply to our relatives. The best move I ever made in my life which allowed me to actually have some sort of life was to leave my relatives and find a better family for myself. Blood is not thicker than water unless you believe it.

hmm, can't leave my family. I can't turn my back on them, they've done too much for me.

At least that's how I feel about the matter.

No matter how badly I fuck up, I can go to them and say, "Guys, I fucked up...please help me." I've never fucked up bad enough that I've been forced to go to them and say this, but I know that if I did, they'd most likely help me. It's pretty priceless when you consider that some so-called friends will hesitate to even give you a place to stay when you have nowhere to go.

 

[Moreaux]

I found coming clean and being honest with my family about my addiction and in turn having them help me with my recovery brought our relationship to a whole new level of closeness. They always focused on the good education, good career, hair must be perfect, clothing must be immaculate, I must be perfect type people and they instilled perfection as the expectation I should have of myself...needless to say I never lived up to that and learned to hate myself rather quickly always failing to measure up. I did end up an excellent alcoholic. I honestly think in disappointed them past the point of caring and they no longer have expectations of me, and are probably just happy that I live on my own and don't wake them up in the wee small hours of the night with drama or police. Failing used to be my biggest fear and I would obsess over it...since addiction took over my life I couldn't sink any lower so now that everything is on the up swing it's nice to just live life without all the pressure of perfection and stress.

 

[Erikmen]

I guess my parents got tired of my adventures. Although that life had brought us closer in the early years, with time they've distanced from me. I had always been able to sustain myself, but they never really saw the silver linings.