How far does the apple REALLY fall from the tree?

I am sorry for the size of this post, but I really, really need to rant…

I am particularly interested in your relationships with your parents. As for the why I realised recently that I really have a hard time accepting mine for who they are and it got me thinking whether this means I am a bad person or perhaps it’s natural that we tend to see mostly the faults of our parents… I know this sounds bad when someone says they can’t stand their parents, but sometimes this is just the truth.

My parents are what you can call ‘good people’, though if I hadn’t moved far away from them and reduced contact the way I did recently I’m afraid they would continue to try and steer my life for me, practically telling me to do this, wear that, think in this way, don’t eat that etc. I realize this is what parents normally do to a certain extent but I feel mine are overbearing. They do not accept it when someone has a different opinion from theirs (though they claim otherwise) – in which case they will ridicule you “jokingly of course”... I won’t bore you with the details.

Suffice it to say whenever I finish talking to them I can’t help but feel drained, like I just went through a criminal investigation into my everyday life, and had to defend my motives for everything I do. I swear, I am angry… Really, very few people can ever get me so worked up as my parents can, in a matter of moments. I especially tend to dislike my mother, it seems, who is manipulative, always knows what is best for everyone and gets bored if the conversation isn’t about her (i.e. starts interrupting whenever me and my dad are having an interesting conversation about something she has no interest in) but cannot stop talking when she has something to say about what SHE likes or whatever. Anything she likes I immediately dislike and I feel almost offended if she pretends to be interested in some of the things I like I just feel like it’s all just another trick to seem more likeable. My mother is a master emotional manipulator, something I found out during all the years of bitter quarrels between my parents that I witnessed as a child.

For a long time when I was growing up my parents didn’t know how to communicate properly (understatement of the decade) – they almost divorced because of that. A lot of my childhood was long ugly quarrels, name calling and accusations thrown back and forth with brief intervals of normalcy, and good times. Coming home from school it was common that I found my mother crying or obviously having just been crying and now “dead silent” not speaking to me, my father (who in turn was sitting in another room) and I had to play the role of mediator, trying to figure out what it was this time that they had fought about… The atmosphere was often very tense, I was constantly afraid they’d hurt each other or split up if this continued… It was really a nightmare at times. Often after a fight like this either one of them stormed out of the house and I had to listen to the other’s “side of the story” i.e. monologue, ranting about why the other one was being unjust – and then the other came back, and I had to listen to another rant, from another perspective.

All rise, the family court is in session, fremen_warrior – having witnessed both sides of the story – must now decide who is right and pick a side, an alliance if you will. Were you ever put in a position where you had to side with either one of your parents? Sometimes all the choices you are given are bad. I hated Christmas. Every year we decided which grandparents to spend it with (and it usually ended with a huge quarrel, and me feeling like I betrayed the side I wasn’t visiting that year speaking of which that was the exact wording used by one of my grandmothers when one summer I decided to go to a martial arts camp with my day, instead of spending that time with them and my mother, she (my mother’s mom) basically said (speaking of me) “how could he have betrayed you like that?!” (I was ~ten) It was a freaking mess.

After years of this they finally started to talk better, the fights got fewer and further in between. Nowadays and for about 10 years now they are mostly great together – good for them. Now they behave as if it wasn’t that big a deal, and seem to expect me to be over it all by now. I mostly have gotten over this I think, though it has left a mark on me, something I am afraid will not ever fully go away.

I still have issues trusting people, forming ‘normal’ relationships with others (“if you’re going to grow up to be like your father, better stay single, stay away from women, and don’t screw up some poor girl’s life that way”). And I am hypersensitive to any and all attempts by others to manipulate me, to ‘sway’ me to their side (whether real or perceived)...

As for my parents, what angers me the most nowadays is how much of a ‘hive mind’ they have become – agreeing on 95% of everything, and thus believing their enlightened fantastic view of the world is the supreme freaking truth, although “oh no, everyone has the right to their own opinion of course, and we are never judgmental of course you can do whatever you think is right for you… you want to do what? Then you are a fool. Fine do whatever you want but you are being a complete fool, you should do this this and this, why won’t you LISTEN to us, all we want is what’s BEST for you” or some such bs.

I am sorry for ranting like this, especially since it is commonly seen as impolite, and a sign of a terrible personality, to be talking that way about one’s parents, but I really feel I could not talk to them for weeks at a time and my life would be so much better. I literally feel better when I haven’t talked to them in a while, like a week or two. They just don’t seem to understand that, and almost feel offended if I don’t call or e-mail them for an entire week.

When I come to visit them I can talk to them for a while, a day and a half at most, and that’s enough, I like my parents I respect them for what they have done for me, but on the other hand I deeply despise them for being judgmental know-it-alls (no offence @KNOWITALL :P), who want to know every single detail of my life (yeah and if we have a falling out they then use everything I tell them against me, been there, done that I cannot trust them with my life’s details because come argument they WILL drag it out and use it as an example why I am a moron and I should always listen to them) and seem oblivious to their own at times toxic personalities. I treat them with respect, I like them in a way, it’s just that more often than not they seem to manage to tick me off like no one else can, and if I come to visit, I want to leave come the end of day two….

What about you are your relations with your parents good? Do they ever make you feel this way? Do you think I need therapy? Feel free to share what your relations with your parents are/were like, and what you make of all of this.

Congrats, if you managed to read through the entirety of this monster of a post.

Penny for your thoughts?

Cheerio!

the fremen

There was a similar question here before but the differences are enough to warrant the asking of mine.