Rejected Parents: if you can't figure it out you don't deserve a blog

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Rejected Parents: if you can't figure it out you don't deserve a blog

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Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

Panfilo posted:

Transactional relationships are not only pretty cold and detached, but you'll never reach a satisfactory point. Who wants to have to demand affection in the same way a loan shark demands money?

oooh, I know this one! It's my parents.

everything was transactional with them. Literally with money, but also with anything resembling a human interaction. if we tried to just randomly show them affection, they would say "what do you want? you're only affectionate when you want something from me", making their statement true.

I went no contact with them 20 years ago, and someone upthread asked what it was like. I have no regrets about going no contact with them. I don't randomly feel like I want to call them and talk. I don't miss family dinners or Christmas because those are the bad memories. my partner comes from a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas and not doing Christmas makes Christmas much more enjoyable.

I do regret that I don't have a close relationship with anyone that I have known for decades, and I do wish that I could call someone up and chat about how I'm doing in therapy or whatever, but that's not going to work with my parents because they're the reason I'm in therapy.

I dunno if that will be the same for anyone else, but I remember wondering if I would regret going no contact, and I think it was just a lifetime of habit (and abuse) making me afraid to change for what was obviously a better life

# ¿ Feb 9, 2022 03:06

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:09

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

Pinus Porcus posted:

Yes, it is always abuse. It is ineffective punishment and absolutely is nothing other than an adult taking out frustration and anger on someone smaller than them. If a friend made you upset or did something you thought was a terrible decision, you wouldn't spank them, so why would you ever do that to your own child? If you did that to another adult it is assault. Think about that, we call a crime to do that to an adult but not a child.

Many, many people walked away from spanking without feeling abused, but it still breaks down your relationship with your parent, creating fear and like someone else said teaching that violence is more acceptable than addressing emotions in a healthy way

Edit: it's also a violation of human rights. The US just doesn't care because "discipline"

More people would care if you did it to another dog. Start beating your dog or horse in public and someone will step in and/or call the cops. There are laws about that kind of thing. If it's a kid, people stand around going "I wonder what they did to deserve it"

I've never quite understood the people who grow up and claim that it was actually a good thing. I can only guess it's something like Stockholm Syndrome. That only takes about 6 months, so I guess if you're trapped with the same people for 18 years, it can be impossible to shake off.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2022 09:21

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

I think this one is similar to us posting rejected parents quotes and then taking them apart. I know part of my progress was hearing abusers do their usual self gratifying bullshit and then hearing someone say clearly "no that's wrong". That's important.

If twenty jerks show up doing the same routine then that's a different story.

And I got to read some new research that I can quote, so that's good too

# ¿ Jun 7, 2022 14:00

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

Rutibex posted:

it's because an adult can defend themselves

And adults can sue.

A 14 year can physically defend themselves well enough, but if they dare, the legal system will drop the hammer on them. Younger children can escape, but the cops will track them down and hand them straight back to their abusers.

The moment they turn 18 and can hire a lawyer, they suddenly get better treatment.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 08:32

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

Danaru posted:

I know I'm not getting anything but I still want to know when the old bastard's in the ground so I can stop wondering if he's still plotting something new

Same, plus I have a party scheduled that week.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 16:55

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

olives black posted:

Is there some law that says you have to be present for the reading of your parents' will? Because if not they can take their little post-mortem spite note and shove it up their dead asses

In Australia, no. An executor is appointed, either in the will or by ???? otherwise. They are responsible for distributing the estate, and you can sue them if you don't think they did it right.

I think it's the same in most commonwealth countries. Reading the will in the drawing room is a dramatic convention.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 01:09

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

I've been checking up on all this because my estranged parents are hopefully approaching that stage of their lives, and I wanted to make sure that they couldn't gently caress me around one last time.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 01:10

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

Vampire Panties posted:

I dont think I updated the thread (I think I've typed it out a million times and then never posted) but yeah - my estranged rear end in a top hat of a father has been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.

I'm glad - I cannot think of someone more deserving. I was tempted to reach out to gloat, but ultimately I've decided to continue with estrangement. I've already said what I needed to say to him, there's literally nothing he could say or do that would give me any kind of closure, so reconnecting really would just be setting myself up to be kicked in the nuts one last time.

Also if I'm going to reconnect on his death bed, I want to make sure its actually his death bed. That rear end in a top hat may linger for decades out of pure spite.

I've been passing the time imagining the eulogy I'll give but I'm not really committed to attending his funeral. He lives in one of the most remote parts of the country , and it would be entirely "his" people... people that he's conditioned my entire life to think I'm crazy and a liar. I know that if I were to go, that I'd be airing all of those grievances purely for myself. I know I'm worth it, but I dont know if the entire effort is worth it.

Any of my attempts to gloat, get one up or even just tell the truth about my family all failed pretty hard. I'm pretty sure if I tried anything at a eulogy I would be physically removed from the funeral. So I'm planning to spend the travel money on a party for friends, neighbours and anyone who wanders by and not even tell them why.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 07:17

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

AceOfFlames posted:

Holy gently caress, she's like an even worse version of my mom. My sympathies.

I just spoke to my brother and he said the 100k thing is likely a lie and I sort of see it. I think she just wanted to be mean.

Even before your update, I was going to comment that the money was never there, the discussion never happened, and you need to stop believing cruel stories like that.

It's not right that it's happening to you, but you can never make people stop doing it because it is always deniable. This is pretty nastiness 101. Get someone's hopes up and crush them in the same sentence. Giggle, repeat.

ed: I just realised that we now call this microaggressions. that's a handy word.

Dongsturm fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jun 15, 2022

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 22:50

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

Ghostnuke posted:

waiting for parents to die isn't always the end though. they usually poison some/all of the rest of the family against you

Yes, but the rest of my family doesn't have the insane burning spite that inspires my parents to drive for literal hours just to start a fight with me in person. I don't miss the rest of the family enough to care, in general.

Apparently my parents have been telling everyone that they "just can't understand" why I don't talk to them. I was expecting them to come up with something nastier than that, although possibly the real character assassination just hasn't filtered its way back to me yet.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2022 19:56

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:09

Dongsturm: Feb 17, 2012

deep dish peat moss posted:

My theory on this is less that it's "deliberate" and more that we (millenials) are now the third consecutive generation dealing with a specific compounding generational trauma. Essentially, they are behaving the only way they know how to behave in a parent::child context because it's what was modeled for them, and it was modeled that way for them because (if my theory is right) their parents largely left home at very young ages and largely did not experience a legitimate parent::child relationship that lasted past the age of ~8-10. I made this post the other day:

Someone who became independent at a very young age is also likely to be someone who will reject external help - e.g. they're not in therapy to get help with these kinds of things and figure out why they have a shaky relationship with their children. Everything they've done, they've done on their own since they were young, and it was existentially important for them to convince themselves that they're doing fine and to be blind to problems in their own behavior (this is true of pretty much everyone, you don't pick up on your toxic traits on your own, it takes being called out on them).

Essentially my guess is that the parents of most posters ITT are emotionally immature and never developed beyond toddler/teen/adolescent levels of emotional control because their parents were emotionally immature and never developed beyond childhood levels of emotional control, with the major waves of "runaway" children being not necessarily the cause but a glimpse at the state of the world and family structure at the time, people were too busy with the struggle for subsistence to be actual parents.

And I'm guessing that because it's harder for children to leave home at young ages these days, we're forced into regular interaction with those parents even as we grow old and mature enough to start to recognize that there's a problem here. If the economy was booming and anyone could leave home and be independent at the age of 16, there would probably be far fewer posts like the ones ITT because people would have less contact with their parents in general, but at the same time that would keep us all blind to those toxic behaviors and it would just cause the cycle to repeat and get worse By getting forced between the churning gears we're stopping the machine. I hope.

I'm interested in hearing from goons ITT whether this model fits their parents or not because it's all just imaginary correlation in my head at this point. Does anyone with parents like the ones described ITT have parents that have/had a healthy relationship with their own parents? Did your parents mostly all become independent at relatively young ages?

it's an interesting theory but it doesn't match my family at all. My parents are ultra-stereotype broke-brained boomers. Far from becoming independent hippies, they repeatedly scurried back to their parents whenever the going got ~~tough~~ slightly uncomfortable, receiving gifts of cars, houses and land. *

Naturally they "worked hard to earn it" etc etc.

They had the opposite of generational trauma, they had pretty much everything given to them, and anytime they had an experience that might have actually built some character, they washed it away with Xanax and booze.

I think I was independent before the age they were, and it didn't do anything to improve my view of them. If anything, it made them look worse.

* You can be sure I didn't get any of that. My father did the classic "this is MY HOUSE and if you don't like it get out"

# ¿ Jun 20, 2022 20:39

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Rejected Parents: if you can't figure it out you don't deserve a blog

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