your relationship with your parents

[Damian]

i've been thinking about this subject when i saw this video on youtube and from what i learnt from a counsellor i used to see.

who here feels they did not have an affectionate relationship with their parents when they were young, from as far back as they remember till about 10 years old. do you remember hugs and things like that.

it is common for people who have issues in their youth to develop some kind of mental illness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w6CgPEEa0Q

you won't agree with everything in this guys video but it's an interesting point.

[Damian]

ok, it may be the same that way around too. i don't remember ever wanting affection either but i don't remember receiving any. my mum was quite strict at that time and i don't remember my dad having much involvement. i did start to collect things at quite an early age, about 7. i have also heard in a video about why people collect by vsauce2 that one reason that people collect could be due to lack of affection as a child.

[gregarious_introvert]

I had a similar experience to Rebka; of course, back in the 1960s, I didn't know that I had Asperger's Syndrome (it didn't exist as a diagnosis) and I didn't know what was usual in other families. It was quite late in life that I came to realise that hugging children was something families did.

Shortly before he died, I asked my father why I hadn't been hugged as a child and he replied that, even as a baby, I would try to push away anyone who tried to hold me, so in the end they gave up trying. I also learned that it was a similar story with bedtime reading - that when anyone tried reading to me, I would snatch the book from them and read it myself.

I didn't lack affection, but I didn't feel any either.

[humphrey]

I have always felt the same way as Rebka, My mum would try to hug/cuddle me and I would run a mile.

I have just started to get more touchy feely with people (Only a tiny little bit) in the last few years.

[Clockface]

I think the way my mind works affects how I remember my childhood, as I tend to remember negative experiences over positive ones.

I did receive affection off my parents but my Dad was in a very stressful job and got angry very easily when I was just subconsciously behaving like a normal child. My Mum also has SA and I subconsciously developed her behaviours, her quietness and her awkwardness around people so that I ended up with SA and low self-esteem as well. Plus my parents have issues within their extended families. They were also over protective of me and naturally I felt stifled by this, so I wanted to break free of it.

Additionally, at school it was seen as socially unacceptable by the other kids to get on well with parents so I felt as if I couldn***8217;t have a close relationship with mine without being bullied and made to feel weird. It goes without saying that I didn***8217;t make any real friends at school, only a few fake ones that came and went.

Going back to my Dad***8217;s stress at work, he behaved at extended family gatherings as if deep down they were an inconvenience to him and so from that as well I further developed a jaundiced view of family life. It came as a surprise to me once I had grown up and gone to University that people got on well with their families and it seemed I was the only who didn***8217;t.

Nearly 20 years on I am jealous of those (and it seems nearly everyone) who have close and fun relationships with their parents, siblings (I don***8217;t have any) and extended families. It particularly stings at Christmas when everyone is with their families for a few days and I am only with my parents for Christmas Day and don***8217;t get to see any of my extended family. Personally I say all families are different (a general belief I have) to try and explain my poor relationship with mine but people who are lucky enough to have said close and fun relationships with theirs don***8217;t understand my point of view.

[snoo]

Yeah I think there is something in that. I totally get what he is saying.

My father was always distant growing up, and still is. The thought of a man-to-man conversation with him even now fills me with amusement, it just wouldn't happen. I can't really put my finger on why apart from he suffered similar social problems to me, the difference being he was the oldest child in a massive family and was always the unofficial head of the family, thus not needing any other friends.

I feel a little sorry for my mother who has had to put up with it, but in the rather old fashioned way, as long as the man is a good provider and doesn't run off with any other woman, what is there to complain about. But as a person I couldn't imagine living with their collective mindset, it's almost the opposite of what I want.

The problem is that I never realised just how dysfunctional this arrangement was. Growing up as a teenager it was heavily uncool to be close to the olds anyway, and the stuff we got up to we didn't want to share with them anyway. In my early twenties life was good and I was having too much fun to really think about it.

Only since the last 10 years have I come to realise how shit it is to have parents you don't get along with. It is natural to want to love them, but you can't, so you do end up wondering if it is something wrong with yourself. The only coping mechanism I have found is just less contact which doesn't really solve any of the underlying issues.

I tend to think had parents encouraged and believed in me more when I was growing up then things may have been different, but really the time for blaming others has long gone now. Intellectually we all know the power to get better lies within the self.