The love I feel for my daughter has something in common with the love I feel for my husband, and the love I felt for 1 or 2 past boyfriends, that it does not have in common with any way I ever remember feeling towards my parents.
I think it's been so long since I've truly loved my parents that I can't even remember what it felt like. I can't remember any time that I didn't feel hurt by them, they've been douching it up since I was around 14 because of religion (which is when I first started going OTD) and now I'm 31. I always was desperate for them to love me and be nice to me, but I don't think I ever genuinely liked them and wanted to be around them at the same time. Like the way I always want to hang out with B and C. I haven't been to my parents house (a place I no longer call "home") in over 5 years now, and even when I was going there, I was always leaving as quickly as I could to avoid them as much as possible
My dad has actually been super cool lately compared to what he is normally like, and is warm again in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of the relationship I can at this point barely remember us having before I was a teenager...but he is still distant and douchey in some ways because of religion every once in a while. My mom is just distant, the last time I talked to her was when they were here when C was 3 weeks old (She is now 17 weeks old). Maybe I will suggest to my dad that we skype on Thanksgiving or something (although maybe they will be having a big party of all the people who don't know C exists so they won't want to skype with us). This Thanksgiving will be 2 years since me and my mom supposedly 'reconciled' when I called her after 3 years of not talking.
i wonder, do you feel any guilt or accept any of the blame for your strained relationship with your folks? or do you blame it all on you choosing not to be frum and their reaction to that?
ReplyDeleteAE has said before that there were issues with her mom going back to childhood, but that things got much worse when she was 14.
ReplyDeleteMy oldest daughter is 14. Lovely girl, but like any normal 14 yr old, she has her moments. A typical 14 year old girl will get moody, think that her parents are so strict/unreasonable/embarrassing, be demanding, have crazy mood swings, and sometimes be a pain in the tuchus. If you're lucky, the mood passes pretty quickly, and if you're a smart parent, you realize that this is typical teen stuff and you act like an adult and don't take it personally or over-react.
I've been thinking about this blog recently, because I'm afraid of what's happening with a friend of mine. He's divorced, his ex-wife is no longer religious, and he is fighting with his almost-teen daughter over religion - or at least, he and his daughter both perceive the fights to be about religion. Everyone else - including the rabbi - sees that this is about his fear of losing control, his toxic custody struggles with his ex, and his tendency to blame others instead of working to improve himself. We can see that he's constantly doing things to alienate his daughter from Judaism and jeopardize his bond with her, but he can't or won't see it himself.
I have a blogging friend who similarly has a kid who just turned 18 and has had years of insane fights, running away, hooking up with random dudes. I kept telling her to just let her have a little more freedom, that it was clearly a power struggle thing, but she kept calling the cops on her daughter and taking away all her stuff and money and grounding her an insane amount to try to "make sure she makes good decisions" because she can't let her have any freedom because clearly her daughter makes only bad decisions.
ReplyDeleteShe even put money to help her get started when she would be kicked out at 18 in a fund (like $2500 start up money) and then took money out to punish her until there was nothing left. She stopped blogging around when her daughter turned 18- not sure if it was because she DID kick her daughter out like she had been planning and counting down to, or because she DIDN'T after all that build up and fan fare. I hope it's the second one.