This is very familiar. My mother is difficult, but not _that_ bad, but she's bad enough that my sister has dropped in and out of estrangement with her and is currently estranged. And while I try not to engage with it, Mom spends a fair amount of time pensively wondering at me what could be wrong with my sister given her completely inexplicable behavior. In fact, the last time my sister dropped out of contact was in response to a very concrete, specific act on Mom's part that my sister blew up at her about in detail before dropping out of contact, and that I got explicitly angry with her about at the time and referenced explicitly as what my sister was genuinely angry about the first couple of times Mom got wistful about what could be wrong that her daughter treats her so badly.
By now, a year and a bit ago on the past, there's no point in bringing it up again as what my sister was genuinely angry about. It's somewhere in between 'never happened' and 'no one could have been angry about that, it's a cover story for inexplicable hostility.'
I was raised to think it rude or unseemly to express my feelings. It's been really useful.
So your parents legitimately don't know why you're estranged?
We got along very well until they died.
I don't have a lot of faith in resolving difficult interpersonal situations through clear communication. I've had a number of situations, personally, where I've bitched about them to third parties and been told "look, it's on you. You need to be clear about what you want or need rather than suffering in silence." Which superficially makes a lot of sense, but when I've followed up on that advice by sucking it up and explicitly saying the things I'd been leaving unsaid, it's never done any good; my implicit read of the situation that clear communication would go uncomprehended or at least unresponded to has always been right.
I mean, no knock on communicating, it's terrific when you've got someone who's going to listen. But those usually aren't the relationships that get difficult.
I think it's a low-hanging fruit thing. "If you're expecting them to read your mind, then even though they're operating in good faith, they may not know what to do in the situation!" It's presented as a silver bullet, though, which is dumb.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure there are circumstances where there's low-hanging fruit to be picked. But most of the time, I think when it looks to an outsider as if people just aren't communicating, it's because one of the parties is determined not to participate in the communication and the other has given up.
I picture it as being a young relationship thing, where kids are in their 20s and are maybe a bit embarrassed to say what's going on for them, and so they claim that if the other person loved them, they'd know. Maybe even that is out-of-date and the kids today know about communication.
But to your larger point: "Knowing when to bail" probably isn't discussed enough in helpful ways in society.
Other people are sometimes better at knowing what I'm feeling than I am.
Anyway, mostly I'm glad my parents had no idea what was going on with me in my twenties.
9: You admire me for my quick wit and sheer longevity of blogging.
I was going to do the estranged child thing here and offer up details of the 16 minute phone call from my mom that ended literally 90 seconds before I clicked on this eclectic web magazine. tl;dr she monologs for 11+ minutes continuously about something I should be congratulating her about, while I stew quietly that she didn't bother to tell us the duration for which we'll be watching her dog while she vacations (three weeks, now that I've pressed for that info).
But then I decided that it was better without details, and my emotions were the important part. Probably I ingested a lot of lead.
I think the communication thing reveals how the self-selection for these fora works: bad parents who refuse to communicate end up losing their kids and seek validation. Bad parents who are willing/able to communicate may have difficult relationships with their kids, but they don't actually lose them.
Cases where kids really do unjustifiably biff off I think lead to very different parent reactions, because the pain is real, not driven by narcissistic injury.
I'm somewhat estranged from my father. There's no formal estrangement, but we haven't spoken in 3 years. I'm sure if asked, he could probably tell you why, but it's not one of those dramatic falling out things. It's just a very one-sided relationship, and with the pandemic and parenthood and work, I can't be fucked with making the effort, and, it seems, if I don't make all the effort, he won't make any of it.
The link in OP is great and something I've seen around the internet before. It really does seem to often describe parents posting at AITA, and I imagine that estranged parents forums are even worse.
If Heebie is right at the end that sometimes it's the kid's fault, my guess is that's mostly cases of addiction.
8 is a great point, I feel like there's a lot of "immature" behavior in the 15-25 age range which is genuinely fixable and people can learn to communicate better. But that immature behavior that lasts much past that is mostly baked in. Yes people improve around the edges, but if you're fundamentally someone who doesn't care about bettering yourself then that's not going to change by clear communication or whatever. As Taylor says "Back when we were still changing for the better..."
My son is 9, for example, and he's never met my Dad. We've offered a few times, to host him, but each time we've offered, he's had something better to do. I suspect he doesn't even really realise how this might seem, as he's quite self-absorbed, in an introspective lives-inside-his-own-head way, rather than being massively selfish in other ways. He lives a quiet frugal life.
I do sometimes worry that he'll die, and I won't know for a long time, and then my son will never meet him. So, probably, at some point in the next couple of months, I'll reach out again.
You have sibling(s), right? Are they more successfully in contact?
Siblings are great because you can team up.
Since the oldest is always the smartest, there's also a clear leader.
I take exception to that, but as a younger sibling I recognize that it's not going to get me anywhere.
A friend of mine (who is estranged from her parents, with whom she has a dynamic similar to that described in the Issendai article) is an only child. She often says how she wishes she had siblings because it's so lonely being the only person in the world who knows how crazy her parents are.
23: Medical school is obviously harder than law school.
re: 19
No. My sister has been estranged from him for much much longer than me, and he's not my brother's father. In that case, it's a mixture of the same thing as me--very one sided relationship in which all the effort to maintain contact falls on us, very little interest from him, other than occasional presents or cards by post, in our kids, i.e. his grandchildren--and a more dramatic falling out that dates back decades. In the case of that falling out, it was a case of fault on both sides. They both had legitimate reasons* to be angry at each other, and neither of them is particularly prepared to play peacemaker. Peacemaking, or at least, biting my own tongue and getting on with shit, is very definitely my role. The only times my sister has seen my Dad in a very long time have been times when I brokered contact in some way.
* we aren't talking about things like addiction, or abuse, or violence, or anything that would be a reason for life-long withdrawal of contact.
"We got along very well until they died."
Who you gonna call?
My relationship with my parents is similar to 15/18 although not as extreme. They just seem to have no interest in me or my family. They'll stop by to visit for an hour or so if they're in town for some other event- pre-pandemic we saw them maybe once or twice a year. Phone calls, which are now every few months, end up being my mom talking about all the things they've done lately with no interest in their grandkids- if I bring something up the response is "how nice" and then back to themselves.
My MIL died a few years ago and my FIL has a new partner who is openly hostile to his kids. My wife wants to ask new partner why she unfriended my wife on Facebook- I really don't think it's worth addressing but she wants to know.
Is your wife selling candles on Facebook?
No, but is that a common reason to unfriend someone?
For me, it's only that and "but Hillary's emails" posts.
Honestly, I think my parents are just too old to take a deep interest in my kid (which I am fine with). They're benevolent and want to hear that he's doing well in school. But a deep interest in his actual interests and dilemmas? Eh. If they were close by it could happen. But it isn't going to happen over occasional phone calls.
My mom thinks she could be interested in Steady, but misremembers his age by many years and doesn't know his daily life.
Steady's dad and grandfather live downstairs from me and Steady. Steady's paternal grandfather is just kinda a benevolent potted plant. Doesn't plan stuff with us; doesn't initiate conversation; just watches the Dodgers or listens to books on tape. Fine. The part that surprises me is that every evening, Steady and his dad play two-square in the backyard while I garden. Tons of banter and naming the serves and creating trick shots and playful shrieks. It is pure wonderful. And Steady's grandfather never comes out to watch. If that were happening in the yard and my dad were inside? Nothing would stop him from coming to sit in the backyard to be part. He'd crawl down the stairs if he had to. Then he'd be crotchety and say mean things and add bad energy, but he'd want to be in it more than anything.
Not exactly the same thing as in the posted link, but I no longer speak to my father-in-law and my partner has successfully gone low-contact with him. This happened because he performed a medical procedure on our 2-day old infant against our explicit instructions (he's an MD).
He is mystified about why I won't speak to him. Like, has absolutely no idea why it's happening. We tried explaining: "we are angry about the medical thing you did to our baby after we specifically said not to do the medical thing to our baby." When we did that, he'd explain why the medical thing was necessary and good. I can't talk to him or I'll go crazy and/or assault him.
That actually sounds pretty spot on: "Why won't you talk to me?" "Because you did something significant and scary to my infant I asked you not to do." "Don't be silly, that's not a real reason. Really why aren't you talking to me?"
33: Well it's the same kinda abusive situation & effed up communication but the dynamics aren't exactly like what's being discussed in the linked article. My partner still does speak to my father-in-law. He believes his relationship with my partner is just fine. He believes the problem is me. So there's a weird narcissistic equilibrium we've established here that doesn't amount to estrangement.
My son is 9, for example, and he's never met my Dad.
Holy cow.
This happened because he performed a medical procedure on our 2-day old infant against our explicit instructions (he's an MD).
Holy shit!
The real hero is me for not asking how the boy got through medical school in two days.
"Murph" is a dumb crossfit workout where they've valorized some poor kid who died in the Iraq war (or maybe Afghanistan?) Some of the crossfit gyms play a video about the real Murph and do the workout on Memorial day every year.
Today we had a "half Murph" workout and I resisted making any jokes about how that's what's left at the end of the video. Am I also a hero?
Some of the people who attend my gym have heard of Passover.
re: 35
Indeed. My sister's kids are almost the same. I think my niece (who is 20) has met my Dad a couple of times, at the most. My nephew, who lives (literally) one street away from him, not much more. I'm not sure my Dad and my nephew would even recognise each other if they passed in the street, which, I'm assuming, because they live in a small village, they probably do. In the case of my sister's kids, that's in part due to my sister, and he did make the effort a couple of times, albeit with some prodding from me.
With my son, though, we invited him down for Christmas one year, when xelA was about 4 and he had some unconvincing selfish reason why not, and then we invited him down a couple of times a year or so later, and he couldn't because he was going on some holiday. I presume because he had a girlfriend he was seeing at the time, but he never confirmed that or not.
It really upsets my wife, and my son is old enough now that he knows it's not right. He was very close, for example, to _my_ grandfather until he died, and sees his grandmother and great uncle (my Mum's brother) all the time. The annoying thing, and I'm not sure my wife believes this or not, as she's never seen this side of him, but he's really good with kids. Funny and engaging, with great stories. He's really good at lying to children (for comedy value).
I guess my son and I count as that, so I haven't checked.
5-7: In the spirit of Tom Lehrer. (Who is still alive! Just had a birthday.)
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days in books, and plays, and movies on, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love. Husbands and wives who can't communicate; children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books, and plays, and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact act that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate the very least he can do is to shut up.
Speaking of whom, found this quote of his I had never heard while searching for the one in 47.
"If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."
Chortle worthy for me absent the "or perhaps ..." but there it isn't absent. A bit of a retroactive Milkshake Duck, but also the casualness with which domestic violence was treated in popular culture back in the day. ("To the moon, Alice! To the moon!"*)
*Somehow I think we've specifically discussed that?
I forgot my story of (minor) grandparental intruding on parenting. My brother and I are Irish twins and my mother didn't want to have to chase me around the house while heavily pregnant, so she didn't encourage me to walk. She didn't knock me over or anything, just didn't give praise or reinforcement when I pulled myself up. Her mom came over to take care of me when my mom went into the hospital to have my brother (obviously my dad smoked too much to care for a baby). My grandmother was horrified to find a 14 month old baby that couldn't walk, so she made sure I could walk by the end of that day. My mother felt grandma could have waited a bit because she missed my first steps.
This whole topic worries the hell out of me as an anxious person with adult children, who has a somewhat fraught relationship with her own parents. I think I'm not driving my kids insane, and they mostly seem happy to associate with me, but there are so many stories of parents of adult children with absolutely no insight into what incredible jerks they're being. It just seems like the kind of thing that sneaks up on people somehow, and how would I know if I'd lost my mind that way?
I thought Irish twins was less than 12 months apart?
That's not even possible. It takes 13 months to gestate the giant head.
50: You should text them every day and ask.
I actually thought strict definition Irish twins was born in the same calendar year -- older January, younger December or like that.
I have no idea. My mother was Italian and thought it very quick succession.
That's called rigatoni twins, because the tube stays open.
50: I think that, to a first approximation and notwithstanding Upetgi's scenario in 16.2, this basically never happens:
I am absolutely sure that sometimes the estranged parent is the sympathetic party, and the adult child has distanced themselves in a hurtful way.
Anyway, I've never seen it -- though plenty of parents lament the insufficient attention they get from their kids. I guarantee you that I will.
On the other hand, for a period of eight months shortly before the end of my father's life, he cut off my brother for harrowingly necessary reasons. Ultimately, after being allowed to visit my father, my brother showed up at his literal deathbed with a lawyer to take control of my father's medical and legal affairs. Supposedly, my father requested this.
My father died a day later, after having refused to sign the papers. My brother has never troubled himself to explain why my father required a lawyer to get out of my (and my sisters') oppressive care. But the fucker did bill the estate for the legal fees. The court threw that out.
I don't speak to my brother any more, and my goodness, what a weight has been lifted from me! Estrangement gets a bad rap.
Maybe attempted fraud is his love language?
Ugh, this is hard. I'm not estranged from my dad, exactly. I feel like that has an air of finality. But he is more or less out of my life and I'm not sure how I feel. Bad foundation (explosive temper/emotional abuse growing up) followed by intermittent contact that vanished once I finished grad school followed by developing alcoholism in late middle age, which most of the family hid from me, which I learned the severity of on his one and only visit - I think Pebbles was six months old at the time. It went about as well as one might expect. He's seen her three or four times. Calabat once or twice more. The kids confuse him with shiv's dad who they also rarely see but who talks to them on the phone periodically and sends them presents. I'm told the alcoholism is no longer a problem but Mom would lie.
He's aware of the kids. And I text my mom daily so he gets pics, videos of piano recitals, etc. I'm told he likes them. So it's not that he's not interested, maybe, but no initiative. And it's a lot of work to keep up a relationship from 2000 miles away and I feel like I'm teaching the kids to try to love someone who won't even Zoom with them. On the other hand he doesn't visit my sister's kids either and they're 10 miles away so maybe he's just fine with a life of Infowars.
Would restraint on 56 have qualified as heroic?
My wife's family is such a weird contrast.
She has had to do a lot of work to establish boundaries with her mom, about eating disorders, choosing not to live in the same town, etc. Denial is just incredibly strong. Mom has asked multiple times after my wife's hysterectomy and us starting adoption research if we are thinking about 'natural birth'.
They had another family they are close with, with the opposite dynamic. A couple well adjusted kids, including wife' BFF, and the mom (friends with my MIL) is amazing and the kindest person. The daughter has borderline and is currently going through cycles of inviting/uninviting all the family to her wedding. The absentee father, who we recently learned has been driving a 2 hour commute weekly through son2's town while ignoring his occasional 'i'd be willing to drive to see you' emails is the only one currently invited.
We would like to be privy to the two mom's conversations about their kids.
You can't call them Irish twins if they're Italian, and Italians like to eat pasta.
That's just a stereotype. Also, half Irish.
62.1: Maybe she thought Handmaids were already a thing?
I had a super weird conversation with my father several weeks ago. We used to be reasonably friendly, maybe close? His new wife is deeply insecure and has broken the relationship, and he seems totally fine with it, only a vague sense of unease. He asked AJ and me years ago not to talk about our jobs, as it "makes Karen feel let out." (Yes, really.) He also was scoring some points off me during a visit - he'd helped us refinish our back deck a few years ago, and he told Karen it was an awful project and he's too old for that kind of thing.
So, on this call, he forgot AJ had started a new job and asked about it. I reminded him he'd asked us not to discuss work. He disagreed, saying I must have misunderstood. He'd never say that. (AJ backs me up, and also he went from asking about our jobs to nothing about them for the past two years!) Meanwhile, Karen piped up that it DOES make her feel left out and she doesn't like it. Word for word. He then asked about a house project. I said we were waiting for a quote from the contractor. He said he'd offered to help, why were we using a contractor. I said because he said he was getting too old for these kinds of things. He said he'd be happy to help, while Karen simultaneously said he would be too busy with their new house to help with any projects on ours.
He emailed to say I had clearly misunderstood. I wrote back repeating what Karen said on the call and that we would continue not to mention our jobs and we'd use a contractor. He wrote back that he "feels our relationship is no longer as close as it was."
After he told a whole table of people at Thanksgiving that my job is "murdering animals," and I objected (after we'd left, but text), he apologized "I didn't know it was a sensitive topic for you."
I responded to his email about closeness with "I'm sorry you feel that way." Because I couldn't think of anything better to signify "enjoy the consequences of your actions."
I spent a ton of time turning these exchanges over in my head, because they're utterly bizarre. There is no shared reality. And surprising nastiness. It's a combination of trying not to be shocked into silence and have some kind of response and to reinforce my perception. I'm not surprised children who are estranged do the same, given that someone so important is denying their reality and their feelings.
At any rate, I'm sorry for the folks above with more challenging parents than mine, but this is certainly unpleasant and disconcerting.
My granddaughter's father is working towards estrangement. In this last weekend's visitation, he insisted to her that the earth is flat, and showed her some pictures of models. She knows that the earth is not flat, and was very much impressed that he was showing her models and not photographs taken from space. 'That's how I know it isn't real.' You'd think he'd avoid situations where he's outwitted by a 5 year old, but what can you do?
Father - I.e. the guy your daughter had a relationship with? (If so, why?) not your daughter's father-in-law?
Flat-Earthering doesn't seem like a good sign.
I have never been estranged from my parents but have a plodding, playing-in-the-background regret about not enjoying their company. They've done nothing wrong except fail to be able to think of me as an autonomous adult and I tend to suppose many or most parents fail at that.
Flawed, bad, or worse relations with parents are so frustrating-- I find it hard to write off the possibility of improvement. I agree with LB in 5 though, sometimes there's no point in saying whatever it is differently or again or simplifying more. My mom is a mostly benign version of some of what's described in the OP and above-- simply not acknowledging that something she'd rather not hear has been said, and forgetting whatever it was she said to change the subject previously. Her primary motivation now in practical matters is fear, probably has always been present and fairly prominent in her point of view; totally understandable in a life punctuated by long intervals with problems survivable but unfixable and large, and also a few really severe dislocations. The thing that's so striking to me about the slective hearing is that she has a keen interest in gossip, and can identify a nuance suggesting that someone ELSE has a problem from 700 paces away in dense fog. But nagging her to let me fix or replace something is a threat.
No shared reality unless I look at things her way, imagine myself a little lost in China.
I hope this doesn't trivialize the seriousness in the OP or above, but I thought the actress Doris Roberts in the otherwise execrable Everybody Loves Raymond managed a gentle depiction of the trap between family members caused by a distorted viewpoint.
68 My daughter was with the guy for 7 years or so. It's come to a very abrupt end.
67 is hilarious in that your granddaughter knows it's just incorrect and why. I'd guess that the best case scenario would be "Dad has some clearly nutty views (that we avoid talking about), but he was always kind and supportive of me." Worst case is it ends up like folks whose parents were lost to QAnon (or Fox News) rabbit holes where they can't shut up about it.
67 is hilarious in that your granddaughter knows it's just incorrect and why. I'd guess that the best case scenario would be "Dad has some clearly nutty views (that we avoid talking about), but he was always kind and supportive of me." Worst case is it ends up like folks whose parents were lost to QAnon (or Fox News) rabbit holes where they can't shut up about it.
Worst case, the scientists lower the basket over the side and see the elephants so she has to apologize.
This thread is reminding me of the rage I felt about my father-in-law, and how baffled I was at my partner's reaction. For decades their family had a lot of practice at sweeping things under the rug. My partner really wanted this whole situation to just go away. But unlike my partner I hadn't had decades of being treated like crap and then accepting the need to ignore it. I actually tried hard to see a way through the situation but I could not let it pass. I couldn't let myself (or my baby) be treated that way.
This made things difficult for my partner. I was the one 'making things weird.' I wouldn't let anyone sweep it under the rug. But I had to cut contact or I'd stick a fork in my father-in-law's eye. Or phone the police. Or have him investigated by the college of physicians. Or enact some other revenge plan.
I'm very lucky. I can tell my parents are getting worse at communicating the older they get, but it's all attributable to their hearing & memory being affected. They were always honest and would never deny that they said or did something hurtful. And they never let me get away with that either. The contrast between them & my father-in-law was so clear... and it was clear why I absolutely could not put up with his b.s.
It's taken 2.5 years for my partner to disassociate from my father-in-law. The whole time I've always said my relationship with him much healthier in comparison. My partner wishes him dead on a weekly basis and has decades of built-up resentment.
re: 7
This is nothing by comparison--not even close--but a few years ago, pre-pandemic, we were in Cz with sprog who was about 5 at the time. My brother-in-law (wife's sister's husband) gave us a lift to the airport from my wife's parents' house, which is about 40 miles. He's a prick at the best of times. Smug, self-satisfied, bumptious. He's also older. His kids are in their 40s.
He was driving like a maniac. Tailgating people, driving at 90-100mph when the roads were just way to busy for that to be a safe speed. He clearly picked up that I was anxious about his driving style with our son in the car, which made it worse, and he spent the whole journey taking near suicidal risks and driving beyond aggressively. When we got to the airport he could tell I was furious with him, and he was clearly enjoying it. My wife said afterwards that she has never been more convinced that I was going to hit someone than right then. She knows me, and she could tell that I was barely hanging on and that it would have only taken the slightest remark from him and they'd have been pulling me off his prone body.* I don't think he realised quite how close he was, and he is neither in good shape nor in good health.
I've seen him once since, and didn't say a word to him.
* this isn't something she has seen before, as I'm quite mellow most of the time, but she could tell.
Being in a car where you and your family may be willfully killed is not nothing.
Now that I've finally clicked through and read the linked piece, it is so familiar, and I don't think "emotion is king" captures it as well as "we can only discuss anything if it is entirely on terms that I dictate and control." It's not that the parent disagrees with what you say, it's that what you have to say does not exist at all if they decide it doesn't, and not just to their online forum friends, also to your face. And that's enraging, or eventually just leads to disengagement, polite or otherwise. I have one parent with strong tendencies like that, but my (late) dad was different and would engage fairly. He would be willing to disagree. My mom would not allow that possibility so lots of games were played to avoid any possibility of that. Related: I spent a good decade or two constantly and openly pissed off that she would never directly ask me to do something. Because asking allows for the possibilty of a "no." So it was a lifetime of the passive voice "this needs doing" or any of a dozen other ways to tell you what you were expected to do without allowing you any agency. I try to do better with my kids, or at least different.
A dynamic that interests me is that in my family and an early girlfriend's family (both had strong and manipulative mothers) there was a youngest daughter who instead of pushing the mom away, became very close. My older sib refers to my younger sister as "codependent" with mom. Both my sister and my ex-girlfriend had a long series of short-term relationships with men, went to top colleges but never had much of a career, found themselves in precarious states in their fifties. Is that a pattern? With an n of 2 I guess I shouldn't push it.
78: that is definitely something in comparison. That is a truly dangerous situation. I would also be enraged. I know in my head it's best not to react, but in my heart I know for sure that some people deserve a terrible beating.
I met with my father-in-law once after the incident. I barely said anything to him. I refused to shake his hand. Afterward he did say he was afraid of me. That gave me immense satisfaction. Probably more than actually assaulting him would have given me.
77: Yeah, when you've been used to dealing with a difficult person for your whole life, having an outsider who doesn't have (and shouldn't have!) all those built-up emotional strategies for minimizing the problem is weird. Mom, as I said above, is difficult, and she spent a lot of time being insanely hostile at Tim (who in general I'm not going to say anything nice about, but who Mom was abusing for no reason and who didn't do anything to deserve it). And it was odd having to remember that Mom's emotions and beliefs aren't a fact of life that people generally have to deal with, they're her problem and to the extent I haven't cut her off my problem, but it was my responsibility not to make them Tim's problem. I managed to keep them mostly separated except for events where I could count on her to stay polite for the decade or two where it was an issue, but it was stressful for everyone.
Maybe your mom can see the future? Take her to the dog track to check.
She does do surprisingly well in the stock market.
I spent a ton of time turning these exchanges over in my head, because they're utterly bizarre. There is no shared reality. And surprising nastiness. It's a combination of trying not to be shocked into silence and have some kind of response and to reinforce my perception.
I vaguely had this thought yesterday, but this phrasing and the story sort of foreground it: we all know some of the cliches around aging include losing your filter, increased irritability. etc. I recall seeing this a bit with my grandfather (the only of my grands who survived into my adulthood), and now I see it firsthand with my dad and AB's parents. It's all pretty mild--none of them are turning into assholes*--but it's really striking to see my dad acting more like an old man than like the person he was when I lived with him (which was last when he was my present age).
Point being, some of these tendencies are just part and parcel of age. When they combine with underlying shittiness, or a new partner who sucks, or Fox News Syndrome, it can lead to the kind of thing described in the quote above or in the OP. IOW, it's not just the fora that are self-selecting, but the people themselves: they weren't always angry narcissists (or at least not only that), but aging has pushed them into that corner.
*AB's mom has always suffered mental illness and was borderline abusively neglectful when AB was a tween/teen, but was mostly a pleasant, functional person in her dealings with others. She's now in steep decline, and while she has neither the capacity nor opportunity to be abusive, she's got the emotional narcissist in deep, deep denial part down pat.
Dealing with complex relationships is intellectually hard. I think we probably underrate the decline of old people's mental capacity because declining fluid intelligence gets compensated for by accumulated knowledge/wisdom/crystalized intelligence. But the compensation can go pear shaped once the knowledge base starts to be about flat-earthism, Q, gold krugarandts, etc. Plus boomer are both lead-poisoned and the generation most helped by keep-alive therapeutics (statins, blood pressure meds, etc.) while anti-dementia drugs are still basically nonexistent.
I wonder what role parenting style seems to play in this. Browsing that site, most of the parents seem very much to think what their children say is optional to listen to and never informative. Which sounds kind of how a not-very-interested parent might think about their 5 year-old. And that habit stuck through the time when you're supposed to start treating each other as adults.
Anyway, my parents aren't really showing many signs of aging yet, except my old man went from Romney-GOP to Resistance and has what is partially the new-convert fire, and partially the old-man-grumpy. Especially when he's on the phone with his 94-year-old father who mainlines Fox.
statins, blood pressure meds
I'm only 50.
I think I'm not driving my kids insane, and they mostly seem happy to associate with me, but there are so many stories of parents of adult children with absolutely no insight into what incredible jerks they're being. It just seems like the kind of thing that sneaks up on people somehow, and how would I know if I'd lost my mind that way?
I think no one responded to this, LB, because we all know you and this ain't you. But anyway: probably the mere fact that you're open to the possibility that it could happen to you precludes it from happening.
Yeah, there's not much to seriously respond to with what I said other than to be affirming at me about how sane I am, but it is disturbing, isn't it? How many of us have difficult parents, given what that implies just in general about the likelihood that any one of us is also kind of difficult?
Sure, but we're less likely to be difficult without a shred of self-awareness. I'm confident that you'd take your kids seriously if they raised issues with you. That's 90% of the ballgame right there.
I agree that you're sane, but perhaps more to the point I don't think you're an *intense* parent. There's a huge range of laid back parents who aren't actually neglectful, where parents and grown kids just get along. Plus people like to visit NYC so it's not like they're just going to stop seeing you due to distance.
Also all these estranged parents probably complained about having teenaged kids, you liked having teenagers which means you don't resent them being people with autonomy.
I do rely on my address as a useful substitute for having an appealing personality.
87: My sister asked me whether Dad had always been such an asshole or whether it was new. He was complaining about pronouns in email signatures at Thanksgiving. It was the sort of thing that he likely wouldn't have noticed or remarked on in his past life.
AJ's mother has a miserable spouse, and it's made her a miserable person, too (she wasn't great before, but she was a lot more sympathetic when it was just anxiety-driven codependence). As far as I can tell, many of my friends are in the same boat with their parents - they're getting crankier at the world (bad service at the restaurant! politicians are crooks!) and at the same time, expecting continued or increased deference from their adult children.
On the tip our tongues, so frequently, is the phrase "You didn't raise me to . . ." be rude to waitstaff, threaten jobs of salespeople, threaten to withhold pay (!!!) from the housecleaners if they left before finishing a list that would baffle Cinderella, to speak to people that way, to expect special treatment. We've been dutiful offspring, but so many of my group seem to be increasingly estranged as we back away slowly from embarrassing restaurant dinners and family meals where dessert is a litany of complaints about the world.
I wonder also whether contemplating mortality and the indignities of aging creates some desire to retain dominance in some way. They're all Boomers, for what it's worth.
And LB, from what I know of you here, you're probably terrifying in an argument, and I can see a disagreement between you and your adult kid about facts (or their interpretation of facts) being pretty challenging for a kid, but the thing is, you're also extremely fair, a careful listener, and genuinely apologize when you're wrong (rare!) on substance or in tone. I don't think I've seen you dismiss someone as being "too sensitive" for feeling a certain way about a topic or behavior, even when I've disagreed with your overall conclusion. I think those are the best indicators you wouldn't end up as one of those parents.
I also think it seems obvious that estrangement doesn't happen all at once. I suspect most adult children give up trying to fix the relationship when they've run out of energy to put in. That takes a while, I think for parents who aren't flagrantly toxic, and even for those that are.
(Also, I wonder what those estranged parents' friendships are like! Is the issue just with their kids, or does it affect all their social interactions?)
98.last: Data point: I worry about death a lot and am still very polite.
The contrast between how many visitors we got in NYC at here is truly astounding. I think we're well liked and people are happy to see us, but there's no amount of winning personality that can match living in a city that people regularly travel to.
Unfortunately, places no one wants to travel to are the ones where you can more easily afford a house big enough for visitors.
I think there's a big generational/social shift involved here - like, I'm in my forties and was brought up in a way that was rather old fashioned compared to my peers. My parents very much felt that they called the shots, that if I didn't like something that was too bad and the purpose of any discussion of serious personal matters between us was not to have a discussion and build a consensus but for them to impart a moral lesson. They definitely took my interests and wishes into account - they weren't monsters - but it was very much a superior-subordinate relationship.
And that's how they grew up, only more so! Both of them grew up in families that were old fashioned for their time and where any kind of frank speaking from child to parent was an unthinkable failure of duty. My mother put up with a lot all her life, for instance, and she did not talk back ever because that is not what good children did, even as adults.
So yeah, I could definitely see that my parents just wouldn't see a child cutting ties as something that a good, mentally healthy person would ever do. On a deep level they would not believe that a child had that kind of authority in the relationship.
Again, my parents were actually pretty good parents because they weren't selfish monsters, and my dad has definitely loosened up emotionally as he has gotten older, so I wouldn't actually have any reason to estrange myself. But there were certainly some really weird failures of communication when I was younger, most often on the "things I should have asked or clarified but didn't because I was raised to believe that if the adults want you to know something, they will tell you and otherwise it is inappropriate to ask" side.
My peers parent really differently and I don't think there will be nearly as much "my kids abandoned me FOR NO REASON because they are bad and ungrateful" stuff in the next generation, whatever other problems there may be.
I think my parents were very much of the superior- with-subordinate kind but they shifted from it more or less willingly as I got to my late teens.
In my sisters' cases, the transition was not until they finished college or a bit later.
Lots of teen pregnancy at my high school. The prom theme was "I think I pulled out soon enough."
family meals where dessert is a litany of complaints about the world
Was talking to a friend who interacts often with Trump-y people for work. He said "they love to talk about what they hate". Thought that was insightful.
Parenting seems to be a whole lot gentler since the mid-nineties or so. Could maybe stand to include a bit more benign neglect, but it seems really nice to me. Maybe there will really will be less estrangement.
104 is super-interesting, and one thing that occurs to me is that one of the ways the linked article is about self-selection is that many/most of these parents surely expected their kids to follow some of those old fashioned strictures, and they cannot at all handle that the kids DGAF. And it's not just Boomers--they still sell "Because I'm the Mommy, that's why!" t-shirts.
I'll confess: if my kids hate me, it's because I yell at them, and part of the reason I yell at them is that they are so much less responsive to me & AB than my sister and I were to our mom. The idea that your parent could glare at you and you'd keep misbehaving is simply incomprehensible to me. I don't really think this will be a problem, but it gives me a glimpse at the dynamic posited in 104.
That makes me feel better, weirdly, because I think Jammies yells at the kids too much, and surely your kids won't hate you, so probably our kids won't hate Jammies either.
My dad's descent from GHWB moderate Republican to full on Fox News Geezer had plenty to do with the dynamic Frowner points out. He understood that the culture had moved on, and was pissed off about having had to be subordinate as a kid, and then not superior as the parent of adult children. (My mom thinks he would not have gone full Trumper if he'd lived past the first day of 2016, but I think she's wrong about that.) I got the feeling that he secretly wished for estrangement, so he could have his sense of grievance be more personalized and authentic, but I never obliged him: I didn't think his opinions on the news of the day to be relevant to my own life at any point after 1971, and avoided trying the learn them.