My Relationship with my Parents is Ruined

Discussion in 'General Advice' started by BlackholeKG, Aug 26, 2016.

  1. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    I don't know what things I don't do. Is she talking about my not doing washing, or cleaning things in my room? But those are things that affect me, not... helping out around the house things. When she asks me to walk the dog or do the dishwasher or even vacuum sometimes I always do that. It's just the "things for me" stuff I don't do... because, surely I should be in control of that? And it's hard to be functional, and I'm not in my own, home space. But that's also their space, and they want me to function more. I don't know...
     
  2. wixbloom

    wixbloom artcute

    Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. That is manipulative, dirty bullshit she is pulling. I'm actually gonna take a break, because this kind of "conciliatory" manipulative ploy has just sent me to that special place in my survivor heart in which I erect a wall of NOPE FUCK YOU YOU'RE WRONG FOREVER GOODBYE and stop being able to communicate in a way that helps you, Josie.
     
    • Like x 1
  3. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    Is it bullshit, though?

    This makes a hell of a lot more sense if you accept the premise that I am actually not being pleasant and not putting in the effort to do things, and of course my mother is much more acquainted with the situation than anybody here could be, and you all are seeing this through the lens of my words alone, which will be biased in my own direction...
     
    • Like x 1
  4. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    I should have been trying harder... more effort, as they say. I think I do have the capacity to do that... maybe I have been excusing myself from doing so as I have discussed more mental health stuff here. But I think I could do more... and I don't know why I haven't. It's easy to not do more, but maybe in not doing so, I have very much been being selfish. I will try and do more things, I don't know why I haven't before, I did say that I often am kinda shitty. And you guys shouldn't try and contest that because, yeah.
     
  5. wixbloom

    wixbloom artcute

    @BlackholeKG I do not accept the premise because, again, you are going to college. That requires effort to do things and any halfway reasonable parent would be proud of you. I'm not very biased towards you. I have in the past replied to threads in which you brought up concerns to tell you that your perspective seemed skewed to me. This is another time in which I am saying that your perspective seems skewed. It seems skewed in favor of your parents. You consistently extend kindness, respect and courtesies towards them in the way you speak about them which are not mirrored in how they are speaking to you. You are consistently defending them even as defending them means diminishing your own self-worth.

    And I have no spoons to dissect what she said sentence by sentence, but the dissection will come and it will be MIGHTY.
     
    • Like x 3
  6. wixbloom

    wixbloom artcute

    Again you're willing to consider their perspective - even if it causes you suffering - and they are unwilling to consider yours.
     
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  7. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    In my own head, though, I'm constantly fighting in order to not be biased towards myself, which is very tempting, and rather I am just trying to lay out the situation, as, realistically, it probably is.

    I am defending them because I don't really think they are likely to be very far in the wrong!

    Ahh, if anybody has any more words about all this though, I am drinking up these perspectives, and appreciate them a lot
     
    • Like x 1
  8. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    I need to know what to think about this, and how to act in response! I need to know to what degree each of us is right/wrong...
     
    • Like x 1
  9. Wiwaxia

    Wiwaxia problematic taxon

    ^^^
    what wix said. you are unwilling to say anything bad about them even in confidence, whereas they are overtly shit-talking you to your face. There is a problem with pleasantness here, but it ain't you.
     
    • Like x 4
  10. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    In the heat of the moment I did say some stuff to them that was kinda critical... I didn't want to but I did.

    Edit: And yes, there may be a different level of... overt pleasantness etc... but, like, surely the proof of the pudding is in the longstanding actions and attitudes... which is what they have a problem with.
     
    • Like x 1
  11. wixbloom

    wixbloom artcute

    Oh no, you criticized them? Welp sorry I was wrong about everything, clearly you are literal satan and they have done nothing wrong ever in their entire life.

    ... Except that if we apply that logic than THEY are literal satan for criticizing YOU...

    No, but in all seriousness, the mere fact that in your head you are struggling to be fair is CLEARLY a lot more than what they're doing. This isn't about you being a Better Person (I do believe you are but that's beside the point) it's about their concerns not really making a lot of sense and you not deserving to beat youself up about them.
     
    • Like x 2
  12. kmoss

    kmoss whoops

    So, jumping in on what words mean to me:
    ok, hey, that's cool. yeah, Team Effort and all that. We should try to be pleasant. (Ignoring, also, that she seems to use words that have pretty vague definitions. Pleasant: like, we smile more at each other on a daily basis? ??) Being pleasant doesn't really hurt. That's cool.

    ok, so for one, i can read the first sentence two ways. "have to live together" as meaning that neither of us want to and it's something that we're forcing ourselves through, or "have to live together" as a way to try to get on the same page with your kid, like "yeah i know, it sucks but it's ok", kind of commiserating and trying to bond. I'm going with the latter because I'm going to try to not immediately be pissed at your mom.
    And then there's a suggestion, followed by a sort of concrete example. put in more effort = doing what she says. It's still vague, and she doesn't do concrete examples, really, which would bug me. I think I read that you don't clean your room? I have definitely had similar interactions on the topic of cleaning rooms, haha, but that's only one, so far, and it's not really a big thing. But, putting in more effort as a suggestion doesn't really help at all. Either you're putting in as much effort as you can or you aren't, and she's not really the one who's qualified to determine that. (spoiler, it's you)

    dingdong that's wrong. she just took the "we" entirely out of team and pushed it all on you. she started the conversation out as "it's us against the world" and it turned into "these are things you have to do because i cannot do anything"

    meanwhile, still wrong. and then the "are you even listening to me right now?" is a way for her to be more in control of the situation. you have two options: you can say "yes", which she can take to mean tacit agreement of her policy, or you can say "no", which would be very not pleasant by the rules of her monologue, and confirms that you're a bad person. And she did take that "yes" as an agreement of the entire conversation, because that last bit was her agreeing to (vague) terms she came up with without your input at all.

    also, yes, gotta agree with @wixbloom re:your tendency to actively try to frame yourself as in the wrong automatically.
     
    • Like x 8
  13. Wiwaxia

    Wiwaxia problematic taxon

    Also a non-comprehensive overview of the ways in which this is bullshit.
    Again, nothing concrete for you to do except "when i ask you to do something, maybe try doing it" which if followed through on means that any saying no counts as "not making an effort" or "not being pleasant" which... :excalibur: And also conveys a lack of respect for you to make your own decisions and priorities about your time and spoons.

    Being "more pleasant" or making "more effort" on the other hand have absolutely no metrics, no ways to do the thing, no analysis of specific problems. If your mom has specific things she would like you to do then she's expecting you to read her mind - which is not going to happen and is bullshit. She's put you in an unwinnable situation - you can burn yourself to the ground putting in effort you can't afford to spend or eat yourself rather than be unpleasant and you still have no idea if it will be good enough. It might be! Who knows! But it will only be blind luck if it is.
    Also what moss said, it's all "we (by which i mean you)" - at no point does she offer to make any sort of effort - she explicitly says she can't - or even consider that the problem is not entirely you, but she still frames everything as "we" so it looks like it's something you're all doing together and that everyone can agree upon.

    "Are you even listening to me right now?" conveys an utter lack of respect, demands you engage without giving any opportunity to respond, is infantilizing while also being a shitty fucking thing to do to kids, and is generally so far beyond the pale I'm having trouble articulating why.
     
    • Like x 5
  14. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    For more context; I was saying "yes" or "okay" after pretty much every sentence she said. The "are you listening" question was like prompted by me hesitantly and repeatedly giving the same short response, and also because I glanced over at my computer screen for a moment just before she said it, while she was still talking to me, because I was thinking about writing it down and also because people were pinging my Skype.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2016
  15. Wiwaxia

    Wiwaxia problematic taxon

    Yes, I know. Still absolutely not cool.
     
  16. kmoss

    kmoss whoops

    oh right! that was something i meant to talk about

    ok so she starts out the conversation as very "we're all in this together!", so it's like, teamwork! we can do this!, and then she continues demanding things of you, absolves herself of all responsibility, and offers you no chance to be involved.

    at the end, she treats you like a child. Except it's kind of a caricature of how i would have a parent treat a child in a story if i wanted to point out that the parent doesn't really care about the child's opinions.
     
    • Like x 4
  17. Wiwaxia

    Wiwaxia problematic taxon

    Also, placing my bets now: if you do anything she doesn't like, she'll use this "agreement" that you had no say in to bludgeon you - like "you promised you would do better."
     
    • Like x 4
  18. wixbloom

    wixbloom artcute

    Which makes it more absurd, not less, to ask if you were listening.
     
    • Like x 5
  19. BlackholeKG

    BlackholeKG I saw you making fire

    One of the big problems I have between my parents is I feel that they still treat me like a child. They kinda say that they don't, and then they insist on treating me like I'm (edit: actually "incompetent" was a bad word... childlike/incapable of doing things sensibly/myself? Which is true to a degree in some areas, but.), and calling me a "kidult", and refusing to acknowledge that I am a "proper adult". And when I say "I don't think you treat me like an adult" they either sort of imply that they do or else they say that I don't act like an adult so I am not treated like one, which from their perspective is fine because it is Actually How Things Are. (It's a big thing with my Dad, the kidult thing).

    The "I don't think you treat me like an adult, and I think that you should" was a big issue that my mum had with the contents of my letter that I wrote, which she was so upset by.

    For the sake of clarity, actually, here are the contents of that letter, which I typed up and handed to them two months ago when we were having another blowup, and wanted me to be more open and communicate what was wrong, so I tried to with this:

    Fake edit: The letter was too long for this post so I stuck it on Pastebin.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2016
  20. Carnivorous Moogle

    Carnivorous Moogle whose baby is this

    jesus. my mom was... well, my mom, and she made way more effort at respectful, constructive conversation than this, even if she did always end up railroading/ shutting everything down when it came time for her to accept some responsibility. even for her it took a mile or two of train tracks to get there. DDD:
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2016
    • Like x 3
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