Were your parents affectionate/ kind/ caring/ nice to each other?

[Ecdysis]

My parents' marriage was... a crock of sh*t... I guess is the technical term.

My dad definitely has PTSD from childhood trauma himself.

My mother has... well, f*ck knows... even after so many years of therapy, we're all still stumped... Let's just say she was really f*cked up in a way that's disturbing and difficult to un-pick...

Anyway... back in the day... my mother actually gave my father an ultimatum "Either you marry me, or this relationship is over".

It was the 70's and my dad wasn't keen on marriage. God knows why his spidey senses didn't tell him to leave... He did not dodge that bullet...

Then, once they were married, she gave him the ultimatum of "Either we have children, or this marriage is over." Again, he relented.

He was a kind soul tho... so although it was her that insisted that they have children, it was him that looked after us.

I've always said to people "My Dad was my Mum" cos he cooked for us, he held us, he read to us, he showed warmth and caring and love, whereas she was just weird and horrible and manipulative.

Even in my earliest memories, I don't remember their marriage ever not being over... I just remember them co-existing.

I don't recall them ever being kind to each other, any signs or words of warmth, any caring, any affection, any mutual repsect or interest, or anything.

They just co-existed and parented us, each in their own way.

Eventually the marriage got worse and worse, lots of fighting and by the time they were getting divorced, I actually remember telling the court appointed cousellor when I was 10 or 11 that I thought it was "for the best" that they separate. It was a really young counsellor... I remember him being confused because kids are "supposed to" say they want their parents to stay together "no matter what".

I'm wondering what this experience of my parents "as a couple" taught me about life and relationships?

I knew from other sources that friendships, romance, being a couple can be positive and nice... So I don't think it taught me that "all relationships" are crap...

But it's starting to dawn on me that this thing of "no kind words, no kind gestures... ever, at all" between them - that that must've had some kind of weird effect on me...

 

[Ecdysis]

Okay... one thing that it "taught" me is this (right or wrong):

Women want to "settle down and have a family" more than men do (well, most women and most men).

So women will convince men to opt into the whole family and white picket fence thing... and then men will often feel trapped in that and wish they'd chosen differently.

Oh... and I know why my parents were so... cold to each other... My father only realised how abusive my mother actually is, once he saw her interacting with us kids... When it was just the two of them, he didn't "get" it.

But once we kids were there, he was horrified by her treatment of us, but by that time he felt trapped because he cared about us and he realised that if he left, back then no family court would've given him custody. So he stayed in the marriage to look after us, but he felt pure resentment for her.

What that taught me was: don't have children because you never know what your partner will turn out to be like and being in a custody battle with an abusive ex is the worst thing on earth, so spare yourself that.

Also: it taught me that "family" doesn't mean anything. Blood is not thicker than water. True family is the people who you choose to be your family because you love them and want them in your life. The people you're related to on paper... Can just be people you coldly co-exist with.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of right now...

 

[OceanSpray]

Between the screaming, slamming doors, punching walls, shoving, slapping, cheating, manipulating the court system, stalking, stranding, financial abuse, probable rape, and spurts of jail time I’m sure there were sweet moments in there somewhere. They had us kids somehow.

Sorry, I know that probably wasn’t helpful. But yes our parents relationship (if there is one) does inform a lot of our view on significant others.

 

[Givrali]

I guess they were very affectionnate but my mother died when i was a child and i have complete amnesia (minus few non significative memories) about her. My father always talked about her very fondly. I can't aks him because he's dead too now

 

[Sideways]

I don't recall them ever being kind to each other, any signs or words of warmth, any caring, any affection, any mutual repsect or interest, or anything.

This is my parents.

They tend to equate expression of emotions as, at best, socially inappropriate, and at worst, a sign of selfishness and poor upbringing.

It very definitely left an imprint on me and the way I interact with others.

In my current job, I work very closely with a large team, and 3 women in particular. It has been a real eye-opener, and a fantastic learning opportunity for me (albeit a little late in life!). They are generous with their emotions. Towards their children, and towards each other. They laugh, hug, offer compliments, and share positive feelings about each other, with each other.

It made me feel incredibly uncomfortable and out of place at first. But after observing it for a while, and seeing that it seemed to make them happier individuals, I’ve been trying to do the same thing.

Initially, tbh, I totally sucked at it. And my brain was really persistent with ‘this is weird, this is wrong, how dare you, you should behave better than this…’. But it’s growing on me.

And…it’s actually really nice!

 

[Ecdysis]

I know you work with animals @Sideways and I've always found animals a super helpful guide for "normal healthy behaviour and emotions". I mean, sure, there are some traumatised animals or animals that have behavioural issues too... but it's generally quite easy to spot a healthy/ normal cat or dog and observe them interacting...

I find with humans there are so many social rules/ norms about what is desirable/ undesirable behaviour, that it can become so skewed... Where, as you describe, people repressing all emotion can be viewed as "positive". And in that human social context, I find it can be quite difficult to untangle it all and to work out am I weird for having emotions or are others weird for repressing them...??

When it gets that muddled, for me, turning to normal healthy animals and checking in with them as to what is normal behaviour, what are normal displays of emotion and affection is sooooo helpful and grounding for me. I think I'd be a LOT more nuts if I'd hadn't had animals as a basic guide in my life...

And how cool that you've got workmates showing you a totally different culture of emotivity, too! : )

I must say I've found different cultures to be so interesting re emotions too... My country of birth is very much about repressing emotions - emotions are bad and messy - the country I grew up in is much more down to earth and sane and normal about emotions - and I find it so interesting to see different cultures that are very expressive and affectionate... it's so stunning to see that there is a totally different, utterly valid way to live... and that my birth culture's rule about repressing emotions is tooootally arbitrary and weird and that they are just plain MISSING OUT...

 

[Friday]

My parents were/are amazing.
My grandparents were amazing.
My aunts/uncles are amazing.

 

[whiteraven]

They didn't even talk to each other. They spoke through me.

 

[Ecdysis]

it's starting to dawn on me that this thing of "no kind words, no kind gestures... ever, at all" between them - that that must've had some kind of weird effect on me...

I'm starting to realise that witnessing this for years on end, "normalised" it for me, that this is a valid way for people to live - to just co-exist.

However, if I analyse it more deeply, then from today's vantage point I can see that both my parents were deeply unhappy with the situation and that it was making them both make all sorts of weird, unhealthy, unhelpful choices as they attempted to escape the situation and get unstuck from that dynamic.

So what seemed weirdly, eeriely "normal" to me as a child, was actually a strained impasse, a calm before the eventual storm, where everything fell badly, messily apart.

I guess in that initial phase my parents were both trying to keep things sort of stable as it dawned on both of them that they'd made a terrible mistake in hooking up and in starting a family together.

They were both trying to keep the facade going, trying to pretend that things were okay, when they knew that they weren't. And they were making us kids play along. Pretend that things are fine. I think that became a major focus at that time - the gap between the reality of the situation and the narrative about it was widening and we kids were stuck in the middle of this weird dynamic and forced to be complicit in the "pretend it's fine" game.

 

[somerandomguy]

My parents were very loving towards each other. (Not always so nice to their kids, but it was the 1970s so no one questioned the utility of spanking and yelling.) Unfortunately, my father is a man of strong opinions, and one thing he frequently opined on was how divorced people were "quitters" and "losers," which was a major factor in my deciding to stay in a crappy relationship that would eventually turn abusive.