Ask HN: How's your relationship with your parent(s)?

I'm really successful. It shocks other people if I tell them the details about how bad my relationship was with my parents growing up, so I don't. I feel super lonely and alienated about it. I don't feel comfortable in the communities online where people talk about stuff like this because either I think their issue is too mild for them to understand my experience or I feel like my issues aren't bad enough to count. Someone once told me I seemed like a person who had never experienced personal hardships, ha. Only ever had one friend I could talk to about it. Wish I knew how to feel less lonely about it

I didn&#x27;t get along with my parents for a very long time, starting during the time I was in middle school (or before? I don&#x27;t know). I could list a thousand reasons why, with all of them blaming my parents, but in the end I have realized that life is just hard. My parents stuck together and raised me and they never abandoned me. While I had my share of troubles like anyone else, and for a long time it really affected me, I realize now it&#x27;s all part of being human.<p>I started getting along with my parents after I turned my life around in my late twenties. We talk more often now. During university we never talked. They probably wondered if I was even alive.<p>Keep talking to your parents though. Make the effort. They won&#x27;t be here forever.<p>&gt; I seem to be surrounded by peers with successful jobs and picture-perfect families.<p>I understand this feeling. I have a massive chip on my shoulder about people who seem to have perfect lives. I tell myself that everyone fights hard battles, but I don&#x27;t believe it.

My mom was the breadwinner for much of my primary and secondary school years, so when she got laid off from her job she took it as an early retirement. It was <i>bizarre</i> seeing her during the week and the daylight hours, when I was used to seeing her in the evenings and the weekends for years. We have a good relationship.<p>My dad has some of the worst self-esteem I&#x27;ve ever come across, and he&#x27;s also rife with anxiety. I have a hunch that he has un-diagnosed Aspergers, which would explain the countless examples of him missing social cues, saying things that are really off-color, seeing many situations as black and white, and seemingly having a lack of empathy when it comes to certain things that I&#x27;ve experienced first-hand. <i>Do</i> I love him? I guess, but over the years I&#x27;ve had to keep my distance from him.

I was born and raised devoutly Mormon, and have since left the religion. My mom and I were tight, and my dad and I butted heads, but we loved each other.<p>I graduated college, with their praise, I had kids, with their love and praise, but since leaving the church that they are still devout to, things fell apart.<p>I try to maintain a relationship, I video call once a week, text some in between, but I&#x27;m always greeted with my mom&#x27;s &quot;phone voice&quot;, which lets me know that she&#x27;s not as close to me as I want to be with her.<p>I love the Mormon church, and it will always be part of me, but there&#x27;s so much pressure on parents to have their kids remain, and I knew it would let my parents down. I disappoint my mom on a daily basis, and that&#x27;s a hard bridge to cross for a relationship.

They have their lives, I have mine. Sometimes you don&#x27;t understand each other&#x27;s behavior, but at some point in life everyone has to know for themselves what is right and wrong for them. We have never tried to impose our different views of the world on each other.<p>As a father, I have made it clear to my children that at some point they are responsible for themselves and of course they will get support if they get into trouble, but not for every mischief they get into.<p>They know I have had to learn my lessons in life the hard way and place a high value on freedom and self-sufficiency, and am willing to pay the price.<p>Just like my parents, I don&#x27;t need power plays out of character mediocrity to bolster a weak ego.

They&#x27;ve recently passed on, but I&#x27;m pretty dang old, so it&#x27;s ok.<p>My relationship with my mom was really strained, during my transition from living at home to college. Improved dramatically soon after.

I&#x27;m not all that comfortable writing about my relationship with my parents in an open forum especially because one of them is still alive and I have siblings, but you can probably trust me on the statement that most &#x27;picture-perfect families&#x27; aren&#x27;t.

My parents were quite distant and unavailable growing up, too busy leading their own lives to be a big part of mine. I didn&#x27;t have many friends either, so I was pretty depressed as a teen. My dad was really hard on me about &quot;my attitude&quot;. Yeah, I was kind of a snot, but I wasn&#x27;t out drinking or getting high, or being brought home by the cops or anything. I mostly just wanted to stay home and be online.<p>I was still living at home in university and got caught in the crossfire of their really messy divorce. I wound up not talking with my mom for years after. I stayed living with my dad for a bit, moved out with roommates for a bit, moved back in with my dad. While I was living with roommates I started talking with my mom again, and a bit after moving back in with my dad I left again and moved in with my mom. During all of this, I was failing classes. I wound up taking six years to do a four year CompSci degree and moved to a new city as soon as I found a programming job elsewhere. Took another 5 years (and another move to an even further away city) to slowly get out of my depression after that.<p>I&#x27;m mostly ok with my parents now. Call them every couple of weeks or so to chat for a while. Visit once in a while. The relationship is much healthier at a longer distance.<p>I could blame them for a lot of crap during my university years. My mental health was a dumpster. I did really poorly for a while there and it was a big struggle to finish my bachelors, but I&#x27;m glad I did in spite of every. I also think my mental health problems dragged on for years after, which really affected my job performance in my early career and held me back a lot. I&#x27;ve mostly righted the ship by now but it&#x27;s been a long road.

If you are from South&#x2F;East Asian country, most of the time you have very tight bond with your parents even as grown ups, I think that&#x27;s what make those cultures beautiful and valuable.

I experienced something very similar to your &quot;coming of age conflict&quot; so-to-speak, only mine began earlier and had certain... catalysts...<p>The short version of the story is that at this point in my life, that conflict eventually dissipated at some point. Perhaps my parent(s) arrived at a new inflection point. Perhaps they became more mature. Whatever it was, it seems they&#x27;ve at least come to terms with the fact that I&#x27;m going to pave my own way regardless of their thoughts and feelings on the matter. Ultimately, acknowledging that if they want a relationship with me it simply looks different than how they originally envisioned it.<p>If you ever care to share your story, I suggest doing just that. Therapy and simply talking through the issues that my experience cultivated allowed me to see things from a birds-eye view a bit better, and dissolve my ego from the situation. I&#x27;m all ears, FWIW, and I wish you the best of luck in finding peace somehow in your own sticky situation.

&quot;And for some reason, in real life I seem to be surrounded by peers with successful jobs and picture-perfect families.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m sure they aren&#x27;t. People show the things they want you to see and hide the ones they don&#x27;t want you to know about.

Read Passages by Gail Sheehy. Was close pre-teen, while a goody two-shoes, I pushed them away a bit teen years (most of which were spent away at school). Got rather frustrated with them early working&#x2F;married years but it recovered rather nicely afterwards. Now, as they&#x27;re long gone, would be nice to have them to talk to.<p>They had baggage which I ended up carrying a bit. Folks, don&#x27;t &quot;stay together for the kids&quot; as the kids know what&#x27;s going down. Balancing sux.

It’s complicated. They were very devoted parents, so my sisters adore them. But they’re quite religious and handled my coming out extremely poorly (definitely have some trauma from that). We have many philosophical disagreements which I’ve learned how to avoid. Now I think of them as friends—I’m not going to depend on them for anything, but we have a lot in common so I can legitimately have fun with them. I try to make it to their house for Scrabble night once a month.

It sad to read some of these comments.<p>People and even friends coming off as enlightened and&#x2F;or allowing political differences to divide key relationships.<p>Family used to mean more. I have like a six sense that it still does. Perhaps that&#x27;s why so many developers are depressed and&#x2F;or feel isolated. It&#x27;s really hard to know as there are many dynamics.<p>It would be interested if -- say you had a minor heart attack -- if family became suddenly more important?

Love &#x27;em. Jannah is under your mother&#x27;s feet

Honestly - not great.<p>We&#x27;ve never been super close. We are pretty vastly different w.r.t. politics but I&#x27;ve been the type of person to let it slide. With COVID and our newborn, the anti-vax approach they&#x27;ve had pushed us even further away. I haven&#x27;t seen them in years because they won&#x27;t vaccinate and I won&#x27;t (knowingly) let un-vaccinated, high-exposure (as in, going out to eat all the time, taking no precautions) people interact with my daughter until she can get vaccinated.<p>We just don&#x27;t see eye-to-eye on almost all things and I don&#x27;t have the patience to deal with it.

I read something once, along the lines of &quot;When I left home my father was so ignorant I couldn&#x27;t stand to be around him. A few years later, I was surprised at how much the old boy had learned.&quot; Something like that.<p>Basically - being out on my own, getting married, and having children let me understand my father much better.

I don&#x27;t like my parents and they are unhappy with me, but we aren&#x27;t dramatic people so it&#x27;s no problem. I used to be angry about my childhood, but as an adult I can understand how hard parenting is and don&#x27;t hate them anymore.

I miss them, I don&#x27;t speak to them.<p>Dad can&#x27;t stop lying to me.<p>Mom can&#x27;t stop trying to annoy me to relieve her misery.<p>They raised me in a High-Control-Cult (Jehovah&#x27;s Witnesses)<p>Both love me, both messed me up.

I read the book &quot;Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents&quot; last year, and that basically summed up my relationship with them. They were emotionally unavailable to me growing up, and very immature, and now I find it almost impossible to connect with them or feel any affection for them.

A bit of complications, but we do talk, and no one complain about the other that much.<p>PS: I am from the West.

Great! Hard growing up, but this corrected when I became independent

There is much wisdom in Philip Larkin&#x27;s &quot;This be the Verse&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.poetryfoundation.org&#x2F;poems&#x2F;48419&#x2F;this-be-the-verse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.poetryfoundation.org&#x2F;poems&#x2F;48419&#x2F;this-be-the-ver...</a><p>though I disagree with the conclusion.