I had a relatively good relationship with my mother but in my 20's and 30's I had a bad habit of being too busy for her. Either working or playing I was off doing things and not returning her calls. I lost her about 18 months ago and now I beat myself up for it.
I'm posting this here because this site caters to a crowd of people who tend to be workaholics. I've read comments here from people saying their mothers came to see them but they were too busy working to spend any time with them. At the end of your time on this planet it won't be the code you wrote or the marketing materials you worked on that you will remember. It will be the family and friends you spent time with.
I lost her about 18 months ago and now I beat myself up for it.
I am sorry to hear that :(.
The thing with parents is that they were always there (maybe not always there for you, but I mean present in your world) since your birth. For a long time in my life I didn't even consider that there would be a time without my parents. Obviously, you know rationally. But it does not feel that way.
Both my parents have now passed 65 (which was traditionally the retirement age in my country, and therefore sort of a milestone) and I have recently really started pondering that statistically they will only live for another 13-18 years.
We have been abroad for 5 years, but the age of our parents has been one of the important reasons to move close to our families again. We now see my parents weekly again (which our 6yo daughter also thoroughly enjoys) and my father in law every 1-2 months (outside COVID-19 times, because he lives across the border).
I am very happy that we made this choice regardless of what happens, so far we have had 1.5 years of much more regular visits and doing things together.
> At the end of your time on this planet it won't be the code you wrote or the marketing materials you worked on that you will remember. It will be the family and friends you spent time with.
But that's exactly why I'm working so hard on my side projects. I want desperately to be free from my 9-5 so I can have my 40 hours per week back...
At the same time, being free later won't give you back the time you don't have today. Neither my friends nor my parents will last forever.
A few things have driven that home for me recently. The world won't hold still while I try to change my life. And I have to work with that limitation, rather than race against it.
This. It is all about the right balance. Here is a good analogy that makes sense to me.
Going full-on penny pinching in the first half of your life, hoping to enjoy it later, is going to rob you of a ton of experiences that you won’t be able to experience later in life.
On the other end of this spectrum, throwing money around and living just for today, without long-term plans and savings, will rob you of a ton of experiences in the second half of your life. Mind you, very different experiences than the ones you were missing out on in the penny-pinching scenario.
So it all boils down to a solution that sounds really simple, which is what makes it really difficult to act on and execute. You just gotta balance those two approaches in such a way, that your experiences are maximized across the board.
But saying that isn’t really solving the problem for anyone, as that’s akin to the famous joke tutorial on how to draw an owl. Saying “just gotta balance is right” is like saying “ Step 1: draw 3 circles. Step 2: draw the rest of the owl.”
So in the end, there is no real concrete solution. The best we can get is a solid guideline of “balance things in order to maximize your overall experiences”, but the actual answer to how to properly balance things is different for every individual and is left for self-discovery.
Seconding this - I’ve heard plenty of people talk about how they were going to be financially independent early. I think it’s worked for exactly one of them and even they didn’t get that missed time back.
I am a workaholic who also loves his mother and has tormented himself with guilt for not calling her enough. Now 42, I've sort of come to terms with that guilt and realized there's a reason I keep mom at a distance. Talking to her is like groundhog's day, the same conversation every time. I do not look back and wish I had been having that conversation once per day instead of once per month.
I'm pretty sure on my deathbed I'm going to be glad I spent so much time working, because that's what makes me happy. When I look back on my life now, my most cherished memories are of times spent on my computer enthralled by a challenging project. Most of my memories involving family involve feeling bored and/or trapped, even though I do love them and have a good relationship with them.
I talked a lot with my mother, and as a result we could talk about pretty much anything, including stupid prototypes ^^ I think if I had only talked to her once or twice a year, she wouldn't have become as much of a friend and confidant as she was. If either of us repeated themselves a lot, the other would simply call them out on it.
Don't take this as me guilt tripping you though. People are different, and I'm not saying it's your fault that your family made you feel trapped. But where you can, be generous and patient. We'll all get old and find out why old people repeat themselves so much, if we get lucky.
Do you ever stop to consider what those conversations mean to her? I'm 43 and only started calling my parents more than once every couple weeks in the last 2 years. They tell me the same stories but that doesnt matter; their happiness is rooted in us sharing time together. I imagine they tell the same stories because as they are older they have fewer new things to share and they dont want our conversations to end. So they repeat something we talked about the week before.
But hey, if your feelings about your time and what's important to you trump having perspective on how someone else feels...
Would you be shocked to hear that I do stop to consider what the conversations meant to her? They mean she gets to vent about all the problems in her life she's had decades to fix, but has chosen not to, because it feels so much better to just complain about them to anyone who will listen. If you want to let your parents bring you down out of some sense of cultural obligation, good for you. I don't regret my choice to stop their cascade of misery before it reaches me.
The number of times you say "I" and "me" in this sentence tells me all I need to know about you and your priorities. Maybe think about your mother more than once a month.
If my comment implies I only think of my mother once a month, then I certain failed in writing it. I think of her constantly - I spent decades trying and failing to be a positive influence on her life, at great emotional cost to myself. It reached a point where I concluded I could not help her, and trying was self-destructive, so now I keep her at a distance. I've seen far too many people failing to thrive because they are chained to an obligation of selflessness. Given the spiteful tone of your comment, I sense you have probably left a lot of happiness on the table and wish to guilt others into doing the same. Sounds like my mother!
There’s a good story about the jar and the sand out there.
Fill the jar with sand and it’s full. No room for rocks and gravel.
But fill the jar with rocks and it’s full, yet you can still pour the gravel. It goes into tiny holes between the rocks. The now even fuller jar still has room for the sand finding those tiny crevices between the gravel and the rocks.
The rocks are your family and your health. The gravel is your job and other pursuits. The sand is social media and netflix.
Now here’s the kicker: You can still go and pour a glass of beer in the jar. It saturates the sand and gravel and finds room.
Because there’s always time for a beer with friends.
Talk to your Mother before it’s too late. I lost mine last summer and today is heartbreaking. All of the times I could’ve spoken to her, or made a difference in her life, are flashing before my eyes today, and it’s a sad go. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
My biological mother died yesterday. I didn’t know her as well as I would have liked to because I found her only three years ago, but I loved her, and now I wish I’d called her much more often than I actually did. I thought I’d have many years to get to know her but I was wrong.
Pretty sure my mother has Borderline Personality Disorder, which causes a lot of strain when talking with her. A lot of projected anger and manipulation. There are very justifiable reasons to refrain from contact with your parents, so do not let a holiday endanger your mental well-being.
>My brother, nine years older than me, cut ties definitively and decisively. When I was 19 years old, he got married, leaving our mother and father behind. While my brother built a new family for himself, he remained close with me. His wife and in-laws welcomed me at every holiday table. I have never faulted my brother for his approach. Some parents commit unforgivable sins. We do not owe our affection to those who share our DNA but have not earned a place in our lives.
I was in the same boat as you.
A parent's bpd is hard to endure as a child and as I grew up I was always scared that I would inherit this trait.
Thankfully I did not.
I got to reconnect with my mom in a small way prior to her death and I feel good that I made that effort.
I'm still pissed off about all those wasted years but I did what I could.
Bpd is a horrible condition.
For everyone involved
.
But also do your part for the long run. You don’t want to regret talking to your mother when she has passed. That’s also bad for a lot people’s mental health. It’s important to find that balance.
You don't have to "do your part". Your part is living a healthy life. Take whatever steps necessary to make that happen, even if that means cutting contact with your parents.
For most people, even with shitty parents, your still parents sacrificed for you and raised you. A loyal human would not abandon them without great reason. Cutting contact should be a last resort, even if that means slightly worse mental health for yourself. Yes, you do owe them some minimum of respect and kindness if they showed you the same in raising you. That leads to better outcomes for society.
I’m up voting because I want to hear this side of the argument. I guess your point is that most people’s experience isn’t that bad, and they owe their parents.
Sure, so it can just be a matter of balancing how they treat you and your family vs basic decency and the benefit of merely maintaining contact and having them around as grandparents for your kids. Everyone’s experience and tolerance is different.
I don’t think we necessarily owe our parents. They made the conscious decision to have us and raise us, that ought to be a reward in it self.
I certainly will the best I can for my kids, but I don’t want them to think they owe me anything. This is especially true if I am (unknowingly or unconsciously) treating them or their family very badly.
It’s replies like this that show a total ignorance for mental health and human dignity. You truly have no idea what some people experience inside their own homes and as a result, in their minds. Please do not listen to this person if you are experiencing problems with family. Get help and educate yourself.
Your highest duty is to your own self and the people you care about. That may or may not include the people who raised you. You can define and be loyal to family that you choose.
I've been trying to find balance for decades. The other side also has to be capable of stability and balance, which has never been demonstrated as a priority for my mom. It feels as though she is incapable of it.
You know they say that if you go to prison the longer you stay... more and more people start abandoning you just because of time. I'm talking about over a period of 10-20 years. Eventually contact is lost because everyone moves on.
First your girlfriend stops visiting, then your wife, then your kids.
They say the one connection that stays constant are your parents. If you're in jail for 20 years your parents will love you till the day you die and that love never fades. No one will ever love you as much as your parents.
The connection is one way unfortunately. Children will never love their parents as much as their parents love them.
As bad as your relationship is with your parents. Once they're gone, you're pretty much alone.
You obviously haven't met my mother. Every time I see my mom these days she's asking for money for drugs or is too busy wrapped in her phone to have a conversation.
And I know plenty other people whose love for their parents far outweighs the love their parents show in return. Mother's Day is always a slog for me as I internally sort my desire for respect and sense of humanitarian duty.
If you're making a general rule, I would refrain from using absolutisms like "never" which alienate the outliers like myself and invalidate your statement.
It's deeper than drugs. The drug problem is a symptom of the greater problem: selfishness and complete lack of responsibility.
Maybe what you say is true. Tell me about your situation.
I know that when someones parents are toxic and abusive they need to be cut off.
However, for many parents when the situation is reversed they do not have a choice. The love is too great and the parents have to stick with the child until the very very end.
If you murdered someone, a good number of parents will never abandon you. They will give up everything to help you including their own lives.
Do you have a friend or someone other than your parents who will stick with you no matter what? Tell me about it.
> As bad as your relationship is with your parents. Once they're gone, you're pretty much alone.
Absolutely untrue. If your parents are toxic and damaging, you should cut them from your life. Some people can't live healthy lives if they keep contact with their abusive parents.
I'm in total agreement with you. If your parents are toxic, dump them for sure. Not every parent is like my description, I'm just describing a generality that describes the majority.
Despite this, I truly believe the statement below:
If you don't have parents that will stick with you while you're still in prison for 30 years, then you don't have anyone on the face of this earth who will do this for you. You are alone.
By alone I mean who in the world will help you if you're a psychopathic killer who enjoys torturing animals and people? Who is the last person on the face of the earth who will not give up on you?
Your parents, that is if you have parents that love you this way. Many don't but many do.
Every single one of your other relationships relies on effort by you to maintain. If you violate certain societal norms all bets are off. All relationships are basically just mutual trade agreements except for the parent - child bond. It's a cynical world view but it's real, there are lines everywhere that you have to make efforts not to cross because you're aware that if those lines are crossed people will abandon you.
I mostly posted because I feel a lot of people have bad relationships with parents that actually do love them but for various other reasons (psychological problems, poverty, stress, drugs etc... ) ended up just having a bad relationship with their parents.
I think it's absolutely worth it to try and establish contact and maintain a relationship if you feel that the relationship problems are superficial and underneath it all your parents do love you.
In that article, the mother lost contact with both of her children. It is not a trivial situation to be in when both children don't want contact. She must have done many things that were really serious and really horrible. But her last email she wrote that she loves both of them no matter what, and I think that is real.
What I am saying is that as imperfect as people are as much damage and toxicity they have done, if you sense that underneath it all there's genuine love then it's absolutely worth maintaining that relationship because you're never going to get someone to love you like this again. If true love even exists, it can only exist from parent to child.
It seems like you're having trouble either understanding or believing how bad some mothers actually are. What about the ones that leave their baby in a dumpster? If that kid grows up does it have an obligation to try and maintain a relationship with its mother?
Abusive parents are one of the most tragic and debilitating sources of trauma there is. Many people are doomed to suffer this trauma for their entire lives despite their best efforts to move on. Please don't encourage these people to reconnect with their parents. You are opening old wounds and I don't think you understand how deep they are.
Have some compassion for the poor guy. People with regular parents literally cannot imagine what growing up with abusive parents is like. When you try to explain you just draw a total blank, it's like taking a blind man to an exhibition of paintings.
The fellow is blind, there is nothing that can be done about his blindness. Let him continue to be blind.
Read my other comments. I'm not disagreeing with you or the other poster. There's a possible misunderstanding in what I'm saying here.
We're all blind in certain sense. I'm thinking people like you who were possibly abused cannot see the other side of the coin. Can you imagine a bond so strong that for parents with abusive/toxic children there is no choice.
If my child was a psychopathic killer, I have to love him and support him until the bitter end. I have many choices in life such as the choice of committing a crime or refraining from committing a crime. The choice of risking my own life to save another or watching someone else die.
For my child, I do not have a choice.
If a parent-child bond exists, I think it's the strongest bond in all human relationships. Many mothers describe it as taking a piece of your soul and letting it walk around outside of your body. It doesn't exist in all cases but when it does exist there's nothing else like it.
But obviously not every parent and child will have this bond, I'm sorry if you or anyone reading this didn't.
I'm thinking people like you who were possibly abused cannot see the other side of the coin
We see how regular parents behave towards their children just fine, thankyouverymuch. We have eyes in our heads. You, however, as your reply shows, are congenitally unable to consider that some parents maltreat their children and that these parents look to the outside world like well-adjusted people. (If they didn't, relatives/the State/whoever) would have stepped in long ago.
No, I don't know how they train psychologists and psychiatrists to even perceive that problem. I suggest you look into that and do not come back until you have done so.
>We see how regular parents behave towards their children just fine, thankyouverymuch. We have eyes in our heads.
And so do all regular people thank you very much. My grandparents abused my parents. I know all about it. I've been told every story. Do not think you have privileged knowledge just because you've been abused? Do I think I have privileged knowledge just because I haven't? No. I don't. But I can honestly say that I don't know first hand what it's like to be abused just like you don't know first hand what it's like to have a parent love you unconditionally.
One of my parents ran away from home for being abused. He had to live on the streets until he was 17 before he was able to make something of himself and become self sufficient.
>You, however, as your reply shows, are congenitally unable to consider that some parents maltreat their children and that these parents look to the outside world like well-adjusted people.
Did you read any of the posts I wrote? I am literally only talking about parents who LOVE their children. NEVER did I say that child abuse doesn't exist. These are completely different things. I even went further to emphasize this point multiple times.
>That's EOD here.
You know what my grandparents said to my dad before they beat him? "End of discussion."
I'm not even slightly kidding here, this is literally the what he said and the attitude he had... my way or the highway. Additionally, this was in Asia, you think there's child protection services back then in Asia? A kid was owned by their parents and beating kids was a part of culture. Beating kids until they're unconscious was probably illegal but given the culture almost always overlooked 99.99% of the time.
Watch where you take your arguments because the hatred, lack of open mindedness, lack of emotional control, lack if willingness to discuss things and lack of empathy for people who disagree with you is a precursor to abuse.
>It seems like you're having trouble either understanding or believing how bad some mothers actually are. What about the ones that leave their baby in a dumpster? If that kid grows up does it have an obligation to try and maintain a relationship with its mother?
Your assumption is incorrect. Where in any of my posts did I say that people are under obligation to maintain a relationship with parents? I absolutely NEVER said this.
This is what I said and I quote verbatim:
"I think it's absolutely worth it to try and establish contact and maintain a relationship if you feel that the relationship problems are superficial and underneath it all your parents do love you."
This was the situation I was in. This is the situation the person in the NYTimes article is describing. I'm just keeping on topic here.
Look there are definitely horrible parents out there. I'm fortunate to not have had parents that would beat the shit out of me or torture me. I'm just keeping in line with the topic of the NYTimes article. If you don't feel "your parents love you" then absolutely do not open up a relationship.
Basically bad relationships with parents who still ultimately love you is the theme that the article and I am targeting.
If you don't have that underlying relationship with your parent then don't try to reconnect. You be the judge, I'm not trying to ask people to reconnect with parents who are psychopathic. I'm asking people to reconnect with parents who mean well and actually do love you but have ultimately made grave mistakes in the past.
Never did I say every parent and every situation is like this. I am saying for THIS situation and the situation described in the article it is appropriate.
Depends on your definition of “family”, I guess, so I wouldn’t throw this around as a universal wisdom.
For a lot of people, their family is something that, indeed, is the closest relationship they will ever have. For others, their family is simply the environment and people they grew up with, and that doesn’t always mean it was pleasant or relevant as an adult. Those people just make “adoptive families” with closest friends, but that isn’t typically referred to as “families” of any kind. And i am not talking only about scenarios where the actual families were abusive or anything like that.
Here goes a personal example of the latter that, I believe, is pretty common. I grew up fine. My parents cared for me, provided for me as a kid. They weren’t “abusive” or anything like that. I really appreciated all the care, despite a lot of their failings as parents. I have zero hatred, anger, or any other ill feelings towards my family. We have always been on really good terms. Just mentioning that, so it is clear i am not making my point from an edge case position of someone who was abused by their actual family and now despises them.
But as i grew up, i realized that people in my family were just not pleasant or reasonable adults to be around (and no, i am not talking in terms of political opinions or some other typical stuff teenagers on reddit tend to whine about). I still visit them, i still spend time with them. But it is more of a sign of appreciation, gratitude, and respect, at this point. I do not enjoy spending prolonged periods of time with them, i cannot share my deepest secrets with them, i cannot hope for them to be understanding of a lot of things and decisions in my life, and i cannot get any good advice from them either. And mind you, i am not even in a situation where i need to “come out” to my parents (or anything like that), we are talking about much more insignificant things.
However, I do have a few extremely close friends who have persisted in my life for a really long time, and with them, I can absolutely share all those things and receive a useful advice. And they count on me to provide the same for them. Our relationship with each other is way more than the “respectful sign of appreciation” kind of a relationship i have with my actual family. But to me, those few extremely close friends are what i would count as the kind of people who are my family. And in that sense, they are there for me in all the ways that my actual family is not.
TL;DR: while your actual family can be what the family is supposed to be about, this is far from being always the case, and your few very close friends can fulfill that role for each other in ways that your actual family failed to.
It's not because they are not your favorite people that they aren't your family all of the sudden.
Your mom by birth is and stays your mom. They can be replaced, but there won't be another "mom" in the blood bound sense.
There can be less than optional cases concerning social issues, it doesn't mean it is not true.
If you break with a friend, as everyone here has done. It is a lot easier as there is no recurring encounters ( edge-cases here apply ofc)
TLDR: A lot of people seem to misinterpret social issues, while I meant the blood bound of my comment. The family ( in that sense) stays, the relation can go bad, ofc. As is the same with friends, but the family relation isn't disappearing.
Example: People are more intrigued to see their birth father/mother, which is perfectly possible they have never seen and have been replaced.
There is no factual social relation, but it was and is their parent/family.
Example 2: You are still going to visit your family although you don't have a deep relation with them anymore. That's perfectly fine and actually affirms my statement.
If one of your closest relationships suddenly has children and his priorities could change. It's perfectly possible that your relation will lessen over a 2-year period ( eg. His wife is always joining and you don't have deep conversations anymore, so you meet him less, ...).
Ps. If you want to challenge the statement.
Who else are you visiting outside of your family because of "respect" :) . Do you do something similar for a friend/acquaintance? :)
Or if you would have money problems. Would you stay at your parents or your friends place as last resort. Who would you ask first/feel most comfortable with asking? :) ( Edge-cases are possible ofc)
I haven't downvoted you btw, I think you bring up good points with this post. I guess my question is, how do adoptive (i.e., not blood-related) parents fit into your argument?
I assume you treat them the same as the blood-related ones, since one of your main points was about reoccurring encounters, which is the aspect that should differ at all between adoptive vs. blood-related?
P.S. not trying to argue against your points, I am just trying to clarify, so I can rough out the edges of my understanding of what you said.
I'm posting this here because this site caters to a crowd of people who tend to be workaholics. I've read comments here from people saying their mothers came to see them but they were too busy working to spend any time with them. At the end of your time on this planet it won't be the code you wrote or the marketing materials you worked on that you will remember. It will be the family and friends you spent time with.