Describe your relationship with your parents.*
Growing up, I never really had the best relationship with my parents. I wanted a relationship with my mother the way most girls my age had with theirs. It just wasn't in the cards for me. I never could confide in her without her telling someone. I couldn't complain about whatever teenage drama was happening to me without her flipping it around to talk about her own stories. I couldn't talk about sex or drugs or love, etc. because she would either get weird and want a lot of details (and then tell my dad all about it and I'd get grounded), or she would tell me she didn't have time to talk and we'd never touch the subject again. The same is true today. I still can't talk to her about anything because it becomes about her, regardless of what it is, or she minimizes it. When I was raped, she told me "You just wanted a reason to cheat on [ex-boyfriend]." When I miscarried, she told me "Well, it was probably a girl and you keep saying you want another boy...". But telling her she said any of those things makes her mad and she claims I "dreamed it up" just to be cruel to her.
My dad, before he started having memory loss, was someone I could talk to and trust with secret information. He would listen quietly, occasionally offering a piece of advice, and I knew he wouldn't tell Mom. However, when Mom learned I had been confiding in Dad instead of her, she threw a fit and told him since they were married, they weren't to keep secrets from each other. It was the last I could go to him for consolation or guidance.
It's lonely, in a way, to not be able to go to my parents for aid or encouragement. At the same time, it taught me how not to be for my own children. I want them to have a relationship with me where they can trust me and confide in me without being judged or insulted or laughed at.
*My parents aren't all bad, but I've come to terms with them as they are and my relationship with them is just going to lack the typical parent-child intimacy.
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