I have spoken to her since, and we're fine now. Even though she doesn't see it this way, I think I did her a favor by leaving her...she was better off with someone else. She's such a good person that she never held a grudge against me.

I have tried many things, I think the damage done from my parents was irreparable.

That's GOOD!!! I'm so happy that things are patched up between you and that woman. She really does sound like a great person. Also, don't worry about whether she's better off without you or not. If she's willing to let you back in her life, then she obviously thinks you're worth the effort, right?

As for you parents... who knows? If you want to patch things up between your parents, then you might as well give it a shot. If you don't, nobody will think less of you. As someone who also didn't experience the best childhood from his parents, I know getting closure with them can be very hard to do. Even after they apologized to me and changed their ways, I still hated them for years afterwards. Forgiving and moving past things like that is so hard...

I don't think that you'll find many couple, even good ones, that are in a state of perfect happiness. I don't really know a single couple that have been living in a state of constant, total happiness. Lover's quarrels and spates are the rule rather than the exception, and I feel that its sometimes a sign that the relationship is working: silence kills relationships, while talk, even loud talk, keeps communication open.

How do you feel that your parent's differences affected you in an irrepairable way?

Regards,
IO

Well I'm reading a book right now that sort of explains effects of wacky parents. There was no love in my house, only controlling b****es, so my whole life I was basically a robot without any personality. They did not want me to express my thoughts or talk about sensitive issues at all, they basically wanted me to be naive and just try to excel academically. They did not care if I had no friends, or went out. My parents were abusive to each other and I always had to watch it. All in all they are very cold, unhappy people who feel the need to take out their grievances on me because I'm the weak victim. On the outside they want to make it look like we're a normal family when in fact we have many secrets and do not want the outside world to know about it.

i don't know how old you are. if you're young than maybe this isn't as easy as it would be if you were grown. but if you're an adult, just be done with your parents. if they're a hindrance on you, then honestly, you don't need them. you dont pick your parents and sometimes they turn out to be shitty ones. but you can't go blaming them forever. especially if you're an adult. if you're an adult, then your problems are solely on you. i never had a father. my mom was all i had. she's a good person. caring, loving, my friends always liked her, we were always open with eachother, etc, etc. but she still fucked my life up in other ways. maybe it was because of her disease, maybe it was because of other reasons. i was angry and bitter for a time but im over that now. i've been through my hardships and she's been through hers. we were kinda homeless for a while and that will really fuck with your self esteem. she wasn't doing anything about it, just me, and i hated her for a long time during that. but i never held it against her afterwards because i had made it out and she was sick. mentally and physically. your parents gave you life and if that's all they ever did for you, then do something yourself with it. if you think of yourself as a "weak victim" then its your job to change that, not theirs. when you stop blaming your parents for your shortcomings, you'll be making some progress. the more you find a scapegoat to blame your problems on, the harder it is to do anything about it. before i got where am today in life, i was hanging out with the dregs of society. druggies, drug dealers, gang bangers, and just bums. druggies are the worst. anything that goes wrong in their life, they can never ever blame themselves or the fact that their life revolves around scoring the next clip, or whatever their drug of choice may be. it's always someone else's fault and so they keep snorting, they keep smoking, and they keep losing their jobs, or going to court fto keep custody of their kids, etc. most of them blame their parents as well and nothing ever gets better. the gist of what im trying to say is, as long as you keep blaming your parents, you're as much to blame as they are because your success in beating whatever problems you may have in your life depends on THEM changing, not you. you need to be the catalyst for change because no one else is going to be. it's your life, not theirs. everybody has hardships. you need to think "what can I do to change this" not "so and so did this to me" because as long as you stay in that mindset, nothing's going to change.

My God, lonelyloser... your life sounds very similar to my own. For most of my life, my primary purpose was to study. It didn't matter whether I had friends, girlfriends, or any type of social network. Failure to bring home the desired grades resulted in some pretty rough times for me at home; I never wore any shorts, because my legs were always covered in large bruises, some a foot long in diameter (and getting hit was the easy part). I still don't wear shorts in public to this day. I guess some old habits die hard, huh? Anytime I started performing poorly academically, my parents blamed it on the school and I was moved to a different one (which was strange, because I was still punished for not doing well). Consequently, I made very few friends, and didn't have any real ones until I was about 14-15. I got so fed up with making friends and losing them again, that I ended up sitting in the corner and drawing whenever I came to a new place. My parents also failed to teach me a lot of things, too; I didn't know how to tie my shoes or read a clock until I was 9. Until then, I walked around with big knots in my shoes (I was so socially inept and scared of people that I never asked anyone to show me). I barely spoke, and, when I did, it was with a lot of stammering and mumbling. My teachers, at the time, suspected that I might be mentally challenged. People in our social network thought we were a nice family, but a few of my neighbors knew that not all was good in the land of Oz; one even threatened to call Child Protective Services.

When I was 13, I got a chance to visit my extended family in Korea; everyone was so nice and warm to me. When I came back, I cried myself to sleep every night for a month. I saw the type of family that I could never have, and it broke my heart. Life was tolerable before, because misery was all I knew. After that visit, though, I knew that my childhood was vastly different from everyone else out there.

It's truly an unfortunate thing when we don't get to live those happy lives we so often hear about or see, huh, Lonelyloser? But I agree with Occipudding: dwelling on your life and putting yourself down will only lead to more anger and misery. The things that happened in your life aren't your fault. Your life wasn't destined to be a failure; it is whatever you make of it.

Making up with that girl seems like you're taking a big step in the right direction, and I hope you find the inner strength to take many more.

Yeah out of everyone in my fam I have the worst parents. I'm jealous of everyone else around me. I'm so sorry to hear about what u had to go through, I don't think any child should have to be subjected to that. Really what makes me mad is that my parents benefited from me always being a nerd and not doing anything out of line, but how did I benefit? This whole life has been a complete waste. I think of killing myself many times just to get back at my asshole parents. The only way that I can truly get back at them is to die. If I do, they'll still think that I was just a screw up and they won't blame anything on themselves, but at least they'll suffer in the way that I did. It's very hard for me to think that they did things because "they care" because my upbringing was so destructive. I really think they care more for themselves than me. If they really did care for me, they would have ensured that I was happy, but it was always more important what I projected on the outside. People have taken jabs at me my whole life, but I hate my parents the most. Maybe my life wasn't destined to be a failure, but I was surely destined to be depressed, lonely, and withdrawn.

I'm sorry you're unhappy with your parents and how they neglected you.. maybe they do care though? that's why they want you to get a good education so you can have a better life than they did. well >.> at least that's what my mom tells me all the time. In a way I was kind of neglected too, my parent's had an arranged marriage and they started to not get along as I was growing up. I saw my dad hit my mom a lot, and they would argue all the time. They are like enemies but they just had to stay together because it's wrong to divorce in my culture. I felt like my parents were indifferent towards me too.. because they were never really around(always working) and they aren't really expressive people(don't hug or say I love you or anything much at all). Now that I'm older I can see they were working hard to provide for my brother and me. My mom always emphasized for me to do well academically though because she wants me to succeed and do better. .. but still sometimes I feel like they don't really care, because it seems like money/status is way more important to them than me, and if I failed I would be useless to them. But I dunno, maybe your parents are like mine? Maybe they care, they just don't straight out say it. Ever tried talking to them about how you feel?

I've never been close to my parents. My father always made a joke out of matters instead of dealing with the issue, my mom always worked so I barely saw her. They were divorced before I was born and now live on opposite sides of the country (its just WONDERFUL taking a 6hr flight back and forth every year) They always debase the other in front of me 'your mother is a ****' "your dad ****** a *** while ******** on top of the *****" .....my mother tends to get slightly more creative. Because of their senseless banter I dont trust either of them or could care less if something happened to them. They have done nothing besides put a roof over my head and means to feed myself. I had to raise myself and deal with life on my own, whenever I got depressed their was noone to turn to and I was left to hurt myself in a vain attempt to deal with the emotional trauma. I blame all my problems on them and for the most part I know I;m right in my accusations. If they were there to raise me I would have had a better understanding of life, a shoulder to cry on, arms to hold me when I was in pain, an ear to listen to my misery instead of bottling it all up inside and bringing me to my current position in life, which suprisingly is still mostly sane, if a corrupted/abstract version of it.

This post was last modified: 04-03-2008 03:49 PM by Fulgrim.

i wish i could give you some useful advice lonelyloser, but i had a terrible relationship with my own people while they were alive. all i can say is that you should really try to move on (easier said than done, believe me) - they might have ruined your life up to now but why should you let them do it any more damage?