This is my first post, probably first of many. Hello everyone!
I'm in my late 30s and getting ready to marry. I'm very interested in learning as much as I can about the life experiences of parents whose children have grown up to hate them, and it's my hope that I can offer some opinions of my own that might help confused parents better understand what happened with the attitudes of their adult children. Anyway, reading about the issues discussed here is what led me to this site. I read the thread at
http://www.momresponds.com/1381/my-children-hate-me/ which then points to this forum, so here I am.
My story in a nutshell: I am the oldest child in my family, and I fully expect to care for my mother when she's too old to be independent. My father left us when I was a toddler, in order to realize his career and live an exciting life overseas; he won't need my care or want it because my mother will be around. He started another family so his daughter (my half-sister) will care for him if he wants/needs it.
About my future wife: she is the middle child in her family, a wonderful and sweet person, but her family is full of hustlers and alcoholics -- especially her mother. Her father left the family over 25 years ago and is probably dead now, so he's out of the picture. The basic problem is her mother. In her younger years she was a heavy drug user and loved to party, and blamed her kids for forcing her to be more responsible. There was never enough money, so the kids had to get jobs early to help pay the mortgage. This led to lots of resentment between the kids and mom, and to this day my fiancee's sister and mom are money-hungry, manipulative hustlers who will do anything shady for a buck. They abuse their men and run their families as a matriarchy.
In my family, though, none of this occurs. And it will not. I'll make sure of this by working hard to stay the same, very real man I was when my fiancee met me, the same man she fell in love with. Not by spoiling her or giving in to her demands, a similar philosophy I will use to raise my kids. By being a real man, and wearing the pants without being too dominating about it, I put my woman at ease. I give her what she never had: a positive, stable, non-abusive male presence that relieves the women from having to make every single decision about everything. By the way, this drives her sister (and to some degree, her mother) insane with jealousy.
My fiancee does not "hate" her mother and sister, but she resents them deeply and does not want them to keep dragging her down for the rest of her life. This resentment could become hate later in life, though, depending on what happens because she is like their total opposite. They always treated her like the black sheep and 2nd-class citizen in the family. It's the old Cinderella story: she was the youngest and most beautiful of the women, so they beat her down, treated her badly, and worked together to sabotage all her efforts to better herself and break free of their abuse. Then she met me. I have helped her establish healthy boundaries; I have also shown her a life plan that will give her a happy life as my wife, partner, and mother to our future children.
That said: having now read so many accounts online about the total nightmare of having a mother-in-law move into the household, I am determined to never let this happen. Instead, if my future MIL ever demands support from me and my wife, I will refuse and tell her to shack up with one of her other children, or her other family members. She is a threat to my marriage, my happiness, and my children. As I write this it almost seems like a bad decision to marry my fiancee but I really do love her. She trusts me and relies on me to not only establish the boundaries but also to enforce them.
A few more interesting facts about my future MIL: she runs a successful business that is currently earning her $25K/month. Yet, last week, she literally stole her oldest daughter's identity (!) to open up a line of credit to pay for cosmetic dental work (!!). We estimate that my future MIL has about $500K in cash right now, and is not paying mortgages on her various real estate properties, banking all that cash as well. Yet she still will commit fraud affecting others, so that she can keep on hoarding those precious green dollars.
All that is fine, whatever, but knowing her she's just going to puss it all away partying around the world. Then, later on, she'll play the dramatic victim card, claiming that she was always the doting mother who only ever loved her kids and worked so hard to provide for them. I get pretty angry thinking about this because I know it's just a manipulative game for her... which is why I'm putting in the effort now to study the problem and make sure I'll be ready when the time comes.
I will not let her become a parasite on my life and destroy my marriage. My fiancee is the responsible one compared to her sister, and it's too early to tell what will happen with her younger brother. In order to protect my own family, I must assume that later in life her older sister will be a complete failure and thus their mother will come to me and expect us to let her move in. As I said above, I will never allow this. My wife and I will only take care of my own mother, who is neither money-hungry, a drug abuser/partier, or a hustler.
Having read the entire momresponds.com thread, I noticed that many of the confused parents here seem to think that because they are due respect for being parents, that they are also due forgiveness for an entire life's worth of mistakes, which should then result in their estranged children opening up their homes and bank accounts on demand. I've also read a ton of responses from moms who got divorced and don't seem to understand just how damaging that is to a child, or if they do, simply make excuses for it be blaming ex-husbands or their own parents.
Although I did see some posts from older parents who really do seem like innocent victims from kids who turned bad completely on their own, I don't think I saw one single response where an estranged parent showed any responsibility for what they did in creating these hateful children who want nothing to do with them later in life. Usually I see a pattern where the older mother says she forgives the child for the child's faults, and therefore expects forgiveness for the parent's faults, without understanding that it's the parent who brought the child into this world.
This is not wisdom.
I also see a lot of older parents who just don't seem to be all that intelligent, talking about how they are trying to come up with ways to shock and guilt their adult children into remembering "how they were loved." People don't remember the good things, they remember the bad things. Similarly, these parents are, for better or worse, trying to avoid the bad things that happened, particularly the impact on their children of their own crushing depression, bad marriages, and neuroses, all the while insisting they are due so much respect and forgiveness that their children are monsters for not giving in to their demands. Just as the kids used to think the parents were monsters for doing the exact same thing!
Apologizing to your bitter, angry children, after you've lived a long and full life full of mistakes, does nothing to change the financial reality that they will choose their own retirements, and the future of their own children, over bringing you -- the reminder of everything bad that ever happened, as well as a burden to everyday life -- into their homes. As a future parent myself, I'm going to do the best I can and if my own kids hate me and would rather see me on the street, well then, I'll be on the darn street. I probably won't last long in that scenario and wouldn't want to anyway.
On the other hand I'm also very open to all these older parents who come here to tell their stories. So many of them are complete disasters and the pain comes burning right off the page. I feel tremendously for all of you, especially knowing that the entire story is never told. It's a terrible feeling to know that you've been abused by anyone, and it's equally bad to realize that the facts are staring you right in the face and are being ignored because of simple denial, ignorance, or worse.
The fact that so few moms come on these pages to express their regret for all the stupid, hateful, abusive things they did to their own children, and for the horrible choices they made, particularly in their choice of husbands, really seems to underline that kids who grow up hating their parents -- or simply becoming indifferent to them -- are justified in their feelings.
I've not had any kids yet and certainly don't want to give anyone the impression that I think I know everything (or anything) about parenthood. I do, however, know about what it means to be a child and have a lot of anger toward parents. I figure I'll probably be sticking around this forum for quite awhile. Perhaps I can help represent the younger generations by responding to posts from the older parents who are here trying to understand their monster children...
Looking forward to discussing with you all!
