What do I owe them if they caused me pain growing up?
Dear Therapist,
I’m an eldest daughter in my late 20s, and when I was a teenager, my relationship with my parents significantly broke down. I left for college thousands of miles away, anticipating long-term estrangement. They were homophobic, telling me I had to break up with my girlfriend if I wanted to continue to have a relationship with them, and I was not willing to do that.
We avoided full-blown estrangement, but our relationship has puttered along without an emotional connection. I text and call my mother a few times a month. I try to text my father and younger brothers, but receive a reply only once or twice a year. My brothers live at home as young adults, so I’m aware of what they’re up to, but I don’t have an open line of communication with them.
My conversations with my mother have made clear to me that she and the others are expecting me to eventually move home and provide eldercare. This is unsurprising because my childhood role in our family was the Responsible One. When our relationship was good, my mother and I spent significant amounts of time caring for her mother, my grandmother, and I found this work profound and meaningful. The idea of breaking that chain of care pains me, but I can’t imagine providing the level of care my parents are expecting without feeling significant hurt as old wounds reopen. They claim to now accept my sexuality because I’m engaged to a woman and that “proves you were serious,” but that doesn’t fix their terrible reaction to my high-school girlfriend, or their assumption that I was not mature enough to know myself.
My parents both grew up with physically abusive fathers and put significant effort into breaking the cycle of physical violence and raising my brothers and me with more financial security than they ever had. They have no close friendships and have always struggled socially. They are textbook emotionally immature adults but cannot see it, and disapprove of therapy.
Anxiety about the future is eating me alive. I just want to make a decision and stop living in limbo with these emotionally stunted but well-meaning people. Our casual contact as I plan my wedding has ranged from pleasant to passive-aggressive, with no victories or valleys better or worse than that. What do I owe to adults who are trying their best, but whose best hurts me?
Dear Reader,
Contemplating caring for elderly parents creates anxiety for many adult children, but what strikes me about your letter is the consuming intensity of your anxiety at this moment. You and your siblings are in your 20s, and it sounds like your parents are relatively healthy. So I’m curious about why this anxiety regarding the future is “eating you alive” right now.
My guess is that the timing has something to do with your upcoming wedding. Big life transitions—leaving for college, moving to a new city, getting married, or having a baby, to name a few—tend to bring old issues we haven’t processed to the forefront. I think the reason the eldercare question is so present for you is that this new phase of life you’re about to embark on—creating a family of your own—is making you ask a bigger and more global question: What kind of relationship do I want with the family I have so much painful history with?
In order to figure this out, you’re going to need to confront some of the pain that still sits between you and your parents, starting with their reaction to your sexual orientation when you were in high school. You say that they “accept” your sexuality now because they’re interpreting your marrying a woman as a sign of your being “serious,” but there’s a significant difference between believing who you are and embracing who you are. I imagine what you’re really longing for is more than mere acceptance; it’s a deep acknowledgment of how much hurt their initial reaction caused you, and a genuine apology for having made their love contingent on you being someone you’re not. It would entail their taking full responsibility with a sentiment that might sound something like this: We are so sorry for our behavior and the profound effect it has had on you. We were wrong, and we see that now. We love you unconditionally and are so excited that you found the person you want to spend your life with. How can we begin to repair this with you?
Realistically, they probably don’t have the capacity yet to express themselves in this way, but you can guide them there, showing compassion and patience as they learn. When family members are willing to make repairs, many ruptures—even extremely damaging ones—can be healed. The key word here is willing. I’m glad that your parents worked hard to break the cycle of physical violence they grew up with, and now they have the opportunity to create a healthier emotional environment for current and future generations. Most important, you have the opportunity to practice emotionally healthy communication and model it for the family you’re creating in your marriage.
Read: The parenting prophecy
You say that your parents disapprove of therapy—maybe because talking about feelings makes them uncomfortable or because they’ve internalized some cultural stigma surrounding it. Some parents are hesitant to go to therapy because they worry that they will be blamed or considered bad parents, though this is a misconception and not something a therapist would do. It’s possible that once communication opens up in your family, they might be more receptive to the idea of therapy, but regardless, you can start some long-overdue conversations with an email like this:
Hi Mom and Dad,
As my wedding approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about our family and how this milestone presents an opportunity for us to have a more open, close, and connected relationship. I feel very lucky to have found the person I want to spend my life with and to have the experience of feeling loved and valued for who I am, and I’m so looking forward to this next chapter of my life. I want you to know how much I admire the work you’ve both done to raise my brothers and me differently than you both were. I know that you didn’t want to inflict the pain you endured as kids on us, and that doing this took a tremendous amount of effort. I’m so grateful for that.
I also realize that despite not having had good role models, you did your best to show me love. Yet I still experienced a lot of pain, especially around your reaction to my sexual orientation and the resulting distance between us that persists to this day. I’m reaching out now because just as you wanted to create a healthier family when you got married, I want to do the same. You wanted to end a cycle of physical violence, and I want to end a cycle of feeling emotionally distanced for being who I am. If I have kids one day, I want them to know that they are loved without contingencies, and that I will never give them ultimatums about how they can love and be loved when they choose their partner.
Recently I’ve thought a lot about the pain and distance in our family, and I believe that unless we address it, we’ll drift further apart than we already have, and that makes me sad. I know we can change our family dynamic so that it feels warm and loving for all of us, but it would have to start with some honest conversations and your willingness to understand the impact of what has happened between us over the years.
I have no intention of blaming you for what happened in the past. Instead, I’d like to foster some understanding and healing around it, along with a more genuine, close relationship.
Would you be interested in continuing the work that you did as parents to end an unhealthy cycle, and have a conversation with me in which you listen openly to how I feel so that together we can create an even stronger family to pass on to the next generation?
Love,
Your Daughter
Read: The changing ways parents react to their kids coming out of the closet
Once you reach out, remember that your parents have choices about how they respond to your invitation to do some family healing, and that you have choices too—including about how you might care for them as they age. They can view you as the daughter who doesn’t appreciate their efforts at good parenting, or as the one who helped bring this family closer. They can see you as the ungrateful daughter who (despite having a full life of her own and other siblings available to help) didn’t take sole responsibility for their caretaking, or as the loving daughter who generously provides whatever level of care feels comfortable. (There are many ways to show care that don’t involve moving back home with your parents, such as offering support in care coordination, calling to check on them, taking them on enjoyable outings, or reviewing their bills.) They can choose not to educate themselves about sexual orientation and continue to make hurtful comments, or they can love you unconditionally for the courageous woman you are, who went thousands of miles away to college in order to stay true to herself, and delight in what makes you happy going forward.
By offering them an open line of communication and the chance to do better, you’re giving your parents a gift that they can accept or reject—and no matter the outcome, that’s a gift for you too. Because instead of sitting in your anxiety and wondering about the future, your honesty—not only with them but, most important, with yourself—about what you need for your own well-being will lead you to the answers you want when the time comes.
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental-health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it—in part or in full—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.
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