The Parents: More Detail
Oct. 26th, 2002 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldYesterday afternoon, Erin asked me why I was upset with my parents, and I hadn't given her a very good explanation of the reason why. So, here it is (I hope).
My parents and I have never been close. We've always interacted on an instrumental level, to lapse to sociologese; there have been close moments, there has been (I think) a moderate amount of love, but we haven't been very demonstrative, by and large. We've almost always been friendly towards one another, but I'm not sure how much real emotion there was lying on both our parts.
Since I came out to them, relations have been strained. I've already mentioned their paranoiac fear--coloured, I believe, be some unspoken concern about my sexual orientation, say, that of course I was travelling across the continent so I could take part in multiple orgies and join a cult before I get hacked to death and I just wasn't telling them. It might well be that this was just their concern at their eldest child's decision to go off travelling on his own. Maybe.
And then, recently--I don't know. Perhaps my expectations for my parents are too high: I wouldn't expect them to adapt very quickly to the idea of me with a boyfriend. Then again, perhaps they should have responded somehow. I had to threaten them with severing all relations to get them to accept the idea of seeing a family counsellor (but then, if I have to do that why should I bother?). Mom's particularly bad, since she doesn't want to talk to anyone, not her sister and brother-in-law (my cousin Derrick's parents) since they fought over Grandma's burial, not to PFLAG since she doesn't like the man in charge of the Charlottetown branch. Worse, I find her rather picky and critical. I've been ignoring her lately, since I'm really uninterested in talking with her.
So. What should I do? And yes, I'd really like feedback--E-mail me at <mcdonald@isn.net> if you don't want to post in my LJ.
My parents and I have never been close. We've always interacted on an instrumental level, to lapse to sociologese; there have been close moments, there has been (I think) a moderate amount of love, but we haven't been very demonstrative, by and large. We've almost always been friendly towards one another, but I'm not sure how much real emotion there was lying on both our parts.
Since I came out to them, relations have been strained. I've already mentioned their paranoiac fear--coloured, I believe, be some unspoken concern about my sexual orientation, say, that of course I was travelling across the continent so I could take part in multiple orgies and join a cult before I get hacked to death and I just wasn't telling them. It might well be that this was just their concern at their eldest child's decision to go off travelling on his own. Maybe.
And then, recently--I don't know. Perhaps my expectations for my parents are too high: I wouldn't expect them to adapt very quickly to the idea of me with a boyfriend. Then again, perhaps they should have responded somehow. I had to threaten them with severing all relations to get them to accept the idea of seeing a family counsellor (but then, if I have to do that why should I bother?). Mom's particularly bad, since she doesn't want to talk to anyone, not her sister and brother-in-law (my cousin Derrick's parents) since they fought over Grandma's burial, not to PFLAG since she doesn't like the man in charge of the Charlottetown branch. Worse, I find her rather picky and critical. I've been ignoring her lately, since I'm really uninterested in talking with her.
So. What should I do? And yes, I'd really like feedback--E-mail me at <mcdonald@isn.net> if you don't want to post in my LJ.
