Question

[Tangled Web]

When do we stop looking for our parents love? Even after everything that has been said and done.......why can't we stop looking? I know it isn't worth it. I know how high the price can go..yet we still look for it. What is it going to take for us to stop looking to them for the love they are so unable to give?

Laura

[mosaic]

we thought we would stop looking when they died. but it just makes the looking sadder cause there's no way now

cassidy and theda

[Tangled Web]

I thought it would be easier to stop looking after my dad died too but you are right it just makes it sadder. And my mother walked away from us once again........which I know should be a good thing and most of the time it is a good thing but today it just feels like more punishment.
Laura and Amy

[Anthology]

a therapist who worked with a ton of clients with severe trauma (for years and years) once told me when I was talking to him about this very thing was that one of the absolute hardest things for people to realize is that what they're looking for is actually within...
I think about this a lot sometimes because i've spent a lot of time wrestling with the looking, not even towards my FOO, but to others in that sort of role, and it seems like to me that part of what makes it so hard for me is that in order to recognize that I can offer that to myself and find ways as an adult to healthily get those needs met requires me to make the distinction between who we are now as an adult who is able to care for herself and has the power to get needs met and who we were as a child who was not able to care for herself and without the power to get needs met, but merely at the mercy of those people who were supposed to be meeting those needs.
Sometimes I run away from this distinction because it's super painful and accepting it means that I can't change the past and that we can't go back and get those needs met in that time and place...in some ways at least for me, that acceptance and that acknowledgement that we didn't get our needs met and that there's no way to go back in time and do that and that there was nothing that we could have done to change that back then is just filled with grief...sometimes, every now and then I can see the benefits of that acceptance...or at least glimpses of it, but it's so very hard to hold onto.
Anna

[MakersDozn]

Anna/Anthology....we could have written a post very similar to yours. We have a few inside who struggle with these issues. Our mother died 12 years ago (our father is still alive).

In any event, it's been very difficult for us to realize that we don't get a "do-over" with perfect parents. And it's a challenge for us, especially those of us most affected, to find healthy ways to get those needs met.

The blue flower at the top of this post is for anyone who'd like one.

MDs

[Tangled Web]

Thanks for the blue flower MDs. I will take one. Anna/Anthology what you write strikes true.....the one word that stands out for me is grief. That fits......it is like we are grieving for the what should have beens and the lost years....grieving the loss of so many things. I think grief is one of the mostful powerful emotions a person can feel because it in itself has so many sides to it and is so complex....I guess that is why there are so many stages to grief. Thank you for your post.
Thank you to everyone who responded.........
Laura