LeadHatter

here in uk the soccer season is starting today.

did anyone used to feel their parent loved a sports team more than them. gave it more love attention etc. how did you deal with this

GingerM

It wasn't a sports team, it was work. All work related things came before family.

How did I deal with it? Maybe it was easier for me because it was year 'round instead of seasonal like sports are. Growing up, it was just one more "that's how dad is" - no questions.

Later on, the coping mechanism changed to "it's one more '-aholic' to add to the list: alcoholic, workaholic, adrenaline-aholic etc. All addictions were more important than anything else in his life. It was (and still is) who he is, whether I like it or not. Accepting that with peace in my heart was a lot more difficult than typing it out here, but that's how I did finally deal with it. That's who he is.

tromboneliness

That might depend on the team -- if it were, say, FC Barcelona, that might be understandable!

Seriously, did you take a back seat to a team? Wow....

T

dollydo

My parents didn't give a crepe, neither attended any of my school functions, they never took me to any sports activities....none...zero.

As for general sporting events, my mother loves the Cubs, major league baseball team. My dad had no interest whatsoever in sports, he was into investing money.

The end result was the same, they couldn't be bothered with me.

EveningRose

It's posts like this that make me take another few minutes to talk with my kids. My parents weren't into sports at all. In fact, they were rather dismissive and disdainful of sports and sports-type families, as if they were somehow inferior. But like others, I had the distinct feeling that I was low on the totem pole of priorities, ironically, maybe moreso with my mother (not the A) than with my AF.

I worry that I, too, have left my kids with the feeling that other things are more important to me, as I do work hard. But I'm glad to say I spent all day today with them at a party, and I do things like going on bike rides and play board games with them, which my mother never, ever did with us. She really never did anything with us that I can remember.

dollydo

Evening,

As long you share you, and, your time with your children it really doesn't matter what the activity is.

You make them feel special and important, unlike our parents who just didn't care.

You are doing a good job with your children, you really care about how your actions can and will affect them.

EveningRose

Thank you, Dollydo, for pointing that out. It reassures me.

It raises the question, of all these parents we're discussing, why did they fail to look beyond their own noses and care about how their behavior affected their children?

I have had one friend go so far as to call my mother 'evil.' My counselor would call her 'impaired.' I would call her broken, bitter, and 100% self-involved (with her own emotions and feelings although she's one of those do-gooders who's always giving to the church and doing so much for the church). I know she's had a lousy marriage annd abuse from my AF...and yet I see in my own life, in stories here, in people I know, in many true stories I've read, people who chose over and over to NOT be bitter, but to genuinely care about others instead, to rise above their circumstances, and it makes it a little harder for me to have compassion for those of our parents who chose not to do so.

GingerM

As I had it recently explained to me by a social services worker who I needed to speak to: "because they never hit bottom, and everyone's bottom is different."

I hit bottom when my then fiance' tried to kill me and I thought "wth am I doing? This is NOT the life I wanted to lead as an adult! I'm textbook - I don't want to be just another statistic!" Apparently my bottom was a bit higher up than my parents bottom is.

JustAYak

I like to believe that my parents didn't love anything more than me (or my sister) though in reality, it didn't seem like that. I like to think my parents just didn't know how to love me, not that they didn't love me.

I can't relate to the sports team but I can relate in the sense of them seemingly loving something more than you. For my dad it was the heroin, and for my mom it was work or fixing my father.

EveningRose

I guess what I don't understand, then, is why someone has to hit rock bottom to realize their behavior is hurting their own children. I don't feel I ever did, but have just had a gradually growing awareness, as my kids get older, as more ugly things have come into my life, of how my mother's negativity affected me and how I didn't want to be like her or do that to my kids.

Is it because my mother never had anyone treat her that way that she didn't stop to think about how awful her behavior was to live with?

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a rock bottom for them. That one of their children wants nothing to do with them is only further proof, in their minds, that I was a bad apple all along, nowhere near rock bottom. They're in their 70's, not many years left to hit rock bottom and think.

I have a feeling maybe I'm taking this off topic, and apologize if I am.

danielleinto

Didn't know how to love me - so true, they did the best with what they had. It wasn't personal.

I can't relate to the sports team either. I don't think my father knew how to love anyone and that went for after he got sober too. He did the best with what he had. My father was always the focus but when I dealt with all of that crap later I realized just how messed up my mother was. I parented her.

GingerM

You were always aware. Your parents are not. They have never been aware. The only way they can become aware is by hitting bottom.

Since you were able to introspect, you never needed to hit bottom.

I was not able to introspect until my 5th fiance tried to kill me. That was my bottom. That was my wake-up call that something was really REALLY Not Right in my life. It was only then that I started looking inwards to see what the problem was rather than blaming people around me.

You have been looking inwards to see how you can change, ergo you hit bottom before hitting bottom was cool (sorry, bad hipster joke). You probably didn't hit it very hard either. Other people? They need to fall a long way and hit really hard, and some of them still aren't able, for whatever reason, to introspect.

Or, as a social worker told me recently, when I asked a very similar question: "Everybody's different."

Bringing this back around to the subject again: I agree with those who say that their parents "didn't know how" to love them. And some parents? Some parents had such bad personal histories themselves that they can't open up enough to love anyone - they had to build their defenses to high to allow anything to come in or go out.

I am glad that society no longer expects/requires women to have children. Those of us who know we stand a good chance of being bad parents can choose to not have children and to stop passing the behaviors on to the next generation.