Responsibility, fault and blame

[msagara]

Something comrade_cat said in the comments tickled a thought I frequently have.

Blaming the crappy part of my life on my parents' divorce is so fucking
cliché though, and I don't want to penalize my parents for making what I
feel was the right decision at the time.

Maybe this is what msagara means about not blaming people.

Comments

Wow. I guess I had to throw this up. It had built up. - Part 1

[estara]

Yes

Re: Wow. I guess I had to throw this up. It had built up. - Part 2

[estara]

What I had taken as a compromise for permanent nosiness and me accepting certain bits of stuff because I like her cooking and it's a way she can show her version of love, was actually a way of confirming to her that I needed her permanent nagging and direction, because I was at child level

[salanth]

:( Rough, rough, rough.

[estara]

Thank you for your commiseration.

Better late than never, is something I tell myself. I'm annoyed at myself for realising so late.

[starcat_jewel]

I was lucky -- I found a piece of wisdom at exactly the point when I needed it most, in Reader's Digest of all places. It went something like this (paraphrased from memory):

If you insist on blaming your past for your present troubles, you are saying that there is nothing you can ever do to overcome those troubles, because the past cannot be changed.

It's fine to say "I have this trigger because of X thing that my parents or teachers or classmates did to me," but that doesn't eliminate the need to do something about it if it's having a negative impact on your life NOW. I've succeeded in defusing a number of my old parentally-caused hot buttons; others I'm still working on, long after they're both dead and gone. Knowing where the problem came from is an important first step, but it's only the first step.

[msagara]

Knowing where the problem came from is an important first step, but it's only the first step.

Yes, absolutely. I think it’s part of the responsibility/blame paradigm. Where we blame, we put the weight of solution on someone else’s shoulders. Where we acknowledge, we can take the responsibility of changing our own responses - but to do that, the responses have to be understood.

[book_wench]

I was an only child, and much beloved. I was a Daddy's girl when I was little, but later, when his health began to break down, it was my mother and I who joined forces. The three of us all loved each other and we got along. My parents were mostly always reasonable with me, always strove to explain their decisions in a way I could understand. Sometimes my parents fought, sometimes they fought with me, sometimes two of us would gang up on the third. They weren't any more perfect than any other parents and I was no more a perfect child than any other child. But our family worked and we enjoyed the good times and got through the bad ones together

[msagara]

I don't know you or your sons, of course. But from what you've been writing here about your approach to parenting and your understanding of familial relationships, I have a feeling your children are going to grow up to feel about you and your husband the way I felt about my parents. And I can't think of anything better.

This was lovely. I don’t know, because we can’t, what the future holds--but I hope.

[green_knight]

I had serious, serious abandonment issues.

I cannot thank you enough, because I haz them, too. And it's not because my parents were only together for a short time - that was normal, I didn't know that kids were "supposed to" have a mother and a father by default until i was seven or eight - so many kids I knew didn't - but at around that age, my mother had to undergo cancer treatment, so I was living with a friend of hers for a while, and then with my grandmother (which I hated), so maybe having them isn't entirely, you know, unreasonable.

It has taken me a very long time before the reaction to someone being late to a meeting was 'oh, they're late' (and if they're very late, 'I hope they're ok') rather than 'they hate me and have decided not to bother turning up.'

[rdi]

Found this via Making Light. You may yet get that Scalzi level readership if this goes viral.

Thanks for posting this. It's incredibly thought-provoking and provides some great framing for thinking about the dynamics in my own family. I'd like to make a more cogent comment, but I have to go off and unpack some stuff first...