I dig through my memories and I remember this was a thing since I was a kid. Like I remember my mom just constantly saying “We love you a lot, do you know that?” and then straight up asking me: “Do you love your mom and dad?” (speaking in 3rd person for some reason) then followed by “Do you love mom or dad more?”… and I remember always just answering that: Yes I love them, and mom more than dad… (I remember that is probably just honestly how I felt, I never lied about it)
I don’t remember dad ever asking this…
Sometimes (when I was younger) mom asked me: “If mom and dad got a divorce, who are you going with?”…
wtf mom
And like sometimes they argue then threaten divorce…
So… mom has higher income so I feel like at the time I just told her I’d go with her solely because of the financial stability… (I mean dad also doesn’t really show affection… 🤷♂️)
(This was many years ago, during my teenage years. The divorce thing never happened, empty threats…)
…
Now as a young adult, I’m dealing with depression and she still says this… and like I feel very awkward when she asks me “Do you love me?”
I do feel an attachment towards her, but idk if you can call it “love” per se.
So sometimes I stay quiet… so it just ended with an awkward silence…
Then mom was like: “Do you you not love me? Do you hate me?”
No wtf mom, that’s not what I meant…
Do parents just do that? Are they seeking validation about their decision to choose to have children?
Cultural Context: My family is ethnically Chinese.
This is some manipulative bullshit. Of course dad don’t ask, he doesn’t want to hear that you love him less all the time. How fucking brutal that must have been for him. Meanwhile your mother is still subtly coercing you to choose her and worsen your relationship with your dad. Men may be violent but women are vicious.
Your mom needs therapy. I’m certain of this because my mom needed the same therapy. It’s insecurity in attachment and feeling like she’s not succeeded as a parent. My mom wasn’t nearly as bad though, she just had a rough life in the whole being loved department
@[email protected] @[email protected]
Sounds like emotional blackmailing.
Homie I have been seeing you make posts like this for months and I gotta say its not normal and I am sorry. I dont ask my kids that shit. I tell them that I love them and pelt them with kisses whether they like it or not because I won’t be alive forever and I want them to know. Kids dont get the gravity of that and they shouldn’t have to.
I mean sorry if I keep making these weird posts… but like its better than keeping thoughts in my head… bottling up everything only makes it worse…
The thing with internet is that you can vent any time you want… seeking professional help takes time, like they’re not on call 24/7 to listen to you…
Sometimes I wish they created an actual AI (like an actual Artificial General Intelligence, not those LLM shit) for you to talk to.
Sometimes I wish I could visit an alternate timeline where that version of my self “figured it out”… so maybe I could ask him for advice…
Ask away. Talking about this stuff is usually a good thing. If anyone doesn’t like it, they can go elsewhere.
Keep posting. I just want you to know that what you are being put through is not normal. You’re not supposed to hang your insecurities on your child. Nobody has it “figured out”, some people are just in a good place for them and some not and that can change in an instant.
I’m not done with it but…
(And if you know how to write me a bot that would be the biggest help. Keeping up with the weekly skill post was one of the things that made me give up. If I could automate those I think I could handle interactions with people on them.
Quick question for you…what is it you need to “figure out?”
No that’s not normal. Sounds like they’re incredibly insecure and emotionally manipulative.
“Is this weird?” is relative, and usually less important than “is this unhealthy?”
I don’t know what’s normal in China, but it sounds like your mom has some kind of problem and the result has not been great for you.
The reason I don’t use the term as an adult is because of emotional abuse exactly like this as a kid. You’re being manipulated and it’s not your fault
I’m not intimately familiar with the culture but as an American, it would be something that would make me uncomfortable.
I would talk with a therapist or counselor for perspective.
Sounds like Mom has a mental health issue. Could be an attachment disorder or borderline personality disorder.
It sounds like things parents would ask their kids in a K-drama?
It sounds like things parents would ask their kids in a K-drama?
😭 Am I in a TV Drama?
nervously checks room for cameras
Is this a Truman Show?
Are my parents actors?
“normal” for what culture?
I mean family culture, not national-culture.
It seems to me that they’re insecure, & committed to using you for their-own validation, & crowbarring you into remaining subjugated to that scam/game/manipulation.
( I had to go no-contact with both parents, for years at a time, for my survival: parental machiavellianism doesn’t have to be conscious machiavellianism. I don’t blame them, but did need to protect my life against their forcing-me-towards-breaking/failing, with all the personal-power I could muster. )
The oversimplification of “the 5 love languages”, the oversimplification being that people are somehow “exclusively 1 XOR another”, instead of being some mixture on a 5-dimension set-of-continuums/spectrums…
It seems your mother’s means of showing-love is verbal, & she felt need to have verbal-expression-of-love for her.
The “5 love languages” thing… when I found-out that some people NEED exchanging-of-things to feel loved, or to express love … WTF??
TOTALLY not the way I’m wired.
Never EVER would have dawned-on-me that some people actually were wired that way.
But… I’ve seen some people I knew who were wired that way!
Diversity-of-wiring’s a thing, right?
So, I think it was you mom being wired for verbal emotional-meaning, AND her trying to manipulate you into being what protected/fed her established-when-she-was-growing-up dysfunction-habit, AND I wouldn’t put 1 single cent on her being “to blame” for it, if she’s never dug into conquering her own unconscious-mind. I think it was probably the result of the growing-up she lived in, just repeating, in variation.
Discard everything I wrote unless something in it is of value for you.
I’ve only experience & what seems to be understanding: I’ve no academic-accreditation, but neither did Socrates, my hero, either.
But if it is of value, then may your life be more-powerfully-awakening/autonomizing, owning your future-karma, more.
_ /\ _
