if there's one thing i've learned from writing about her childcare experiences it's that i really owe it to my hypothetical future wife to repair my relationship with my parents so they can be roped into childcare for our hypothetical future kids
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wonder if this is this something women think about in the dating scene? "yeah he's good at sex and got a big heart but does he also have a good relationship with his parents so they can look after our kid(s) for a weekend"
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i want to be clear that this is coming from a baseline position where i am extremely supportive of people hating their parents, cutting contact with their parents, etc. i've heard some really fucked up stories
there's just a cost to doing this i hadn't been factoring in
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this may be slightly orthogonal but i very strongly believe that
1. you don't owe it to anyone (including yourself) to repair your relationship with your parents because
2. an incredible amount of people think they have to / are obliged to do so, and try in a futile manner %
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% until the end of their/their parents' lives, making themselves more miserable through the process (at best) and continuing to pass down trauma (very often)
alice miller's "the body never lies" is a really good book about his
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yes omg
for me this is like one of the biggest future upsides of the fact that I've healed enough I don't blow up whenever my parents are around any more
we now have normal good convos about future pregnancy care and childcare plans 💕💕
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we're not emotionally deeply close but we are now solid enough to be practically and life-planning-ly close and that's maybe enough for now, for what is needed for life to be good
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Counterpoint, can they repair themselves enough to avoid inflicting the same harm on your child it's taken you a fair piece of your life to undo?
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fuck, that's a good point.
though why is it in my mind that typically parental trauma wouldn't get passed from grandma to grandkid?
like, the "being the primary caretaker in a world of scarcity" thing doesn't really get retriggered here