What do you wish your loved one/s knew and understood about you and how you feel about them? What causes you to hold back?
What do you wish your loved one/s knew and understood about you and how you feel about them? What causes you to hold back?
r/AskWomen
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I wish that some of my family members would stop calling me ‘sensitive’ when it comes to certain topics. I’m not sensitive. I’m just sympathetic and not an a-hole.
I hold back sometimes, but most of the time, I do speak up. Too bad they don’t listen.
That I don’t feel safe around them after they repeatedly forced me onto meds that harmed me and into facilities that made me worse. Even though they never directly harmed me, they sent me to places and people who ruined my life.
My parents would brush this off as “you need to move on” as though I could simply choose to forgive them. But it’s not a choice when it’s engraved into my body and mind.
That the reason I have such strong boundaries is because they don’t respect them.
My family seems to think I am unwilling to help them or spend time with them, and I guess it’s true, but not because I am an unhelpful or antisocial person. It’s just because as soon as I say yes to one small thing with them, they sneak in ten other requests that they didn’t tell me about upfront. “Coming for dinner” turns into a plan to socialize for the next three weekends. And doing them a favour that should take me only an hour or two turns into a lifelong commitment of always giving them computer help or them assuming they can refer their friends to me for a similar type of job.
I am, in fact, hugely community minded and do a lot for other people out of the goodness of my heart, and make social plans often. Just not with them.
I don’t try explaining it to them because I don’t feel like they truly listen, or they make excuses as to why I’m wrong in feeling the way I do and these things are not their fault.
I wish my parents and family knew how awful living with stage IV cancer really is. Part of me resents them for not checking in more or helping. I hold back from telling them because my cancer makes them very sad and upset and as a child it’s hard to burden your parents with your health concerns
I wish i could tell my mother how much the way she parentified me from a young age and her high standards made me feel as kid. I hated it…I hated feeling like it was my job to raise my siblings and how I absolutely loathed being held.to high standards I could never meet.
Why don’t I tell her? She’s old and in poor health and I don’t want her to feel worse than she already does on a daily basis.
I wish my family understood that all we have to do is love God and love thy neighbor as thy self. They spend so much time judging people and it’s depressing.
Everyone knows me for being super outgoing and friendly and bubbly. I am! But what no one knows is that I feel like I have to keep that up because I’m always terrified that no will like me and I’ll be left alone. I’m so anxious all the time that everyone secretly hates me. I wish I could just ask for reassurance or a hug.
My immediate family is extremely introverted, while my extended family is more extroverted. I find them very…..trying and exhausting.
Because they are family, I’ve never bothered to mask (around strangers, I’m much more outgoing, but it’s a panic response, and not real) so they see the quieter, more serious side of me.
As a kid, I got in the habit of bringing a book and finding a quiet place to read when they got to be to much. After 40+ years, they have decided that I NEVER want to talk to them, as opposed to preferring to talk to one or two at a time and at a reasonable volume. (They are very loud.)
Plus, they have also collectively decided that, based on my reading habit, that I don’t like “silly” things and therefore don’t want to/can’t carry on a conversation about movies or gossip or whatever.
I guess it all boils down to….I wish they saw me as worth the effort to get to know, instead someone they have made certain assumptions about and tolerate.
I wish my parents had some idea of who I really am and didn’t try to insert their own narrative in terms of stuff like my mental health and neurodivergence. There’s no point in trying to let them into my personal world at this point, though. I’m in my 40s, they’re in their 80s, and I keep them at arm’s length. I was really secretive when I was struggling as a kid/teen and didn’t know how to talk about anything, and my family doesn’t do open and honest and vulnerable anyway. In my late 20s and early 30s I tried to have some conversations with my mum. She can’t engage without getting very distressed and doing some sort of martyr-ish thing that makes both of us feel like shit. My dad has no interest really in hearing any personal stuff, he’s too uncomfortable with deeper emotions (perhaps doesn’t even know how to express them) and doesn’t seem interested in carrying any responsibility for our family’s dynamics. So it’s easier to remain superficial at this point. We text often enough but I haven’t seen them in person since 2019 (they live a couple hours away, I could make it happen if I wanted to for sure). I don’t really talk about my health anymore and they have no idea I got remarried three months ago. 🤷🏼♀️
I try really hard every day to be a good wife and every day I feel like I’m coming up short. We dont even have kids. Fuck, what’s wrong with me
While I am glad my partner is neurotypical for a lot of reasons I wish he could more fully understand what my depression is like. He is kind and he is sympathetic when I am in a depressive episode but I don’t think he truly understands the depths of it.
But I hold back because this is some heavy, dark stuff that I don’t want to inflict on people anymore than I have to.
That I’m tired. No, exhausted. Of being the responsible one, of being the adult, of making the decisions, of being the one that can handle anything, the strong one, the smart one, the one with all the answers. Just for a while I’d like to not be “me”. For them to handle their own shit, for them to ask me about mine and gasp maybe offer to carry some of the weight for a bit. But that would require insight and empathy and emotional intelligence that they’re not capable/willing to learn. So instead I erase myself to fit into the mold they believe “me” to be.
I wish I can tell him how much I love him, I wish they know and feel how much I care. I may appear to be nonchalant most of the time, some think I don’t care at all, but my love and loyalty runs deep. I’m not that expressive of my emotions, not that I’m holding back, sometimes there things better left unsaid…but in my small ways I try to show and make them feel what they mean to me. I know I need to be louder so they will be aware of it, but when all things are said and done, I know I will be one of the last people standing with them when the world goes against them.