Relationships and conversations with parents when you are an adult are obviously not the same as when you were younger. You’ve changed while they don't seem to have changed, or you’ve both changed.
But what you feel most is awkwardness as you try to connect adult to adult. Maybe you feel resentment at times that they don’t reach out more, see you for who you are, or feel the same concern about your relationship that you feel.
Here are some of the common sources for these changes:
You’re both caught in your own worlds. This is about logistics. You don’t live under the same roof; you both are busy. You’ve moved away, and you simply don’t see each other enough. And when you do, it's often built around a holiday or occasion that carries its own momentum.
Connections are maintained with details: What did you finally decide to do about X? So, what did your boss say after you confronted her? But if you don't know about these nuances of their lives, the phone calls, texts, or emails are merely check-ins.
Your parent isn’t good at conversation. How’s work? Fine. What’d you do last weekend? Not much. There are no details with which to track their lives and connect around. You lose intimacy.
Stuck in roles/loss of roles. This is one of the bigger problems.
You may not want or need your dads advice, and when he tries to give it anyway, you feel that youre being treated like a child or micromanaged. You have different needs, but he doesn't know what to do differently, leading to awkwardness.
Old wounds come to the surface. Although you may have idolized your dad when growing up, you now are more aware of his human failings or see past events through the lenses of an adult. All this can ignite childhood wounds that can get in the way of feeling connected to or reaching out to him.
This is common. After plowing through those late teen/early adult challenges of getting through education, finding partners, and living independently as an adult, you often reach a place in your life when you are finally more stable, and with that stability comes the opportunity to look back at your childhood. For some, this brings appreciation, but for many, it stirs resentment as they struggle to reconcile their past relationship with their current feelings. Some become angry and literally cut their parents off, while others pull back.
What to do: Closing the gap
This is a time of developmental transitions on both sides. Rather than settling and taking what you get, going on autopilot, or pulling away, instead, imagine the ideal relationship you would like to have with your parents now. Don’t expect your relationships with each of your parents to be equal: You share different histories and experiences and have different personalities.
Change the conversation. The conversations are the carriers of the relationship. If your father never asks about the details of your life or never goes beyond his one-sentence grunt, you can reshape the conversations: Give him details about your everyday life, or ask more detailed questions of him and not just settle. Likely he will, for the first several times, fall back into his old ways, but if you persist, you can change what and how they talk.
Or you can be bolder and tackle this head-on: Send him an email or plan a conversation where you talk about what you want differently when you do talk. This can give him a heads-up and help him understand what to move towards.
Let them know what you need now. You may not need advice or small talk, but your father, in his mind, is simply being the parent he has always been.
Repair old wounds. If old wounds are getting in the way, talk about them. This does not mean doing a rant about the past, but instead, in a calm way, helping your parents know what has lingered. It’s usually more about them listening and understanding how you felt rather than making them feel guilty and you dumping your anger. Let them understand this from the start.
Build new memories. No more science projects to work on together, but maybe getting away together for a weekend and creating shared new experiences and memories. Will it be a bit awkward? Probably, but do it anyway.
The challenge here is moving from parent-child relationships to more adult-adult relationships. These are difficult transitions that often can take years but always take perseverance.
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