Are you in peace with your parents?

Touhid Kamal
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read

Wise men say you need to leave home if you want to have an “intimate lover”. Parents are the first who falls in the experience of intimate love. So should you abandon your parents? Or stop talking to them if you are living under the same roof? Why? Because your ideas, your thoughts, your beliefs doesn’t match anymore?

Charlotte Kasl, a prominent writer in relationships, talks about making peace with your parents means to realize how we are like them and how we are different from them.

There are some tendencies in our parents that we hate about them, but those are the same tendencies that we hate about ourselves as well. If your mum is a complainer and you hate that part of her, it makes sense to interpret that, you hate that part of yourself as well. Complaining is universal, or you know someone utterly devoid from it?

You don’t need to abandon your parents. You need to DIFFERENTIATE from them. Our perspectives about our parents change when we open our masks first, and feel compassionate for “that man” and “that woman” rather than the giant images of father and mother. This changes as we become more adult and more mature, but realization can help this process faster.

People often say things like, “I am afraid of intimacy, I am better off alone.” Its not the intimacy we are afraid of, its the negative reaction of our intimate behavior to someone (in this case our parents) created a hurtful experience that now we are afraid of intimacy altogether. when your partner calls you over phone and says, “I am busy and can’t come to meet you tonight” we respond, “you just think I am important in your life anymore, you don’t love me”. It is time to understand by saying this, we are falling in a childlike stance when we are incapable of managing our time, foregone our own emotions. Maybe it was the parents who ignored you repeatedly when you are a child. Reflect.

Susan David, a famous psychologist came up with this words, “We own our emotions, they don’t own us”. Her opinions make total sense as emotions are part of our whole, we are not. It is time we acknowledge that and control our negative emotions. If emotions are colors, do you also know which one are your favorites?

Compassion and clarity about our parents can help us make peace with our parents. I went on from being a anger-filled teenager to an appreciative son, because I have picked out some of my favorite emotions, can focused on the love and admiration I have for my parents. Sure they neglected me, sure they didn’t take me out somewhere to just for a minutes walk, sure they didn’t ask me anything except if I have eaten and my results; but they are also people with their history, their heritage and their culture. People are flawed — just like us — on different levels. They are also making mistakes, just on a different level and understanding, that you can’t relate.

The key is to be friends with your parents. A friend doesn’t judge who is better or who is worse than the other. Don’t let them control you, or control them. If its extreme, go away and love them from afar. But pick out your emotions carefully on how to love them, because the more you age, the more you will end up loving them.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this article, feel free to hit that clap button 👏 to help others find it.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade