When mother’s day came around this year I felt sad and troubled. I missed having a family. Having a place to hang out with no specific reason, familiar smells and sounds, people around me who have known me my whole life, speaking my mother tongue…

And then I started thinking about my decision to break from my parents, to no longer have them in my life — why did I do it?

One of the things that came up recently was me feeling angry and humiliated. I remembered times when my mother would insinuate that I was dishonest, unfair, mean, or unreasonable, and then when I called her out on that, she would plainly deny ever saying it.

That reminded me of an afternoon 6 years ago, in April 2010. I visited my parents in the house where I grew up, asked some questions, and walked out feeling shocked but also with a sense of clarity that I never experienced before: they are truly not interested in a relationship with me.

Due to mostly emotional circumstances, the actual break from them only happened two years ago — but I knew since that evening in 2010 that something had to give, and that my long term future would not involve having them in my life.

As I walked out of my parents house and got on my bike, I knew that something big had just happened. That’s why the minute when I came home, I started writing down everything I could remember. When I was done, I shared it in an email to a friend.

What follows beneath this paragraph is a translation of my same-day recollection of that meeting with my parents, pretty much verbatim.

I just came back from visiting my parents. First we talked about inconsequential stuff—my job, what my parents are doing, and about others in the family. The atmosphere was what you could call pleasant.

At some point, after about twenty minutes, I shared with them the mixed feeling I get when they want to help me and give me advice about my professional life and other matters. That on the one hand I really appreciate that, but on the other hand I can’t shake the feeling that they believed that without their help I wouldn’t succeed, that I would mess things up if my dad or my mom didn’t make adjustments along the way.

I was only a few sentences into trying to explore these feelings, and everything started exploding around me.

My mom accused me of making her feel so bad again. She said I had a one-sided view on things, a morbid and pessimistic perspective. That I just as well could see things positively, like how other children do that when their parents do something for them. She hammered on the fact that she has done the exact same things for my sister as she does for me, and that my sister’s experience of that has been positive.

Tears welled up in her eyes and she sounded very agitated. I told her that I felt nervous, that it seemed to me that she could start shouting at any time (what she tends to do).

My parents then both said that they were shocked that I don’t appreciate what they do for me. I told them again that I did appreciate that, but that I had mixed feelings about it.

I tried to explain my conundrum again. That I didn’t know what the solution was or should be, and that what I was asking was for them to just listen to me. “But we are listening!” they responded.

I told them that, at least as far as I thought, if you truly are listening to someone and you don’t understand what they’re trying to say, you’ll probably ask questions. You’ll try to find out how the story exactly fits together, and where it possibly could come from. That if you really listen, you don’t immediately call the other person to order or try to correct his thinking (whether or not that’s preceded by you saying you don’t understand what he’s trying to say), but that you first try to find out what the crux of the matter is.

While trying to make this case to my parents, they interrupted me a couple of times, forcing me to clearly have to ask whether I could finish my sentence (whereby I then promised to also listen when my mother and father are talking). To that, my father said he was not an analyst and that I didn’t need to teach him a lesson in conversational techniques.

My mother then tried another approach. She asked why I couldn’t understand what my parents are feeling, why I tried to rationalize everything. Why couldn’t I just feel what they really mean (that they always have good intentions with me, and that therefore I shouldn’t be suspicious about their actions). I asked what she meant by that, and then we went around in a circle: she said that I rationalized everything in words, and when I then asked how I could do things differently, or how ‘feeling people’ worked for her, she gave me a vague answer—after which I asked for more clarification, after which she said I rationalized everything with words and reason, etc., etc.

In the past, she said, in the past everything was a lot better between us. I then asked her when it was that everything started to change. She couldn’t remember a specific time period. I asked if it was in elementary school or in high school. Well, she said, as a teen in high school you were always such a cheerful lad, you were engaged in the boy scouts, you were popular with the girls…

“Really?” I responded. How is that true, if I didn’t have one girlfriend during my entire elementary and high school career? (Which wasn’t true, I had had one, but my parents didn’t know about that.) Then she said that one time on a camp she had seen me interact with girls.

I asked more about whether our relationship was really that good when I was in high school. “Didn’t I not talk to you for two years in that time? Didn’t we have major fights over that?” (Which is true: for almost two years, at home I didn’t say more than “yes,” “no,” “good,” and “I’m going to my room.”) My parents didn’t remember anything of that, or at least so they say.

I then asked my dad if he remembered the time that, out of frustration because I wasn’t talking, he lifted my desk chair above his head while I was curled up against the wall fearing that he would throw it at me. He said he didn’t remember that.

I continued asking about what my mother said about me being happy in high school. I said “Mom, didn’t I tell you later that in that period I was stoned in class, that my best friend almost got kicked out of school, and so on?” Their initial reaction was: “you never told us that,” but after a while they backpedaled and said that I never told them that it had been that bad.

My dad became even more agitated, and asked what in fact my point was. I said I was trying to hear what exactly happened in the past that we once did have a good relationship with each other and how that now isn’t the case anymore. I told him that mom said that in my puberty I still possessed that connection-quality, and so I was trying to investigate with them what that quality could have been. (What I was in fact also steering towards, and I think they sensed, was that their image of my teenage years doesn’t align at all with my actual experience, and that in fact even back then they didn’t really hear/listen to who I was and what I was doing.)

Eventually I also asked why in that period they had decided to send me to a psychologist, if indeed that was the period in which I was normal-like-everybody-else. Normal children shouldn’t be analyzed by a psychologist, should they? Then they both said that in that period I didn’t go to a psychologist at all, and when I gave details about how and when that happened, they told me they didn’t remember that.

Then my mother started comparing with other families (an old habit of hers), where everything is much simpler and peaceful. What followed was a long litany from my parents about all my problems (that I didn’t have empathy, that I over-rationalize everything, that I could never ‘just do something for another person’) and about all the harm that I was doing to other people (for example that I was just like my psychiatrically ill aunt, always seeing everything from the dark side, always creating drama). And that if they couldn’t do anything good in my eyes, that maybe we should break entirely instead of taking distance, just breaking from each other.

I told them I felt like things were carried to an extreme, given that my original intention had been to discuss the mixed feeling I sometimes had if my parents offered their help or gave me advice, nothing more. And that the only thing I really had wanted was that they would listen to me.

“Do you listen enough? Do you ask enough questions?” my dad bounced back. “When is the last time that you asked me for help?” (I don’t really know why, but he was referencing practical situations.) Except for the question whether he could help me move a bed, last week, I couldn’t remember much. “Why is that?” my dad asked. I told him that that was a good question indeed.

After some hesitation I answered that the reason why I asked them so few things is that I sensed that they always react in a bulldozer-like fashion: getting involved with full force without asking what exactly my need is, and then reacting angrily when I try to indicate that I had meant one or another thing differently and then accuse me of refusing or questioning their ‘unconditional’ help.

My mom laughed and said that that was something she recognized. She gave the example of when my (paternal) grandmother comes for dinner, they sometimes are so quick with setting the table that their guest can’t really get involved anymore because she can’t see where she can help because it happens so quickly and efficiently. To which I indicated that the reason why I don’t ask my parents things isn’t because they do things so fast and efficiently, but rather because the communication is lacking.

“As if you always communicate so well,” was the response.

After this, the question came whether I still go to that psychologist. I said yes. Well, my mom said, perhaps you should invite us there so that we can explain to her what the problem is, and so that she can then explain it to you. Because if we tell you, you apparently don’t understand.

I then raised my voice (for the first time, during the rest of the time I made a calm impression), saying that that would never happen, that the therapy was my project for which I paid, and that I didn’t want my parents to be present there.

“But isn’t the problem in the communication between us?” was the response. I then said that in the past 6 months I had worked really hard, and that as a result my communication with others had improved a lot, and that I had become much more open, honest, and also more in touch with my feelings and intuition. “But with us things aren’t working out,” they said. Indeed, they aren’t, I responded, and added that there are two sides to relationships. “Are you suggesting that I should go to a psychologist?” my dad said. I asked him if he had ever done that. He snapped angrily, saying that he knew himself enough, and that he didn’t need therapy.

Then my mom launched into a story about how my sister and her fiancé had asked practical help for the house that they are going to buy. She said that together with my father they had decided to support their daughter’s project with a financial gift, and that they at first had wanted to give me such a gift, too (she called this ‘divide everything equally among the children’), but that they wouldn’t do that now given that I’m only feeling bad about everything they do for me.

I then said, pretty directly, that what she had just told me was in my eyes sarcastic and manipulative. My dad agreed with me on that. Then my mom said that this wasn’t true, because I had said myself that I don’t feel good if my parents do something for me. I responded by rehashing an argument I gave her a couple of months previously: I wanted our relationship to improve, but I can’t tolerate her talking to me in a manipulative and sarcastic way, given that it is humiliating and it makes me feel bad every time it happens.

My dad retorted that maybe I should think less about myself. I told him that this seems odd to me, given that it appears that I had actually done that too little in the previous years. I told them that they themselves, when they boasted about me (my mom likes to tell me that she always boasts about me to others), they were always proud that I did so much in the boy scouts, in the private school I helped found, with the Rothbard Institute, for other people… They admitted to this, and then I asked if maybe what they meant was that I didn’t do much for them. That was it, indeed.

My dad gave the example of me telling them to “figure it out” (with regards to downloading and installing a program for the webcam). I corrected him and said that I had asked for them to try to find a solution themselves first, and that if it didn’t work out I would then help them out. Eventually they admitted that I hadn’t told them to “figure it out.” (But there was some truth to what they said, I don’t like doing things for them.)

During the conversation I was rather stoic and on guard, and my mom used this to launch into another version of “maybe you should break from us entirely then, because things can’t go on like this.”

I started to feel exhausted and tried to wrap up the conversation by asking what the conclusion could be. “We don’t choose our feelings voluntarily,” I said, making another reference to my mom and how she often had a hard time controlling her emotions. “So about those mixed feeling I have sometimes when you help me or give me advice… Would you prefer if I no longer talk with you about those?”

Their response surprised me. They said they wholly agreed; they’d rather not hear about those feelings. They repeated that I make everything way too complicated, and that all this analysis wasn’t welcome with them anymore (my dad said this, and my mom concurred).

My mom then said all those discussions only resulted in her feeling bad.

“Ok,” I said, “that’s clear.”

I then stood up to go.

“Come here, give me a kiss,” my mom said and she pulled my arm.

“No, I don’t want to.”

To which both of them almost exploded.

“Yeah, let’s keep it strictly business,” my dad said, sarcastically.

“Shall we then also arrange for the rent in a business fashion?” (I still owed him the rent for March, as I was living in an apartment he owned.)

I told my mom (who had begun crying) that I’m sorry that she felt hurt, but that I didn’t want to give her a kiss. It wouldn’t be sincere if I did, I said.

Then the doorbell rang. It was my sister. I said hi to her and then left.