Asklemmy

Lost the birth parent lottery hard.

Won the in-law lottery like you can't believe.

My actual parents are raging mentally-ill disasters who are far too consumed by their own shit to realize they have kids, or that kids aren't meant to be used as crutches and emotional punching bags. They love me in name but not action, and are generally disintereted in me unless they think they can use me for something. They have no idea who I am as a person, frequently forget where I live (same place for 6 years) and what I do for work (4 years), and couldn't pick my spouse out of a lineup (7 years). I haven't given them grandkids, I left a prestigious sounding but financially unwise program to do generic business admin, I live far enough away they can't "invite" me over to do tens if thousands of dollars in free labor anymore, I won't let Mom call me out of the blue to scream and insult me when she's having a bad day, and I won't "loan" them money, so from their perspective, what's the point of me?

In my early marriage I used to HOUND them with calls trying and failing to get 5 minutes of their attention - they'd literally answer and then set the phone down and ignore it or just talk to anyone else and ignore me with the phone to their ear - the problem was so bad I could barely get them to commit to meeting my now-husband until we were already engaged, and even then it was a fight (it took multiple months of proposing a time every weekend to even schedule them for a video call - in person was off the table. They have regular jobs and schedules). So I stopped trying around 6 years ago and said I'd answer when they called, but they could call me.

In the 6 years since I believe we've had about 7 phone calls or so, and about as many texts - that's for both parents total, not each. Not Christmas or birthdays, not to actually catch up, just Mom wanting to yell - she used to start the call already angry, THEN start asking questions about my life until she found something to yell about. She used to frequently do this and accuse me of lying if I didn't report sufficient failures, then have a go at me for lying. Eventually blocked for my own sanity. Dad getting caught by his siblings not even knowing where I lived at a family function and trying to cram all the trivia about my life into a short phone call so he could go back to the party and save face (this actually happened twice). Dad calling and without prompting comparing my mom to a man-eating tiger with a taste for my flesh personally (literally), then asking me to unblock her anyway because now she was treating HIM that way ("I feel for the tiger keeper, but I am not the tiger-keeper's meat shield."). 100% promise rate from Dad that he'd call again next week and then not hearing from him for well over a year - just recently got a text because he heard from a different relative that I bought a house and got caught looking bad again - he did not want to talk more.

My MIL frequently accidentally refers to me as her child and then trips up when she tries to refer to my spouse - "auto complete" in her brain says the spouse of a child should be an in-law, but they are also her child and in fact is her ACTUAL child. She also adds me to her Total Kid Count (high) and when she has to walk someone through the timing on That Many Kids, realizes she put one too many in there. When I want to call "my mom", I call her. We just bought a house, and I prioritized one with a guest room for her frequent visits (every time: "Is it ok if I spend a day seeing my siblings when I'm I'm town?" "Of course?? When has it ever not been??" "Well I did say I was coming to see you two!!"). She calls just to chat multiple times a week and I know I can tell her anything. She's not perfect, but she literally taught me what unconditional love looked and felt like, and has been there for me through every win and loss I've had over the last 7 years. She is the envy of our married friend group.

My FIL is great and we get on well, but I think it's a standard positive in-law relationship. When I want Dad advice, I call an old family friend who fell out with my folks over them generally being the people described above, to make an extremely long story short. We try to talk once a week on a schedule - but he's busy with a family of his own and a demanding career in addition to the gaggle of my siblings he volunteered to Dad-up, so it's more structured. It's always meant a ton to me that he still prioritizes carving out that time just to be a listening ear and a friend. He's been a great example to me of what it means to be a self-accountable, good person in every way, what admitting you're wrong and changing for the better looks like, and how to just generally be a kick-ass community member. He's the one who gets the Father's Day call around here.

All this to say, just because your assigned parents are a couple of slouches doesn't mean you're cursed to never have that parental support - even if you don't cut contact with your assigned parents, please give yourself permission and space in your life to find some better ones. I highly recommend joining some hobbies - especially old person hobbies - or volunteering to make those connections. We all know it's important to have peer friends, but Older Mentor Friends are also so freaking critical - my knitting group ladies got me through SO MUCH before I had that solid support system, and they're still a huge wealth of knowledge, community, and support.

It gets better, dude.