I haven't heard talk to me about this hair, who is flex and rooms? It is flexing rooms on cater We don't often talk about like dynamics between parents and children, not because there isn't heaps of content, but I guess what better time than the present?
Yes.
Recently The New Yorker came out with this article entitled do I still have to be a good daughter? Even though my mom is selfish? And I said, this is a controversial headline, and basically what this section of the site is is a classic advice column. You ask a question, post the specific context, and then the person the author sorry will respond. And I think this is very controversial, and there's some good stuff in here. And I read I'm in a situation with my mom who's in her
late seventies. I'm in a situationship with my mum, who's in her late seventies, and I'd appreciate your help. We used to be semi close, but since I've had kids, she is checked out of being a person I can count on. She's barely able to be a grandmother and does not make an effort to get to know my kids. She seems very selfish.
She's crazy.
Maybe she was always like this, and I've never noticed until I became a mum. She's not an addict or abusive, just self centered and immature. She never asks me about myself, and when I do talk about myself, she mostly reacts by being anxious or confused. I don't know how she functions in the world, but I'm done making an effort
to spend time with her only to be disappointed. I don't see why I should call her every week and fly across and fly across the country to visit her if our relationship is going to be totally one sided. My brother, however, disagrees with me and thinks I'm being too hard on her. He wants the family to all get along together and doesn't see my side of things. Do I have a duty to be a good daughter or can I follow my gut? This is from c Brooklyn. Now.
The advice given, I think is super interesting, and I'm wondering if we should read out this advice on and talk about our feelings on the podcast.
I think that's a fantastic choice.
We can at least read a little bit, this author says. And this is a New York magazine author who will not be named because they haven't left their name. Yes, I tend to think about our relationship with our parents as having two phases, the one you have with them when they are alive and the one you have with them when they're dead. My god, what anything can happen While they're alive. You can say things that will surprise
them and vice versa. Incredible the way we're able to keep surprising each other even after we've written each other off. When they're dead, all you can do is live with what you did and didn't continue this advice that we did not write from the New York magazine. This person says, thinking about relationships this way is somewhat at odds with the current tendency to take an actuarial approach to intimacy. Okay, we think in terms of what we give and what
we're owed. We keep a running tally on all the people we care about. We're told that doing this is important for maintaining fairness, and above all, for pushing back against old, hierarchical and patriarchal forms of relations in which women are duty bound to serve men and care for everyone, both young and old. I think a lot of us believe that if we don't act as our own INTI ooh. I think a lot of us believe that if we don't act as our own intimacy accountants, we'll be taken
advantage of harm intimacy accountants I speak. This habit of mind is bolstered by the pop cultural interest in pointing out the narcissists and gas lighters. Even in our midst this became important, even urgent, during the height of Me Too. But like any important social change, calling out bad behavior has become a packaged good on reality TV. It's entertaining to watch housewives do it, but do we really want to invite that approach into our own interpersonal relationships and families.
The alternative to actuarial intimacy is not selflessness or Confucian subservience to our elders. You can be self respecting and self determined while also treating your flawed and disappointing family with compassion and even love. But this demands that you ask yourself what is the purpose of family relationships anyway? If it's not scorekeeping and making sure everyone is getting what they deserve, and it's not duty and service, then
what's left. I don't know enough about your mother to tell you what your relationship with her might offer you, but you do say she is an abusive. Family estrangement is no joke, and people tend to avoid it unless it's a matter of survival. This doesn't seem to be the case. It's easy to forget that, in the midst of coping with our family members' flaws, that it's rare and important to be known by someone for your whole life.
I sometimes wonder if all of our lifelong journeys of entrepreneurial self improvement are making it too easy to lose sight of the pleasure of being intensively known by someone. Our culture's emphasis on self improvement, whether it's through wellness or professional accomplishment or whatever, suggests that our old selves weren't worth knowing anyway. We're looking for the people who will celebrate our future selves and our past selves. We move through life banishing the past in a flurry of
insistence that we have no regrets. Mindlessly projecting ourselves into the future is a symptom of our human lives beginning to imitate the spirit of capitalist enterprises. Growth or death.
Damn, I don't know it.
Maybe I'm wrong to once again make neoliberalism into my whipping boy. But this approach to life feels low key impoverished, So you people are povo. Corporations don't have regrets, but people do, which brings me back to the two phases of relationships with our parents. Your mum knows things about you that no one else will ever know, and when she dies, that ephemeral archive of knowledge about you will vanish.
Your brother is right. Having a living mum, no matter how self centered, is important, not because she'll make your life better or because she'll make your children happy, simply because she exists alongside you and shares your history. It be a tragedy for you to realize that only after she's gone give her a call. She'll disappoint you, and
you'll be angry and it won't feel triumphant. But this is your life as it is, and coming to terms with it, rather than leaving it behind you in a huff, is your challenge as a human adult whoa there's not even anything to say. I don't think I want to add anything else to that.
I mean, it makes sense.
It makes sense, and as someone who has a great relationship with their mum, I can't weigh in on these things I observe my friends who have really strained relationships with their parents, like non existent relationships, abusive relationships, and I'm like, I could not even fathom.
Okay, at yourself, lucky. I read a book if you like relate to this. I've been reading a book called Sorrow and Bliss. Have you heard of that?
It's a fiction book.
I'm nearly at the end, but not yet. And she is an interesting dynamic with her mum.
That I think would be interesting what way.
I don't want to give the book away, but her mum is like very unpredictable and not doesn't seem to have this woman's best interest in her heart. But I'm not sure how it ends, so maybe they repair it. But yeah, that's finally, don't.
Know, no joke. I should talk about the more often. Yeah, I guess people don't want to talk about family dynamics because it implicates you too much, because you've only ever had one family, so whatever you perceive to be your argument just calls you out. Whereas dating you can kind of hide between the experience of other people and be like, I've heard that dating is like this. Exactly when you say mothers, you mean your mum.
Yeah, and it's real life and hard.
Well, best of luck, miss you already.
You've been listening to The Flex and Froom's daily podcast. For more, Tune Indicator on DAB or stream it on iHeartRadio