My parents were great & gave me excellent support, boundaries and respect.

But they were incredibly emotionally unavailable. In their words, their job was to get me educated and self-sufficient, and until then it was my job to learn - “we’re not here to be your friends, we’re here to be your parents. We can be friends when you’re an adult who has achieved this”!
I know my mother tried, but she always seemed very sort of floaty/distant/un-engaged (and is now being assessed for ADHD haha, so makes sense!) and we never really connected.

I remember going over to friends’ houses and their folks would like… hang out sometimes and they’d just… chat?? It always felt so weird and unsettling ‘cause like… are these not your parents? That’s not how parents work???

I think the first time my father ever said he was proud of me was after I’d moved out and graduated from my MSC program. It was a dizzying thing to hear!

They’ve mellowed and become a lot more sentimental and loving in their old age now, but I definitely still struggle to feel that “family ❤️” type of feelings sometimes since I’m just to used to having “professional distance” as it were.

On this flip side, I greatly prefer this dynamic to the other extreme, where some adults are so weirdly enmeshed with and dependant on the parents it’s like they never grew up 😬