Part A:
It happens all the time; Children grow up and abandon their parents and not necessarily physically.
Up to a certain age (of the child) the relationship is two-way; Love (and therapeutic support) on the part of the parent to the child and love (and emotional and physical need) on the part of the child to the parent. But from a certain age onwards the two-way becomes one-way; Only from parent to child. The adolescent child (no longer in need of parental care and support) is now looking for new objects to direct his love towards. And for the parent it is an emotional abandonment. Abandonment after which he is almost always left – wounded and bleeding. And all that is left for him from now on, is to rejoice in the joy of his children and suffer in their sorrow. And all this through the glass of alienation they have established from a certain age onwards. The parents tap on the glass, but get an empty, cold look from their loins. He does not see (through the parent’s mask) the human being in need of the rigid love on the glass.
Indeed, this is the heart of the problem, the children who have grown up do not see the person in the parent, they see the role, the parent’s mask – and remain emotionally cold to him as a person in his own right. While the truth is that being a parent is only a part (and an external part) of it, until the moment of parenthood he was a person, with desires, aspirations, weaknesses, desires, disappointments, longings, etc. The very act of becoming a parent did not stop them, or ‘shrink’ him as a person in his own right, simply adding a role to him. But mostly a new love was added to it. And this is the secret of the parents, they are in love with their children while they, from a certain age onwards do not return love to them anymore.
The process of emotional cleansing begins in adolescence, intensifies towards the end of adolescence and is usually fixed in the twenties. And since then almost every parent has remained grateful for every hug, for a sign of affection – on the part of his or her growing children (or older ones already).
The explanation that parents give for this emotional detachment of their children from them, is one of several, depending on what age it is; In adolescence, it is of course ‘this age’, then, of course, they are already married and it is clear that their love is given to the spouse, and then, this is the job; He’s just busy, he does not have, or has a spare moment, the Russians come home, who has the power to pick up the phone.
However, it must be said that this is not a complete, physical abandonment. But ‘only’ emotionally and mentally. For there is responsibility, sincere concern for their well-being – there is, and moral commitment – there is and there is. But human warmth is lacking. They often remain cold and stiff towards the parents, lacking in softness.
So from the active side of the adult or adolescent children. From the passive side they are still trying to benefit from the parents, to help them functionally or financially. Suck from the sagging parental breasts a few more drops.
To begin with, there is an unwritten contract between parents and their children. And as in any contract, each party is supposed to provide something to the other party, and each party needs something from the other party; The child needs functionality from the parent, and the parent needs affection and love. Usually the parent stands by the contract and usually helps functionally and financially and waits for a reward of warmth and empathy that are usually worn out.
Part B:
All of this is usually a recurring story; Parents are always in love with their children. A bit like the Greek sculptor who fell in love with the woman he created: Pygmalion. * And falling in love with your work (unlike many other loves) is a love that will never fade.
And as in a fine classical tragedy – the end is known in advance; The child will grow up and abandon the parents in love with him in favor of new loves. From an evolutionary biological point of view, it seems only natural: to leave parental love to find personal love and continue the lineage. But not so at the level of the mind and heart. At these levels it is not a natural and desirable evolutionary continuation, but an abandonment, always an abandonment. And no, that does not have to be the case. This, as stated, must be so physical, but can be passed from the needy love stage of the helpless child, to the adult love phase of the adult person mentally; Discover the person behind the parent. And when you discover the person, and within the person you discover his human part – you usually fall in love with him. After all, only in what a human can fall in love with, one cannot fall in love with a role. Roles can not be loved, only human beings. But the person in the parent usually remains unknown and hidden behind the mask of the role of being a parent. And the parent grimaces behind the mask, and shouts: ‘I am a person, a person with feelings, I love you’, but the older child does not hear, the role mask hides the voices and sights from him.
It could have been a natural process, moving from an infantile phase to an adult phase. From therapeutic need – to human love. But this rarely happens. Usually, after the child’s need for a parent has expired – he or she becomes emotionally disconnected.
After the child no longer needs the parent as crutches and he stands and walks on his own – a space is created, and instead of the space being filled with bustling humanity, ** he is populated by alienation. ***. And could have been different, that after the stage of: needy – caregiver, the stage of: person-person, human-human will come; Relationships that have an affinity of tenderness, human warmth, empathy for the person as far as he is human. But as stated this is not an automatic process, and as if it is easier for a boy and a girl growing up to slow down towards the parent than to open up to him emotionally and mentally.
The boys and girls who grew up could say, ‘Now that we no longer need them, we can develop an emotional attitude of warmth, affection and love towards them.’ But most of the time the alienation with the addition of a sense of responsibility and fulfillment of duty – are what characterize the attitude towards parents.
The parent loves the human in the child (because, as mentioned, this is the only thing you can fall in love with) while the child who has grown up becomes blind and deaf to what is human in the parent. And this is the great tragedy in the parent-child or adolescent-child relationship, a tragedy that remains an open wound in the hearts of parents. A wound that does not heal, a wound that the adolescent children, for the most part, do not even know exists. (Both because of the insensitivity of the parents and also because the parents very much do not want to hurt their children, so they do not tell them about it).
And sometimes, when the moment comes and the parents die, their children experience deep feelings of remorse and sorrow. Feelings of remorse that only deepen in the years to come. The memory of the great miss does not let up; There was a human opportunity, time after time, time after time, time after time: to open the closed heart, to know the person who gave birth to us. Treat it through the heart and not through the parent label.
Gabriel