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qsz comments on Open Thread, Jun. 29 - Jul. 5, 2015 - Less Wrong
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In the spirit of asking personally important questions of LessWrong, here goes. Please be gentle with me.
Related:
Discussion post by another user on being raised by narcissists
r/RaisedByNarcissists
My parent always had a number of narcissistic traits, but was never a full-blown narcissist. They (singular) supported me financially and always seemed to legitimately care about how well I was doing academically and professionally. However, they had a habit of lowering my status by verbally critiquing my actions, and sometimes made odd demands of me, such as demanding that I share some of my passwords with them, or demanding that they be present every time I go to the doctor (I'm 25).
Right now, I think that I'm either going to severely limit contact with my parent, or cut contact completely. I think that cutting contact completely is likely to be more pleasant and easier on me, but I'm really not sure about that yet. I've had a few family members tell me that I'm obligated to keep in touch with my parent. Since LW is my in-group, and since I share lots of values with the kind of people who tend to post here, I'd prefer to get advice here, rather than elsewhere. Specifically, I'm not sure if I have a familial obligation to remain in contact with my parent, given that they've only been somewhat emotionally abusive to me; it's probable that they don't even realize/ are incapable of realizing that I find their treatment of me to be hurtful. Do you think that I have any such obligation?
Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?
I was in a similar situation with my parents in my early 20s (although their motivations and characteristics were probably very different). Looking back I think they were not ready to deal with my independence (I was the oldest) and tried to deal with things in the same way they did when I was a child. Your mention of medical appointments really rang a bell with me - my parents did the same and this made me perhaps the most uncomfortable of all.
In my case, severely limiting contact was a highly successful approach. I didn't do this explicitly; we had no conversation "I am limiting my contact with you". I took a job in a different place, got my own (tiny, horrible) room in a shared flat and just started being more independent in my life. I must admit I used the workload of my new job as a convenient excuse to limit contact - just the occasional phone call to let them know how things were going (back in those days my parents didn't have email). I also didn't visit nearly as often as before --- I found myself reverting back to a teenage mentality, they would treat me like a child, I would get very angry/upset.
Now many years later (I'm approaching 50) I have a somewhat positive relationship with both parents - perhaps in large part because I live in a different country. After a lot of time had passed we were able to discuss the earlier issues more dispassionately (although not entirely) & get a better understanding of each other's motivations.