I can relate to being intelligent and have issues. I'm just guessing, but maybe you are a bit like me, I test about where you test, but I can't do anything with it. For other reasons I can't put things together and make something out of what I should be able to do, and I have never known anything else, but it is mega frustrating because it feels like I should be able to, still there are obstacles huge enough to stop me.

Whatever it is that needs parental approval, I don't have the need. I have finally realized how rare that is. Maybe why I don't have the need can explain why..? I have always been very independent. I think that is one part. I have never seen my parents as someone wiser than myself. I know that sounds a bit crazy. Also I think we had very lose bonds in my family. Sure I am attached to my parents, but that is more a feeling that happened past I was 30. When I was younger, I didn't see them as closer to me emotionally than others. They probably felt different, but they didn't show it. They have never encouraged me and never said they love me. I think their emotional lack of reaching out (even if I do think they loved me) coupled with my self dependency and lose bonds to them made me not care about what they thought.

It might sound bad, but the way I am as a person I feel they gave me a lot of freedom, and I wouldn't trade it for "love". They didn't probe into my private emotions and physically I could do almost whatever I wanted. Since I would have been independent even with closer parents, I actually prefer to have more distant ones, because they never used bonding in a negative way the way most parents do, at least at times.

I don't want to impress on them. That doesn't mean I tell them things. I know some stuff they would not accept so I keep that a secret. I feel there is no use upsetting them. I'd rather we function on a more superficial level. It's not before my father divorced and remarried and compared to new wife's family that he understood that it is normal to be closer to the children. So he tried to make up for lost times, which is nice in one way and annoying in another.

And doesn't mean my parents don't claim ownership of me, they do, they treat me worse than they would a stranger. I treat them well. I never do anything back because I feel that is wrong.

I do feel like a failure but my parents have little to do with it. I more feel that way because I have talents that I cannot use because my brain is evilly set up for wanting to do something worthwhile, having some talents, but also having a lot of things getting in the way. I don't think my parents would been able to make me overcome the obstacles because they seem to be built into my neurology.

But I assume there is a meaning to strong family bonds. People through the ages would not have survived without strong bonds.