I can relate to the parental comparisons... especially the one's in the "nice voice"... the really manipulative conversations with the "safety net"... if I ever called them on it or expressed how much I did not appreciate it, they would go with the "I didn't mean anything by it!" excuse. It didn't matter if I expressed that whether they meant it as a comparison or not, it still hurt my feelings... all that was important was that they "didn't mean anything by it" and so they would keep on doing it.

My dad was horrible. He used to make snide remarks comparing me to my cousin after every family gathering. That is one of the big reasons I stopped going to all those gatherings when I got old enough, and the rest of the family took offense because they thought I didn't want to see them... I just didn't want to be there with my father. He always showed his disappointment in me... as an example I was never good at sports and so he would constantly mention how good my cousin was at sports. I became so embarrased about it that I never pursued any sports so my reaction was always the opposite of what he intended. When I became a teenager I sort of "came to my senses" and understood what was going on so, like you, I stopped considering his approval to be an important thing and was just proud of the things that I was proud of. Many years later I went to one family holiday with them, at that point my cousin had begun to go to pot, and my dad remarked (actually he didn't, my mom told me he said this afterward) that I looked so much better than him. The compliment was meaningless and I had to hold my tongue from telling him off... because if his opinion was valuable enough for me to take that as a compliment, then I would have been utterly destroyed by his expression of his opinions for the many years preceeding.

Oh I've gone off

Glad to hear of your success cms!!!!

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