I relate to your post bigtime. I believe that my parents love me and I also believe they have tried their best with me. For some reason I stopped being able to accept their love at around age 12. I rejected them, a relationship with them seemed like the most unnatural thing in the world to me. It didn't feel safe to have them near me anymore and 13 years later I still feel this way.
I grew up desperately trying to find a mother figure. I didn't know what I was doing at the time or why I was falling in love with a certain type of woman. Teachers, guidance counsellors, neighbours, friend's mothers. As long as they were old enough and warm and caring. I didn't even know I wanted a mother because I didn't think that sort of love could come from a mother, I believed it had to come from an outside source.
I acted out, and I so desperately wanted whichever woman I was obsessed with at the time to rescue me from my life. And the only thing that ever happened was my own mother being informed of whatever I had done, but I didn't want her attention because it felt so wrong. So I stopped trying to get anyone's attention.
Years later, once I spotted the pattern of what I was doing and worked out why I was doing it, I magically just stopped needing to do it. Once I realised that this is an actual problem that some people have and not just my weird thing, the shame went away. I still have no idea why I felt the need to reject my parents love though.
I have lots of older friends and I often prefer their company to people my own age, but I've stopped fantasising about manipulating them into caring for me. They are what they are and I stay very guarded with them. They know very little about the real me, they seem to think I'm this fun, carefree, shallow sort of person and that is the way it has to stay for them to like me. But they are there for now and I am glad.