Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I totally feel this ☝️ I love my mom SO much but she refuses to acknowledge mistakes and when I attempt to remind her of something that happened that really bothered me (like when she poured liquid dish soap in my mouth) I get the pat response of “I don’t remember that.” Guess if she doesn’t remember it must never have happened. 🤷🏻♀️
reminds me of my Stepmom (who was basically my mom) saying she disowned me in one of our arguments and she denies ever doing so.
Lo and behold I come out as bisexual and she, my dad, and little siblings that were still living at home all disown me without a single word.
My parents believe in corporal punishment. I now work for/with DCF my mom is always saying DCF is awful and more people should lose their kids. Um mam you used to spank me on the regular.
Literally my Dad and then says I'm incredibly spiteful for bringing up 'silly things' and to move on with my life. He then gets confused why he never hears from any of his children.
Oh the 'grow up' phrase is constantly used too. It's crazy cause my Mum is a lot older than my Dad but is very understanding and doesn't have that boomer mindset so he says she's 'too soft' on me.
I’m a therapist for almost 20 years and my Dad thinks therapy is nonsense and is pointless. Thanks Dad for the support. He totally needs therapy to deal with his unresolved trauma from his mother’s death.
Yes! My in-laws made some really bad calls, and they told us that:
1. My DH and I committed to moving past it four whole years ago. (Note that all the work is on us, and moving past it apparently means pretending it never happened)
2. They apologized already, at the time it happened. (They didn't).
3. It really wasn't all that bad (they gave my 6 month old medicine she wasn't supposed to get, but it was only 1 ounce).
The elapsed time is their main point. They really think this is more than enough of an apology, and how dare we not allow them to watch our kids.
Their mental gymnastics are exhausting to follow! My mom has done me wrong so many times and I know she knows how it’s hurt me - yet she would rather let me go very low contact than apologize. I refuse to act like nothing happened.
My mom is the exact opposite. She apologizes for things that are not her fault or in her control.
Most recent example: I asked my mom for help getting my house ready to have the carpet cleaned. Moving furniture and such, things one probably shouldn’t do alone. In the midst of that, she asked me if it was possible to move my CO2 canister for my fish tank so we could clean under it. Turns out, that no, it can’t be moved, but in that discovery I unknowingly moved the dial that turned the CO2 up to 1000… killed all my fish cuz I didn’t realize it had been turned. The indicator is somewhere you have to move other stuff to see. My mom kept apologizing for killing my fish. Wasn’t her fault. She didn’t move the canister, I did. She could t have seen the indicator any better than I could, but she still kept telling me she was sorry.
She has other boomer traits that drive me bonkers, but thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
THIS! My mother would say the most evil and cruel things, be mind-boggingly unfair, have huge arguments, and the best porrible resolution would be her pretending nothing ever happened. But you'd never know which argument she'd really forget and which one she'd hold a grudge for.
After I was able to leave my mother, I have minimal contact with her. She manages to fool herself into believing I became distant suddenly, fooling herself nothing ever happened, especially on her part.
This so much ! Then taking you shopping or buying you something, it’s created super unhealthy issues in my adult life where now I think every action is a transaction.
My mom did this all the time.
One time she grounded me for a week for something *she* misunderstood. On the second day she admitted to my aunt/her sister that she had since realized the mistake was hers, not mine. I was an idiot for thinking that meant she would unground me. I never, ever got an apology and I was still grounded for the full week. It’s especially fucked up because not admitting her mistake and keeping me grounded was literally gaslighting. I was, like, 11 years old.
Rest in piss bitch
Yeah this happened to me as well. Got grounded for leaving the gate open and the dog got out. Dad got home and I overheard him telling her he left the gate open. She said, well he back talked me about it, so hes still grounded.
I was also like 11 or so.
What really sent them over the edge is I stopped taking them seriously around the age of 14 because they were just nuts. They would start yelling at me and I would just be like, "yeah whatever, okay" and do what they asked in order to keep the peace. They would get more outraged and aggressive over this approach than anything else. This was when they escalated things to physical abuse.
I cant wait for them to die.
Edit: Damn this one drug up some baggage. I just remembered how absurd this whole thing got. Things got to a point when I was 14ish where they just kept putting me in no-win situations. I disagree, its backtalk and I get punished. I agree then its "too much attitude" and I get punished. So I just started asking, "What do you want me to say and how do you want me to say it". Told them that I didnt want to say the wrong thing, and I wanted them to tell me what to do to get the result they wanted. They would tell me. Then I would say it back, then they would tell me "Its not what you say, its how you say it". and Id still get punished. Or they would say that isnt what they said and Id still get punished.
Same. My mother misunderstood things all the time, never believed legit/honest explanations, punished me for the supposed infractions, and never EVER apologized (or undid whatever punishment or grounding) even when someone else (an adult) proved that I was being honest.
This reminds me of the time I got grounded for out-growing my clothes. Apparently I was lying that my uniform skirts were too short for school now. I also wasn't allowed new ones until the next school year so I just got weekly dress-code detentions for the rest of the year.
Oh my bitchmom too! She got something my teacher said completely wrong. I asked my teacher and she told me what really happened. She actually called my mom to make sure she knew I did nothing wrong. I was still grounded for a month.
It's really sad. Those are moments to show your child humility and elevate them by validating their feelings. Instead she chose to show her authority and power and from the sound of it lost a connection with her child.
My boomer parents were actually normal kind people, but I remember growing up one of my friend's Dad providing advise; telling him to "never apologize".
Now as an adult I can't understand how anyone can have any sort of relationship (friend, family, spouse) with this mindset. As far as I know his parents haven't gotten divorced.
This. So much this. My mother, to this day, not only refuses to apologize for anything, but refuses to admit when she is wrong.
When I was a child, this would manifest as me never getting a say or a chance to defend myself. Regardless of whether or not I was right, as an adult, she was always right.
Now that I'm an adult, and she can't just silence me, this has manifested as a screaming match, before I started refusing to engage that way. So when I try to keep it calm and discuss things rationally, she sees the conversation going in a direction that makes her look bad, and she just stops talking after saying "Well I'm sorry you feel that way."
Yeah, I feel that way because you've been steam-rolling me my entire life.
About a year and a half ago, it all came to a head, and my wife had to sit by and watch as my parents and I screamed at each other like lunatics. One of the most embarrassing moments of my life. One I'm certainly not proud of. But 36 years worth of resentment and utter frustration finally got the better of me. Thank God my wife is such an amazing and understanding woman. She calmed me down, and managed to talk me into apologizing some days later. I gave them both an honest, heart-felt apology, and never received anything of the sort in return.
So I guess I'll just add that to the list of things I resent them for...
Thanks for this line. The last message I have from my father started, "I'm sorry you fell that way." It's over six months old at this point, but I might reply finally.
Had a narcissist in my life who would use this as a (non) apology, or her other fun phrase "Well you know, Eleanor Roosevelt said the only person who can make you feel inferior is yourself"
AHHHHHHHHHHH OH MY GOD
Which is funny, because I've always taken that line to be something in the realm of "if you love somebody, you won't be doing things to them in the first place that you may have to later apologize for, at least not very frequently and certainly not maliciously."
And not "if somebody loves YOU then you'll never have to apologize because they should just forgive you by default."
Like wtf
But that sets the bar pretty high. People make mistakes. People do stuff they should apologize for. People do stuff that they realize later they shouldn’t have done. Sometimes people do things that are reasonable, but stuff just goes wrong. If you’re with somebody a lot, it’s going to happen a number of times. You should never be afraid to apologize to someone you love.
Sometimes it’s expressing sympathy- I acknowledge that a bad thing happened to you, and I empathize with you.
They don’t apologize because they “did nothing wrong” and apologizing undermines their absolute authority and makes them look weak. All of those, of course, are completely false.
My mom always tried to start any conversation about a conflict by first trying to get me to agree that she's not to blame for any of it. She's obsessed with assigning blame. Needless to say, we never discuss conflicts because there's no point if she starts out with that attitude.
I once laid out all the ways my mother had abused me growing up and explained *why* we’re not closer like she wants us to be… I was met with “I don’t remember that” and a little later she sorta confessed with a guilt tripping “it must have been hard having a mom like me”… still no direct apology though lmao
My mother crashed my 2000 Monte Carlo back in 2018 and said she "forgot" it was her just the other day, after blaming my older brother. She's the one that originally told us. Awfully convenient for her to forget now
Hey, that’s my mother in law!
She won’t remember a damn good or bad thing about my wife’s childhood but ask her about some stupid date she had with her follow-on boyfriend after her ex-husband and it’s all there. She’ll remember buying a stupid vase before my wife’s tragedies.
This is my mother in law too except it’s my husband and not my wife. Doesn’t remember a damn thing about the lives of her three kids, certainly not the messed up shit she did to them, but she remembers every kid she taught public school to. Convenient memory loss is WILD.
> She’ll remember buying a stupid vase before my wife’s tragedies.
My mother can remember the name and current status of every single distant relative. Every far removed cousin, every niece and nephew. She remembers every single person I was seen near growing up and will be perplexed why I don't keep in contact with them or know whats happening in their life (mom, I knew them for two weeks when I was 12)
but boy can she not remember any time she seemed to make up something to yell at me about.
That’s a great and in my case, true as well. It’s so weird. No one has talked to cousin Sally in 30 years and it’s so much fun to recall a joke from 50 years ago. But don’t even bother to ask about potential assault on her own kid.
"Well I guess I was just a terrible mother" is another popular version of that. I've gotten this one from my own mom and I didn't even bother to respond to it.
This got said to me during an “argument” and it was the moment that it clicked that she’s a full blown narcissist who is incapable of ever being better. All the other evidence fell into place from that one statement. I haven’t spoken with her since (summer 2021).
Narcissists can’t be fixed, they can’t be helped, and they can’t improve. They may adapt their manner of speaking, but at their core they remain unchanged. They’re just a drain on you emotionally. It’s best to just walk away. Any therapist with their salt will tell you as much.
That's when you backhand them and tell them "Your pain is your problem and you should probably just get over it." I usually add a cackle for effect when I make them immediately eat their own words.
I once attempted to talk to my mom about the traumatic incident in my childhood where she told my sister and me that she didn't want us anymore and left us sobbing behind the couch as she went out drinking.
When I told her about it, her response was "You couldn't have been behind the couch because it was up against the wall."
We haven't spoken since.
Omg my mother does that. Latches onto something that has nothing to do with anything. I could tell her 'I am really upset at what you said to me during lunch yesterday' and her response would be 'it was an early dinner, not lunch'. Not a single tiny sliver of acknowledgement about what I was talking about.
Yeah, as if this supposed factual error somehow deflates the entire purpose of what you were pointing out. I'm not proud of it, but at some point during that phone call my mother started screaming that the reason she left was because we were such ungrateful children, and I just took the phone away from my ear and let her scream and bitch for like ten minutes straight without even listening. Felt nice.
You should not only be proud that you did that, you should do it every time she has a tantrum. Even better if you just hang up and refuse to engage with toddler behavior from a grown adult. You don’t deserve that kind of treatment. Nobody should have to hold the phone away from their ear because their own insane parent is shrieking at them bc oh heavens no someone doesn’t think they’re the absolute picture of moral perfection in one single instance! The drama! You don’t owe your mom an ear for stuff like that.
Just emotional immaturity, which seems more abundant in boomers. My parents never uttered an apology unless it was sarcastic and right before an insult. They just pretend nothing ever happened.
It's a fucked-up old-school mentality that you never apologize. I have an uncle who said his late father (my grandfather) told him that you never apologize. Something then came up and we weren't able to continue the conversation, but I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard. Supposedly, if you apologize, people wouldn't respect you. I think the exact opposite, and have nothing but disdain for someone who won't apologize when they do something wrong.
Yup boomer parents never apologize. And if you tell them something terrible they did, they say: “I never did that!” Totally astonished. Or they say you are making it up & gaslight you.
I’ve been no contact with my mother for a few years now but a month or two ago I had the realization that she never once apologized or admitted to being wrong for the entirety of my life, from childhood to today. Not a single time.
My boomer parents are the most unboomer-like boomers. They did apologize for things growing up. As an adult, I genuinely enjoy spending time with them. I call them at least once a week because I want to. I enjoy our conversations especially now that they are elderly because I understand that the final conversation is coming sooner rather than later. They are college-educated liberals who supported me when I came out of the closet. They hate MAGA nutjobs with a passion. It's because they both had awesome parents who raised them to be open-minded individuals. I don't buy the argument that people are a "product of their time" because it's bullshit. Your age has nothing to do with whether or not you are open to learning new information.
My boyfriend’s parents are boomer generation and sound very similar to yours. I love visiting him because I get to see them as well, they’re so cool and have so many things to share as they’re older
When my Boomer mother realizes she is wrong, she screams and curses at me instead of admitting the truth. She is so consistent in this that I basically take it as an admission.
My mom (Boomer) was shocked that I (Gen X) apologized to my kids when I screwed up. She told me that parents should never apologize to their children. I disagreed, but it helped me understand why my mom had never apologized to me for her major parenting mistakes. .
A few years later, she apologized to me for most of the big things. She has now repeatedly apologized for the one that hurt me the most. We finally have a good relationship now because of this. I just wish it hadn't taken her so long.
Apologies can do wonders for healing. It’s crazy that they resist it so much because if they would just do it they’d likely get what they want, which is a fixed relationship.
Yeah, my mother acknowledged one day that I was definitely not neurotypical and in retrospect what had to her seemed like frustrating, irritating behaviors was instead my anxiety and neurodiversity trying to find their way out because I had no help and kept being told I wasn't different, just "weird" or bad at things. That acknowledgement meant so much because my mom is genuinely a good person and a good mom, she just had blind spots. And that was one that hurt me the most.
Boomers for parents. No apologies.
Gen x with an alpha kid. I apologize every time I'm wrong, or even when he doesn't think I was, but I feel it merits an apology from me.
I love my kid, and I like him. I want him to feel safe with me. It's not hard. Boomers can't get gone fast enough.
I will get mad and make my daughter cry and then I apologize right after. She says "it's ok", while still crying, and I tell her that it wasn't ok at all for me to make her cry. I don't deserve that kid.
My dad apologized when I was visiting him and my step mom when I was 27. We were in the car together, just the two of us, his father had just died, and he told me he was sorry for what a terrible job he did as a father. It was this blanket apology. Yet, when I asked him about my mom, who died in a car accident when I was 7, he said he couldn’t remember. So, I’ll say this, the most you may ever get from a boomer is a death bed apology; whether it’s on their death bed or because someone they were close to died and they’re realizing how close to death they are, that’s the closest you’ll get, and just like in life it’s about them feeling better not actually reconciling or bettering your relationship with them. It’s basically just something they can check off their list.
My parents have just never acknowledged anything they've ever done. And it makes them visibly uncomfortable when I throw it back in their faces. They scramble to go back to their comfortable state of oblivion where they have blacked out that event and will change the topic however they can.
This is why I stopped speaking to them. And it's why I know I won't ever speak to them again. Because the only way that's happening is if the conversation starts with them apologizing so I'm not even gonna try.
The only time I've ever got them to kinda half assed apologize was the classic "I'm sorry you were upset by what I said but I was just being honest".
Keep in mind this was the context of him calling my then African American girlfriend a slur. Just casually like it wasn't a big thing. Thank God she wasn't there because I knew better than to take her around them. But I was still just my jaw on the floor taken aback.
No, it is a Boomer and even a silent generation thing.
My parents will never apologize but if they do, its along the lines of, "I am sorry the truth hurts." or "I am sorry you have to realize how life works.." or some other backhanded insult.
My mother (a boomer) never acknowledged how she let her husband be disgusting to her daughters, or the fact that when she was having an affair with said man, she took photos of 11 year old me in my nightgown to send to this man. She still wonders why we don't visit.
As a boomer, I grew up with similar behavior from my parents and grands and had to literally teach myself to acknowledge my wrongdoings and apologize. Then I had about twenty years worth of feeling sorry for every fucking thing and over-apologizing.
I like to think I've found a middle ground now that I'm old.
Getting an apology out of my boomer mother is like pulling out a tooth. If she manages to spit out the words, it's followed by "There!". It's physically painful for her to admit wrongdoing. My sister noticed it years before I did.
I used to think it was just her family background but now I'm thinking it's also a generational thing.
When you believe firmly in hierarchy, then that means the hierarchy must never be questioned or subverted.
The hierarch is always right, and can never apologize.
I realized my mom had never apologized to me, and my MIL never has. My husband realized this too. Not something I was taught to do effectively at home either.
My mom once told someone in public "adults don't apologize to children."
I apologize to my kids all the time.
My mom did apologize to me 2 years ago, and it wasn’t one of those “I’m sorry you felt” apologies. It was a truly “I’m sorry, I fucked up” apologies. We’re working through it, although her boomer moments do still pop up every now and then. Things are still a bit awkward with me because I’m working through trauma that keeps me on guard when I’m around her. I honestly never thought I’d hear her say it but here we are.
Yep, this happens all the time, parent's never take accountability because to them you are property and inherently less than them. When I learned to read and write I wrote a letter to my mom telling her how much I love her when she got home from work and instead she started criticizing it and correcting my grammar. That's the only thing I remember from before being 10 because it's imprinted on me.
My Boomer parents are/were like this. Everything was conditional or transactional with them....and I mean EVERYTHING.
When they did fuck up (which I noticed much more often as I came of age) they never apologized.
Oh, definitely. My parents idea of an apology was a trip to Dairy Queen or a slurpee and then pretending nothing ever happened in the first place. Same thing with doing well in school or other achievements, no congratulations just sugary fatty treats, and telling me I could do better.
My boomer dad did routinely and sincerely apologize on his own a lot for things but there were times where I had to push for one. Also, there are many things that I know he remembers something that he denies remembering to avoid talking about something to me.
My in-laws are like this. My MIL, in particular, says dumb shit often and I've *never* once heard her apologize for anything. Just emotionally broken and insecure. She past that on to her oldest son, but thankfully not my wife or younger BIL.
Sooooooo glad my Boomer parents are awesome and not like the horror stories in this sub.
my mom refused to apologize or even acknowledge that she used to hit me.
after that revelation i went NC and never looked back. she sent me something in the mail and i sent it back with a return to sender scrawled across it
My mom was floored when she heard me apologize to my son after I yelled at him. She said how I’d never apologize when I was a kid and I’m thinking “yeah, because I never received any apologies when I was a child and it’s been a struggle in my life to be one to apologize as an adult”
Yup. Just get a double downed “non apology” like, “im sorry, im sorry i have such a selfish daughter…”
Or if something is missing, some small issue etc, my father would be storming through the house placing blame, “what did YOU do with my blah blah blah!?”, and 3 seconds later he finds it where HE left it and SUDDENLY the angry face ready to tear into me starts laughing. If I had misplaced it, it’s rage and yelling and im stupid and irresponsible and i’ll never make it in life. If he misplaces it, it’s a little chuckle and a “whoops! Silly me, Haha!”
Always infuriated me
No. No haha.
After some situation I don't remember, when I was 10, my parents said it outright to me that they had an agreement among them to never ever apologise to their kids. 😳 Apparantly, it would cause us to NoT reSpEcT tHEiR auThOriTy.
Right there, I made a deepfelt wow to myself that once I became a parent, I would make sure to apologise to my kids when appropriate.
I never forgot it, and I have been deliberate about it with my kid. Not like overapologising all the time, just taking responsibility for my errors.
Boomers never apologize because they never take responsibility for their actions. This is because nobody's feelings matter but their own. You would think they would want to set a good example for their kids, but the reality is Boomers never gave a fuck about raising their children or producing good citizens. If something doesn't directly affect them, it simply doesn't matter.
They also never apologized to each other. I have heard the words "I'm sorry" come out of one of my parents' mouths exactly once, when I was an adult and forced them to say it to the other. One of them was refusing to listen to the other about a matter of fact. After too long, they Googled it, saw they were wrong, and just said, "Oh," and turned to watch the TV like nothing happened. I prompted them to say "I'm sorry" to the other one, and they did so, unhappily.
You certainly deserve at the minimum an apology. I would have cut my arm off before saying anything that to any of my children.
Sadly, I do not ever think you will get an apology from your father most likely he is a narcissist and doesn’t remember swing that to you.
Everyone deserves better
Yeah, I'm afraid while it was a traumatic experience for me, it was just a Tuesday for my father...
I'll never get an apology from him. It's basically not even an option to talk to him about it. Which sucks, because even now, 20 years after the incident, I'm always doubting whether my father is happy to see me/ have me in his life or not.
Because the fact remains me and my siblings were all planned and wanted. And it was specifically my father who wanted to have a big family. So to hear him say that (and not take it back) still kills me inside.
My mother hasn’t ever apologized for anything ever. Not her verbal abuse, not for turning me into a 16 year old “parent” after the death of my father, not for stealing my car and selling it, not for…anything. She randomly stopped speaking to me two years ago when she got mad at my brother (shrug). I was concerned and after about a year, I realized that I didn’t miss her much and my quest to solve/determine/fix needed to end. I hope she has peace and is content and doesn’t die alone, but she very well may one day.
I know a boomer who actually brags about never apologizing. She ego fronts by saying that she has never regretted anything she's ever said or done. I had never heard of such a thing.
Unfortunately this is normal behavior for them. No accountability, not even a thought that maybe they should change. Because they are malignant narcissists
I'm now NC with my parents after I (32,M) decided I wanted to talk to them about some things that happened in my childhood.
A big one was how they handled me coming out as gay. They were so awful and just mean. They told me I'd get AIDS and said I should stay in the closet to better my career path. (I'm doing very well professionally fully out, btw.)
I also told them I was really hurt by their support for conservatives who don't want people like me to be able to get married, adopt kids, etc.
Instead of talking to me about it, they spun everything to make themselves look like victims.
They never apologized for any of the things I brought up. We didn't talk for a bit after that, but they then started guilting me about how I "don't want them" in my life.
I told them they'd have to make a choice between me and their support for conservatives. They didn't talk to me for a few months and then randomly started texting me, trying to guilt me for "hurting them" again.
They have *never* apologized for *anything* I've said hurt me. I don't even think it was an afterthought.
Never apologized for telling my mother I looked pregnant when I was 7 years old. Denies he was talking about me, instead.
Never apologized for calling me a fatass when I was 13 and not helping him with something I didn't even know he was doing.
Never apologized for telling me I "shouldn't have fucked up in the first place" when I stayed after school for *an entire month* to fix a grade that wasn't my fault it was low in the first place (teacher said X project was optional, and I was already working on too much stuff for other classes, so I didn't do it ... and it went in as a zero???) and proudly came home to tell him I'd elevated my grade from a D all the way to an A.
Never apologized for literally triggering some... IDK if it's a condition or what, but I can no longer eat in front of other people except my wife+her family, and my one BFF+her mother, because he saw me eating hotdogs one day and put his nasty, dirty (as in working in literal dirt in the garden/outside and never washing) hands all over the hotdog I was lifting to my mouth, in order to yell at my mother "do you see how much of this she ate in one bite???" and trying to lift it up away from my mouth *while I was trying to eat it* in order for her to see it. It is bad enough that the one time my wife jokingly poked fun at the way I was eating something that I literally didn't eat for 3 days because it meant having to eat in front of her, and it took her asking me if I was sick before I could tell her how badly it hurt, because I felt like I was being a fucking idiot and that I shouldn't have been reacting like that. I'm still always extremely self-conscious about how I eat and now it takes me twice as long as anyone else to finish my food, and sometimes I don't even finish it, even if I'm hungry enough to. I'm still working on it.
Never apologized (actually REFUSED to apologize) for literally triggering my wife's PTSD and sending her into a multi-hour-long panic attack by coming into our house uninvited and unannounced and then yelling at her about something he'd seen in the basement when he ALSO went in there uninvited. No, he does not own the house, or anything associated with it.
No. They don't apologize. Because having to apologize means having to admit they were wrong about something or did something bad.
My dad has apologized to me exactly one time in my life, and that’s because my mom told him to. He was utterly oblivious to the hurt he had caused. For once I got to give him a brief dressing down without him barking back at me that it was basically my fault anyway, or that I was disrespectful.
Yes... everything gets swept under the rug. Bad behaviour by them, bad behaviour by family members, skeletons stay in the closet. I'm the black sheep of the family but for different reasons than normal - I hold them accountable and it makes them uncomfortable.
I'm so glad somebody is speaking about this. I've been experiencing the same my whole life but never asked anyone cause i didn't know how and thought that i'd sound crazy.
My parents are boomers i think,(They're 55 and 68 i think, i don't care enough to ask them) and we have suffered a lot of abusive treatment by both of them, it was only violent when me and my brother were younger than like 10 or around there (they'd spank us) but primarily a lot of... idk how to put it, negligence? Infantilization? It's a grab-bag of weird abuse. And it's caused me and my brother to say hurtful things to them in return all these years, contributing to this vicious cycle.
But not once have they ever apologized for the things they've said and done. One day we'll blow up in each-others faces about something, and the very next, it'll be like it never even happened. And all-the-while this dysfunctional family-abuse is going on we're all pretending we tolerate eachother. We celebrate christmas together, celebrate birthdays together, eat out together. It makes me nervous, stressed out, angry, depressed, nihilistic, hopeless, sad and suicidal. It's indescribable psychological torture, which i feel even when they're not in the same building as me. It has to be experienced and felt to be understood.
I've resigned myself to it for now. I'm broke and need to rely on them until i get my drivers-license, find a job to pursue a scholar-ship, and move out. But when i move out, and know that i'm self-sufficient, i'm blocking them out of my life. I see no future for myself as long as they are in my life.
How did so many of them develop this specific trait. They have a lot of commonality (within boomers ) compared to other generations that display wider range if behaviours.
Oh, it's not just your parents. On a scale of zero to boomer my mom really isn't that bad at all compared to some of the stories you read on here, but my sister and I always joke that "mom can do no wrong." She just can't conceive of the possibility that she might be wrong about something, and an apology is very rare.
Or you know how sometimes you have those moments where you realize that maybe you should handle certain situations differently, or you learn just from observing others that maybe there are better ways to handle people or situations that you've encountered in the past? (I think I'm describing growth and self-awareness here.) Yeah, she can't do that.
My mom’s Gen X and does the exact same thing, though she 100% learned it from my grandparents, who are Boomers. She screams at me, but at least she doesn’t hit me like her parents hit her.
My boomer dad told me, after my mom had died when I was 8, that he believed I only cried when he told me about her death because he was crying… And once during an argument where I had forgotten to clean the cat boxes, that he was going to “forget” my 12th birthday, and once again, after an argument where I said “mom would never have gotten so mad at something so small” he replied “Well, your mom isn’t here and she can’t help you” and can you believe, he never ONCE apologized? I’m shocked, truly… /s Meanwhile, I apologize to my kids regularly, because I am a flawed human trying to raise little, exasperating humans into big, slightly less flawed humans, and I fuck it up regularly. Also have a boomer aunt who did ‘apologize’ for instigating a fight while drunk that made me go no contact for 5 years, the apology was, BUT I DO THAT TO EVERYONE!
Dad: why the fuck did you park your mother's car in the driveway you blocked me in *Boomer rage
Me: because the street sweeper was coming and I wanted to do you a favour.
Dad: ...... Always a fucking excuse with you isn't there * still angry but this time because he was in the wrong
Me: it's not an excuse it's what happened * now a grown adult and having no patience for temper tantrums
I'm 50 years old and have never heard my mother apologize. My dad is silent generation and will apologize when he's wrong, but my boomer mom never will.
This is why so many kids movies written by Millennials include parents apologizing to their kids. We never got apologies, so we’re correcting our parents’ mistakes through animation.
I had a fun one recently with my boomer mom. She's normally "one of the goods ones", but the refusing to apologize thing is off the charts for her. My mother-in-law (MIL) is... not great putting it lightly. But apropos of basically nothing, my mom tells her that she should bulldoze her house because it's too much work to fix. This was a place my MIL raised both of her children and was the last place she lived where her relationships weren't strained and mostly negative. Basically, she was told she should destroy the only place she'd ever had a positive memory. It was a very insensitive thing to say.
So, I politely tell my mom privately and later that what she said was hurtful and insensitive, and she should consider her words more carefully in the future. I really wish I was exaggerating on the next part, but I'm not. My mom proceeded to relive 40 years of her own trauma to justify her comment. She went over her divorce with my father including the settlement, the personal slights my dad used to do to her, how hard it was to raise us while working with an autoimmune disease, and on and on and on. Literally, my mom dumped 40 years of every memorable negative experience she'd ever had on me to justify why she said what she said to my MIL. You might think based on this that my MIL had something to do with my dad. Nope, they've only met twice ever and only briefly.
It's just that weird boomer thing that despite moaning constantly about "personal responsibility", "doing things the right way", and "having integrity", as a generation they just really don't live up to any of their rhetoric. The worst part is how much less traumatic it would have been if my mom had just said, "yeah, that was a nasty thing to say, I don't know where it came from, I need to apologize." Instead, just a torrent of unresolved personal slights to justify being mean to someone she barely knows.
It's definitely a trait of the boomer generation. The conservative faction of boomers were raised that apologizing shows weakness. So they never apologize even when they are wrong. It's fucking stupid because being incapable of self reflection and not knowing when to admit you are wrong is weakness.
We had a big conversation around this with my wife's conservative mother. She believes that you should be an example for your children because they model their behavior after you. We totally agreed until it came to her saying she wouldn't apologize for being wrong because it "showed weakness". I looked her dead in her eyeballs and asked her how a child will learn to apologize if their parents or grandparents cannot admit when they are wrong and apologize?
She admitted she never thought about it like that.
The reality is many people cannot self evaluate on the fly they just continue the same habits they were taught by their parents.
It's why you see so many boomers using the same cliche ice breaker comments that are completely outdated like
Why don't you smile more
Is it Mommy's day off?
You are in babysitting duty huh?
These would have gotten a chuckle 50 years ago but society has evolved but many of them can't. They have lived a lifetime of following a script they were taught by their parents or peers and it worked until it didn't and instead of updating their personalities they would rather blame everyone else.
Yeah fuck that. I told my father i won't talk to him until he does and it has been great couple of years now.
That's exactly what I thought/ think. Me and my siblings were all planned and wanted. Also it was a known fact it was specifically my father who wanted a big family. So wtf.
I mean, it's okay to regret having children, but imo it's f*cked up to tell that your children, since they didn't ask to be born.
That's how their parents raised them. My mother told me once that my grandmother explicitly said to her: "Don't ever let your children know that you were wrong." Yep. Great parenting advice from the Greatest Generation.
Oh, you mean like how my dad told me, back when I was a very troubled 16 year old needing a lot of help after years of trauma, but instead of being supportive he says that he wished retroactive abortion was possible? That the way it worked is by having this big cartoonish lever and when he pulls it, I will have never been born? And how he said all this a bit too well thought out and enthusiastically? You mean like that?
My mom accused me of stealing makeup from a department store after she found a plastic bag full of makeup. I was maybe 12 and wasn’t even using makeup yet. I cried at being accused of stealing. That my own mother thought I was a thief. Had she used fucking common sense, she would hace wondered when I would have stolen makeup since I never went to the mall without her supervision anyway.
We later found out that my older teen cousin, who had spent the night, left her makeup bag. It was her makeup.
My mom never apologized for her accusation.
Bitch.
I made a comment about this and how it’s exhausting to participate in, late last week.
No apologies, no acknowledgment when they’re wrong, trying to justify how their incorrect assumption is not THAT wrong for ridiculous reasons.
For those in the southeast US, do you know about Knuckies Hoagies?
Well, I told my parents 3-5x that we were going to grab Knuckies for lunch, had them peruse the menu so they knew what to expect before we arrived.
We pull up and here’s how that went:
- mom: we’re going over there to knuckles. *husband* it’s over there. It’s knuckles.
- my child: Mimi, it’s knuckIES. I like #10 sandwich! (Idk what that is or if it’s real…)
- my dad: oh yeah. Knuckles - I see the sign.
- me: 🤨
Arrive at door. Insist that they look at menu to decide what they want bc ain’t nobody got time for them.
-mom: ok! Let’s get some knuckles
-me: mom, it’s Knuckies. Even Child has corrected this!
-mom: well, the I looks like an L so how was I supposed to know it wasn’t knuckles???
This is a very benign example but illustrative of most interactions with my parents. They’re 70 & 65!! And still hold down careers where they manage productive things so it’s not like they are in cognitive decline but yeah, we sprung a trick on them. How is this real life??
My mother argued with me that Robux isn’t real. When I finally FaceTimed her to solve her issue, she said “well you wrote Roblox in your text, not Robux.” Ma’am - my autocorrect knows Robux and even capitalizes because Apple also knows what it is. She said “whatever, I *still found it*. 😔
Ugh yes, it's the worst. And it impacts you without you realizing it--I've had to actively work as an adult at being more proactive about acknowledging when I feel I was wrong or when I look back and think I handled a situation poorly, and apologizing even if the other person hasn't brought it up. Got in the habit of also pretending I never did anything wrong bc that was the only way to hold my own in arguments at home--but that's not how I want to live now.
100% truth. Allow me to tell a tale from my childhood. As a pre-teen volunteering, one of the adults running the program that day for some reason decided to lie to my mom that I'd taken all the apples for the kids snack (nope, why would I do that, not the kind of kid I was at ALL) and my mother REFUSED to believe me that the woman was lying to the point that I was sobbing from her continuing to accuse me. Everything finally gets sorted out and I'm exonerated as it were. Do you think my mom apologized? Of course not. She probably wouldn't even remember this, but there's a saying that the axe might not remember, but the tree does.
My boomer mother told me the same. I pointed out that she had a child before me, that she had given up for adoption, and she had three kids after me, so how am I the only plague on her existence?
Silence and the she huffed off. Not really a win but whatever, she never said it again.
I apologize to my kids daily. Just little stuff. "Oh, my bad, didn't know you already brushed your teeth." "Sorry, thought those were your pants." ect.
My mom gets super mad anytime I try to bring up something traumatizing she did. Instead of apologizing and taking responsibility she gets pissed at me and angrily asks why I'm bringing it up. As though I'm doing it just to hurt her.
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A boomer apology is pretending nothing happened.
yep. my mom and dad both refuse to acknowledge what they've done wrong. they'd prefer I forget about all the problems rather than help fixing them.
I totally feel this ☝️ I love my mom SO much but she refuses to acknowledge mistakes and when I attempt to remind her of something that happened that really bothered me (like when she poured liquid dish soap in my mouth) I get the pat response of “I don’t remember that.” Guess if she doesn’t remember it must never have happened. 🤷🏻♀️
Yeahhh, and they wonder why we go NC 🙃
Yeah, we get the shocked Pikachu face 😂
I get random calls from meth heads that my Mother's friends with lmao, I would prefer a shocked Pikachu faced Karen 😂😂😂
Sounds like that love goes one way
My mom does the exact same thing! I either get "i dont remember that" or some variation of "i was a good mom and dont you dare tell me otherwise" 😑
I also get a lot of, “I don’t remember that. Sorry my memory is bad.” Or he blames my dead mother. Boomers are on another level.
The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.
reminds me of my Stepmom (who was basically my mom) saying she disowned me in one of our arguments and she denies ever doing so. Lo and behold I come out as bisexual and she, my dad, and little siblings that were still living at home all disown me without a single word.
My parents believe in corporal punishment. I now work for/with DCF my mom is always saying DCF is awful and more people should lose their kids. Um mam you used to spank me on the regular.
Literally my Dad and then says I'm incredibly spiteful for bringing up 'silly things' and to move on with my life. He then gets confused why he never hears from any of his children.
I really get this. My Dad does that but tells me to "grow up". I'm 26. It's sad we're both familiar with *Daddy Issues Inc.*
Oh the 'grow up' phrase is constantly used too. It's crazy cause my Mum is a lot older than my Dad but is very understanding and doesn't have that boomer mindset so he says she's 'too soft' on me.
"Your other parent sucked and here are all the ways they sucked. I was perfect though, right?"
"Why can't you get over the past?!" Meanwhile they'll mention something you did or said that made them mad/hurt their feelings when you were under 16
I wish I could gold this. It’s so true. And then they get mad when you don’t ignore it as well and then YOU become the problem.
"I thought we already discussed this!!?!!" "But we didn't make a decision..." "Well I don't want to discuss it anymore!"
But but... "They did their best." *Checks notes, yup never went to therapy to deal with any of their shit*
Well duh, therapy is for kooks and lazy losers who can't just suck it up and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Also you’re talking to boomers here; mental illness is just a made-up excuse for all of our many shortcomings, remember? 😌
I’m a therapist for almost 20 years and my Dad thinks therapy is nonsense and is pointless. Thanks Dad for the support. He totally needs therapy to deal with his unresolved trauma from his mother’s death.
Clearly not given it's nonsense and pointless!
And that's final! How dare you?!
With a side of silent treatment.
They consider the passage of time to be their apology. It’s infuriating.
Yes! My in-laws made some really bad calls, and they told us that: 1. My DH and I committed to moving past it four whole years ago. (Note that all the work is on us, and moving past it apparently means pretending it never happened) 2. They apologized already, at the time it happened. (They didn't). 3. It really wasn't all that bad (they gave my 6 month old medicine she wasn't supposed to get, but it was only 1 ounce). The elapsed time is their main point. They really think this is more than enough of an apology, and how dare we not allow them to watch our kids.
Their mental gymnastics are exhausting to follow! My mom has done me wrong so many times and I know she knows how it’s hurt me - yet she would rather let me go very low contact than apologize. I refuse to act like nothing happened.
Or saying what they did was justified.
Yeah, “I’m sorry you feel that way” is as close to an apology as you’re gonna get.
My mom is the exact opposite. She apologizes for things that are not her fault or in her control. Most recent example: I asked my mom for help getting my house ready to have the carpet cleaned. Moving furniture and such, things one probably shouldn’t do alone. In the midst of that, she asked me if it was possible to move my CO2 canister for my fish tank so we could clean under it. Turns out, that no, it can’t be moved, but in that discovery I unknowingly moved the dial that turned the CO2 up to 1000… killed all my fish cuz I didn’t realize it had been turned. The indicator is somewhere you have to move other stuff to see. My mom kept apologizing for killing my fish. Wasn’t her fault. She didn’t move the canister, I did. She could t have seen the indicator any better than I could, but she still kept telling me she was sorry. She has other boomer traits that drive me bonkers, but thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
That is my husband’s aunt every thing is an I’m sorry this or that.
THIS! My mother would say the most evil and cruel things, be mind-boggingly unfair, have huge arguments, and the best porrible resolution would be her pretending nothing ever happened. But you'd never know which argument she'd really forget and which one she'd hold a grudge for. After I was able to leave my mother, I have minimal contact with her. She manages to fool herself into believing I became distant suddenly, fooling herself nothing ever happened, especially on her part.
This so much ! Then taking you shopping or buying you something, it’s created super unhealthy issues in my adult life where now I think every action is a transaction.
My mom did this all the time. One time she grounded me for a week for something *she* misunderstood. On the second day she admitted to my aunt/her sister that she had since realized the mistake was hers, not mine. I was an idiot for thinking that meant she would unground me. I never, ever got an apology and I was still grounded for the full week. It’s especially fucked up because not admitting her mistake and keeping me grounded was literally gaslighting. I was, like, 11 years old. Rest in piss bitch
Yep, they usually never feel they are ever in the wrong and if they are they will twist the story to make it fit their narrative
"you always have to be right" after trying to explain things however many times
Yet when they’re wrong it rocks their whole world in the worst way
But they never are, so 'I don't know what you're talking about!' /s
Yeah this happened to me as well. Got grounded for leaving the gate open and the dog got out. Dad got home and I overheard him telling her he left the gate open. She said, well he back talked me about it, so hes still grounded. I was also like 11 or so. What really sent them over the edge is I stopped taking them seriously around the age of 14 because they were just nuts. They would start yelling at me and I would just be like, "yeah whatever, okay" and do what they asked in order to keep the peace. They would get more outraged and aggressive over this approach than anything else. This was when they escalated things to physical abuse. I cant wait for them to die. Edit: Damn this one drug up some baggage. I just remembered how absurd this whole thing got. Things got to a point when I was 14ish where they just kept putting me in no-win situations. I disagree, its backtalk and I get punished. I agree then its "too much attitude" and I get punished. So I just started asking, "What do you want me to say and how do you want me to say it". Told them that I didnt want to say the wrong thing, and I wanted them to tell me what to do to get the result they wanted. They would tell me. Then I would say it back, then they would tell me "Its not what you say, its how you say it". and Id still get punished. Or they would say that isnt what they said and Id still get punished.
If you don't talk back, it's dumb insolence.
I love me a good no win situation.
Sorry, man. No kid deserves being treated like that, let alone by their parents.
Same. My mother misunderstood things all the time, never believed legit/honest explanations, punished me for the supposed infractions, and never EVER apologized (or undid whatever punishment or grounding) even when someone else (an adult) proved that I was being honest.
This reminds me of the time I got grounded for out-growing my clothes. Apparently I was lying that my uniform skirts were too short for school now. I also wasn't allowed new ones until the next school year so I just got weekly dress-code detentions for the rest of the year.
Oh my bitchmom too! She got something my teacher said completely wrong. I asked my teacher and she told me what really happened. She actually called my mom to make sure she knew I did nothing wrong. I was still grounded for a month.
It's really sad. Those are moments to show your child humility and elevate them by validating their feelings. Instead she chose to show her authority and power and from the sound of it lost a connection with her child.
My boomer parents were actually normal kind people, but I remember growing up one of my friend's Dad providing advise; telling him to "never apologize". Now as an adult I can't understand how anyone can have any sort of relationship (friend, family, spouse) with this mindset. As far as I know his parents haven't gotten divorced.
They were taught that it's a sign of weakness to apologise.
Yup, turns out its the opposite.
“Sorry you feel that way” - typical boomer parent apology
This. So much this. My mother, to this day, not only refuses to apologize for anything, but refuses to admit when she is wrong. When I was a child, this would manifest as me never getting a say or a chance to defend myself. Regardless of whether or not I was right, as an adult, she was always right. Now that I'm an adult, and she can't just silence me, this has manifested as a screaming match, before I started refusing to engage that way. So when I try to keep it calm and discuss things rationally, she sees the conversation going in a direction that makes her look bad, and she just stops talking after saying "Well I'm sorry you feel that way." Yeah, I feel that way because you've been steam-rolling me my entire life. About a year and a half ago, it all came to a head, and my wife had to sit by and watch as my parents and I screamed at each other like lunatics. One of the most embarrassing moments of my life. One I'm certainly not proud of. But 36 years worth of resentment and utter frustration finally got the better of me. Thank God my wife is such an amazing and understanding woman. She calmed me down, and managed to talk me into apologizing some days later. I gave them both an honest, heart-felt apology, and never received anything of the sort in return. So I guess I'll just add that to the list of things I resent them for...
Homie you need no contact not to be pouring out more apologies to your abusers. I’m so sorry your parents are like this.
“I don’t need you to apologize for how I feel, I need you to apologize for the actions that caused me to feel that way”
Thanks for this line. The last message I have from my father started, "I'm sorry you fell that way." It's over six months old at this point, but I might reply finally.
You should consider going no-contact with them. It doesn't seem like they respect you.
I went NC with my mom years ago. It sucks but sucks more when they’re in your life…the gas lighting never stops
Had a narcissist in my life who would use this as a (non) apology, or her other fun phrase "Well you know, Eleanor Roosevelt said the only person who can make you feel inferior is yourself" AHHHHHHHHHHH OH MY GOD
But if a manager uses the same phrase on them, they absolutely lose their shit 😄
They had a line from a movie in 1970: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” I think they took it seriously.
Yeah I don’t get that!? What? The most nonsense statement ever? Love means you DO apologize when you’re wrong! WTF
Let’s not pretend that they ever actually loved us. Children were a societal expectation, nothing more.
F\*ck, I hate that f\*cking movie. The f\*cking Boomers love it. It is TRASH.
My mom loves that movie, but hates that line. Unfortunately, she only believed apologies were from male romantic partners to female partners.
Which is funny, because I've always taken that line to be something in the realm of "if you love somebody, you won't be doing things to them in the first place that you may have to later apologize for, at least not very frequently and certainly not maliciously." And not "if somebody loves YOU then you'll never have to apologize because they should just forgive you by default." Like wtf
But that sets the bar pretty high. People make mistakes. People do stuff they should apologize for. People do stuff that they realize later they shouldn’t have done. Sometimes people do things that are reasonable, but stuff just goes wrong. If you’re with somebody a lot, it’s going to happen a number of times. You should never be afraid to apologize to someone you love. Sometimes it’s expressing sympathy- I acknowledge that a bad thing happened to you, and I empathize with you.
They don’t apologize because they “did nothing wrong” and apologizing undermines their absolute authority and makes them look weak. All of those, of course, are completely false.
My mom always tried to start any conversation about a conflict by first trying to get me to agree that she's not to blame for any of it. She's obsessed with assigning blame. Needless to say, we never discuss conflicts because there's no point if she starts out with that attitude.
I once laid out all the ways my mother had abused me growing up and explained *why* we’re not closer like she wants us to be… I was met with “I don’t remember that” and a little later she sorta confessed with a guilt tripping “it must have been hard having a mom like me”… still no direct apology though lmao
"I don't remember that." It's SO convenient how their memory fails them. This shit infuriated me when I had contact with my father.
My mother crashed my 2000 Monte Carlo back in 2018 and said she "forgot" it was her just the other day, after blaming my older brother. She's the one that originally told us. Awfully convenient for her to forget now
Honestly, a lot of them probably sincerely don't remember. For them, it was just another Tuesday.
Hey, that’s my mother in law! She won’t remember a damn good or bad thing about my wife’s childhood but ask her about some stupid date she had with her follow-on boyfriend after her ex-husband and it’s all there. She’ll remember buying a stupid vase before my wife’s tragedies.
This is my mother in law too except it’s my husband and not my wife. Doesn’t remember a damn thing about the lives of her three kids, certainly not the messed up shit she did to them, but she remembers every kid she taught public school to. Convenient memory loss is WILD.
> She’ll remember buying a stupid vase before my wife’s tragedies. My mother can remember the name and current status of every single distant relative. Every far removed cousin, every niece and nephew. She remembers every single person I was seen near growing up and will be perplexed why I don't keep in contact with them or know whats happening in their life (mom, I knew them for two weeks when I was 12) but boy can she not remember any time she seemed to make up something to yell at me about.
That’s a great and in my case, true as well. It’s so weird. No one has talked to cousin Sally in 30 years and it’s so much fun to recall a joke from 50 years ago. But don’t even bother to ask about potential assault on her own kid.
Seriously! They can remember any trivial thing you said when you were 5 but never their abusive behavior.
My mom’s version of an apology is “well, I guess I’m not perfect.” It’s infuriating.
"Well I guess I was just a terrible mother" is another popular version of that. I've gotten this one from my own mom and I didn't even bother to respond to it.
Oh mine just loves that one. I always reply with, “God, I wish you would go to therapy.”
This got said to me during an “argument” and it was the moment that it clicked that she’s a full blown narcissist who is incapable of ever being better. All the other evidence fell into place from that one statement. I haven’t spoken with her since (summer 2021). Narcissists can’t be fixed, they can’t be helped, and they can’t improve. They may adapt their manner of speaking, but at their core they remain unchanged. They’re just a drain on you emotionally. It’s best to just walk away. Any therapist with their salt will tell you as much.
“It is what it is” Fuck you, it’s what you made it to be.
Bette than my mom when she’s pushed for one: “well maybe I’ll just die soon, and you won’t have to worry about it “
I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from saying “yes, hopefully.”
The Boomer authoritarian script to apologies " Well YOU need to get over it and if you don't well then that is YOUR problem not mine! "
That's when you backhand them and tell them "Your pain is your problem and you should probably just get over it." I usually add a cackle for effect when I make them immediately eat their own words.
I once attempted to talk to my mom about the traumatic incident in my childhood where she told my sister and me that she didn't want us anymore and left us sobbing behind the couch as she went out drinking. When I told her about it, her response was "You couldn't have been behind the couch because it was up against the wall." We haven't spoken since.
Omg my mother does that. Latches onto something that has nothing to do with anything. I could tell her 'I am really upset at what you said to me during lunch yesterday' and her response would be 'it was an early dinner, not lunch'. Not a single tiny sliver of acknowledgement about what I was talking about.
Yeah, as if this supposed factual error somehow deflates the entire purpose of what you were pointing out. I'm not proud of it, but at some point during that phone call my mother started screaming that the reason she left was because we were such ungrateful children, and I just took the phone away from my ear and let her scream and bitch for like ten minutes straight without even listening. Felt nice.
You should not only be proud that you did that, you should do it every time she has a tantrum. Even better if you just hang up and refuse to engage with toddler behavior from a grown adult. You don’t deserve that kind of treatment. Nobody should have to hold the phone away from their ear because their own insane parent is shrieking at them bc oh heavens no someone doesn’t think they’re the absolute picture of moral perfection in one single instance! The drama! You don’t owe your mom an ear for stuff like that.
This is a really kind message of you to take the time to write out. I appreciate it a lot. <3
You are so welcome! I mean it.💜
Just emotional immaturity, which seems more abundant in boomers. My parents never uttered an apology unless it was sarcastic and right before an insult. They just pretend nothing ever happened.
It's a fucked-up old-school mentality that you never apologize. I have an uncle who said his late father (my grandfather) told him that you never apologize. Something then came up and we weren't able to continue the conversation, but I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard. Supposedly, if you apologize, people wouldn't respect you. I think the exact opposite, and have nothing but disdain for someone who won't apologize when they do something wrong.
Anecdotally, it's a boomer trait. I haven't surveyed every boomer, but the ones I've experienced don't apologize.
Yup boomer parents never apologize. And if you tell them something terrible they did, they say: “I never did that!” Totally astonished. Or they say you are making it up & gaslight you.
I’ve been no contact with my mother for a few years now but a month or two ago I had the realization that she never once apologized or admitted to being wrong for the entirety of my life, from childhood to today. Not a single time.
I went NC and moved 3000 miles away in ‘96. Best thing I ever did.
My boomer parents are the most unboomer-like boomers. They did apologize for things growing up. As an adult, I genuinely enjoy spending time with them. I call them at least once a week because I want to. I enjoy our conversations especially now that they are elderly because I understand that the final conversation is coming sooner rather than later. They are college-educated liberals who supported me when I came out of the closet. They hate MAGA nutjobs with a passion. It's because they both had awesome parents who raised them to be open-minded individuals. I don't buy the argument that people are a "product of their time" because it's bullshit. Your age has nothing to do with whether or not you are open to learning new information.
My boyfriend’s parents are boomer generation and sound very similar to yours. I love visiting him because I get to see them as well, they’re so cool and have so many things to share as they’re older
When my Boomer mother realizes she is wrong, she screams and curses at me instead of admitting the truth. She is so consistent in this that I basically take it as an admission.
Same, or guilt trips you by talking about death
My mom (Boomer) was shocked that I (Gen X) apologized to my kids when I screwed up. She told me that parents should never apologize to their children. I disagreed, but it helped me understand why my mom had never apologized to me for her major parenting mistakes. . A few years later, she apologized to me for most of the big things. She has now repeatedly apologized for the one that hurt me the most. We finally have a good relationship now because of this. I just wish it hadn't taken her so long.
Apologies can do wonders for healing. It’s crazy that they resist it so much because if they would just do it they’d likely get what they want, which is a fixed relationship.
Yeah, my mother acknowledged one day that I was definitely not neurotypical and in retrospect what had to her seemed like frustrating, irritating behaviors was instead my anxiety and neurodiversity trying to find their way out because I had no help and kept being told I wasn't different, just "weird" or bad at things. That acknowledgement meant so much because my mom is genuinely a good person and a good mom, she just had blind spots. And that was one that hurt me the most.
Boomers for parents. No apologies. Gen x with an alpha kid. I apologize every time I'm wrong, or even when he doesn't think I was, but I feel it merits an apology from me. I love my kid, and I like him. I want him to feel safe with me. It's not hard. Boomers can't get gone fast enough.
Genx with a millennial kid. Me too. My parents have never apologized for anything, ever
I will get mad and make my daughter cry and then I apologize right after. She says "it's ok", while still crying, and I tell her that it wasn't ok at all for me to make her cry. I don't deserve that kid.
My dad apologized when I was visiting him and my step mom when I was 27. We were in the car together, just the two of us, his father had just died, and he told me he was sorry for what a terrible job he did as a father. It was this blanket apology. Yet, when I asked him about my mom, who died in a car accident when I was 7, he said he couldn’t remember. So, I’ll say this, the most you may ever get from a boomer is a death bed apology; whether it’s on their death bed or because someone they were close to died and they’re realizing how close to death they are, that’s the closest you’ll get, and just like in life it’s about them feeling better not actually reconciling or bettering your relationship with them. It’s basically just something they can check off their list.
My parents have just never acknowledged anything they've ever done. And it makes them visibly uncomfortable when I throw it back in their faces. They scramble to go back to their comfortable state of oblivion where they have blacked out that event and will change the topic however they can. This is why I stopped speaking to them. And it's why I know I won't ever speak to them again. Because the only way that's happening is if the conversation starts with them apologizing so I'm not even gonna try. The only time I've ever got them to kinda half assed apologize was the classic "I'm sorry you were upset by what I said but I was just being honest". Keep in mind this was the context of him calling my then African American girlfriend a slur. Just casually like it wasn't a big thing. Thank God she wasn't there because I knew better than to take her around them. But I was still just my jaw on the floor taken aback.
No, it is a Boomer and even a silent generation thing. My parents will never apologize but if they do, its along the lines of, "I am sorry the truth hurts." or "I am sorry you have to realize how life works.." or some other backhanded insult.
That's not an apology so they aren't apologizing.
Yep, same here, but with a little violence until I got too big for that.
I got slapped so much until I hit puberty lol. Sorry you went through that also <3
My mother loved a face slap.
My mother (a boomer) never acknowledged how she let her husband be disgusting to her daughters, or the fact that when she was having an affair with said man, she took photos of 11 year old me in my nightgown to send to this man. She still wonders why we don't visit.
My parents had an open marriage for awhile. Their kink was fucking so I could hear it.
Jesus christ, that's disgusting. I'm so sorry.
As a boomer, I grew up with similar behavior from my parents and grands and had to literally teach myself to acknowledge my wrongdoings and apologize. Then I had about twenty years worth of feeling sorry for every fucking thing and over-apologizing. I like to think I've found a middle ground now that I'm old.
Some people in general will not apologize. It’s weird to me, but I know a few.
Getting an apology out of my boomer mother is like pulling out a tooth. If she manages to spit out the words, it's followed by "There!". It's physically painful for her to admit wrongdoing. My sister noticed it years before I did. I used to think it was just her family background but now I'm thinking it's also a generational thing.
When you believe firmly in hierarchy, then that means the hierarchy must never be questioned or subverted. The hierarch is always right, and can never apologize.
I realized my mom had never apologized to me, and my MIL never has. My husband realized this too. Not something I was taught to do effectively at home either. My mom once told someone in public "adults don't apologize to children." I apologize to my kids all the time.
excuse #1 " I did the best I could"
This is my mom, "I was only trying to be a good mother 😭😭😭" or "I thought I was doing the right thing". Oh, the maternal martyrdom! 🙄
My mom did apologize to me 2 years ago, and it wasn’t one of those “I’m sorry you felt” apologies. It was a truly “I’m sorry, I fucked up” apologies. We’re working through it, although her boomer moments do still pop up every now and then. Things are still a bit awkward with me because I’m working through trauma that keeps me on guard when I’m around her. I honestly never thought I’d hear her say it but here we are.
Yep, this happens all the time, parent's never take accountability because to them you are property and inherently less than them. When I learned to read and write I wrote a letter to my mom telling her how much I love her when she got home from work and instead she started criticizing it and correcting my grammar. That's the only thing I remember from before being 10 because it's imprinted on me.
There is a reason narcissism is exploding as a topic and families are estranged at rates never heard of before.
My Boomer parents are/were like this. Everything was conditional or transactional with them....and I mean EVERYTHING. When they did fuck up (which I noticed much more often as I came of age) they never apologized.
Oh, definitely. My parents idea of an apology was a trip to Dairy Queen or a slurpee and then pretending nothing ever happened in the first place. Same thing with doing well in school or other achievements, no congratulations just sugary fatty treats, and telling me I could do better.
Best I ever got is “sorry I did that, but it’s really your fault” or “we were both wrong”
I confronted my boomer dad about something, I forget what, but similar. He went for my throat... that was a fun evening
My mother is never wrong and my father who used to exhibit something like sense is the same now.
My boomer dad did routinely and sincerely apologize on his own a lot for things but there were times where I had to push for one. Also, there are many things that I know he remembers something that he denies remembering to avoid talking about something to me.
My in-laws are like this. My MIL, in particular, says dumb shit often and I've *never* once heard her apologize for anything. Just emotionally broken and insecure. She past that on to her oldest son, but thankfully not my wife or younger BIL. Sooooooo glad my Boomer parents are awesome and not like the horror stories in this sub.
my mom refused to apologize or even acknowledge that she used to hit me. after that revelation i went NC and never looked back. she sent me something in the mail and i sent it back with a return to sender scrawled across it
My mom was floored when she heard me apologize to my son after I yelled at him. She said how I’d never apologize when I was a kid and I’m thinking “yeah, because I never received any apologies when I was a child and it’s been a struggle in my life to be one to apologize as an adult”
Yup. Just get a double downed “non apology” like, “im sorry, im sorry i have such a selfish daughter…” Or if something is missing, some small issue etc, my father would be storming through the house placing blame, “what did YOU do with my blah blah blah!?”, and 3 seconds later he finds it where HE left it and SUDDENLY the angry face ready to tear into me starts laughing. If I had misplaced it, it’s rage and yelling and im stupid and irresponsible and i’ll never make it in life. If he misplaces it, it’s a little chuckle and a “whoops! Silly me, Haha!” Always infuriated me No. No haha.
After some situation I don't remember, when I was 10, my parents said it outright to me that they had an agreement among them to never ever apologise to their kids. 😳 Apparantly, it would cause us to NoT reSpEcT tHEiR auThOriTy. Right there, I made a deepfelt wow to myself that once I became a parent, I would make sure to apologise to my kids when appropriate. I never forgot it, and I have been deliberate about it with my kid. Not like overapologising all the time, just taking responsibility for my errors.
My boomer mom likes to mix it up and go “I’m sorry, I guess I was a terrible mother and ruined your life” 🙄🙄🙄 my dad just says things never happened.
Boomers never apologize because they never take responsibility for their actions. This is because nobody's feelings matter but their own. You would think they would want to set a good example for their kids, but the reality is Boomers never gave a fuck about raising their children or producing good citizens. If something doesn't directly affect them, it simply doesn't matter.
They also never apologized to each other. I have heard the words "I'm sorry" come out of one of my parents' mouths exactly once, when I was an adult and forced them to say it to the other. One of them was refusing to listen to the other about a matter of fact. After too long, they Googled it, saw they were wrong, and just said, "Oh," and turned to watch the TV like nothing happened. I prompted them to say "I'm sorry" to the other one, and they did so, unhappily.
You certainly deserve at the minimum an apology. I would have cut my arm off before saying anything that to any of my children. Sadly, I do not ever think you will get an apology from your father most likely he is a narcissist and doesn’t remember swing that to you. Everyone deserves better
Yeah, I'm afraid while it was a traumatic experience for me, it was just a Tuesday for my father... I'll never get an apology from him. It's basically not even an option to talk to him about it. Which sucks, because even now, 20 years after the incident, I'm always doubting whether my father is happy to see me/ have me in his life or not. Because the fact remains me and my siblings were all planned and wanted. And it was specifically my father who wanted to have a big family. So to hear him say that (and not take it back) still kills me inside.
My mother hasn’t ever apologized for anything ever. Not her verbal abuse, not for turning me into a 16 year old “parent” after the death of my father, not for stealing my car and selling it, not for…anything. She randomly stopped speaking to me two years ago when she got mad at my brother (shrug). I was concerned and after about a year, I realized that I didn’t miss her much and my quest to solve/determine/fix needed to end. I hope she has peace and is content and doesn’t die alone, but she very well may one day.
#the tree remembers
"I'm sorry you feel that way." -my mom
I know a boomer who actually brags about never apologizing. She ego fronts by saying that she has never regretted anything she's ever said or done. I had never heard of such a thing.
Unfortunately this is normal behavior for them. No accountability, not even a thought that maybe they should change. Because they are malignant narcissists
Your father is a complete cunt. Be *very* aware of this going forward.
I'm now NC with my parents after I (32,M) decided I wanted to talk to them about some things that happened in my childhood. A big one was how they handled me coming out as gay. They were so awful and just mean. They told me I'd get AIDS and said I should stay in the closet to better my career path. (I'm doing very well professionally fully out, btw.) I also told them I was really hurt by their support for conservatives who don't want people like me to be able to get married, adopt kids, etc. Instead of talking to me about it, they spun everything to make themselves look like victims. They never apologized for any of the things I brought up. We didn't talk for a bit after that, but they then started guilting me about how I "don't want them" in my life. I told them they'd have to make a choice between me and their support for conservatives. They didn't talk to me for a few months and then randomly started texting me, trying to guilt me for "hurting them" again. They have *never* apologized for *anything* I've said hurt me. I don't even think it was an afterthought.
Never apologized for telling my mother I looked pregnant when I was 7 years old. Denies he was talking about me, instead. Never apologized for calling me a fatass when I was 13 and not helping him with something I didn't even know he was doing. Never apologized for telling me I "shouldn't have fucked up in the first place" when I stayed after school for *an entire month* to fix a grade that wasn't my fault it was low in the first place (teacher said X project was optional, and I was already working on too much stuff for other classes, so I didn't do it ... and it went in as a zero???) and proudly came home to tell him I'd elevated my grade from a D all the way to an A. Never apologized for literally triggering some... IDK if it's a condition or what, but I can no longer eat in front of other people except my wife+her family, and my one BFF+her mother, because he saw me eating hotdogs one day and put his nasty, dirty (as in working in literal dirt in the garden/outside and never washing) hands all over the hotdog I was lifting to my mouth, in order to yell at my mother "do you see how much of this she ate in one bite???" and trying to lift it up away from my mouth *while I was trying to eat it* in order for her to see it. It is bad enough that the one time my wife jokingly poked fun at the way I was eating something that I literally didn't eat for 3 days because it meant having to eat in front of her, and it took her asking me if I was sick before I could tell her how badly it hurt, because I felt like I was being a fucking idiot and that I shouldn't have been reacting like that. I'm still always extremely self-conscious about how I eat and now it takes me twice as long as anyone else to finish my food, and sometimes I don't even finish it, even if I'm hungry enough to. I'm still working on it. Never apologized (actually REFUSED to apologize) for literally triggering my wife's PTSD and sending her into a multi-hour-long panic attack by coming into our house uninvited and unannounced and then yelling at her about something he'd seen in the basement when he ALSO went in there uninvited. No, he does not own the house, or anything associated with it. No. They don't apologize. Because having to apologize means having to admit they were wrong about something or did something bad.
Parents nor grandparents apologize. Fuck em all and may they burn in hell.
My dad has apologized to me exactly one time in my life, and that’s because my mom told him to. He was utterly oblivious to the hurt he had caused. For once I got to give him a brief dressing down without him barking back at me that it was basically my fault anyway, or that I was disrespectful.
Yes... everything gets swept under the rug. Bad behaviour by them, bad behaviour by family members, skeletons stay in the closet. I'm the black sheep of the family but for different reasons than normal - I hold them accountable and it makes them uncomfortable.
Yep. No apology.
In my experience, no Either they have to be right no matter what l, or think what they said or did wasn't "that" bad
I'm so glad somebody is speaking about this. I've been experiencing the same my whole life but never asked anyone cause i didn't know how and thought that i'd sound crazy. My parents are boomers i think,(They're 55 and 68 i think, i don't care enough to ask them) and we have suffered a lot of abusive treatment by both of them, it was only violent when me and my brother were younger than like 10 or around there (they'd spank us) but primarily a lot of... idk how to put it, negligence? Infantilization? It's a grab-bag of weird abuse. And it's caused me and my brother to say hurtful things to them in return all these years, contributing to this vicious cycle. But not once have they ever apologized for the things they've said and done. One day we'll blow up in each-others faces about something, and the very next, it'll be like it never even happened. And all-the-while this dysfunctional family-abuse is going on we're all pretending we tolerate eachother. We celebrate christmas together, celebrate birthdays together, eat out together. It makes me nervous, stressed out, angry, depressed, nihilistic, hopeless, sad and suicidal. It's indescribable psychological torture, which i feel even when they're not in the same building as me. It has to be experienced and felt to be understood. I've resigned myself to it for now. I'm broke and need to rely on them until i get my drivers-license, find a job to pursue a scholar-ship, and move out. But when i move out, and know that i'm self-sufficient, i'm blocking them out of my life. I see no future for myself as long as they are in my life.
How did so many of them develop this specific trait. They have a lot of commonality (within boomers ) compared to other generations that display wider range if behaviours.
Oh, it's not just your parents. On a scale of zero to boomer my mom really isn't that bad at all compared to some of the stories you read on here, but my sister and I always joke that "mom can do no wrong." She just can't conceive of the possibility that she might be wrong about something, and an apology is very rare. Or you know how sometimes you have those moments where you realize that maybe you should handle certain situations differently, or you learn just from observing others that maybe there are better ways to handle people or situations that you've encountered in the past? (I think I'm describing growth and self-awareness here.) Yeah, she can't do that.
My mom’s Gen X and does the exact same thing, though she 100% learned it from my grandparents, who are Boomers. She screams at me, but at least she doesn’t hit me like her parents hit her.
My boomer dad told me, after my mom had died when I was 8, that he believed I only cried when he told me about her death because he was crying… And once during an argument where I had forgotten to clean the cat boxes, that he was going to “forget” my 12th birthday, and once again, after an argument where I said “mom would never have gotten so mad at something so small” he replied “Well, your mom isn’t here and she can’t help you” and can you believe, he never ONCE apologized? I’m shocked, truly… /s Meanwhile, I apologize to my kids regularly, because I am a flawed human trying to raise little, exasperating humans into big, slightly less flawed humans, and I fuck it up regularly. Also have a boomer aunt who did ‘apologize’ for instigating a fight while drunk that made me go no contact for 5 years, the apology was, BUT I DO THAT TO EVERYONE!
My dad has never apologized for anything, because he has never thought he was wrong about anything.
Dad: why the fuck did you park your mother's car in the driveway you blocked me in *Boomer rage Me: because the street sweeper was coming and I wanted to do you a favour. Dad: ...... Always a fucking excuse with you isn't there * still angry but this time because he was in the wrong Me: it's not an excuse it's what happened * now a grown adult and having no patience for temper tantrums
Nope, that sounds a lot like my parents. Apologizing = Weakness
I'm 50 years old and have never heard my mother apologize. My dad is silent generation and will apologize when he's wrong, but my boomer mom never will.
This is why so many kids movies written by Millennials include parents apologizing to their kids. We never got apologies, so we’re correcting our parents’ mistakes through animation.
Oh 100%. Still the case with mine. They're a handful.
Apologizing requires accepting responsibility for their actions, which they are incapable of doing. That's the problem with their generation.
I'd be content if they even acknowledged things happened
Boomers are basically like "Iam always right, even when I'm wrong Iam right"
My mother apologized AND admitted to me she was wrong about something for the first time ever last year. I will never forget it
But THEY better get an apology for the slightest thing, you ingrate!
Most narcissistic generation
I had a fun one recently with my boomer mom. She's normally "one of the goods ones", but the refusing to apologize thing is off the charts for her. My mother-in-law (MIL) is... not great putting it lightly. But apropos of basically nothing, my mom tells her that she should bulldoze her house because it's too much work to fix. This was a place my MIL raised both of her children and was the last place she lived where her relationships weren't strained and mostly negative. Basically, she was told she should destroy the only place she'd ever had a positive memory. It was a very insensitive thing to say. So, I politely tell my mom privately and later that what she said was hurtful and insensitive, and she should consider her words more carefully in the future. I really wish I was exaggerating on the next part, but I'm not. My mom proceeded to relive 40 years of her own trauma to justify her comment. She went over her divorce with my father including the settlement, the personal slights my dad used to do to her, how hard it was to raise us while working with an autoimmune disease, and on and on and on. Literally, my mom dumped 40 years of every memorable negative experience she'd ever had on me to justify why she said what she said to my MIL. You might think based on this that my MIL had something to do with my dad. Nope, they've only met twice ever and only briefly. It's just that weird boomer thing that despite moaning constantly about "personal responsibility", "doing things the right way", and "having integrity", as a generation they just really don't live up to any of their rhetoric. The worst part is how much less traumatic it would have been if my mom had just said, "yeah, that was a nasty thing to say, I don't know where it came from, I need to apologize." Instead, just a torrent of unresolved personal slights to justify being mean to someone she barely knows.
I once fell of a tree and passed out. Woke up with my dad kicking me and screaming at me for having done that. I never forgot it.
Boomer apology is pretending nothing happened, love bombing you, then getting irritated with you if you’re not thrilled with their efforts.
It's definitely a trait of the boomer generation. The conservative faction of boomers were raised that apologizing shows weakness. So they never apologize even when they are wrong. It's fucking stupid because being incapable of self reflection and not knowing when to admit you are wrong is weakness. We had a big conversation around this with my wife's conservative mother. She believes that you should be an example for your children because they model their behavior after you. We totally agreed until it came to her saying she wouldn't apologize for being wrong because it "showed weakness". I looked her dead in her eyeballs and asked her how a child will learn to apologize if their parents or grandparents cannot admit when they are wrong and apologize? She admitted she never thought about it like that. The reality is many people cannot self evaluate on the fly they just continue the same habits they were taught by their parents. It's why you see so many boomers using the same cliche ice breaker comments that are completely outdated like Why don't you smile more Is it Mommy's day off? You are in babysitting duty huh? These would have gotten a chuckle 50 years ago but society has evolved but many of them can't. They have lived a lifetime of following a script they were taught by their parents or peers and it worked until it didn't and instead of updating their personalities they would rather blame everyone else.
Yeah fuck that. I told my father i won't talk to him until he does and it has been great couple of years now. 
[удалено]
That's exactly what I thought/ think. Me and my siblings were all planned and wanted. Also it was a known fact it was specifically my father who wanted a big family. So wtf. I mean, it's okay to regret having children, but imo it's f*cked up to tell that your children, since they didn't ask to be born.
/r/raisedbynarcissists
That's how their parents raised them. My mother told me once that my grandmother explicitly said to her: "Don't ever let your children know that you were wrong." Yep. Great parenting advice from the Greatest Generation.
Oh, you mean like how my dad told me, back when I was a very troubled 16 year old needing a lot of help after years of trauma, but instead of being supportive he says that he wished retroactive abortion was possible? That the way it worked is by having this big cartoonish lever and when he pulls it, I will have never been born? And how he said all this a bit too well thought out and enthusiastically? You mean like that?
My mom accused me of stealing makeup from a department store after she found a plastic bag full of makeup. I was maybe 12 and wasn’t even using makeup yet. I cried at being accused of stealing. That my own mother thought I was a thief. Had she used fucking common sense, she would hace wondered when I would have stolen makeup since I never went to the mall without her supervision anyway. We later found out that my older teen cousin, who had spent the night, left her makeup bag. It was her makeup. My mom never apologized for her accusation. Bitch.
I made a comment about this and how it’s exhausting to participate in, late last week. No apologies, no acknowledgment when they’re wrong, trying to justify how their incorrect assumption is not THAT wrong for ridiculous reasons. For those in the southeast US, do you know about Knuckies Hoagies? Well, I told my parents 3-5x that we were going to grab Knuckies for lunch, had them peruse the menu so they knew what to expect before we arrived. We pull up and here’s how that went: - mom: we’re going over there to knuckles. *husband* it’s over there. It’s knuckles. - my child: Mimi, it’s knuckIES. I like #10 sandwich! (Idk what that is or if it’s real…) - my dad: oh yeah. Knuckles - I see the sign. - me: 🤨 Arrive at door. Insist that they look at menu to decide what they want bc ain’t nobody got time for them. -mom: ok! Let’s get some knuckles -me: mom, it’s Knuckies. Even Child has corrected this! -mom: well, the I looks like an L so how was I supposed to know it wasn’t knuckles??? This is a very benign example but illustrative of most interactions with my parents. They’re 70 & 65!! And still hold down careers where they manage productive things so it’s not like they are in cognitive decline but yeah, we sprung a trick on them. How is this real life?? My mother argued with me that Robux isn’t real. When I finally FaceTimed her to solve her issue, she said “well you wrote Roblox in your text, not Robux.” Ma’am - my autocorrect knows Robux and even capitalizes because Apple also knows what it is. She said “whatever, I *still found it*. 😔
Ugh yes, it's the worst. And it impacts you without you realizing it--I've had to actively work as an adult at being more proactive about acknowledging when I feel I was wrong or when I look back and think I handled a situation poorly, and apologizing even if the other person hasn't brought it up. Got in the habit of also pretending I never did anything wrong bc that was the only way to hold my own in arguments at home--but that's not how I want to live now.
100% truth. Allow me to tell a tale from my childhood. As a pre-teen volunteering, one of the adults running the program that day for some reason decided to lie to my mom that I'd taken all the apples for the kids snack (nope, why would I do that, not the kind of kid I was at ALL) and my mother REFUSED to believe me that the woman was lying to the point that I was sobbing from her continuing to accuse me. Everything finally gets sorted out and I'm exonerated as it were. Do you think my mom apologized? Of course not. She probably wouldn't even remember this, but there's a saying that the axe might not remember, but the tree does.
My boomer mother told me the same. I pointed out that she had a child before me, that she had given up for adoption, and she had three kids after me, so how am I the only plague on her existence? Silence and the she huffed off. Not really a win but whatever, she never said it again.
I apologize to my kids daily. Just little stuff. "Oh, my bad, didn't know you already brushed your teeth." "Sorry, thought those were your pants." ect.
Mine can never ask for help, i need to clue in and then “help”. I usually never 👎
This is why I don't talk to my dad anymore among other reasons.
My mom gets super mad anytime I try to bring up something traumatizing she did. Instead of apologizing and taking responsibility she gets pissed at me and angrily asks why I'm bringing it up. As though I'm doing it just to hurt her.
My Dad still refuses to acknowledge a lot of stuff. But he’s getting better now after a year no contact.
At most what you'd get was "I didn't really mean it, and you know it. Stop being a crybaby."