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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWhat is the most non PC discussion you've had with your parents...
Do you have an unconventional relationship with either parents?
I've always treated my father as my best friend and now I'm sort of learning through visits with my psychiatrist that I'm rather too close to him. I don't mean that in any creepy Freudian sense, just that developmentally we are more like best friends than father and son. Because of this we tend to talk about any and all subjects that friends might talk about. He reads literature a lot and will discuss with me the latest book he's reading, sometimes including bits that parents might not talk about with their kids but friends would, like sexual details and the like. Again nothing Freudian going on here, nothing creepy certainly, it's just that we don't see each other as father and son that much, something that may not be good I don't know. And this isn't a trend or something that happens often I'm just suing a more extreme example to illustrate the overall feeling that we are friends and not parent and son so much.
But I'm sure that societal norms vis a vi family relationships are bent all the time. What's the most "non PC" discussion you've had with your parents? Topics that you didn't think you would have talked about with them.
Perhaps non PC is taking things too far, just simply realizing at some point that you weren't mother and daughter / father and son at that point but good friends.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)She woke up and cried on my shoulder for a minute and told me to clean my room. She has been fine with it ever since.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)That's great for you and it's fantastic all worked out, as it should. But that still sounds like an otherwise normal parent child type conversation. Replace gay with some other big life news for example.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)that happened that night. Before and after.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)We have too many rules about social and familiar "norms".
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Agschmid
(28,749 posts)Dad: Did Tony stay the night his mom called looking for him.
Me: Yes.
Dad: I didn't see him downstairs, did he already go home?
Me: No.
Dad: Well where is he?
Tony: Here.
Dad: Oh
.
.
Pause
.
.
Dad: Tony call your mom.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)But to me she gave the evil eye. LOL.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)and if they needed to close their bedroom door, when I was due home to visit
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)And a bit awkward
HipChick
(25,485 posts)and a sex scene comes on...
my Dad stays now...though..
sometimes I wonder how they even had 4 kids to begin with..
And I am still trying to work with them though the whole gay issue...
at least they are to the point, where they agree gays should be allowed to be married..
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)I pretended I was sleep walking and when they mentioned it in the n morning I said I did not remember it.
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)Apparently many gays like math?
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Most awkward 5 seconds of silence in my entire life.
marzipanni
(6,011 posts)and by speaking about the things he has read that involve sex he can see if you'll let him know how you feel about it.
Like most parents, he would probably like to see you having a good relationship with someone eventually.
Also he probably figures that a 31 year old guy is not a kid, so a conversation like that isn't off limits.
If it wasn't about our own personal sexual relationships my mom and I could talk freely about stuff.
olddots
(10,237 posts)that's probably typical for the circumstances but uncomfortable .
Denninmi
(6,581 posts)I'll spare the Lounge the torture of detail, let me just say some if the fights I had with him were over subject matter that one would think could only come from Hollywood. Let's just say my dad was kinda Norman Bates in a lotta ways, just didn't take it quite all the way.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)They often turn into arguments so it's best just to avoid them all together. When we go to visit I purposely ask my wife to not talk or ask about certain things to avoid conflict.
MrYikes
(720 posts)our research on using a flavored douche. Mom didn't understand.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)Locut0s
(6,154 posts)fizzgig
(24,146 posts)we don't go into gory details about sex or anything, but we talk about everything openly.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)That's the type of relationship I have with my father. With my mother it's more formal but I can still talk with her about most things.
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)he had started watching "Six Feet Under" and found it "fascinating that they had their own lingo and everything!"
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)(I mean she dressed up as a clown - she also put on religious puppet shows with my step-father)
and I'm an atheist.
Pretty much all of our conversations were odd.
My dad, however, was unafraid to discuss anything with me and often did whether I wanted to hear it or not. One thing we did NOT discuss, though, was the time I found a VHS tape of him and my step-mother.
That was the day I learned not to rummage through other people's closets.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)That sets a new watermark for awkward lol. And I'd have great difficulty with the fringe religious creationist stuff as I'm a strong atheist myself. I was never raised with any religion to begin with.
47of74
(18,470 posts)We were up at the assisted living place visiting Grandma and Grandpa when out of the blue dad decided to mention that someone had either a penis or testicle cut off during surgery. (I'm not sure and I'm NOT going to ask dad if he remembers which it was). Sometimes I still think Grandpa and Grandpa (when he was still with us) weren't as hard of hearing as they let on, I think they both turned the HOH up a bit and pretended they didn't hear what he said. I still laugh about it sometimes.
a la izquierda
(11,791 posts)Both will talk about blowjobs and how often they get it. In front of my mother. My sister will often bump and grind with anyone while at parties. The first time I witnessed (with my mom present of course) this I just wanted the house to collapse on us all.
I'm the reserved one in the family.
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)Why? I have one parent. She has no social filters. Anything I talk to her about is immediately going to get discussed with a dozen of her closest friends.
And sometimes in front of complete strangers, because, when it comes to what comes out of her mouth, she is oblivious.
It's been that way all of my life. I learned, painfully, during puberty not to ever talk to her about anything personal.
Growing up, though, my friends thought she was the "coolest," and told her all kinds of things I never would have.
All of that said, I love my mom. My role, though, is as the listener. Not the talker, especially about anything I don't want broadcast to a wide area.
hunter
(38,302 posts)My brother once asked a building inspector, who was being an officious ass, "Can I just give you a blow job instead?" That comment cost him a few thousand dollars in unnecessary work.
As kids we fled Franco's Spain in the middle of the night because my mom couldn't be polite to a Spanish official who had "questions." My dad couldn't sleep that night, woke us all up, we put all our stuff in the car, and we left. We were living in a French park when the local officials bought the crazy Americans tickets to Southampton. Let the English have 'em.
My grandma was insane. It's amazing the cops didn't shoot her when they and the paramedics came to remove her from her house as a danger to herself and others. Some of the things that would come from her mouth....
The only serious girlfriend my parents ever met is my wife.
In my family there are no limits. My mom still occasionally comes up with stories of her childhood that are... okay, her daycare providers were nice ladies with sailor friends. Thy lived down by the docks during World War II. This was my mom's childhood normal. My dad's family is simply autistic spectrum, artists, engineers, and scientists. Mildly inappropriate at times, and those who are not functional in the "real" world simply don't talk much.
My wife's family is more traditional. They don't say the first things that occur to them. Or maybe they don't even think those things.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)When we're kids, parents clearly need to be the authority figure and set boundaries, but once we reach adulthood that relationship SHOULD be abolished. What is the "proper" thing to replace it?
My parents and I don't agree on everything, but we can talk about anything. Sex, drugs, health, marriage problems, you name it. We talk like friends, and that's normal to me. I have actual friends who oog out when they learn that I can discuss sex with my parents, and that just seems like an immature and ABNORMAL way to live your life. It's one thing for sex to be an "icky" topic when you're 15, but if you're still drawing artificial boundaries like that when you're 35, I think you've got issues.
But everyones relationship with their parents is different, so YMMV.