Their youth, carelessness, freedom… Maybe we envy our children? It is difficult to admit this to yourself, but parental love does not interfere with rivalry. Especially when the kids have turned into teenagers, and the horizons of our possibilities have not become as wide as before.
“I watched them from the window: my 20-year-old son was standing in the company of boys and girls. Who is in an open jacket, who is in one sweater, despite the cool weather. They were talking, gesticulating animatedly, laughing… I thought that yesterday I was exactly the same, just standing with friends, refusing to wrap up, exposing my face to the wind. I felt like I hadn’t changed much since then. But suddenly I realized with surprise: the time when everything was possible is in the past – after all, I am over forty! And I felt ashamed that I was looking at them like this, with tenderness, but also with envy, and I moved away from the window, ”says 42-year-old Irina.
There is nothing surprising or bad in this nostalgia, it is just a consequence of understanding: our youth has passed.
“We feel sadness about this, which helps us to accept the inevitable changes with dignity,” comments systemic family therapist Rimma Maksimova. “But sometimes we resist this sadness, and then the acceptance of our new place on the ladder of generations is delayed. We begin to experience other feelings, including envy of our children, which can be expressed in irritation, resentment, and claims against them.
It’s a forbidden feeling, but not that rare. It is described in many fairy tales.
“Snow White’s stepmother embodies the idea of a bad mother who is afraid that her daughter will surpass her, become more attractive,” recalls psychoanalyst Serge Efez. Parents are believed to love their children unconditionally and want the best for them. But there is also an unconscious level at which it is hard and painful for us to give way to children who are ready to conquer the world and seduce.
The carelessness of adolescents can make some narcissistic parents crave a little more from life.
47-year-old Georgy once left the Moscow Architectural Institute, going into business. And his 20-year-old son Leonid is now studying architecture at the London School of the Architectural Association.
“I am happy for him, because he will not have the difficulties that I had to face, but at the same time I feel bitterness,” Georgy admits. – I envy the fact that he can get a good education in another country, communicate with different people, make friends and not think about a piece of bread. I didn’t have that opportunity. I wish I could live like him. Why, I would be glad if my son at least talked about his life. So after all is not present, is silent! Somehow my nerves gave out, and I reproached him for selfishness, reminding him that he owes his abilities to me and his mother.
Narcissistic trauma
The feelings of parents are ambiguous. “They try to give their children everything they didn’t get themselves, but at the same time they criticize children when they use the freedom that their parents did not have,” notes psychoanalyst Alain Braconnier. “When interacting with teenagers, they begin to compete with them due to their narcissistic injuries.”
These traumas make parents feel like they are being devalued or being pushed out of their lives. Often, children reach adolescence just when the time comes for their parents to regret the lost and unfulfilled.
According to child psychologist Daniel Marselli, the maturation of adolescents causes an emotional revival in parents: “Their sexuality is already fading, and therefore parents are keenly aware of the flowering of teenage sexuality. She reminds her parents of her own youth, and it’s exciting.”
It is these emotions that give rise to rivalry. “The main value of youth is pleasure without limits,” adds Serge Efez. – As a person grows up, he refuses unlimited freedom. But the carelessness of adolescents can make some narcissistic parents crave a little more of life.”
This belated youth in the older generation is often associated with the breakup of a marriage and can be devastating to children.
How to deal with it?
Get rid of guilt. Being jealous of teenagers is not always bad and shameful. It is not jealousy itself that creates the problem, but its strength and the ways in which it is expressed. Conscious and controlled, it will not interfere with the relationship between children and parents.
Keep a sense of humor. Rather than be angry at teenagers who are “luckier” who can study, leave home and travel abroad without asking, it is better to admit that we would like to be in their place.
Inspire faith in the future. If children continually listen to our regrets about the past and about unfulfilled dreams, it will be difficult for them to hope for their own happy future. Maybe it’s more useful to show our admiration for how they build their lives? After all, one step from envy to arrogance, and it would be better for us not to do it.
Middle age crisis
“I often meet clients whose parents divorced and went to young, almost the same age as their children,” says Rimma Maksimova. “Teens suffer, but their attempts to tell their parents about their feelings are in vain: they no longer want to fulfill their parental role and show emotional care for children.”
Serge Efez cites the example of a family where a father who left his wife and teenage children said in family therapy: “I moved into a one-room apartment and I feel that I have only just begun to live.”
The psychoanalyst does not insist that the father’s behavior caused his eldest son’s anorexia, but admits that the young man is confused in the situation of “the father’s apparent abduction of his role as a young man.” There are also extreme cases where one parent tries to charm their child’s partner.
43-year-old Polina faced her mother’s jealousy early: “Since my breasts began to appear, my mother’s attitude towards me has changed dramatically. She was annoyed when I was complimented or, even worse, told that I looked like her. If someone praised my hair, she replied that I was badly combed. If they said that I had beautiful eyes, she objected that I painted them too much. Once, in the tenth grade, I was sitting with friends in our kitchen after school, and suddenly my mother came in in a barely wrapped dressing gown, bare breasts were visible from the neckline. My friends found her very seductive, unlike me…”
There has always been rivalry between generations, but the conflicts that it could cause did not appear.
“It used to be customary to get married at a certain age, have children, start working life,” Rimma Maksimova reflects. Everything was more or less predictable. Now the boundaries are blurred. It happens that mother and daughter become pregnant at the same time, because the first has remarried.
The cult of youth
“In a society that tells adults to feel young, beautiful and energetic, it’s hard to come to terms with your age and make way for the next generation,” says Serge Efez.
A paradoxical situation arises. “Adolescent parents rebel against the authoritarian fashion, denying the value of the youth subculture that provides role models: athletic smartness, torn jeans,” notes Rimma Maksimova, “but at the same time they are trying to prolong their own youth, suppressing the independence of adolescents, so that they can stayed children longer.
The other extreme of this unconscious jealousy, namely indifference, is equally harmful to children.
“When adults are busy with personal development, they get the feeling that youth will last forever, they leave teenagers to themselves, without any care and protection,” says Daniel Marselli. “Then the kids are looking for other patrons.” Or they take unnecessary risks.
If you realize and limit envy and jealousy, they can be turned into a driving force
Serge Efez often meets adults in therapy who are still afraid of arousing parental jealousy: “At 40, they continue to protect their parents. And for this they cut their wings, abstain from sexual pleasure, do not fight for a professional career … “
Polina tries not to complain: “At the age of 18, I dressed like a goth, which didn’t make me look too good. I compensated for the lack of love with food, and for this I had to endure my mother’s “gentle” treatment of “my fat”. And even today, I cringe internally when someone compliments me in her presence: I am afraid of her negative reaction. And it’s even harder because I love her.”
If you recognize and limit envy and jealousy, they can be turned into a driving force. George succeeded: “On the threshold of my fiftieth birthday, of course, I have fewer opportunities to realize some of my desires than my son. But there are other hobbies and interests. I started painting again: let those buildings that I could not build appear on the canvas. It’s a rivalry with your son, in a good way.”
As for nostalgia for our own youth, let’s not complain. We have gained experience and vivid memories: they can become signal lights for us that light the way to the future.