I was raised in a loveless family

[JBR]

I believe there was love in my family, but my mother and father had very different personalities — and for me that resulted in confusion and resentment for many years.

I felt my mother's love all through my years with her. She was caring, communicative, lively-minded, interested in emerging ideas.

My dad was responsible and hard working, but seemed to have made up his mind about everything before his kids were born. He was ethical in relation to work & business. He was basically old-fashioned and rigid, and he had a hair-trigger temper. He believed in physical punishment with his boys. I became ambivalent in how I felt about him. In my adolescence I couldn't talk with him about my feelings & thoughts, and I became resentful. After I left the family nest, he at one point divulged to my younger brother "I didn't want to have kids, but your mother wanted to".

I always knew my mother loved us. Years later, I'd unkinked my emotions and clarified things in my understanding, and I realized that our dad did love his wife & sons... but sadly his emotional straightjacket, confusions, and work-related grind affected his manner in the home.

 

[oscash]

There used to be an old man who lived down the end of our street, some 20 years ago. You would see him sitting on the front porch watching the people going past. One day I saw a police car outside his home and an officer came over to ask me if I knew his name, which I didn't. He was dead in the house amongst all the rubbish, probably died of natural causes. I attempted to befriend him, but he wasn't friendly. I learned later his sister lived two houses away from him, and they never spoke. After he died all I saw was cars pulling up in front of his house and people helping themselves to his property.

 

[smiley]

The bible is pepper sprayed with examples of "love" all over from filial to agape?? - now when did that old phrase " every home should have a bible and be outwardly and inwardly digested by all who dwell therein"?? stopped being remembered and practiced daily?