Ooops, my post went long…
Well, that’s the way the lawyers put it. However, she had a millionaire father supporting her, plus she was a national security analyst (probably for the CIA, at one point for the state department, but she never really said for sure) and at the time of the divorce had several working options. However, she never visibly worked when I was growing up.
All in all, my parents didn’t provide me very useful models of how to work in the world we have today. My father had a tenured academic research job (particle physics) of the type doesn’t really exist anymore (now that the cold war is over). My mother spent her life spending her father’s money. By the time she died, there was nothing left… I recieved a box of old photographs and had to put up a fight just to try to get six plates of nice china that I remember from my childhood. That was more or less the sum total of everything (aside from tickets to visit) I got from her since I turned maybe 15, other than one time in grad school.
Perhaps I sound bitter (and I am), but it’s not so much about feeling entitled to her stuff, and more about the frustration of being raised with expectations of what I was supposed to achieve in life and how to do it and then totally not being given the resources or proper education to achieve them. OK, if you’re going to live like a queen but keep me out in the cold, then don’t compare me to friends and neighbors who have their family and connections behind and pulling for them. And - if you’re not going to help because you want it all for yourself - at least teach me to fight tooth and nail like an irish or italian floor trader (or not try to stop me when I go that direction) rather than force me to learn it on my own in my late 20s (something that still doesn’t come naturally to me).
I work for a guy who said “Yeah, 2004 was a tough year for me, so I called up my dad and asked if I could borrow $100,000, and he said fine.” For most of my life, I realize I’ve been competing with people who can do that and end up coming up short. Meanwhile, I asked for $2000 to help with the cost of living in New York during my first year of grad school: she talked me down to $1500 and told me never to ask for anything ever again (and I didn’t). How does one compete favorably with that? Yet my boss looks like the winner, and I look like the screw-up. It’s very frustrating.
Anyway, about five years ago I went to a shrink and he helped me untangle a lot of the stuff that those experiences created, and I’m more accepting of who I am, more proud of what I’ve accomplished, and less angsty in general. But it still hurts to have lost over a decade of my life to that kind of stuff, because that is a decade that I really could have enjoyed and used far more effectively.
The shrink also helped me relate far better to women in relationships, because he helped me understand how the wacky women my father liked made me too scared to trust the women I met. Today I have a better understanding that not all women are like my mother and step-mother, and I have learned to spot the red flags that will keep me away from such people, and my relationships with women have become far, far better and more satisfying as a result.
So, perhaps I’ve overshared here. But it’s an interesting experience, life. I’m old enough that I can look back on it and see arcs and currents that you can’t see going forward, but young enough that I can also hope to learn something useful for the future.