Does anyone on Tildes not speak—intentionally or not—to one or both of your parents? If so, why?

Time to dump a preview of a couple of decades worth of emotional baggage here, I suppose :)

My biological father is just a piece of garbage. He cared more about his own image and ego than my future. Even though he hardly had any presence in my life, he had the audacity to suggest that he would "disown" me if I switched high schools to an alternative school due to my failing grades, as though he had any claim to me in the first place. Hell, he treated me like shit before I was even born, trying to force an abortion by punching my pregnant mother in the stomach. This same egotistical fuckwit actually ran for mayor in one of the larger cities in my state almost two decades ago (and barely made a blip in that race, mind you). Overall just not someone worth wasting my energy on.

My stepdad, the man I actually think of as my dad, I'm on okay terms with, but he definitely rubs me the wrong way. He had a tendency to undermine my mom's parenting efforts and allowed my younger brother in particular to get away with a lot of things. In fact, there were a lot of clear points of displaying favoritism that I didn't realize consciously as a kid, but ended up becoming aware of more recently as I've been out of college and had the downtime and the opportunity to think about my upbringing more consciously. It also turned out that he's done some pretty shitty things, especially to my mom, but she shielded me from that information when I was young so I could develop my own opinion of him. He raised me, so I do love him, but I've definitely become pretty disillusioned and it's caused me to distance myself.

My mom was going through a lot of shit when she was raising me. She definitely screwed up in her parenting. A lot. And honestly, part of me subconsciously still resents her for not properly preparing me for adulthood, not giving me the freedom I needed to grow, and for having the kind of temper that made me fear doing just about anything if there was even a remote chance that she might be upset with me (even small things like asking for a ride somewhere), among other things. But she did try her hardest, and put herself through a lot for the sake of my brother and I. It's just unfortunate that the damage is still done, so once again I kind of distance myself.

I do talk to my mom and dad whenever either gets in touch. I don't intentionally block them out. But there's enough emotional distance that I don't feel inclined to make the effort to initiate, and I can't afford the much-needed therapy to help bridge that distance.

In short: My biological father can go fade into obscurity where he belongs, but as for my parents, I just don't take initiative with contacting them because my upbringing makes me a walking sack of job security for whatever therapist I end up seeing in the future.

I don't speak to my biological father - the sperm donor, I call him - at all, and we live in the same city. He was never there for me - not physically, emotionally, or financially - and I have no feelings toward the guy, not even loathing (I used to hate to even hear his name spoken, which was nuts because it's a popular name). I was not close to his parents (they were actually his blood aunt and uncle, who adopted him as a baby because his real mom - the aunt's sister - had no desire to take care of him because of his real father) and I'm not close to him. He always blamed my mother's family for this, but it was really him and his own family. His adopted mom was very snooty, referred to my family as being from 'the wrong side of the tracks' and even tried to interfere in my late aunt's marriage by telling her fiance's mom not to let her son marry my aunt (it didn't work). When his parents died, I did not care to attend their funerals and I won't be attending his, either. No apologies, no regrets.

Mother dearest is a narcissist, and a lover of drama. Oh, and she's also homophobic, transphobic, racist, and probably a bit sexist. And a terrible parent ("I can make another one just like you", "I brought you into this world and I can take you out") who tried to buy love through gifts. And that weird kind of religious that only comes up when used for manipulation (see above: narcissist). All of those things screwed me up in ways that I didn't even realize until I was around 30, and I'm still recovering from.

Father is not a narcissist, but seemed to have some vaguely homophobic views. Mostly reasonable, but enables his narcissist wife.

I cut contact with them a few years ago and have been quite happy since. No more yelling and screaming, no more drama, no more nonsense. I am the person I am despite my parents. They were fine role models of who not to be.

You are under no obligation to love your parents, or anyone else, who treats you poorly. A parent is not automatically owed love. This is a very unpopular view, but it's unpopular among those who have good parents (or who don't realize how awful their parents actually are). We have this (mis)perception that becoming a parent makes someone infallible. It does not. It takes a lot of skill (which no one is trained in), effort, and favorable circumstances to be a parent, without which you can really screw up a person for their entire life. Yet there's no regulation around becoming a biological parent, there are no laws, rules, suggestions, anything. You can create a family of scarred, broken people, and there's nothing preventing you doing so.

You are free to choose your family. Learn this at 24 instead of 30 when I did. Preferably, learn it before 24.

I'm currently not speaking with my parents, for a bit over a year now, mostly because they refuse to have a conversation as equal adults, and not as a bully/victim power game. The situation that sparked the estrangement was them not repecting me and my wife's parental decisions towards raising our child. In retrospect I should have cut contact years ago....I am much happier without them in my life.

I've talked about him here far more than I would have liked to, honestly. Though I haven't put the whole story, mostly because it's exhausting to explain everything, here is a vignette that gives the general feeling without going into the drama that started it.

I haven't spoken to my mother for a few years. I always felt like she wasn't quite right in the head, and it all came out when she decided to run off with some random guy, and attempt to take everything my father owns, along with manipulating my sister and i to basically try to rob him. At one point it occured to me what she was doing, and i stopped responding to any mails, SMS', or calls. My sister soon did the same and we both agree it has helped improve our daily life dramatically. I no longer go around feeling immense guilt over nothing, i'm less generally anxious, and i have a much better sense of self now.

Emotional abuse is bad

Does your father make an effort to reach out to you?