(based on my experience)
Use it as an opportunity to observe your reactions and the place they come from. You'll be able to find the core issue (unresolved need for acceptance/love/affection/whatever they didn't give you) and see how it spreads into other aspects of your life. And once you see how you constantly bring that shit into the present, you'll forgive them a great deal...you've been hurting yourself far more than they have ever hurt you.
Definitely don't try changing them
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
Ain't gonna happen
Let me put this..., I`m raised in a catholic family (so usually the mother educates the kids). My father is a nevrotic parent that has a paternalistic personality, he is a self made man (a mcgyver kinda guy) (when I mean that is: he likes control and to do things in his way, so if you dont, there are quarrels, insults...He is manipulative because he can twist words, facts, phrases from the real meaning for having right and/or exagerrating to evoke sense of guilt, of shame. I think he likes to feel important. No doubt about it that he was a bad boy at my age and a womanizer even if he was raised by a single mother and by the street.
He is a cool guy when you talk to, funny, he likes to joke and tease. He`s kind when it comes to things that interests him.
My mother (who really raised me because my father was most of the days outside for work and come home bitter, stressed, tired) is very kind, serious, very nice and very empathic at work (she`s a nurse and because of her attitude every patient likes her) and outside the house. Inside she is not nice, she is bitchy to my father, she`s like a child. She uses every manipulative tactic to "steal the ball" from my father using nagging, crying, shaming, guilt, insults, anxiety...and she fails and plays the victim. My father first tease her than if is too much BS get respect from her, like David X used to say about getting respect, by fear.
At the end there is me, between two fires, since childhood. Has happened many times that If I pleased one of them the other one complained about it and viceversa (stupid shit that happend in my childhood: "took the jacket" says one, the other one says the opposite). On one side, I stood up against him when he uses his tactics, insults to put me down or to defend my mother (what a nice guy I am, I get mad very fast like him, I think is something I learnt from him) I go in defensive mode…sometimes I feel guilty about it.
On the other side I feel being manipulated by my mother too, I see the game that women play ("look you see how he is evil, its good that you are not like him, once he did that/this, he is father-master") because she knows what button to press to start the drama...and it something that I forget.
I could day easily that this brings unsadisfaction in the present, unsuitability, fears and problems when it comes with women (because nice guy are easily manipulated)