Dear caroline:

Reads to me that you “don’t trust them”, your parents, that is, because they are “not honest people”.

Your father “has never been consistent with what he has said, (your) mum is the same”. They “keep secrets from each other, many conversations end with ‘don’t tell__'”

This means each of them lies when they feel that they need to lie,  to each other, and each one of them to you. Likely, your father and mother have conversations about you when you are not present (gossiping about you, that is), one telling the other to not tell you this and that. When your mother rolled her eyes, that was probably a signal to your father, referring him to a conversation they had about you relating to what you said right before she rolled her eyes.

You wrote that when you asked your mother about the milk, “she just gets defensive, loud and tries to humiliate me by making it seem like I’m being too sensitive”-

this means, to me, that she is not motivated to give you an answer to a question you ask, that her motivation is to defend herself from the discomfort she felt when asked the question by attacking what she believed to be the source of her felt discomfort: you.

You wrote: “I always wonder if my mum’s behavior is deliberate or not as it’s very subtle”- I think that when she feels uncomfortable/ distressed by something you said or didn’t say, by an expression on your face, or lack of, she then aims at hurting what she perceives to be her enemy, at that particular moment, the source of her distress.

In my experience, it is easier to imagine other people (not one’s parents) are dishonest and gossipy. It is difficult to hold it in awareness that my own mother or father, or both lie to me, gossip about me. Is it so for you?

anita