Folks with attachment issues be like...
Are you idealising your parents and childhood?
While this is more of an avoidant thing, I've seen it across people who identify with all attachment styles.
As children, we can only see our parents as good or bad. Parts of us can get stuck in this stage as a result of trauma or emotional neglect and we resist viewing our childhood and caregivers through a more realistic, complex lense. In this process of protecting our fantasy parents, we created stories about why our needs were unmet, justifying them with our own shortcomings.
As adults, we have the cognitive resources and emotional awareness to understand that our parents have their own unresolved trauma and coping strategies. Acknowledging parental shortcomings doesn't make you disloyal or ungrateful but through denying that they happened you are betraying yourself.
We can't heal through suppressing the dysfunctional family dynamics we lived with. Developing a more secure attachment includes understanding where your current patterns come from. Hint, hint, it's your childhood.
I understand the desire to be loyal to your caregivers, I suppressed the reality of my childhood to the extent of fabricating memories about my mum. Through my healing journey, I recognised relatively early that my dad is and always has been as avoidant as they come; he physically leaves the room in the presence of an emotion. Unsurprisingly, all my relationships were with avoidantly attached men. That stuck part in me was replaying the patterns from the past, doing her best to get dad's love through my adult relationships.
I have had a very privileged, picturesque childhood, AND it was also confusing, emotionally neglectful, unpredictable and with poor relational modelling. It was only my full awareness of it that helped me understand my patterns and work my way through them to a secure attachment and a healthy relationship. At the same time, I can now also view my parents with compassion and understanding of the complexities behind their imperfect parenting. While not without setbacks, this process not only changed my attachment and relationships but also improved my relationships with my family.
You can love your parents, have a relationship with them AND acknowledge their imperfections so you can validate your experience and heal your attachment wounds.