Is it normal to feel sad for your parents?

Yes. You are all going through a major life transition. Transitions can be difficult for some people to face. Your parents will continue to age. You will continue on a road to independence. It’s normal to experience some pang of sadness or to be sensitive to the process of this change.

It depends on whether your parents seem sad about their current life status. It may be hard for you to believe at this age, but the 50s are not all that old. Your parents can enjoy a new phase in their lives when you move out.

Instead of focusing on them, why not spend your time looking forward to your life?

I feel this too x My parents are a little older though but I think what @marinelife has said is still appropriate. It’s very easy to start feeling responsible for them and negate our own needs and desires but independence is very important

I agree.. I also feel like I need to be on my own to be happy… They think I never even kissed a boy… They don’t mind much but I just feel awkward telling them…
I just hope they don’t feel bad themselves, because that would make me feel even worse.

I understand and acknowledge the feeling and it’s funny but that feeling, in my case at least, comes and goes all your life.
The thing is, you will always stay the child of your parents, the age gap will always stay the same, so in your eyes, whether you are twenty or forty five, they’ll always be twenty or thirty years older then you ( and look ancient).
The thing that weakens the feeling of being sorry for them is the fact that you will one time realize that you are of the same age then your parents were when you first had those thoughts.
You“ll realize then that it is not that bad and not that old, being, lets say, thirty five.

Parents eventually die [unless kids die faster which is not good because it’s not normal for kids to die before the parents].
I felt sorry for them and I still feel it but I cannot change anything. It’s hard to change my dad ways so I just help him how I can.
Do not go there and think you need to focus more on your life [they are part of yours]. Independence comes in time, do not rush it. Independence also comes with responsibilities.

I feel sympathetic toward my parents all the time. I feel responsible for my mother, certainly. I think it is natural.

It sounds like what you’re experiencing is the transition from child-love to adult-love, it’s natural, all of it.

Our life on earth is just a stage. We are born, we live and we die.

It’s what we do in the “we live” section, that prepares us for death.

What you are feeling is normal. I felt the same way.

My dad and I use to shake hands. All of my life, he could always out grip me. I think he was about 65, when I noticed his “gripper handshake” was weakening. That was a cold, hard day for me. To realize that my dad was not the big, strong mentor that made my life what it is today. Same applied to my mother. She just stopped painting. I knew then that something was wrong. It was her age. Again, i felt just like you…...sad.

This is why we have to spend each available minute with our parents.

Once they are gone, they are gone.