FAVORITISM and How it Breaks Bonds Between Loved Ones

Favoritism is something that we’re all familiar with.

It’s something innate within us and ranges to every aspect of our lives. We all have favorite basketball teams, favorite movies to watch, favorite outfits to wear, and even favorite cousins to hang out with.

The last one resonated with you, right?

Favoritism is something that’s truly within us, even when it comes to family members. This applies to parents and grandparents as well.

I know it’s harsh to hear and that our parents always assure us that they love us equally. And yes, that’s true, they love us all very much, but they have favorites, is what I’m saying. Even our loving grandparents too.

Being called your grandparent’s favorite grandchild or “apo” is such a heartwarming feeling. The fact that you’ve been picked as the favorite among a bunch of cousins is an amazing feeling, but what about those who were not chosen as the favorite?

Can you imagine the pain of that?

Our grandparents tend to have favorites not just among their child, but also their grandchildren as well.

My mother has come to terms with it and has told us multiple stories about how our grandmother tends to love or care for her older sister compared to her. She tells us that it’s not something that she thinks of often, but I know for sure it still hurts her to this day.

Even in us grandchildren. I have cousins that could afford costly private school and are intelligent. Also, I have cousins who could only afford public school and those who don’t even go to school.

My siblings and I are kind of in the middle, we can afford private schools, but we just choose not to. And we perform well in class as well.

Of course, my grandparents favor our higher-class cousins more than us, and they always talk bad things about our cousins who did not go to school, always criticize their future, and how they’re throwing it all away.

As a cousin, this hurts me to my core because what if it had been me?

What if I was the one they’ve been talking about whenever there’s a gathering.

This goes to show that even family members can backstab you.

I’ve also had my fair share of not being the favorite. Being a middle child comes with lots of unwanted responsibility, along with this, is being the least favorite one, and I know many people can resonate with me on that one.

To be clear, I don’t want to be their favorite as well; I just want them to love us all EQUALLY.

Whenever I get high scores on my test, instead of praising me, my parents criticize me for not getting the perfect score. When my siblings perform well in school, they get praised highly by my parents.

I could list a bunch more examples about their favoritism tendencies but let’s just leave it at that.

The way we can counter this problem is by starting with ourselves.

Try to become less biased or have favorites in everything.

Treat and love your friends equally.
Treat and love your cousins equally.
And love your parents equally.

This way, we might altogether remove this tendency of ours.

What about you? Have you had an experience where your parents/friends had favoritism tendencies?