I'm mostly affected by my father's inconsistency and ambiguity and unpredictability in terms of emotional support. Sometimes I wish that he would have simply ignored me all the time. But he only did it sometimes. Some other times, he'd try or pretend to listen to me —with disastrous results.
My therapist says that if your parents are just never available, it's tough because you naturally want them to be there (especially as a kid), but you end up understanding (painfully, of course) that you can't count on them. But when they come and go, it's confusing and it's harder to close that door, because "hey, maybe this time will listen". And then you're more likely to develop trust issues because they somehow teach you that you can't expect anything from anyone.
Of course, neither she or I are trying to say that one thing is actually better than the other one. We're not measuring who has it worse. But it's still something interesting to discuss. So what do you think?