So sad

[Elfingbell]

Last year I felt I had it all - loved my job, bought my first home with the man I loved and had dd, then:
We get hit with astronomical fees for 24hr fire watch in our apartment block. My partner left me for another woman when dd was a few months old. Covid saw me working from home and looking after DD I wasn’t performing at my best and have now lost my job.
I’ve spent 90% of my savings and this week will move back to my hometown and move in with my mentally ill mother.
I’m returning the keys to my apartment to the bank which means I’ve lost my deposit money but frees me from the mortgage, repossession wasn’t far off anyway.
I know I’m lucky having somewhere safe to go and some savings but I’m just so sad that It’s come to this.
I’m not looking for sympathy or advice I just needed to write it down.

What lovely contact from your siblings.

If you want this year you can and your SM a Christmas Card to "the best Mum in the world" because she really is up there isn't she!

Don't take on your Dad's failures as your fault. He was an adult and he let you and your SM down, that's his forgiveness to ask for.

Do you think your ex is like your Dad but with a enough backbone to split up with you? In the future ensure you don't end up with someone that has your Dad's weaknesses, bizarrely we are very attracted to people like our opposite sex parent.

Be positive you found out now and not in your 60s you still have so much living to do being the authentic you.

Good luck OP. I love the message from your step sister.

@RandomMess it’s interesting what you ask about my ex, I know when I was looking for a boyfriend I wanted someone who was happy to let me wear the trousers in the relationship and he did, he just went along with whatever I wanted. Things fell apart because I decided it was the right time to have a baby and he wanted to wait as he was taking professional exams and had an end goal in sight and didn’t want distractions. There were lots of arguments and I think I just wore him down in the end. I think ultimately he left because he wanted a relationship with dd free of me, his new dp is the complete opposite of me, lives on a houseboat and is a bit hippy and into lots of spiritual stuff.
I’ve read a bit about women being attracted to men like their fathers and until this week I would have said for me it would be perfect. I’m coming to realise that both of my birth parents are not worthy of the pedestals I’ve previously put them on.
When I was talking to B he said that my dad let me down badly and that what he remembers about dad and stepmum arguing when we were growing up was her trying to get him to tackle my bm and call her out on stuff. A perfect example is the wonderbra that my bm bought for me, I had only just started to develop and stepmum took me shopping for some proper bras rather than the crop tops I’d been wearing, she made me feel really special. I was really happy but when bm saw my bras she started mocking them, saying they were old lady bras and people would tease me at school, she took me into town and bought me push up bras and a white wonderbra for school, she then demanded the money for them from dad. Obviously at 12 I loved the padded bras and felt like the big "I am" at school and stepmum tried to talk to me about how inappropriate it was to have them at such a young age and that I didn’t need padding because I would develop as I grew and to keep them for parties. I now wonder why dad didn’t go ballistic with bm for making me look like a slapper and tell her to butt out.

I'm glad you can see your Dad has been crap and let you down. I should imagine in the future you will have a private chat with DSM at some point and you'll both be going "what planet was Dad on that he did nothing 🤦🏼‍♀️"

My dsis has just pointed out to me that I’ve spent little time with her and virtually none with my other dsis away from bm, she said "it’s only going to be when you’re free of bm that you can be your own person"

It would be a mistake to turn the growing realisation of the truth into scapegoating of your dad. He was caught for some reason in the web your mother wove.

Whatever his faults, your step sister seems to have great fondness for him, and your level headed step mum seems to have seen enough in him to stick with him for all these years. In some respects, he seems to have been an adequate dad to the others and a decent enough husband to your step mum.

Take full responsibility for your own part in all of this as both a teen and an adult. If and when your dad is ready, you can go to family therapy and perhaps he will offer an apology, or at least try to understand his own part in the saga.

Don't delay getting therapy for yourself.

@mathanxiety. He was a lovely dad, he always did stuff with us and cooked Sunday lunch I think my step siblings are very close to him because their own dad died and of course when we were with mum they had dad and stepmum to themselves. It was just when it came to bm that he was useless, I think fear of bm applying for custody of us was a fear he had it was frequently threatened. When it came to discipline he was useless and we got away with murder, stepmum always said it wasn’t her place to punish us because we had a mum and dad to do that.

I agree you need to take him off the pedestal but not scapegoat him, there is a difference.

@Bluntness100

Op I’ll be blunt, it was only a few short months ago you were on the attack with your step mother, you seemed to only have a light bulb moment when you faced going back to live with your own mother.

It does read like your impetus to make amends coincided with you being made homeless. And the urge to apologise seems to have lessened now you’ve got someplace else to stay.

I’d think very carefully if your desire to apologise is because you thought there was something in it for you. You might get to stay there. And you’re still being manipulative.

As your ex said, I think you need to seek help. The fact your acknowledgement of the pain you caused only came when you needed some place to stay and you were still at it right up to this moment, even though you’re now in your thirties, indicates this isn’t all about a sudden understanding of what you’ve done.

These were my first thoughts. If this awful thing hadn't happened to you, you would no doubt still be feeling the same and have no intention of making things right.

I'm fairness to op, her dad doesn't want her there and asked what help she needed. She could easily have said toove in and then continued to make SMs life he'll, or said 1k and then gone back to ignoring. Instead she said none, just to work on our relationship and the rest is on me.

Does it matter why the OP has had an epiphany or that she has had it and wants to make amends??

Usually people do have an epiphany when they reach rock bottom and find out who their real friends/family are.

The op has finally seen and accepted that he BM is horrid/toxic.

It seems like the epiphany was something of a false dawn. It doesn't seem to me like true responsibility for the way that the OP has acted is being taken. Attempted to scape dad is making me feel a bit ill. If this were a reverse people would be calling the OP a narcissist!

@HarrietPotterska

It seems like the epiphany was something of a false dawn. It doesn't seem to me like true responsibility for the way that the OP has acted is being taken. Attempted to scape dad is making me feel a bit ill. If this were a reverse people would be calling the OP a narcissist!

Why the false dawn comment? I’m genuinely interested because it doesn’t feel like that for me. I will hold my hands up to being narcissistic in the past, that’s why I’ve said from the beginning that I want counselling because I’m committed to not being anything like my bm

@RandomMess

I agree you need to take him off the pedestal but not scapegoat him, there is a difference.

This.

Your Dad is a good man but was scared of your DM. Nothing he did was designed to hurt anyone, the opposite from what I can see. He wanted everyone to just be ok. I think for single Dad's with primary custody the fear someone will give the kids to their Mom esp back then must be significant given the societal boss about child raising. He was out of his depth but from love.

Your BMom loves you on a way that gives you nothing. You were ways of hurting her true love for not being with her, and for hurting the interloper for being who she couldn't - a good wife and mother. She only did it for herself and that's the difference.

@Lepetitpiggy you’re wrong in your assumptions, this process began when I gave birth, when dd was plonked onto my chest one of my first thoughts was "how could bm have left us". It’s thanks to my dsis and the pandemic that those seeds grew.

In my head the things I did and said wrecked my stepmum’s life because that’s the lie I’ve been fed by bm "she’ll never get over this" "she’s depressed because she’s never going to see dd" "she’s livid that I’m staying in London with you" etc but there was no evidence of any of that being true, just what I’d been told by bm. The reality according to my step siblings is that she was devastated but because she felt I’d been lost to bm, not because of things I’d said or done. The fact that they laugh about the things I said made me realise that.
My sisters have a good relationship with them but as I just posted we rarely got to be alone together without bm being there so meaningful conversations were few and far between until I had dd.

I’m logging off for the rest of the day, we’re going to get a Christmas tree with dsis and then decorate it at her house before I go back to bm’ s house hopefully for just a few days.

I will come back later and answer as many posts as possible, I’m here to learn and grow as a person and facing my critics on here is really helpful.

Bloody hell. Your family sound amazing OP. Your stepmom is a very special lady, insightful and clearing loves you.

Sounds like they’ve all been waiting for you to have a Damascus moment, which is now here.

I have a toxic mother, no where near as bad as this but I understand some of your positioning as a child, as so it seems, your step mum.

Your ability to reflect, apologise and bring truth says a lot about your personality. You may have had learned narc behaviours but you don’t sound like a natural narc (if that makes sense).

This may not be an easy ride, I imagine you feel deeply ashamed, hurt and god alone knows what else. Try not to focus on missed opportunities, you have taken this huge one.

I wish you and your family all the very best for the future.

Op as your posts go on, the one thing that stands out is you started off taking personal responsibility. Even admitting you were on the attack very recently

Now you’ve changed the narrative to it’s your mothers fault. And the step mother is becoming the saintly one. You’ve reversed their roles in your head. And at the same time reducing yout level of personal accountability. When actually you were in your thirties and still doing it.

I think maybe some counselling would help, but I don’t think simply reversing the roles of the two women is going to solve this. You don’t always need to have one as the saint and one as the sinner. You can have a relationship with both. You don’t need to put one down to elevate the other.

I agree with Bluntness.

You’re starting to reframe this now as all other people’s fault. And you’re not taking personal responsibility fully.

I blamed every one and every thing for my shitty and appalling behaviour when i was younger. My dad died, my mother had many breakdowns and I was hospitalised countless times as a child. I still recognise that all this trauma had a huge effect but now have learned that my responses could have been better. Hopefully I'm now someone who is much more equipped to cope.

I do take responsibility, especially for keeping up my narrative for eight years, I’ve never said my bm was saintly far from it. In my first posts I’m said she was mentally ill and explained her controlling behaviour.

My image of what effect I had on my stepmum and siblings came from bm, dad doesn’t do emotional stuff and would rather not discuss my relationship with bm or stepmum, he just wanted to pretend everything was fine.

Your step mum and siblings sound like amazing people. They would be great role models for your dd.

You are very lucky that they're willing to forgive your past behaviour, but you also need to forgive yourself.

I do believe your remorse is sincere and hope that you're all able to move forward and have the relationships you always should have had with them.
It's never too late, so don't focus on the years you've wasted.
Instead, look forward and think about all the time you still have to get to know them all and to watch your dd have all these great people in her life.

Good luck

Op, no growing up you treated your bm like the saintly one and your step mother like the enemy. Now you have switched the women in the marrative

And it’s a lot longer than eight years. You’re thirty one now. It’s nearly double that. You’ve definitely changed the narrative to it all being your birth mothers fault. Even classifying yourself as her weapon of delivery.

This is understandable at 14. Not at 30.

You don’t need a narrative coming from anyone else to know it was you who did it. Not at 20 and not at 30 either.

You did those things. You weren’t a conduit for anyone. You did them. By yourself. As an adult.

All that love for your child but you kept it up all since and didn’t even allow your dad to share photos of your dd. That’s on you.

Oh OP, you've been through it, haven't you? Your step mother sounds like she's a nice woman and she's fully aware of the BS your BM has spouted and how she has influenced you. I'm no psychologist, but sometimes it's easier to project all of our sadness and rage, confusion and frustrations onto a person and make them a monster in our own minds. It's somehow easier when we have someone to hate and blame, however unfairly that may be.

Sometimes it's only once the walls have already been blown down and you're feeling vulnerable that you allow yourself to go there and accept the truth and see clearly.

I really hope you are able to make amends - not for the purpose of solving your current predicament, I think you just have to suck this up unfortunately, but to move on and hopefully feel some sort of resolution and peace, and to try and correct the huge disservice you have done your SM.