Opinions on these memories, please!

[FuschiaFlower]

You know how when you're growing up you assume everything is normal? I was mentally sifting through some childhood memories and wondered how "normal" these events actually are. For current context, I am now NC with my mother, and father is long gone.

1. I was home from university for a holiday. Parents in adjacent bedroom have sex, noisily.
2. Aged about 8, walking behind my parents. Dad reaches between mother's legs (as if going to stroke her inner thigh but moving his hand up, iyswim). Mother tells him off angrily because he went "too high" and she knows that I would have seen it.
3. Being hit. This happened until I was 15. It wasn't regular beating sort of stuff - just a clout around the head for perceived rudeness every few months.
4. Waking up alone in the house (very rural location - no neighbours) because parents had gone to the pub about a 10 minute drive away. This would happen from the age of about 11. I used to beg them not to do this, but it happened routinely.
5. Aged 16, a male teacher who didn't teach me traces his fingers deliberately across my shoulders as he walks behind me (empty classroom). My father tells me not to tell anyone as it could destroy the teacher's career. Does any of this parental behaviour ring as "normal" or have I just had a case of the over-sensitive thinkings? I have hugely fond memories, too, but, with hindsight, these, and some others, stand out as being weirdly cruel. Thoughts, please!

Not normal. The teacher absolutely should have lost his career. Men tend to protect other men though. Your parents sound selfish at best OP.

Some of that is ‘normal’ for the time, as in fairly common but not ‘right’ as such. For example, the minimising of sexual assault, the buggering of down the pub and a clip round the back of the head for being rude.

The loudly having sex and sexual touching in front of your kids, not so much.

But we don't know the OP's age, @OlympicProcrastinator , so how can it be said to be normal "for the time"?

OP if you're NC with your mother,there has obviously been other things which have not constituted a normal family relationship?

1. Presumably you were 18 plus so not nice but nothing abusive in my opinion
2. Sounds like a groppy dad and your mum put him straight - not sure I would consider this as weirdly cruel to you
3. Depending on your age I think this was more the norm than it is now. It was the same in my house - I consider it a sign of the times but obviously depends on the extent of the hitting
4. Again might have been considered more normal in days gone by. Shame that you begged them not to and they still did.
5. There was plenty worse going on between teachers and 16 year olds in my school - absolutely not condoning it by today's standards but again I would say if you are 45 plus this was not a deliberately cruel act but rather that behaviours were different then.

@JanglyBeads Educated guess seeing as these things were fairly ‘normal’ as recently as the 80’s / early 90’s and the OP talks about things that happened with her parents in her university years but her dad is ‘long gone’.

I'm NC with her because I finally realised (as an adult) that there was something wrong with my father's narcissistic, controlling behaviour (details for another thread sometime!) and she chose him because she was the one who "had to live with him". She supported him with some fairly unusual stuff, like not wanting to come to my wedding for example - so I didn't get to be 'given away'. She was completely under his spell despite him driving her to suicidal thoughts - in short, if I was to escape him, I had to get away from both of them. But now I'm starting to feel guilty about it, hence the over-thinking.

Yeah, @OlympicProcrastinator is right - I'm now late 40s.

That sounds really tough FuschiaFlower Does she want to have more contact with you now he’s gone?

What you feel is very common. I have seen so many posts here over the years from people who look back on various incidents in their childhood and are like, ‘wtf’ 🤔

@Twintrouble1234 I know - I'm starting to wonder if these things were a lot more common than I think they were, and if I've over-reacted by NC-ing. That being said, he was wildly unpredictable as I became an adult - would tell me I'd never get a promotion, that I had something wrong with my personality, that I was incapable of managing my finances and needed to let my DP do it (I had just bought my DS a trumpet for his music lessons and this was "wasteful"), he would say that my DD was his "favourite", that his mind was faster than a calculator, that he was the target of a nearby family who wanted to murder him... I think he might have been genuinely mad. He even tried to get my mortgage details off the bank.