To hate my mom because she was controlled by my dad

[TheDaringOchreQuail]

Trying to simplify this. All my life it was about him and treading on eggshells to please him. She always has to be the victim too.
he is basically like a dictator. Everything revolves around him and his needs. I feel so much hate for her. She didn’t put me first. She never spent time with me or listened to me. Even now, as he controls the money she has to pretend that I ordered food when she was the one who paid for it but he can’t know, please say this isn’t normal?!

Could you talk to your Mum and ask her why she hasn’t left?

Your poor Mom.

Obviously I don't know you, but I can tell you that amongst me and my siblings who had something similari-ish we have the following:

• Anxious attachment tendency (my sibling)
• Avoidant attachment tendency, (me) I push people away to avoid being 'trapped' like my mum was
• People pleasing that can lean towards self hatred for 'being weak' and not saying true to ourselves/end up doing things we don't want
• Sensitivity to loud noises due to association with my dad getting into one of his moods (and it being our job to fix it)
• Poor understanding of what a healthy relationship is like

I think it could go one of two ways:
You stay with abusive partners because that’s just the way they are
or
You are hypervigilant for signs of control and leave immediately.

Perhaps you could talk to him about how you felt when you lived at home?

I honestly wouldn't advise that, especially if your mum is still under the same roof as him

This!

You're hating the abused for being abused.

I don't think that's fair - coercive control and financial abuse have only very recently become offences.

Had she left (with no money) and no evidence of physical abuse - which is still frequently dismissed as their own fault/both as bad as one another/she's making it up/mentally ill - there would have been no guarantee she'd have kept residence; after all, no money = no home, no evidence of being beaten = no right to social housing as she 'has a home'. And even if she did, there could have been both the inability to protect a child from the full brunt of abuse when not present for contact and the abusive parent alienating the child from her through presents, trips, promises of not having to live in that rented flat, the promise of having university costs paid, all manner of disneyfication and future faking for the child to decide 'well, he's my Dad and he's not going to change, he says Mum's weak and poor and made him angry, it's all her fault so I want to live with him because it's not his fault he's like this'.

Maybe she can't, but you can.

She should have protected you, but when someone's being abused it's not as easy as that. You're entitled to feel upset and disappointed that she wasn't able to protect you, but I this hating her for it when she was also a victim is a little strong.

How easy or difficult would it have been for her to leave ?
Did she work ?
Who owned the house?
Lots of reasons why it's hard to leave.

Yes a lot of men do. They label you a "bad woman " if you don't kowtow to them. What country are they from?. Your mum was brought up to be how she is

Your father has taught you that men are in control and are superior. While rationally you don't believe this, the message is still deep in your subconscious. This is why in a situation where there is a very obvious abuser (your father) and a very obvious victim (your mother) it feels 'right' with you to direct your anger and blame on to her. Your whole upbringing was a lesson in misogyny and you have learned it well. Some anger towards your mother for a failure to protect you is understandable, but its not healthy to focus on that rather than your father and processing his abuse. I agree therapy may help you.

I felt this, but it is easier to blame or to have it out with the softer character, the enabler.
My parent's dynamic is similar, but less extreme. Once I realised this, I stopped resenting mum so much and did stand up to Dad.
There were fireworks, because he was true to type: the angry bully.
And suddenly, it was him I challenged. Of course he reacted. I absent myself if dad's behaviour is bad. He knows this is what I do now, if I don't challenge him.
It wasn't easy or even possible to leave in the 70s onwards.
My mum still moans, but I do see them both through a clear lens now. Mum, with sympathy, but the memory of "anything for peace/a quiet life" and him ruling the roost which I no longer tolerate around me. When I was unable to make that choice or separate myself from that as a child, she would allow me to take someone the flack as I am a much more outspoken character. That's unforgivable, but I know he is worse.
Let them be.
There's no way my mother would leave my dad, who now they are retired, wants to do everything together, watches what he wants on TV with constant channel flicking etc.
She wants space from him now, hasn't forged an independent life that allows it.
I do feel for her, but I have to forge my own life and I can't play into their dynamic anymore.

Why is he 'the way he is' , but not your Mum?

Why in your mind is ' he is the way he is' an excuse for your Dad, but not your Mum?

You Mum will have her own reasons why she never left, based on her own history and her own personality, and perhaps based on what he told about what would happen if she ever tried to leave him.

Your childhood sounds awful, but excusing the man and blaming the woman will not help you come to terms with it.

But how old? The decade this happened in 8s significant as to how feasible it was for a wife to 'just leave'

So you’re siding with your mother’s abuser?

Maybe you could read this. It might be useful for you to understand what abuse does to victims, and also to stop blaming your mother for being abused.

lundybancroft.com/kids-who-side-with-the-abuser-part-1/

What I have noticed is that when one parent is an abuser each child is forced to take a side. There is rarely neutrality. That's down to the unhealthy environment that the abuser creates. The 'you're either with me or you're against me' thing. I've lived it as a child and also as the victim of an abusive husband.

The reality is that no child should feel like they have to pick a side. You can love both parents equally , even if they're separated , where there was no abuse.

I think some people forget that even though one parent is a victim that doesn’t remove the fact that you had a shit childhood and the hands of an abuser and parent who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave so you the child were stuck in this no win situation.

yes your mother is a victim but so are you and I’m sorry for that OP. It is normal to feel resentment and hopefully you can talk it through in therapy and come to peace with the decisions your mother made and have a decent relationship with her so that she know there’s still time for her to be free of him.

"she could have left, he is the way he is"

This is immature and shallow reasoning. You claim to be a victim yourself and yet refuse to acknowledge that your mother was. Why is your father "the way he is" and not your mother? You're an adult now, try to think like one and stop looking for blame. Your fate is in your own hands.

My father was a degenerate gambler and a bully. I have very complicated feelings about my Mum, I love her but find it difficult to forgive her for not leaving when i know she would've been a perfectly good single parent and we would've had a much better childhood. What I found helpful was looking back at her childhood and figuring out why she was such an easy target for a man like my father. I try for empathy every day.

I never have and never will empathise with my father - addiction is a disease but even without the disease he would've just been a bad person.

Men are often left to behave as they please aren't they? How many times have you heard that old Jeff has always been this way etc. It's often seen as okay to not evolve and do better if you're male.

Don't hate her she is as much a victim as you are, hate him

Your whole upbringing was a lesson in misogyny and you have learned it well

This.

I don't see the OP absolving her father of blame it blaming her mother unnecessarily.

I think what's difficult is that OP's mother is probably a kind and nice person who tried to be a kind and nice mother to her children and wants to be seen as a good mother by those children now they are adults. But in fact caused huge hurt and damage to her children by failing to protect them from her abusive relationship and always putting her husband's needs before theirs. Yes, she is a victim of coercive control, but she is still an adult with much more power than her children had to change their circumstances.

So for the OP, there is a huge discrepancy between how her mother wished and intended to be, and the actual impact of her behaviour.
Whereas OP's father is clearly an abusive jerk who behaved similarly to his children and his wife. There's no discrepancy there because he's a jerk to everyone. So no dissonance to resolve.

I grew up in a similar household my mum was a single parent first husband was horrendous second wasn't much better, I think mum was just beaten down by it all that she was subservient and meek. I just feel sorry for her now although being amongst the chaos wasn't great I blame him for it all.