AIBU to still feel hurt about my childhood and family dynamics?

[Treasurechest8374749]

When I was 5, my mum met my step dad. Before then we both lived with my grandparents, who I was very close to. I was happy until this point. My bio dad and mum were never really together.

Shortly before she met my step dad, she had bought a house for us and after a short time he moved in. We didn’t see my grandparents as much after this as they lived a little while away and I felt bereft of this. I also started to see my real dad at this point, and for some reason went to his house every weekend.

I never felt like my step dad wanted me around really and when I was at home during the week I felt like an outsider or like I shouldn’t be there. He didn’t include me in things, wasn’t really warm to me and was very easily irritated by me. My mum either didn’t notice or did nothing about it. It hurts more that she didn’t step in and protect me. And then on a weekend I had to see my dad who I am not close to, who also had a girlfriend who didn’t really want me there either.

When I was 9, my mum had my half sister and at that point I felt completely rejected tbh. She was put on a pedestal by my step dad, and still is, and I was just in the background or so it felt to me. I have never felt part of a family unit.

I thought that I had put all this behind me but since having my daughter 6 years ago, I am just so angry, hurt and sad. I could never let her experience anything close to this. I want to have a good relationship with my mum and we do to an extent, but there is all this anger there that I just can’t let go of. It gets triggered all the time by seemingly innocuous things. She doesn’t understand why I am still hurt and thinks I am just anxious or dwelling.

She minimised your needs and feelings when you were little and continues to do so now. I don't know how you get past this when she's just not invested in you. X

I can totally relate to this.

I felt the same in my dad's house when he married my step mum 30+ years ago. She had a daughter of her own and she made it very obvious (in a passive aggressive way) that I was just a visitor and not really wanted there. It was low level stuff that if you challenged would be brushed off as just being silly but it was there nonetheless. Looking back now it wasn't actually that subtle!

Still hurts to this day when I look back. I have a relationship with him and have told him exactly what I felt but it's always minimised and brushed away as being silly. It wasn't then and it isn't now, it's just an inconvenient viewpoint on how they behaved.

As a mum myself I would never do that to my child. What makes me angry is that neither of them had ever experienced divorced parents having been brought up with their mums and dads, so had no experience of what it was like as a step child and no real empathy. That makes me angry.

Honestly I don't think the resentment ever really goes but you have to learn to turn the volume down on it otherwise it will just hurt you. However you do that will be individual to you. For me, I'm just keeping them at arms length now despite their annoyance at how I'm not kowtowing to them in their old age as they did with their parents. My answer to that is 'well you gave me a completely different childhood to the one you had so you can't expect the same outcome'.

You are not unreasonable to still feel hurt

Sometimes it takes years and years to be able to have the capacity to feel a hurt from childhood

These things take time and you are not unreasonable.

For a grown adult to behave towards a very young child, with such animosity and for your DM to choose to ignore it is atrocious, emotional neglect, and down right cruel.

No wonder you are getting flash backs.

They won't admit it but they carry the shame not you, and it is very important to let go, and if letting go is too much then seek counselling.

I can relate to this. I consider myself a guinea pig of a 1970’s divorce and an example of how not to treat children. My stepmother had 4 kids so there was absolutely no space or a warm welcome for me. It wasn’t until I had my own kids that a thought about awful my parents had treated me. My DF is dead now, I learned after he died that he cried into his whisky every night that his kids & grandkids weren’t in his life; he was a spineless man who let his new wife call the shots and we were never welcome and he didn’t try to have a relationship with us. My mum was marginally better but very self absorbed, I struggle to have an emotional attachment with her.

I’m not sure if counselling would/will help me, but the pigeon hole I put this stuff in is pretty much buried somewhere inside me. What lives with me every day is the knowledge that I will never allow my children to be treated in the same way.

Yanbu. It was emotional neglect. I had similar in my childhood, I grew up to be a very quiet adult, unsure of her identity or worth - the result of growing up feeling like a nuisance.

I've had some therapy which has been really useful for working through it. I've realised I grew up in a totally different era to now, in the 1980s for many families, kids feelings were never a priority or consideration.