"But We Took You To Stately Homes!" - Survivors of Dysfunctional Families.

[singingprincess]

There is a word document with all the relevant links which I will try and find, but in the meantime...Post away.

Something hit me today. Whilst I have broken the cycle, I will not be the kind of mother that mine was to me, that maybe hers was to her and I am busy enjoying being the best mum I can (and I do love it) I just thought to myself.....who mothers me? I have nobody. DH is close to his parents and can turn to them for support. I have no one. I feel so lonely sometimes.

I guess what I mean is DH is very much like his parents, they all think the same way but if I don't agree with them I've no one to turn to for support, no one who thinks the same way as me.

Anyway enough of the self pity, it came for a fleeting moment but now it's gone.

Hi Mampam, Thanks for asking...I am doing really well...on the whole :-)
I totally get where you're coming from. I do get a lot of support emotionally from dh (sometimes I think too much and it skews the relationship). I have a couple of close friends but it is never the same as having a loving mother is it?
I did used to feel consumed by that very fact but now I think although I will, like yourself, have those fleeting thoughts and moments of profound sadness I can at least function and live a fairly normal life.

I think using this thread and the last year of counselling Ive had has really helped, before that I felt very stuck in that sadness.
I know a massive part of my journey has been coming to terms with not having a mother. In fact having to mother my mother from a small age...there was a lot of rage regarding that.

Hope you all dont minf me lurking and posting for a bit...it does feel good to have an outlet from time to time.

Hope everyone has a toxic free easter

trs glad you're ok I'm really pleased for you that the counselling has helped. My counselling came just at the right time and really helped me through cutting off my mother.

I know what you mean about coming to terms with "not having a mother". Or with me I feel cheated out of having a 'proper one'! I do get lots of support from DH and he's the main reason I had the counselling as I felt I was putting too much on him.

Lurk away, I'm always here lurking . That's the thing about this thread isn't it that you can lurk without posting and get comfort from knowing that you're not mad, that your feelings are justified. Yet no-one will judge you when you want to post or sound off even for the silly little things.

I haven't found you guys all week :(

It has all kicked off again, yet a fucking gain.
What has ome out this week is the impact that my mother and my brother are having on DS, he has been distraught. He has felt that he had to side with my mother, or lose their (love and) respect.

It is never going to get better; call me slow, or hopeful, but I have finally gotten to this point.

I have been intimidated, to the point where I have been scared, from my brother, the amazing prodigal uncle-on-a-pedestal. DS is scared that he will lose that relationship with his uncle. His uncle would also like DS to know that I am not to be trusted.

Can anyone help please? /i feel really lost x

plucking that letter is exactly what I am due to write. How do I make it non-accusational? I don't know :( My Dad and friend are goingto help me. If I was to write mine myself, it would cut glass; and divide family :(

I wish I had some good advice x

I was about 14, it was mother's day, I gae my mum a key ring in a shape of heart engraved: I Love You.
She said: what do you want now? money? How much?

I have thought of posting on here for a while. I know that I am one of those posters who say it wasn't that bad, others had it worse. But I do think my family were dysfunctional.

From the outside my family look great. My parents obviously love each other, they cared about our education, bought us nice toys, my friends thought my mum was great fun.

And yet...my mum was very dominating and manipulative. I wasn't supposed to have different opinions from her - remember telling her for example in primary how we had had a debate and been asked to defend a position. I said I had found it hard. My mum's response was to say that I should have asked her and she would have told me what I could think about it.

They both even now don't believe stuff I tell them and laugh at me. From the existence of Roland Rat - a rat as a puppet...are you sure it wasn't something like a hamster hahaha, to things about my work.

My mum very obviously wanted me and my siblings to love her more than my dad and frequently made jokes about my dad and encouraged us to look down on him. And yet when they were together it was obvious he came first.

They both had no friends and ridiculed the need for friends...we don't have friends Lesley, you don't need to have friends. They gave me the impression that I was needy and demanding. My mum competed with me over looks and I think looking back actually encouraged me to buy clothes that I didn't look that good in. I remember 1 top I tried on and loved and she persuaded me it was too small and I needed a bigger size. The size was far too big for me and of course desexualised me.

Other stuff too - finding information that told me they were swingers, walking in on them having sex in the living room,etc. When as an adult I tried to talk to my mum about some of this stuff I was basically told no parent is perfect, we tried our best and given the impression that I was unrealistic and demanding.

I know none of this sounds that bad, but I think it did affect me. At 18 I deliberately decided to go to a uni at least 200 miles away from my home so visits home were practically difficult. Thank you for listening and sorry if this all seems petty.

Thank you courage, I appreciate it. And sorry to hear you have had these issues too.

We were brought up to think our family was as a whole was superior. But things were in some ways more nuanced. I was encouraged to have friends over, have sleepovers, etc. But also explicitly told that friends didn't matter - it was real mixed messages.

My father didn't really bother with us. He did when we were very young, but when i was 5 he kind of stopped really talking to me. I remember talking to my mum about this and being told I was imagining it. But I also remember telling friends that I had had longer conversations at bus stops with strangers than I had with my dad.

I hadn't thought of it being a sexualised environment, but one of the things I didn't post last night was the odd stuff. So I remember a scene in Fanny and Alexander where my dad said he had never seen a better justification for sex with a child and my mum agreeing. And a case of a celebrity on the tv who had been accused of sexually molesting a child at a swimming pool.

My mum was very disbelieving of the whole thing and used justifications that even as a young child I could see had no validity. And she was gleeful when the case was dismissed, saying she knew it had all been made up. There was also an odd situation with my dad and a 15 year old girl, that alway seemed as if there was more to it than I was being told. Thanks for listening.

The superiority thing and the no friends thing is very familiar to me.

My father's temper terrified me, so I was never able to have a conversation with him. He was always intent on dominating me and humiliating me whenever I expressed an opinion.

When I think about it I do start to hate him. He punished me violently, never ever controlled his temper or attempted a dialogue with me. Even now he tells me what to think, he's a manipulative bully with no self-awareness. I've sadly inherited a lot of these traits, but at least I'm aware of them and try to control them.

His public persona is a hardcore proponent of liberal values - gay rights, etc.

At home he'll trumpet hate speech against women - calling female politicians, for example, fat and ugly (I'm quite big myself), and insulting people incessantly. I remember there was an article in the Guardian with Andrea Dworkin writing about being raped and him ranting about how ugly she was and who'd want to rape her.

looee - My father's public persona is very left wing too. He would say things like your dad, but in a pitying way rather than a rant. When he did start to talk to me again as a teenager it was mainly to argue against any beliefs I may have expressed and he was very dominating in doing this, basically rubbishing my views. He is very patronising in his manner.

also, my dad will just randomly say/do really insensitive and cruel things and act like i'm being really insensitive if i react.

ds1 was diagnosed with health problems shortly after birth (i was staying with my parents at the time). i remember him acting really pissed off that i was seeing the midwife in the room he liked to watch TV in. As soon as she left (with instructions to take 3 day old DS to A+E) he stomped in and turned TV on loudly then stomped out. I turned it off so I could tell my mum what was happening and he barged back in yelling "I was watching that!" and when I replied that DS1 needed to go t A+E he barked "You're driving him there?" (I'd had a c-section).

sorry i meant "oversensitive"

That is awful loee

lesley33 I find it very hard to tell my dad anything because of historically being humiliated. Of course as a child/young person I didn't know "everything" and could have benefited from intelligent discussions with my dad (a very intelligent and capable person who dedicates much of his time to helping and supporting others) but instead I was aggressively dominated and treated as if I was being stupid on purpose - he seemed to take it as a personal slight if I expressed any differing or dissenting opinion.

He is still like this now.

It's hard because no matter how awful he is, I still deep down want him to love me and find me interesting and think I've done well.

The - treated as if I was being stupid on purpose really resonates with me. Although there are differences, I think the things that are the same between our dads is the belief basically that their opinions are right and anyone who doesn't agree is basically stupid. My dad would patronisingly "explain" things to me, but if I didn't actually agree he would belittle.

lesley33 as you say upthread, my friends (who I had in spite of my dad) and our local community love my dad and think he's great fun and wonderful.

My friends thought my mum was wonderful and said they wished they had a mum like her.

It does make you feel even more as if you are imagining it and blowing things out of proportion though?

lesley33 my dad wouldn't explain things he would aggressively bombard me with what felt like a tonne of bricks of how wrong I was.

So, if I expressed naive opinion X, he'd start to fume and rage and say "so you think Y is a good idea, then? Well if you think X then you must think Y" and just leave me reeling and frightened to speak.

In public he's so nice and polite.

pluckingupcourage regarding writing a letter that you can feel comfortable with: have you ever had any assertiveness training?

The basic premise is this:

• describe behaviour (in unemotional way: just the facts)
• say how it makes / made you feel, using only "I" statements
• state what behaviour you want from other person instead.

The ideas behind this are that noone can deny how you feel about something (although abusers certainly try...), since only you know your own feelings. And you are always justified in stating how you feel about something.

The error to avoid is labeling the other person: "you are awful; you were abusive" are statements that can be denied (and they also mean you are yourself using one of the tactics of abusers: to label others). "You did x. That makes me angry. Stop it." is not labeling, and it put you in a position that is always defensible: that of deciding for yourself what your boundaries are, and stating them.

Does that help?

Here's the structure I adopted for the NC letter I wrote my parents:

• I am going no contact, because I am angry at you
• I am angry at you because of past behaviour, both towards me and towards each other (examples)

-...and also because of present behaviour, both towards me and towards each other (examples).

• to conclude: I am angry, and I do not want any contact

Their reaction proved to me that my action was justified.
But given the way the letter is presented, they had the choice (and still do) to acknowledge my feelings. They chose not to, but that door is open: I did not say that they are horrible people, but described actions of theirs and how those made me feel.

HTH. Good luck!

He does sound a bully.

Thanks for empathising lesley33