To those who were abused by father/member of family in childhood...

[Allboxedin]

How do you feel about your mum if she is still around and how do you deal with the fact that she never protected you from it if you think she knew?
Do you have any meaningful relationship with her?
I am findingthis really hard. Never really got on with my mum, she is quite annoying at the best of times and generally only talk about herself. If we ever end up having a conversation about the past it is always tunred into how she is suffering rather than listening even when she has asked us to talk about it.
Ok I know it must be hard for her (she is still with my dad) and it must have been but she just doesnt seem to honestly care about anyone else.

I know she wants me and my sisters help and to have a relationship with us but how can we when she is like this? Even when someone else is ill or has a problem somehow iot affects her more than the actual person.
I feel I am talking to a wall when she asks us about things or our opinions.
I just find it so irritating and annoying.
My sister who was abused by my father for many years feels exactly the same.
When she told my mum about it later in her teens she stayed with dad in the hope he would change but he continued. She is still with him but having problems now and seems to think she can rely on us to help her.
I am fine supporting her if she needs it but I don't want to be her crutch. I dont feel she was ever there when we needed her so why should we be?

I am completely rethinking my own situation due to discussing this so thank you all whom are being brave and open, I forgot how familiar the patterns of abuse are.

hi op
ive had numerous threads now so ill not waffle, but for me, i cannot have any relationship with my mother and havent had for about 12 years now. She tried to contact me via facebook fairly recently which sent me on a bit of a downer, but im addressing this through counselling. I have a half sibling, who is a screw up, and again, i tried recently to establish some kind of relationship, which turned sour fairly quickly, but he stays in touch with her, and was pressuring me to forgive and forget.

i feel that i hold her more responsible than my stepfather tbh. she knew, yet did nothing, except make me feel terrible and blame me for letting the cat out of the bag, when at age 11, he landed me in hospital.

she told me then that she didnt love me. that if i made her choose she would choose him. She made her choice then, she can live with it now.

Yes it is, I had that big pretending game because you always know what lurks beneath. You do become very good at it though!
antsy, for my parents it was their reputation they were worried about. For my mum who herself can be a snobby, shallow butt when she feels like it. She is split in two now......does she tell people so people can feel sorry for HER, or does she still keep it all quiet so she can keep her name and reputation?!
She is the kind of person who would cross the street if she saw someone in crisis. She has all her church praying for HER yet hasnt told them why but she is having a terrible time!!!
....and yes both of them went to church and pretended to be christians all their lives.......!! That is how good they were at hiding it all.

antsy I am too. This thread is so therapeutic!! :)
Thankyou Vicar. Baffles me how a mature adult can say such horrible things to an innocent child and a child that she has betrayed her trust in.
I am so adament that I will try my very hardest with my own children to build up bridges of trust and love which will bring the security they need.
I simply do not understand even my own parents - I don't feel a part of them at all and share nothing in common. In fact I would hate to be like either of them :(

With me it was my Mothers bf at my Fathers funeral. I was 3 years old and she watched and when i told my DGM later on she denied it and said he wasn't like that. Luckily for her she had left before I told ayone or the rest of my family would probably have killed her. She later admitted it. :-( i honestly wish it was her funeral and not my Father.

What a bitch. but sorry, evil woman.

Schrodinger. Jesus. That's just breathtaking.

Cailin Dana 'to save her the hassle, that's all I ever was to her, hassle' - makes your choice of username very poignant.

I'm coming at this froma slightly different perspective.

My mum was emotionally abusive and my dad never stepped up an intervened. Whilst I was a child I looked up to his as my savior as he provided temporary respite from all the shouting and nastiness but now as an adult and a mother myself it saddens me enormously that he hast back and watched it happen.

I also struggle dealing with seeing the man who I once thought was wonderful as flawed and a bit pathetic for never standing up to, or actually seeing what the woman was like.

I cut my mum off for a number of years during which she made zero effort to reconcile but it hurt my dad and my sisters and I tried again. I now keep my distance and am comforted by the fact that at least in adulthood my sisters recognised the difficult childhood I had.

Wow, this thread has certainly made me realise I'm not alone.

I grew up with a physically/emotionally violent, alcoholic father who abused my mum, me and my 2 sisters.

My childhood was a living hell and I prayed everyday that my mum would leave.....but she never did.

My mum is a weak, timid person who seemed to think it was ok to let her 3 children live in such misery.

My childhood has had a huge impact on my adult life, I have lots of mental health problems because of this and I'm currently having counselling and CBT.

I am in my 30's and have stopped contact with my dad and recently started to ask my mother what she was thinking staying with my dad and putting us all through hell but she (as another poster mentioned earlier) just turns into a 'child' and becomes a 'helpless victim' and it's then all about her. She never really takes responsibility for what went on and I feel she was just as bad as my dad (but in a different way).

It's recently come to light that my mum has been secretly manipulating my relationships between me and my sisters and some really disturbing things about her have now been realised.

I need to break contact with her really, but part of me feels sorry for her and what she's been through.

It's ok to feel sorry for her, Daisy, as long as you feel sorry for yourself first, and do whatever it is you need to do to honour your feelings, ahead of anyone else's.

And that can mean cutting contact, if it is too difficult or unpleasant for you.

sara, thats just as sad being the other way around :(
Daisy, I also have a long history of depression and was really mucked up until a few years ago. In fact all us kids have been. This is the problem. It is not only those childhood years that it effects - it is a whole lifetime, relationships, addictions, depression and mental health problems.
I am doing fairly well now but I know deep inside I am still very very angry and that comes out sometimes when I suddenly explode every now and again.
The worst thing is I think is not telling people for fear they will think you are not normal or strange ect and yur family is. What I have found on this thread is that we are all coming out with really similar experiences which makes it a little easier to speak out about it.

Just wanted to update quickly. Mum says she will find it very difficult to levae my dad now because his condition has apparently worsened and she can't find it in her heart to do that to a poor sick old man!!
Dad had been trying to call my sister and me but we have said he hould just write to us if he wants contact.

Hi my adoptive father abused me and I have flashbacks about it which I can't tell are memories or not. Sometimes I think I am the crazy one

My adoptive mother believes it is in my head and chooses to support him. He has cut contact with me after I wrote a letter confronting him about the abuse and dysfunction.

Sometimes the pain is like a ball in my chest and I feel so alone. I have a wonderful family of my own but I still lack self esteem and seek external validation all the time

I've read this whole thread and I recognise a lot of other peoples' experiences in my own.

My mother was emotionally abuse, my stepfather was an alcoholic - with all that involves, aggression, unpredictability, and being sexually innapropriate with me from about the age of 10 or 11. I spent until the age of 16 when I moved out, terrified he was going to rape me when pissed, so from 14 onwards I lived with my boyfriends family, who thankfully were aware of the dangers at home from what my boyfriend told then, and let me live with them pretty much until I was 18 and moved out
I am so grateful to them, I would have a lot worse to tell a psychiatrist if it wasn't for them taking pity on me.

I told my mother when my stepdad began making 'dodgy' comments to me (about my body, things about sex, telling me how my mum liked it in bed, porn etc) and she told me to stop being so sensitive and prudish and so on. I'll never, ever forget the way she pushed it all under the carpet. I was sexually abused by an older child when I was little and she wasn't interested in that either - to her it's just silly old ManicPanic making a fuss and wanting attention (I am actually very shy and hate attention being drawn to me - it only leads to trouble). I'll never forgive her. She is / was a very very cold woman who genuinely doesn't 'get' compassion or that other people's feelings matter. I have found out she has lied to me all these years about who my bio dad is - I contacted the guy who she said was my dad, he was very sweet and understanding but still afraid of her, he was scared that she would send him hate mail (he was dying of cancer at the time) and he asked me not to tell her so she didn't make us stop writing to each other! He told me she was a complete fantasist who would twist her version of reality to be what she wanted - I had been thinking the same thing so that made me feel better!

Cut them off when I got pregnant with dd and understand maternal love - I genuinely thought everyone hated their kids like my mother hated me...

My life is infinitely better without their shit in it. And I know my daughter is safe from them. I am ostracised from the whole family but I couldn't care less (hurts sometimes though).

I too am of the mental health ishoos. Huge anxiety, years of addictions, currently having a second bout of depression, on medication but determined to feel better about myself and live the life I want to lead, finally.

Boglach, I find myself wondering the same but it is all part of the plan for them to make you feel crazy. I feel that if you really feel this in your heart and have like a burden then your memories are most likely right and true. If he has cut contact - why could he not face up to it if he was innocent? I would have thought he would want to confront the issue.
Manicpanic I am the same, pretty introvert and hate attention which is why it helps to write stuff down here. Sounds good of your bf's parents to have helped you there - Good for them.
It does hurt losing your 'family' but quite frankly I don't have any feelings towards them, I think maybe it's more out of habit or changing from the norm you have known which is upsetting.
Am sure all of us are going to try our hardest in not letting our kids come anywhere near this rubbish that some 'parents' seem to think is normal and acceptable behaviour.
I think staying in contact will just be let down and let down, you will never really trust them and of course you are still under their manipulation.

Yes definitely, so often you hear recounts of horrific childhoods on here and then at the end the OP mentions that they have regular contact with their parents and take their children along!

We are made to feel guilty for cutting parents off though. It was easier for me because after the age of 12 or so my mother lost interest in me anyway, and I moved out at 16. There was a slight sexual element to the behaviour of my stepdad, so that gave me extra encouragement in feeling it was really not safe for him to have contact with any of my children. My mother I knew I couldn't trust, she despises children and gets very angry (used to slap me around the face) and would say awful things to me (you're ruining my life, I should have aborted you etc etc) so that was not ever going to be allowed near my dc.

Funnily enough though, they were both invited to my wedding and there are pictures of us all together, me with a horrible strained fake nervous smile! But when I got pregnant with dd, that protective instinct kicked in - no way, ever, where they going to get near my child and have a chance to do to her what they did to me. I wasn't going to let them turn her life into a misery like they did me.

Lots of people don't understand, though. Some people see it as you've only got one family (actually no I've just got me, dh and dd and that's a family) and only one muvver (you can have the hateful old bitch then) and blood is ficker than water (whatever!)

I have only found myself able to admit everything that happened after I cut them off.

Sorry you went through this but your mother couldnt protect you.There's no way she wouldn't have known for all those years. I am trying to protect my kids from their evil dad,I knew something was wrong,I could feel it and all the signs were there.I couldn't just ignored it,at first I just couldn't get my head around the situation,I was in shock but I needed to protect them.He still denies it but deep down I know he feels guilty.Am glad to hear other pp stories, uve given me even more confidence to protect them.(angry)

manic family is so often more trouble than its worth. Lets concentrate on our proper families who mean evrything to us :)
Am, I know in my heart she must have. I imagine any mother should have some kind of instinct, she saw the signs too and says my dad persauded her that they were normal. Do people suddenly lose their concept of what is normal or acceotable or not? I have been controlled and manipulated many times but I never lost my sound judgement. I may have gone down roads which I prefered not have to gone down but I am glad I still have my self respect.

am, I think it takes a strong woman too to actually do something about it. I sometimes see my mum as a coward. If you are really feeling that something is going on and you take a stand against it your children will be so much safer and stable in the end. It must be hard because they all seem to deny it or trivialise it. I hope the truth comes out properly for you and your kids so you get some kind of closure from it.

All strong and lovely ladies

I had reached a sense of peace but a family party later in the year stirred a lot of stuff up for me again. I am not going but it is being used to goad me I feel

Yes it is the sense that others don't understand and the feeling of lonliness that brings. Sometimes I hate them so much

Does anyone else suffer flashbacks? I am not sleeping very well and having mild panic attacks. Sometimes I feel like I am tainted by my abusive and dysfunctional background

I have never talked about this but maybe someone can tell me if this is abuse[sorry darent start my own thread].From when I was about 13/14 till I was 15/16 [long time ago now] my dad who had multiple sclerosis used to call me downstairs when everyone was in bed[he slept downstairs] and ask to see my body[open my dressing gown with nothing underneath].He never attempted to touch me but told me I was helping him cope with his illness and not to tell mum.I stopped responding when I was about 16 and after a couple of times he stopped asking.I didnt tell my mother until after he died in 1990.She was totally devastated to the point where I made it sound less than it was.I dont think she ever got over it.
I was a much loved only child and had a good relationship with my dad until his death.However I never allowed dd to stay at their house without me.
Was I abused?

thegreylady, yes. yes you were.

Boglash the results of any kind of abuse can last years and years. I have only ever had one proper panic attack. I used to have flashbacks when I was blinded by the sun if that makes any sense on sunny days or when the sun reflected on glass ect....I know it all sounds a bit strange. Depression, anxiety ect have all played a major part in my life. I also have periods where I walk around in my own bubble as if I am all alone, I think its a bit like derealisation ect. There is also something called disassociation which I have been reading up on. I am doing much better now I am married and have my own family but the years preceeding this I was a huge mess. I havent had councelling yet, I would like to but it is expensive as mentioned up thread, But anti depressants have really helped me deal with my depression.
The greylady, yes, he was doing it for his own pleasure and using your body for sexual gratification - that is abuse of your body and innocence as a child. Even if he didn't touch you, you were emotionally scarred and I would imagine had some effect on your self confidence?

One of the greatest motivations was trying to think in terms of me living and getting on with my own life, of being convinced to make something of myself because if I didn't they had won again. They took enough miserable years of my life, they don't need to take any more of it and in the end it will be them old frail and guilty who can look on us and say - you win.