Realised that my happy childhood was just a fantasy in my head

[tulipsaremyfavourite]

I've posted loads about my family/childhood so apologies for repetition and no need to read anyway as I just need to get these thoughts put of my head.

After many years of genuinely believing my dad and I had a good, healthy relationship during my early childhood until age 10, I recently decided to stop ignoring the fact that there was an incident of sexual abuse by my dad when I was about 4/5. I have known for a while this incident did happen ( I only recovererd the memory a few years ago though), but I chose to ignore it for some reason.

Even when I began to admit to myself that the incident took place during the time I thought my dad did care about me, I put it down to a moment madness on the part of my dad. But deep down somewhere I know that's not true. I look at my DH and how he loves our DC's and I know with 100% certainty that he would never exploit either of them to meet his sexual needs no matter what.

So that leads me to the conclusion that all those years when I thought my dad loved me, was not love at all, not in the way I needed to be loved as a child. It appeared to be love but it was something else entirely. Perhaps my dad has NPD and I was his supply. I don't know. But I am gradually realising that if my dad loved me that one incident of sexual abuse would not have happened.

I have also attributed many other incidents of emotional, verbal and psychological incidents of abuse from when I was about 10 to my dad suffering some sort of mental breakdown around that time. But he was abusive for years and years and I can't give him the excuse of mental illness for all that time. He was cruel years after he had recovered enough from the mental illness to go back to work.

I have been very confused about him for years as he wasn't abusive ALL the time. Sometimes he could be very nice, genuinely caring, financially generous. But I think he was the sort of husband that MN would have told my mother to leave straightaway.

It's confusing as in his mind I'm sure my dad thinks our family was normal and that my childhood was great. I don't know a lot about his childhood but I know his dad had a violent temper which tells me a lot I suppose. My dad thinks what he gave me was love. And it was. But it was his particular brand of love and was in no way the type of love that I

..sorry needed.

It's taken me years to come to this realisation, but I think it's far closer to the truth than my previous thoughts.

The weird thing is that I should be devastated to realise that I didn't recieve the unconditional, consistent love I needed as a child from either parent. But so far I don't feel devastated or even upset. Perhaps it will hit me later.

My dad couldn't love me because he doesn't know what love is. And i wonder if i do myself. I say I love DH and the DC,s but i honestly don't know what love really feels like. Either to love or be loved. DH i know truly loves me but i can't seem to feel it in my self. I must have loved my parents like all children do but my love was soon destroyed or unrequited. I can't even remember what it felt like when i did love my parents it was so long ago when i was very very young.

To answer your last point, love feels different for everyone so there is no one definition. The love we feel changes as we get older, understand more, & appreciate more. There is no one type of love. The love we feel for a husband is different to the love we feel for a child. In your case, I would say that even more important than the love you feel is the love you express through your actions. If your template for the feelings is uncertain, the way you behave is something you have 100% influence over.

My grandmother and her sister were placed in an orphanage as toddlers by their mother, who they never saw again. They both received zero affection from the nuns who ran the place and they both suffered ill-treament in the institution and when they were put into service age 14. When they went on to have families of their own, one sister was determined that her children should have all the love and care she'd never experienced. The other sister became a horrendous mother, replicating the ill-treatment she'd experienced towards her own children. Same childhood experience, entirely different outcomes.

That's why I say that, regardless of what happened or didn't happen in the past, and regardless of whether you know what love is or not, how you take things from here is entirely what you make of it. I think that's an amazing opportunity.

The variability and inconsistency of your dad's and my mum's conditions was part of the abuse, I believe. It undermines our security, trust and ability to make judgements
You won't pass it on to your dc because you recognise what happened.

Thankyou both for reading....am amazed you got through my ramble.

Cogito you make a very good point. Whatever i feel/don't feel inside i know that i show my DC's every single day that i love them. I know they know i love them. They are both such happy little things, thriving at school, lots of friends. I feel better knowing that. And DH too. But it's easier with him as he knows my history and issues. His love for me is as close to unconditional love that I've ever had. The feeling of safety and security he gives me is amazing. I can only try and imagine how it would have felt like to have that as a child. Like having a safe warm fluffy soft blanket wrapped around you at all times...

Julia yes i see that now. Taken as a whole, it was all abuse, the 'good' and the bad. Consistent bad would almost have been better/healthier, the alternating good and bad is what does the most damage.

I must have rebuilt my trust and love time and time again during the good moments only to have it destroyed again and again by the bad times until I switched off, learnt not to love to avoid the pain of it being destroyed over again.

My dad gave me some money recently. His way of being nice. At last i didn't fall for it. I took the money but i know it doesn't mean he cares about me. It's his tool of manipulation and it worked on me for years. He would be abusive then take me shopping and buy lots of things so I would love him again which I did. And then he would be abusive again and then buy me stuff again....

www.travelin-tigers.com/zlyn/bktoxic.htm

Have you ever seen this? It might help
Best wishes

" I can only try and imagine how it would have felt like to have that as a child. "

That's the thing about childhood, though. It's wasted on children. :) I don't think any child appreciates it at the time. Like everything else in those early years security is just something that, if you've got it, you take it for granted. For everyone that, like you, had a crappy experience there are a dozen that grew up in lovely, stable, affectionate, wealthy homes and still complain that they were let down or are total bastards with their own families. So much is a choice.

^"It's not where you start, it's where you finish,
It's not how you go, it's how you land.
A hundred to one shot, they call him a klutz,
Can outrun the fav'rite, all he needs is the guts.
Your final return will not diminish,
And you can be cream of the crop.
It's not where you start, it's where you finish,
And you're going to finish on top."^

Julia thanks for that link. I have read toxic parents plus many many other brilliant books and they have helped me enormously. Have also seen numerous counsellors most of whom if not all were pretty useless. Didn't understand me or my family at all and some just lacked knowledge and experience, I felt I was teaching them stuff from all the books I have read. And worst of all some seem to subscribe to the taboo of saying your mother was not good enough and did not love you and made me feel bad for criticising my mother who was emotionally absent but physically present. But funnily enough they were happy enough to listen to me talk about my abusive dad because it's totally accepted that men are usually/ always the abusers.

I am not wasting time or money on a counsellor ever again.

Cogito unfortunately I disagree. If an adult child has an issue with a parent I think there must always be a valid reason for this. They might appear from the outside to have had loving parents as I did, but only that person knew how it really felt for them growing up, even if as an adult they have no concrete memeries of abuse/neglect as i didn't. There is wide spectrum of abuse/neglect, much of it hidden and covert like mine was. I had no bruises no broken bones plenty of material possessions yet i was so unhappy felt unloved unwanted rejected an outsider alone with my family all my life.

I also disagree that where you start out doesn't matter. It does. The very way a child's brain develops, the pathways,synapses are affected by the love and affection she recieves or does not recieve. Damage is done to the child'sdeveloping brain by experiencing trauma beyond it's processing capabilities. And all this carries on into adult life. A child that was abused is far more prone to depression and physical ill health as an adult. To re programme your damaged childhood brain is a mammoth painful task and not always possible.

So I totally disagree with your views but of course you have every right to your beliefs.

I had the same realisation a few years ago. I was severely depressed and I was looking for comfort from my mother. She gave it to me for a short while (under duress) and then one day she just started acting like I wasn't ill at all. She just completely ignored the fact that I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. At the same time I had to hear from my cunt of an older sister about how "worried and upset" she was. So it was all about her. I had been descending into depression for a long time and this was rock bottom for me. All along I thought the main cause of my depression was the abuse I suffered as a child, at the hands of a family friend. That was awful, of course, but a psychiatric nurse helped me to see that the childhood that I thought was pretty normal was majorly majorly fucked up, and that, more so than the abuse, was what was dragging me down.

Like you I had a physically present but emotionally absent mother. My father was just away with the fairies and while he would ferry us around in the car, or give us money etc he just wasn't engaged with us at all. My mother very much gave the impression that looking after me was a tiresome chore. She told me I was a "mistake" and her actions made it obvious that she really felt that way. I was afraid to say I was ill because it really pissed her off. I don't remember ever being told I was loved, ever being cuddled or ever really being cared for at all. The crunch point came when as a teenager I told her about the abuse. Firstly, it was clear she knew about it already, which now I find so shocking I can't think about it too much or it makes me feel ill. Secondly she made it clear that she didn't want to know about it. When I pushed the issue she claimed I was trying to make her feel guilty. All in all that incident encapsulates the kind of mother she is - happy to feed and clothe her children, but totally unwilling to help them beyond that.

Like you, realising all this wasn't devastating for me, it was a release. I had wasted so much time and energy trying to get my parents to actually be parents that realising once and for all that it was never going to happen was like someone taking a huge weight from my shoulders. I moved away from my family and now I have very limited contact with everyone but my younger sister. The reason I'm in contact with my sister is because she is much younger than I and I was basically a mother to her when she was growing up, I sort of filled in the emotional gaps. It was only when I was having my own son that I realised that I consider her to be my daughter.

I agree with you though, even though I am now a much happier and healthier person, the damage done by my childhood is still there and I have no idea how to repair it. I suppose I'll have to live with it as best I can.

Hi Cailin thanks for posting. I know you from your other thread. So sorry that you had shit parents. But you're lucky you have one close sibling. I have 2 sisters who i was never truly close to. Again any ideas that we were close was just a fantasy in my mind. I have no contact with them at all. So I have no family of my own. Makes me feel very lonely and all alone in this world when DH goes off to visit his family.

Like you i thought other things were causing my bouts of depression over the years. I thought i was depressed because of my awful eczema which made me feel so ugly and unlovable. But my depression was caused by my love deprived abusive childhood. And also by the overtly differential way my mother treated me in comparison to my younger sisters.

And yes my mother too feels as if she is the victim in all of this because she was abused by my dad too. But she cannot see that I was abused just as much as her but at the time i was a young child she was an adult. I've given up on her ever understanding her responsibility in it all. She is a child in a womsn's body.

I am also happier than i've ever been. And mentally stronger and healthier and living in my real as opposed to fantasy world. But my physical health has suffered greatly as a result of the years and years of stress strain and trauma i suffered with no help or support at all. It's only since last year that DH has been supportive and understanding and so have some friends. Before that I was struggling on overburdened alone for years. To the point that I was suicidal. I now have heart problems due to the years of living under stress and with undiagnosed depression. My immune system is shot to pieces and my eczema is constantly flaring up. The legacy of abuse will be with me forever. And meanwhile my parents are living in blissful ignorance of the damage they did to a the sensetive young girl that was me, who only wanted their love. That's all. So simple. And yet so hard impossible for my parents to give. They'll give me money but not love.

I hear ya tulips. It's shit. My parents gave me an incredibly large amount of money for my wedding (really massive, I actually spit my tea out when my mother said the figure) and yet neither of them said "You look lovely" or even "Congratulations" on the day. My mother fussed over her own hair and nearly made me late, my dad was pissed by the time the speeches came round (very unusual for him to be fair) and his speech made very little sense. I would have traded those thousands of euros for a single nice word. Thankfully my MIL is a normal, loving person and she said some lovely things to me, so I have that at least.

I'm also at the stage of accepting the wodges of cash they throw at me without remorse. I might as well get something out of being their child.

Tulips --- unmumsnetty hug.

What you are describing is the loss of self. In order to survive the little person that was you had to go numb and put the needs of her crazy parents above her own.

Finding the self is very important work and takes a lot of energy. I tried to explain it in a thread of mine but got totally flamed.
But it does involve staying in the moment and working to recognise a situation for what it is and then being still and feeling what you feel. For people who have not been allowed to be seen this is very difficult.

Cailin omg my dad picked a huge row with me the night before my wedding. I went to bed crying and had 30 mins sleep. Nobody said i looked nice. My sisters when they got married got each other expensive presents. When i got married neither bothered to get me anything. This is after years of accepting lovely birthday gifts, meals out and holidays all paid for by me because I'm a generous person at heart. They are horrible, definately the ugly sisters, ugly on the inside if not on the outside to my 'cinderalla' always left out and excluded whilst my sisters and mother went out and enjoyed time spent together.

Re the money i feel guilty sometimes and know my accepting it and giving nothing back in return will confirm my family's view of me as the selfish ungrateful daughter compared to the other 2 loving daughters. But i see the money as compensation for the damage and suffering caused so i don't need to give anything in return. They don't see it like that though.

Abitwobbly thanks for the hug, much needed and appreciated.

I understand what you mean about finding the lost self. It does take energy and processing previous unfelt feelings which can be very painful. How crazy that you got flamed for saying this.

I feel better now for finally seeing the truth. My 'version' of the truth alwsys sat a bit uneasily. I can see now that I twisted the facts to fit my preferred theory that my dad did love me. The abuse I put down to mental illness and moments of madness.

But if my dad did really love me in the way that eg DH loves our DD there is no way that even during a moment of madness he would have sexually abused me even if it was only once. And if he did love me and had bonded with me during the first 10 years of my life even if he had a serious mental breakdown he wouldn't have been verbally agressive and cruel to me for years on end without ever once feeling remorse.

The confusing thing was that in his mind he thought he did love me. I don't think he consciously thought he hated me apart perhaps during his agressive rages when he was shouting and screaming and hurling sbuse at me whilst I cowered petrified in the corner where he had me trapped.

After seeing how DH behaves with our DC's I am beginning to learn what real healthy unconditional parental love looks like. I can see just how safe and secure the DC's feel with DH. He is totally consistent in his behaviour with them. They always know where they stand with him. He never suddenly flies into a rage with them or is unapproachable grumpy moody some days and nice on other days.

My dad never learnt what unconditional consistent parental love was. He acted out with me the thing he thought was love, the way he had received parental love as a child. Which was not love at all but was simply given the name love.

And that's what my parents have always done. Told me the way they treated me was love. But it never felt like live to me. But I believed them when they said it was love because I didn't know any better.

So the truth is my parents did love me in the way they had been shown 'love' by their parents. But of course it wasn't actually love not even during the years when I did think my dad truly cared about me. He was unable to love me from day 1 even though the actual overt abuse did not begin until I was 5 and then 10.

My mother was the same. Neglected by her own mother. Brought up by older siblings who fed and clothed her but did not give the emotional nurturing only a parent can give. She treated me in exactly the same way. She looked as if she was a proper mother to my sisters. Perhaps she was better with them than she was with me, as the first child is the one on whom most of your mistakes are made and she was also 5 years older when she had middle sister and 8 years older with third sister. She is emotionally still a child. A child in a woman's body. She would try and share her parenting concerns about my sisters with me showing that despite being an adult she could not cope with the normal everyday issues children have at school with friends etc. She didn't know how to deal with my dad who was agressive and bullying towards her. She was scared of him like I was in a childlike way. She was never going to stand up for me when he abused me because she is still a child. She needed an adult to step in and look after her and in fact when I got older I would stand up for her. She could never see past herself and her own needs.

I was always too demanding of her. She wanted a child to fill her needs not vice versa. I didn't do that but my middle sister did and that's why they were very close. They were codependent and still are.

You could be describing my mother tulips, except that she was the one who raised her (many) younger siblings as she was one of the eldest. She is very bitter about her childhood because they were poor, there was a ridiculous amount of children in the family and her father was an alcoholic. She is emotionally childish, just like your mother. She can't deal with any negative emotion, she used to just look perplexed if I cried or needed any emotional support - she just didn't know how to do it. My older sister is the co-dependent one in our family. They have a very unhealthy relationship.

Seeing the truth is a big relief. It's also very hard though. I still flip flop back to my old version of reality sometimes and it can be hard to remind myself that it doesn't really exist. I think coming to terms with something like this is a long process.

How are you feeling?

Cailin my mum would either just give me blank stare if i told her anything i was worried about or get cross with me if i was crying and needed comforting. Once she did try to comfort me ehrn i was crying. But when i told her what i was upset about she told me i was wrong and that i was upset about something else. I had been upset about feeling so lonely and excluded and like i didn't belong anywhere in family. She dismissed my feelings completely but i got the feeling that she knew exactly what i meant that she knew already that i was being excuded but it suited her so she didn't want to address the issue. I couldn't talk to my dad as I barely spoke to him after all the years of emotional abuse.

How am I feeling? I can literally feel a big hole inside me. Where the presence of my mother should be. For many years without realising I msnaged to fill the hole with good friends. But recently my close friendships have dwindled. I decided to not try and fill the hole by making new friends to just see how it felt. But now i realise that i have instead been filling the whole with food. But no matter how much i eat i never feel full. It's not the same as always feeling hungry but more feeling empty inside. Literally like there is a hole inside me.

How are you feeling?

Not too bad really. It's funny what you say about food. I used to be ok with food - always ate a healthy amount, never overweight, but since I've started dealing with this a few years ago my eating has been all over the place - first I was very thin and lately I've been getting fat. It's like I no longer know how to deal with eating. Weird.

I talked to a good friend about all this today. He knows a lot about me but I've never talked about my parents much with him before. It was strange to talk out loud about it, a lot of vitriol that I didn't realise was there came out. I am still angry, much as I would like not to be. Day to day I'm fine, then every so often it hits me.

I am still in denial about my father to a certain extent. He was always my favourite. But at Easter my mother visited from Ireland and my dad, despite having nothing else to do, didn't bother to come. That about sums him up. Detached and uninterested. I forgive him a lot more though than I forgive my mother and I suppose that's because he did actually show me love a few times in my childhood. Pathetic really.

Yes I know what you mean. I never used to over or under eat. But like you since dealing with all this stuff i have got very thin at times or fat, fatter than I've ever been. I also seem to develop cravings or addictions to a particular food for a while and I'll eat it everyday for weeks until I'm totally sick of it and don't want to touch it again.

I think i fill up with anger too at times. The last few days I've felt nothing, numb then today I suddenly felt soooo angry. I took it out on DS a bit I'm ashsmed to say. He was being quite naughty but did not deserve to be shouted at.

I seem to swing between each parent as to who I hate the most who I can forgive a bit. At the very beginning I HATED my dad. I processed so much anger. Eventually I reached a calmer more forgiving place. Same pattern with my mother. I haven't been angry like I was today for a long time. Years. It could just be PMT but I think it's emotions stirred by my recent realisation about my dad never having loved me even during the times I thought he genuinely cared.

I'm finding it diff now dd is the age I was when it all went horribly wrong. You?

Julia yes me too. Although I found it difficult even when DD was much younger. I used to try and imagine her in some of the situations I experienced with my dad but literally couldn't think about it for longer than a split second. It was just too upsetting to imagine the sheer terror on her face. And yet for me it wasn't imaginary, I actually went through these experiences for real. It seems unbelievable that I survived as relatively mentally intact as I have (well, apart from my suicidal breakdown in late 2010.)

What I am now incredulous about is how I believed my dad did love me until I was 10. And I blamed his subsequent abuse on his mental illness and a moment of madness and I even managed to completely ignore the sexual abuse when I was 5. It must have been a defence mechanism created by my mind to protect me from the truth, that he never loved me, until I was ready to cope with it.

I'm glad I felt angry yesterday. But not that I shouted at poor DS for which I did apologise. I had felt numb before that which was wierd considering I had just realised some enormous truths. I still feel a bit angry today. I hate my dad. I can't believe I was feeling quite forgiving towards him (perhaps his manipulation with giving me money was working after all). I was even feeling sorry for him. But he never did love me. He probably liked the fact that i was a bright child because it reflected well on him. Whereas my mother felt threatened and out of her depth with a demanding bright child who would be content with just sitting and playing with a piece of string for ours on end like my cousin apparently used to do. I think mother hated my inquistive nature and my demands to learn, whereas my dad liked that. He definately liked having an intelligent child he could show off about and he liked teaching me things because I was eager to learn and quick to pick things up. But that's not unconditional love. And that's why his so called love so easily turned to hate because it was never love in the first place. I never did anything that deserved his hatred and rage. He could treat me that way because on his part the feelings that I mistook for love were never love at all. I believe that if he had truly loved me he would not have been able to abuse me in the cruel way he did regardless of any mental health issues he had. In fact it was my mother who put that idea into my head, that my dad was abusive because of issues in his life. But I know that my DH would NEVER abuse our DC's no matter what was going on in his life.

I know it's shit realising all this stuff, but it's a good thing too. Trying to reconcile being abused with being loved is impossible and slowly drives you mad. Realising that actually, no, that wasn't love, is a relief because you can then start to see things how they really are, and enjoy genuine love.

I still get moments of despair when I really wish I had proper parents. I can't help but wonder what I would have been like if I had grown up in a truly loving home.

Cailin yes trying to reconcile my dad's abuse with love was driving me mad. And what sort of moment of madness makes a truly loving dad sexually abuse and exploit his 100% trusting 5 year old child. I even told myself the sexual abuse was a relatively minor incident and so didn't really matter. I'm sure it mattered very much to the 5 year old me and made my previously safe world seem very scary. Although even that's not true as my world was already very scary because I had heard and witnessed many arguments including violent ones between my parents even before my dad abused me.

It is good to realise all this and see the truth as you say. I even in a wierd way like feeling all the emotions that come up including anger and pain because at least I then feel like a real person. I was going through life as if I had been anaesthetised before, awake but unable to feel anything.

I also used to wonder a lot what I would have been like had I had proper parents. I would get very angry and feel bitter over my lost potential. I don't feel bitter or sad about it these days, I seem to have accepted it. I feel I have achieved a lot to be proud of though just not in obvious ways like great academic qualifications or career success. I'm sure you have too if you think about what you survived through and how you have used your experience to grow and evolve as a better person than your parents and break the abuse cycle and leave a positive footprint behind you instead of damage and destruction.

Tulips, I had to write to let you know you have helped me immensely in wirting your post - my situation was a little different, that although I personally was usually never ( I have no memory of anyhow) being the target of both parents' rages and moodswings, my dear elder sister was...

So, I am beginning therapy next week and am on a mild antiD

Since having my 2 DC's, I couldnt work out how before toddler tantrums and screaming noisy babies doing the natural thing they do, was swinging me off course and giving me immense sadness. I have nurtured my kids since birth and put my career and ambitions on hold while my wonderful DH provides for us all. Part of this is that I can't bear to think of abandoning my DC's in the way that I felt virtually ignored and excluded when I could see my sister getting hit and shouted at at home by either parent for 'being cheeky' or some other ridiculous reason...my mother chose to keep a long bamboo stick behind the sofa in our tv snug room - supposedly a place of safety and chillout

my sister has since done exceptionally well in her life, is at the very top of her career, single and the most glamourous and beautiful independent person I could have imy life. She is helping me terribly with the flood of memories which have suddenly come back to me since the birth of my own daughter 3 yrs ago

Basically the issue for me is that I couldnt even protect my sister, even the fact that I was in the room, seeing it all happen, was never enough to stop them

it happened once my mothers daughters hit puberty - so once we were both at grammar school...so I can hugely identify with your confusion, that up until a certain point, there are golden memories, then suddenly, there is a huge chapter of arguments, screaming and basically violence against my sister until she went to university

i feel sick, numb and so angry

hoping therapy helps. prayer is helping lots too for me. giving me healing etc

(it was also a religious parenting style, adding further to our confusion about their behaviour...they told my sister often she had the 'devil in her tongue'

so sad

sorry to waffle on, but just wanted to thank you for sharing this, as it has really helped me to see my own situation more clearly that yes my parents WERE WRONG

and yes, now - the money thing - they have given my sister and i huge sums of money in the past and recently to help us out...I have guilts about taking it, but i needed it to clear a debt which has helped, but We are paying my mother back

but yes, it is bizarre and very hard work to have this whole memory chapter in our heads as mothers right now ourselves

Belle sorry to take so long to respond. I felt very overwhelmed suddenly and feel i have had a mini breakdown the last few days. Not as bad as in 2010 but not very nice. Couldn't stop crying at one point.

But feel much better now. I think it was the previously ignored past emotions hitting me.

I'm very happy to have helped you with my rambling on this thread. I hope your counselling goes well. Well done for having the courage to tackle your issuea, it's a scary and painful thing to do, but very necessary.

Feeling down again. Was listening to radio discussion where someone said they had been told they were ugly by their mum from a young age and so understandably now had self esteem issues as an adult.

I was shocked that a parent could be so cruel. And then remembered that my own parents had said the same thing to me many times but not in a blatant way.

I clearly got the message from them that I was ugly and unlovable. I actually think that the main reason i got married was to prove them wrong, that somebody was willing to marry me. I luckily married a gorgeous intelligent decent man but my dad didn't think much of him. But he didn't say anything eg like DH wasn't good enough for me. Instead despite thinking DH was not a decent man, my dad was fine about me marrying him because he thought that because i was so ugly because of my eczema and because of my nasty horrible personality I would have to marry anyone who would have me and couldn't be choosy. Whereas because my sisters were so much nicer and prettier and eczema free they could be a lot more choosier over who they chose to marry and should not settle for just anyone like he my middle sister was apparently doing in his eyes.

Things were very bad between DH and I a while ago and I was seriously thinking about divorce. But I didn't want to get divorced because i felt it would prove that my parents were right. That i was nasty and ugly and unlovable and even though i had managed to find a man who was willing to marry me, he would soon realise how horrible i was and would leave me. This would be even if i initiated the divorce because DH was being abusive. My parents would blame me for the abuse saying i must have provoked him.

I'm horrified now that i made such an important decision in my life in order to prove something to my parents and not because it was what i actually wanted. Luckily it has turned out ok and DH and I have got through our problems and have strong happy and stable marriage. But i bloody hate my parents. What kind of sick parent thinks their own daughter is ugly nasty and unlovable. I was nasty to my parents because they abused me. But they thought i was just a nasty angry argumentative belligerent rude snappy hostile person because that's just who i was. And i did continue to be that sort of person even with DH who did not deserve it because without realising it i was being triggered by every day interactions that brought back past emotions. And i was so used to being attacked that i was alwsys on the defensive or in attack mode even when i didn't need to be because i was no longer in the hostile environment created by my parents and siblings.

It was scary for a while. It seemed my parents were right. I was the nasty person they said i was. It was not just with them i was nasty. I was nasty to DH too no matter how much i tried not to be. It was only after i worked on my issues for years that i was able to be me. The real me, a kind funny generous intelligent empathrtic person. My parents never saw the real me the whole time i was with them. Even before the real me became hidden by the angry false me that emerged as a result of the abuse and neglect i suffered. They were never interested in the real me, in the individual person that i was. I was just there to meet their needs not vice versa.