I'm still so very angry, but I'm supposed to be grateful. Should I be?

[NeedToMovePassedThis]

The background is that I fell in stupid-teen love at the age of 17 with a 21 year old. He proposed, I said yes, then (very accidentally) got pregnant. I had never wanted dcs. Not ever. And had always thought I would have an abortion in these circumstances. But I found I couldn't. That I loved my dc. My fiancé encouraged me to keep the baby. I still lived at home (halfway through my straight-A-Student A levels).

I told my dm and ddad and they were shocked, upset and encouraged me to have an abortion. I stuck by my decision. A week after finding out my fiancé dumped me (charmer that he was, that's a whole other thread), told me he doubted the baby was his, and that was the last I ever saw of him.

My parents let me stay at home. Which I am grateful for. I paid them rent. They said very firmly that they would look after me, but not the baby. Which is fair enough.

I left my A levels, dm and ddad said I couldn't live there if I wasn't studying or had a job. I applied for work. Went through a few humiliating interviews as the visibly pregnant teen (unsurprisingly didn't get the jobs), and then found a free secretarial course to do, so did that until the week before ds was born.

Dm and ddad made it clear they were ashamed of me. They made lots of snide comments, told me how many of their friends had told them to kick me out, would say things like, "so and so looked at me funny today, that was because of you".

I knew they found it hard so didn't say anything.

I couldn't cope with the smell of smoke, but ddad insisted that if I opened the chimney up all the heat went out, so he'd close it down to have smoke billowing into the room. So I couldn't sit with them. My room had no heating, so I'd try to stay warm in bed.

When I was 8 and a half months pregnant we went to a party as a family. Me and my younger brother wanted to leave early (about 1am) as we were exhausted. It was only a 20 minute walk home, but it was too far for me with SPD. Ddad said he'd drive us back. He was hammered. I couldn't argue, but said I would drive us there and he could drive back. He wouldn't give me the keys.

He then drive me and dbro home. He sped, he turned corners sharply whilst laughing, he kept slamming on the brakes because I was screaming for him to stop. I was terrified. I got out of the car and he sped off. I just burst into to tears and said to dbro that he would never drive another heavily pregnant woman like that :(

Then ds was born and he was my whole world. I'd never had someone to love like that, I'd never felt loved. It was hard. I was alone. All my friends had just gone off to uni. I did all the nights alone. Ds wouldn't breast feed and I desperately wanted him to. Dm went on and on about how important it was (he had no sucking reflex at all), I expressed for as long as I could but he never ever latched on. At 3 months a bfing counsellor came out and just said "you have no milk, he has no urge, you know this, why am I here?" Then she clicked and said, "ah, you want me to tell your mother, don't you?" And she did. Because dm didn't believe I couldn't.

I did all the night feeds. All of them. They would hold him so I could have a bath if they were in.

I was also a teenager who definitely didn't help around the house as much as I should have. Looking back I think they expected me to be cooking and cleaning straight away, and I didn't do much. I helped where I could. But there was so much, and they never asked me to do anything. But as an adult, with distance, it's clear I wasn't meeting expectations.

I became very lonely and depressed. There were no groups for teen parents, and I couldn't bring myself to go to baby groups. I knew what people thought of me. They thought what my parents thought. That I was scum.

I had one aim. Go back to college, finish a levels, get to uni. Then they will be proud. So I did. When ds was a few months old I got him into a nursery and went to college. College were brilliant and I could even bring ds if I couldn't afford the childcare. dm looked after him one day a week.

I paid rent with the benefits I received. My parents told me how proud they were of my older sister for not going on benefits when she was between jobs.

I got good a levels. I got into a Russell group uni, and ds and I moved 300 miles away.

Now here's the thing. Whilst I was there my aunt complimented my dm on how well she was raising ds in front of me . Dm took the compliment. I always get comments about how amazing and supportive my parents were. And how lucky I was. And it brings out this enormous anger. They were horrible! They made me feel like shit. I was so ashamed of who I was. I spent the first 9 months of ds's life waking up crying because I wished I'd died in the night. I told dm I thought I needed ADs. She didn't believe in ADs :( so I never went to the gp. She booked me a homeopathy appointment, gave me a load of scare stories about ADs and that was it.

I've always suffered from anxiety. I tried to kill myself when I was 11. Walked out into a lake and lay in it face down. But then pictured my dm finding me, and couldn't make her sad. So went home. No one noticed I was soaked. No one spoke to me.

But now I am in a good place. After the clichéd first abusive marriage that I escaped after 15 years, I now have a wonderful, kind dh. I have 3 beautiful dcs. I have a wonderful lifestyle. My parents are brilliant with the gcs. Although it cut me deeply when dbro and his wife moved in with them for 6 months when their ds2 was born, and I found out they helped with night feeds, they lived there rent free (despite earning 80k+) and no one made any comments about how dsil wasn't really parenting her dcs.

So how do I get rid of this anger? Am I right to be angry? Do I have that right? They didn't throw me out. Everyone says how amazing they are. No one ever compliments me on my parenting. They'll tell me how lucky I am to have such easy, nice dcs ( because that just happened by accident and they're in no way normal children).

I feel like this is holding me back from enjoying my parents as they now are. I feel history has been rewritten. I was alone so much as a child. I was bullied physically and emotionally by my older sister (locked me in sheds tied up for hours, tried to drown me, beat me, loads and loads of nasty things). We now get on ok, but she is snide and cutting towards me a lot.

The couple of times I've tried to speak to family about it, dbro for example, they leap straight to how much I owe my parents. Although he did remember the drink driving and said that was out of order.

If I spoke to dm she would sob and say I think she's terrible and I would end up comforting her. The one time I tried to talk to them about dsis's bullying, dm just looked at ddad and said, "that always really upset you, ddad, didn't it?" And no one acknowledged my hurt at all. They just said it was normal sibling rivalry.

Sorry about the essay. But... Help. Please.

Help me move on.

Of course you have a right to be angry; the version of events they have presented to the outside world is so different from the reality, so the dishonesty of it must seriously rankle.

Not throwing you out doesn't make them wonderful - it wasn't the 1950s! I very much doubt if any their friends told them to kick you out, or looked at them oddly because you were pregnant. They also did remarkably little to help - couple of my neighbours had teenage daughters who had babies and they helped loads - one girl was even able to maintain a social life no different from that any other teenager. Your parents, on the other hand, haven't done anything special that you should be particularly grateful for - most teenagers live at home, whether they have babies or not.

You have done amazingly well to complete your education and make a success of your life despite having a baby so young - they should be proud of you.

I don't think there is much point in talking to them or trying to make them see the error of their ways - I doubt if that will happen. But it is important for you to see that your feelings are completely valid. Distancing yourself is a very good idea even if you can't cut contact completely. What does your DM bring to your life? Even her supposed efforts to be helpful bring you more grief that if she hadn't bothered.

OP you've had some great advice on here I hope it helps you. Its hard to forget the things people have done to us when they have been in the wrong but by holding on to it all it can make us bitter- that's not to say we have to put up with it though. I think sometimes as people we need to just hold onto the fact that you could never behave like that to your DCs and therefore you are a better person/parent than they are and take comfort in that x

It's really interesting that you were at pains to say you can't see them as toxic and that you know you could depend on them to help out with the kids (eg the chicken pox) and then you later go on to detail an example were your mum was horribly unreliable with child care

There's a sense I get that you are still a little in denial about just how bad they are. have I read that wrongly?

I can see how angry (rightly) you are but are you still on that journey of accepting how much they are actually to blame here and how little they give you that is on any benefit at all?

I don't think they'd ever slag me off to the dcs, that would be a visibly "bad" thing to do. Instead they will be amazing gps. Ds has come to me before telling me how amazing they are and how he's jealous I had them as parents, that stung. But I laughed and just said that as gps they have loads of time and that they never did anything like that with me. He was surprised, but took it in. They have undermined me on occasion, but I am very firm on my expectations with the dcs and not shy about stating them. They are very defensive when I have done this, but have listened and done things my way.

I would never rely on them for childcare, I would go insane.

My dm will drop everything if I need them. But I think I am going to distance myself a bit. Of all of them it would be dm who could give me closure potentially. She rules through guilt, and that has less and less affect on me.

I want to speak to her about it all, I fear minimisation. Which is probably what will happen. So I avoid doing it.

But I do want to.

Xpost weareD, I am in denial. Yes.

They sound utter cocks. You are right to be angry. I don't think I would be able to keep them in my life and be civil.

These people are so toxic it is unbelievable. They aren't amazing grandparents. They aren't even amazing grandparents because they know they messed up. They are showing you what they can do when they want too. They didn't forget to come and baby sit. They didn't accidentally double book baby sitting. They reel you in just enough so that they can say look at all we do for her yet she says this and that, etc

Controlling, abusive bullies. Your sister is a piece of work too.

I used to work with pregnant teenagers, they were mostly brilliantly resourceful and made great mums (mostly). Almost without exception they suffered from low self esteem and came from fractured or unhappy homes. Sad but true.

Your parents sound very similar to many I met, outwardly supportive but inwardly undermining precious confidence. You would almost certainly have been happier alone.

In order to move on I believe you have to accept the past as true and, for you, miserable. Then try to look towards a happier future. To do that you have to stop caring what they think of you. It will never be as good as you want. Comments will be or seem barbed, insults veiled as compliments.

I'd favour continuing your therapy with very low contact and only when you are ready or indeed if, moving that up a bit. If they come late to a birthday tea the cake will be eaten. Do it. Mean it.

I wish you well in stopping caring. It's so hard but it's the only way IME you can grow and be happy

My sister is a piece of work. At times she is openly hostile and nasty. But "she never means it". It's hard. I do try to minimise contact.

Dh says my dparents are different to me in one enormous respect; where I would say "there isn't time for that" or work out what is possible and er on the side of caution, they would promise the earth and not deliver. All they see is me being negative up front about time scales etc. whilst all I see is them not doing as they promise.

So for example if I asked dm to meet me at 3 to go somewhere, she would see no issue with saying yes, even though she knows she has promised to be somewhere else at 2 and that that will take about an hour. If it were me I would assume the thing that would take an hour would overrun, and would make plans to meet at 4, she would not do that.

Dsis is the worst for this. If you are going for a meal with her and need to be at the place for 8pm, she would start getting ready at 8 at the earliest.

I don't make plans with her that matter, expect her to be late, and carry on without her if she is.

With Dm if she's babysitting I say the latest she can be here is an hour before the latest I need her. I expect her to call at some point and tell me "oh by the way I'm having dbro's dcs too". Although I have told her that it's important that my dcs have time alone with her as well (dbro lives next door and they see her daily).

They're not horrible people. It literally is only me who feels this way. Yes everyone jokes about their lateness, but it's always "oh that's just their lovely way". I'm seen as difficult. I was the angry child (which is funny since none of us were allowed to be angry ever). I'm seen as the difficult one. I'm the one with the failed marriage. I'm the one who says XH was abusive (and he never even hit me so how could he be?). I'm the one with the MH issues and the therapist.

If I were to go to them and say any of this it would just be more evidence of my being a drama queen. And I'm not. I'm really not.

A mutual friend of mine and XH's once accused me of being in love with the drama of out relationship. I hated the drama, I was so desperate for someone to help. Funnily enough she sided with XH in the divorce.

The thing is that it is me. Only I feel this way, only I hurt like this. So maybe it's not real. Maybe it is my hyper sensitivity. Maybe I'm a freak.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility.

Dsis used to tell me the reason I didn't fit in and wasn't one of them was because I was adopted. I remember hoping it was true.

Matilda xpost. We weren't the sort of family that happened to :(

Funnily enough, my very posh grandmother (by far the poshest and most proper of us all) hugged me and told me how she'd always wanted to be a great-grandmother before she died.

NeedTo I can feel your distress and anxiety at this situation coming through your posts.
I feel that my experiences of my parents have been so similar to yours (but no teenage pregnancy for me), I am identifying with your posts SO much.

It sounds like you feel similar to me - that your feelings or perception of a situation are irrelevant, and can not be trusted, as it is the opinions of your DParents that have always been more important, you learned not to trust your own intuition or perception. And now as an adult, to have everyone else see your parents in such a different way to you (especially siblings - mine feel like your DBro, that our DM is just the way she is and we need to learn how to 'manage' her. I think that just makes us enablers), it reinforces the feeling that your feelings of the situation just must be wrong.
That makes me feel quite alone, and also that I may be going a little mad(!)

You need to find a way to believe in yourself and that your opinions are just as (if not more) valid as your parents'.
I wish you luck with this, and I will be reading this thread with interest.

Always, that's it. That I can't be sure.

I remember when I told dm I was pregnant, and that I had been on the pill for a year. She was shocked and asked why I hadn't told her I was going on the pill. I was shocked that she asked. I never told her anything. We never discussed periods etc. I was mortified by all bodily functions and mocked for locking the door when in the bath. Why on Earth would I have told my mother anything ever?! Why was she surprised?! She knew nothing about me. Rarely knew where I was or who I was with.

I don't know if she thought we were close (we weren't), or what. It just struck me as odd that that was what she seemed to be most shocked by.

You are getting some fabulous advice here. And the best is the idea that you need to accept your past as the truth about what happened and that it was miserable, to look for a happier future and to stop caring what they think. They will never see your version of events in a million years.

I know that's a lot easier said than done! But you to need to become Teflon woman

Teflon I shall be. I will be zenlike and their words will slide over me.

You're biased because they've brainwashed you and because ultimately they are your parents and you live them - but they ARE horrible people. As is your sister. Just awful, nasty specimens.

You sound lovely.

Love, not live.

Thanks Kate. My sister is a party person and has hundreds of friends. She's always on Facebook getting messages saying "need's sis is so amazing and the best friend in the world, I don't know what I'd do without her!"

And I think, "where's my help?" I'm not saying I need help, but I did. I think in the last five years with XH dsis only visited once. I don't think dbro did at all.

I visited them (but then they lived near dparents, so would see them then).

Dh has said whatever I want will happen. I can tell him anything. He is amazing and supportive. I know he would take them all on if I needed him to.

Here's something silly that no one else knows (not even dh! Ha!) I'm terrified of everything. You name it, I can probably find a fear to match it. I'm scared of being bitten by rodents, I'm really scared of spiders, wasps, snakes, bees, insects in general I hate, etc etc etc. (okay not everything, but lots of the clichéd things), I'll probably show this to dh later and he's going to be shocked.

Me? Scared of anything? Nah! Always wanted a tarantula as a pet, owned a snake. Spider? Scared? I'll pick it up and put it out. Rat? I'll sort it. Mouse? Easy. Hamster? Of course we can have one. They're lovely. Wasp? Just stand still it'll never hurt you. Here I'll catch it. Bee? Don't be scared I'll put it out. And so on and on and on. The dark? Hate the dark. But I visualise everything and pretend it's not dark (!)

I am practical and sensible, and a terribly hypocrite (sorry dh).

But I freaking hate spiders, and I've picked up ones the size of my hand, with my hand and put them out. Calm as you like whilst my heart thunders in my chest.

Because you're not supposed to be scared. So I'm not. But I am.

And that's probably why anxiety comes out in other ways.

(That was the sound of a minor epiphany)

Oh Needs, I absolutely bloody adore you! (((hug)))

Is it cos I'm a plonker?

Non because you bloody rock!

You are clever, funny, tenacious, strong and all round lovely.

If I knew you in person, i'd be so proud to know you!

Hissy :) you are very kind.

I am also a shit-magnet.

But it's good to know other people would be sad and angry if these things happened to them.

your posts make e sad and angry just reading them, never mind any of it actually happening to me. You are right to be angry and you sound so lovely. They are all horrible horrible people, you must at least reduce contact with them. I don't have any advice really, but am here to listen and hold your hand. They don't deserve the shit off your shoe!

NeedTo you are amazing and sadly brain washed.

Just because your parents are lovely to everyone else doesn't mean they are lovely to you.

You come across as the kicked animal, seriously. They are horrid. The inconsistency with childcare is to keep you on your toes; never being able to rely on them 100%. And just when they make you grateful for that emergency childcare they let you down with babysitting.

They do this because they want to appear amazing to other people. Can you imagine the conversation, "well I did have to drop everything to be there for NeedTo's children when they were poorly."

I had a crappy childhood but it was circumstance, not deliberate cruelty which is what you had and have.

You do need to distance yourself from them. To shit on your engagement is abusive. Please, this will never change. They will never acknowledge your feelings, make a life without them. They are amazing grandparents because they want you to realise what you didn't have.

Oh Need you do realise that you are the family scapegoat? And how strong and resilient you are for doing what you did and coming as far as you have?

I'm sorry to say your family (bro excepted) sucks big time. As you were brought up in this environment you're only starting to realise how utterly dysfunctional your family is.

Please, please don't be fooled into thinking that dear old granny is really nice with your DCs. She won't be. It's all about the image. She will have chosen a golden child and a scapegoat out of the DCs. Which one does she lavish attention on? Which one gets sidelined.

My M used to tell my ds2 (age nearly 3) that he was "too little" for the expensive toy she bought ds1 that day. (Nothing for ds2). Or chocolate for ds1, fruit for ds2 and how dare ds2 be upset. Ds2 asked me one night why grandma didn't love him. The utter bitch that she is destroyed his confidence.

I'm telling you this to help you see that people as toxic as your parents do not suddenly become wonderful grandparents. Too toxic for you, too toxic for your kids.

Find yourself some local support. She didn't help with the chess did she, just made you waste your money and made you both unhappy the many times she could not babysit. I guarantee she will have told everyone how she offered to babysit while you went out. So she can 'prove' how nice she is.

I echo what Hissy said, get yourself some support from friends and local people so you are not relying on your parents. The more distance you can have the better.

Well done for coming as far as you have. Your DCs have the wonderful mother you never had.

As I learned with my lot, just because you're surrounded by wankers doesn't make you one!

As I realised just how hideous my family could be to me, given the chance, I was utterly struck by how strange they were to me. I'd spent my life feeling an outsider, but then could see that it was a good thing.

I couldn't ever be as much of a bitch to people as they were! This was the reason i felt so at odds with the world. I couldn't make sense of it at all. Everything felt wrong, but if I asked, I was told it was me that was wrong. But being 'wrong' felt so right...

I was never entitled to any feelings of hurt, upset or sadness.

Anytime I ever challenged them about this, I was told I was being silly/over sensitive/dramatic. Mostly was told that whatever it was didn't happen in the first place.

Sometimes they'd be nice, but when I really needed something, they'd make me sweat/beg.

They loved seeing me hurt.