The Good One (aka the Golden Child)

[black5heep]

I had a situation recently that I am struggling to get my head around, and I’d appreciate help in understanding what happened from others who’ve lived in malfunctioning families.

It is so long, I’ll put in the next post.

I couldn't go NC with Mum. She's too old, too vulnerable. She was rejected at the start of her life, so i couldn't do it to her at the end as well.

(Even though she is challenging, to say the least).

However, the hateful person that she always made me out to be would have done it in a heartbeat.

I can give you a perspective about being the Golden Child. I grew up with both of my older sisters resenting me because I was the GC. When I finally realised (in my late 40s!) the damage my Narc M had done to us all I went into therapy and chose to go NC with her. M then spent lots of time moaning to both sisters about how much she missed me etc (but never bothered to try to get in touch with me or my kids). She died a couple of years ago and my relationship with my sisters has never recovered. They blame me for being the GC even though it was not my choice. They blame me because she tried to get to me through them. They never confronted her about her behaviour. I sympathise because I know how hard it was, but my sympathy runs out when I'm told yet again "Oh, you were the favourite", followed by some snarky comment. It's as if they're still trying to argue with her that she was wrong about me and I'm really an appalling person!

So IME as GC you get some toxic approval from the parent, which is conditional upon you behaving as they wish, and you lose your siblings. I no longer have the strength to try and fix it.

Luckily we have little contact anyway and I have a lovely family of my own. Therapy has made that possible, and I will forever be grateful to my therapist. blacksheep you sound like you've got them all sussed and have the tools in place to detach if you want to. Good luck

I am sorry to read that, Fresh. I think it just proves that there are no winners in a toxic family. I am really sorry that your sisters cannot see that you have rejected it all too and be glad to have you back again.

Obviously, my sister does not think we have a toxic family, and I do not think she ever will. I guess, for her, blocking it all out, is how she has responded to what we all went through. Maybe she wasn't in the firing line, but it cannot have been nice to live within our family, even as a spectator.

Although I am ok now, I really wasn't when I got home from the trip, and that's the problem. You can spend 25 years, after you've hand over your door keys and shut the front door of the family home behind you, doing everything you can to move on emotionally. You can think you've made great strides.

Then you spend a weekend with your mum and your sister and you feel like an emotionally bruised and physically battered teenager again, except a middle-aged face looks back at you from the mirror making it even more absurd.

Absolutely. It never goes away, but at least you know what it is that's making you feel shit! Buttons get pressed again, but there is some real satisfaction in being able to see it clearly and recover. And I firmly believe that each time we go through the button pressing/recovery phase, we detach a bit more.

Don't feel absurd. If you were looking at a bruise which you'd got from someone thumping you, you wouldn't feel absurd. I think sometimes we feel that, because we've seen it for what it is, we shouldn't be affected by it. Time to remind ourselves we're not superhuman (well, not all the time).

I married into a toxic family. My husband was the golden child, but it has not been a bed of roses. He is very damaged, and what I had thought of as a lovely, gentle nature is actually a people-pleasing lack of boundaries.

When his scapegoat sister removed herself, a vacancy arose for a scapegoat. This happened about 15 years ago. Since then he has been golden child from the point of view that as a talented, successful, polite man, he brings status to mil.
Behind closed doors though, it has been a different story. MIL felt free to rage at him and emotionally abuse him.
The worst thing is that he felt obliged
to put up with it, and that he would be "bad" and disloyal if he didn't.
He has anxiety problems and I am sure it is the consequence of his dysfunctional upbringing, and the sense that it was his duty as favourite child to be a sort of emotional caretaker for his mother, in order to prevent the next nuclear meltdown.
Now he is low contact.

My sibling is so conditioned to be 'right' and to get his way that in his fifties he goes to pieces rather than agree with me or support me. If I have good news, he'll turn it on its head.

His problems go deeper than being the GC, but I think that's where it started.

Another observation is that the GC can provoke feelings of dislike outside the family because the behaviour which is rewarded at home is not tolerated in normal society - selfishness, laziness, thoughtlessness, greed. So they can have trouble with relationships. My mother woulds smugly say that the problem was that people were jealous of my brother, rather than identifying that the entitled behaviour he exhibited (and that she had inadvertently condoned) was causing him catastrophic problems in his life.

Seol I've lost track of your story but I remember your thread - hope things are better now.

Hi Imbroglio
Thank you, things are much better although the first few months of 2015 were traumatic. MIL's behaviour finally provoked a much-needed epiphany in DH, to everyone's shock (mine included. And his half-sis who is estranged from MIL said she couldn't believe that Golden Child DH had managed to break away).
We have been weathering lots of flying monkey attacks (as you can see, I am now more au fait with NPD terminology than I ever wanted to be!) and DH has a long road to walk, to build up his psychological strength. But the important thing is that he wants to, which is a huge change. Until MIL went too far with her malignant narcissism, DH constantly prioritised her over DD and me, and thought that he was obliged to do so. He did it gladly, because he had been conditioned to believe that a good person puts their mother first whatever the circumstances .

As an aside, I have read about a woman with a narc mother, who bought a special ringtone for when her mother was calling her. So whenever her mother rings her, the phone says "Blah, blah, bullshit bullshit!" She says it is the best 79p she ever spent!

If I were to describe my sister, I'd say she is highly successful professionally, has many friends and is very effective. When she puts her mind to something, it gets done. She definitely rules her family, but her husband seems to like it that way.

I don't think she wastes much sympathy on other people. She can be very single-minded and she never wastes time asking herself if she's formed a false opinion.

Within our family, she also rules. Her good opinion is a very valuable asset to have within the family. If she approves something e.g. the choice of a venue for a family get-together, then you know you are there will be no further debate about location, time or menu.

Mum seems to value everything my sister gives her as a gift above all others. My sister always gets it right, it seems. Her advice is always deemed to be good by Mum. Once Mum and my sister are aligned, then experience tells the rest of us, that its not worth arguing about any more, because the argument has already been lost.

Does that sound like an adult golden child?

I reccommened the Toxic Parents book, too!!

yeah, that's a Golden Child. She does sound very effective, but that doesn't make her a golden child in itself. It's certain details which make it: that her opinion rules, that gifts from her are a gift above all others, plus what you've said before: that she feels free to criticise you. That's been tolerated or even silently encouraged a long time.

(what happened if you tried to criticise her back?)

Things like her not questioning her own opinions or her single mindedness or even her ruling her own family are not GC things. Those are more personality traits ... it's the fact that she is really the Queen Bee in your mother's eyes.

I have read about a woman with a narc mother, who bought a special ringtone for when her mother was calling her. So whenever her mother rings her, the phone says "Blah, blah, bullshit bullshit!" She says it is the best 79p she ever spent!

ha ha ha ha!

Joking aside, Seol it must be very sad for your husband to have a mother like this. His sense of loss and betrayal must be enormous.

Actually he saw her yesterday for the first time in many months (the second time since January). It has messed us up all over again. Things had been going well.
He is desperate to believe that she can improve in spite of all the standard advice about people like this. His scapegoat half-sister and her husband told him recently that she is a narcissist and that the only way to deal with her is to back away.
He had to go to her house yesterday as he needed to get some of his stuff. She was full of excuses and the frustrating thing is that he sort of believed some of them. She told him she just needs regular phone calls from him and he so he came back home asking my permission for this, therefore outsourcing the decision to me. Thanks a lot.
So much for LC. Feels like we have gone backwards. Although at least he openly says she is not a good person now, which is a big improvement on the old days.

His scapegoat sister sees it more clearly but he goes back into the FOG at the click of MIL's fingers. This is the lot of the Golden Child.

I imagine its really hard for him to shake off years of conditioning. And its his parent. Most of us would assume that a parent acts with unconditional love as the starting place from which all else flows.

In these families the parent seems unable to give that love - the nearest thing is approval and reward for 'good' behaviour.