Is there something really wrong or is it me?

[lostinhisworld]

I've recently moved back to be local to my family, and since I did have just felt really down when in contact with my family or spending time with them.

My Dad, 64, is quite sexist. He thinks all books by women are not worth reading, he thinks fat women are disgusting (I am a size 14 - 16 and get the feeling he includes me on that list) and I have never really heard him say anything positive about a woman that ws not related to her tits or her being beautiful. He thinks housework is for women etc.

My Mum is 61 and stunningly beautiful. She looks about 40, is very slim and she has always been a SAHM and pushed her sexist views subtly onto me also. Like she has a go at me because I don't regularly offer DS (12) drinks and think he should go and get one himself. She is always maing comments about how my DS is not lookked after the way we were or whatever. I work and am a single Mum and my son is really well cared for by I do expect him to bring his plates to the kitchen and get himself a drink.

My brother 2 is married to a girl from overseas and a subservient culture and he belives women should hold their tongue around men. He has also made comments that he finds my weight gross. He says only skinny women are attractive and finds single Mum's to be "losers".

My brother 1 is twice divorced, and also only dates skinny and beautiful women. He has two children and so when his kids and my DS are at my prents house for sunday lunch I am expected to look after his kids also. I am also told by Mum to "get your brother a drink" while he lasy on the sofa. If the kids are being naughty (even his kids) she shouts at me.

Brother 1 is also extremely shady. Twice divorced. Banned from driving three times for alcohol and now lost his licence. 2 businesses went bankrupt. Didn't see his kids for two years. Had affairs on both wives. Openly sleeps with hookers -his last ex wife took the children to FIND him at the brothel and he also slept with my other brothers long term girlfriend. In the end he was so abusive to his last wife that she took off and left him with the children and is now being treated for a total breakdown - making him essentailly a single father by default.

And yet all my parents do is go on about how fucking wonderful he is. "Isn't he a wonderful father", "isn't he a wonderful businessman", "he stayed with so and so and they said what a wonderful house guest he is".

I, by contrast, have never had an affair, always done very well with my job, always supported myself and DS, always been a really devoted Mum and yet they never say a fucking word nice about me.

So today I was sitting there and brother 1 who is 44, rich (through shady means), fat bald, ugly and wears his trousers hanging round his arse and he is on POF looking at girls to date. They are all 25 and gorgeous.

So I said to him I thought he should look more around his own age instead of keep bringing these Polish and Russian whores into his life because he has kids to think about.

He said that he wanted a woman under 30 because any older was ugly (I am 38)

He said he wanted a woman who was a sixe 10 or less because he had a "weight limit" and anything else made him want to vomit (I am a 14 - 16)

He said he had no interest in personality, and only wanted good looks and preferred a woman who wanted him for his money so she would stay at home and do the laundry.

I told him that making those decisions when single was fine, but what abut his children.

Brother 2 and Dad totally agree with him and tell me I am basically a tree hugger and no man wants an ugly old fat woman and that looks in the number one most important quality in a woman.

He then tells my Mum I am picking on him, and she turns around and says to me she agrees with him too and why should he have someone ugly. It;s almost like she doesn't care at all about her Granchildren who have already been through so much with all the mental 25 year olds he shags (the last one was a cocaine addict who hit him and I had to go round in the middle of the night to pull her off him and phone police).

Then Mum shouts at me to control the children and tells me I am a drama queen when I got upset.

Is any of this normal? I feel like they are just all so shallow and sexist and I am made to feel like I am the one with a problem?

My brothers openly discuss women and their tits and shagging prostitutes and they are so demeaning to women it makes me sick.

I don't think she ignores them for the quiet life. I think she also believes her main value is her looks. I think she thinks she is stupid, not clever and her jb is to be a martyr and cook and clean.

She thinks my Dad is a pig, but at the same time she carries on doing everyhting for him and she raises my brother's to be pigs.

I think it's just so deeply ingrained...

she lacks confidence and a bit of arse kick.

Do you think perhaps it would be in the best interests of you and your DS that you went NC with them? They sounds like the kind of people your life would be better without.

I cannot imagine in this day and age a family situations where the man-work-woman-cook cliche still operates to that level, and couldn't tolerate it without going a little bonkers. They have you doubting every part of yourself, they have your self-esteem in their hands and they're wiping their backsides on it. I honestly think cut and run is sometimes easier because this situation will never change.

As an aside, you don't have to be thin or young to be beautiful. But of all the beautiful women I know, the most beautiful are stunning because their happiness radiates from them. Make yourself happy. Be around people who make you feel good about yourself. Family means nothing if they don't have your back.

She will never, ever stand up for me against my brothers.

Ever.

She thinks the sun shines out of their backsides.

As an example. My brother could come round my house and punch me in the face and hispitalise me, and she would tell me he has had life so hard, he is upset, he is weak, family first and she would excuse it all, then she would guilt trip me into never bringing it up again and not mentioning it ever happenned ...."don;t talk about such awful things and upset everyone all the time".

I could then a few months later not show up for a dinner prty at my brothers house and for weeks and months she would go on about how inconsiderate I was and would tell everyone else too - how my brother had toiled in the kitchen and had no manners.

Her brain works on this most basic level - and those are just examples - but similar experienced have been had multiple times.

She willfully disengages from seeing or acknowledging my brothers acts. It remind me a little of the Sultan and his mother. His happiness is her most important thing and she doesn't really see her own feelings (or mine) and believe me she makes sacrifices for him that are appaling in nature (financial, babysitting) and does not even mention it.

With it just being me and my DS, I think family is important to both of us. My sister is LOVELY (she is a lesbian and she jokingly credits growing up in my family with being put off men for life) , and my extended family are lovely too and very warm and loving. My neices and nephews are the best friends DS has and it would be too hard and diffiuclt to go NC.

'Personally, I think prostitute is a job description, whereas whore is a misogynist insult.

I think it's a good indication of the brainwashing from your ghastly family as to acceptable ways to talk about women.'

This. And I think your evidently unthinking use of the term shows how enmeshed you are in their ways of thinking.

It's good that you are going to set up boundaries, but honestly I would not want my 12yo ds around such people at all. He is on the cusp of adolescence and will be looking to the behaviour of the males around him. It sounds as if you have provided him with solid foundations, but there will be an element of apparent cognitive dissonance for him in your continuing to spend what sounds like quite a lot of time with them.

My Dad also arse kisses my brother. He was first born and quite a bit older and for whatever reason he can do no wrong in their eyes.

He put his bloody ex wife into a unit for a mental breakdown and my parents both sit there and to my face tell me "isn't he a wonderful father"

I almost want to choke!!!!!

Thanks for the apology OP! I am on a crusade to defend E.European woman from this kind of thing.

Others are right though, even if they are sex workers/prostitutes, whore is a horribly sexist and misogynistic word to use. I think Twinklestein could be right though, it could be just conditioning by your family. Part of getting out of this mess will be you having to be aware of their influence and phase out any bad habits picked up from them so you can start with cutting that word out.

I honestly wouldn't bother with the standing up to them, I would really consider just cutting them out, you really, really don't need this shit OP. Yes your DS enjoys seeing his cousins but sometimes a sacrifice needs to be made for the greater good of yourself.

Re the protection of the fat, a friend of mine had this after a similar upbringing, she really wanted to be invisible and unattractive to men, she had counselling and lost the weight/dealt with the overeating, keeps herself very well and has a healthy body image now. Could counselling of some kind be an option for you?

To be clear...I agree..."whore" is an insult, and I sometimes do use very insulting words to people I don't like but it doesn't mean I don't like all people who share the same job, nationality or otherwise and I am far from a woman hater.

The particular people I am talking about are not characterised by their sex, profession or nationality, but by bad character.

One in particular showed up brazen as anything at family events when he was still married and had very young children. She had my ex sister in law show up at her house crying with the children and walked around naked in front of the young kids laughing and found it all very funny. At the time my exSIL was unhinged, and shortly after had a breakdown but imagine the kind of person who openly does that.

If you had any idea what those children had been put through you'd probably be angry too, and angry people might call the perpetrators names when they are upset, but it really doesn't mean I am anti-women or prejudiced in any way. I'm not.

Thanks Rachel and again, sorry!

Thanks Rachel, I had counselling for three years after leaving home to unpick the mess of my family and I suppse just living near them again means more contact and I suppose feeling a bit like a child again. I relly had walked away from this shit for the past 15 years.

I think going Nc isn't right for me or DS, but definitely calling a halt to all of this is. I hopefully would counter the congnitive dissonance potential with DS by showing him tht I love them, but that I am not willing to tolerate their weird behavior or views and hopefully he will learn a lesson from that, in that we can sometimes love people but still have to tell them if they need to stop something.

I would prefer than than him growing up estranged, as he is already estranged from his father and his father's family.

I would suggest not going round again, because while your DS might enjoy playing with his cousins, he's actually losing more in terms of the adults' negative influence on him than he's gaining from a relationship with his cousins.

I would invite your mum to yours, possibly invite her to bring your DNs over when your brother1 has them (assuming he'll dump parenting of them onto the nearest woman, if not you, then his mum).

Think carefully about the damaging messages your DS is learning, is that 'worth' the extended family relationship?

Think very carefully about your interactions with these people.

Thinking about your visits to them since you moved back to their area, how many times would you say you have left feeling "That was a great visit, I feel happy and loved" versus "That was so awful and I feel like a fat failure"?

Pcketavior probably predominantly the latter, but I do admit I love time with my Mum on my own. It's the group that is the issue.

I think you should be very selective about who you see and when. It's not all or nothing. Surely you could stay in contact with your sister and cousins but stop contact with your father and brothers? And you could carry on seeing your mum (without them) from time to time. But when you do see her you need to set clear boundaries, for example shut her down if she criticises you or says something you find unacceptable.

I really think you need to get some more counselling to keep working on your boundaries and self esteem.

Also, if you've moved recently, maybe you don't have many friends in the area yet? Could you be more proactive about that? It takes time but will be so worth it when you have other, better people in your life.

In my very limited experience of living with ME men (10 years as a host to foreign students) I recognise the culture you describe.

Whereas a British culture would be truly appalled by the shocking sexism in this (and what you describe re your brother is in no way typical!), I do recognise and understand the incredible warmth you describe that is just wonderful. There is nothing like it. Great warmth.... and potential for great savagery.?. ( passion on a whole other plain to what we know and recognise here?)

It sounds like you're getting to find your way with this. Going NC with a family of this culture is practically unthinkable. It can be very difficult in the British culture to go nc with family - but even that pales in comparison to cutting off a family from this culture.

BUT. You do have to protect yourself. The extreme vagaries of the appallingly brutal sexism in your family (again, no way typical of their culture) are going to have a drastic effect on you - as you have seen. Your mother's blind devotion to your brothers, although cultural up to a point, is waaaay up there in rabid dysfunction - to your cost, as you see repeatedly.

If you can pick your way through this minefield then I can quite see it is worth it... for the warmth. Which can't be underestimated imo. Especially if it's your own family.

Good luck with the statements! I can't honestly see them taking much heed, they're so far gone tbh (and they could well up the viciousness ) but imo actions speak louder than words if you want to keep some level of relationship with them. There's nothing like not engaging, absenting yourself with no words, to pique their egos (people like this - I don't mean cultural! - don't like being ignored: they want a reaction they can get their teeth into).

I think you're dealing with an extremely dysfunctional family from within a culture with disordered sexist values. So your work is cut out for you! Keep yourself safe eh, protect your heart. It is likely they will hurt you again - people like this do it like breathing. They're so established in it they are far gone and unlikely to change..

But you have a gay sister! Bloody hell, that was a coup! So perhaps it's possible to make some headway with your insane family after all

(Talking as one from an insane family myself, don't mean to be offensive! Except mine has ZERO warmth. Hence NC