This is really chilling, I think

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Namechanged for this, as potentially too identifiable to FOO stalkers.

I am NC with FOO, for a variety of reasons, none of which I particularly want to rehash here. Occasionally I lurk on a FB forum for parents of estranged adult children, because I find it morbidly fascinating and actually quite validating to observe just HOW bonkers the mindset is.

Today I found this post on there, which sent shivers down my back because it is SO similar to the kind of thing my NMother has sent to me:

The last time I wrote my daughter...a few years ago, I stated the following: "When a person is charged with a crime, the accused is presented with a list of grievances. As your mother, I feel I am entitled to no less a list of grievances in support of your claims of hatred towards me." I've never received a reply, because she has none. We as parents shouldn't accept responsibility for our adult children's short-sightedness and bad behavior.

As ever, it's much easier to see the crazy when it's not your own personal situation being hashed out, but OMG at the demand that the adult child justifies her emotions with a bullet-pointed list of grievances before there can be any question of her being permitted to feel her own feelings. And these people wonder why they are estranged. You'd think round about the time you wrote about your entitlement to a list of grievances to support your child's claims of hatred towards you, you might get a glimmer of realisation about why your adult dc didn't want to be around you. But apparently not.

I read the "inner child" book last night; haven't tried any exercises yet but found it very touching in places - it's interesting how DH and I have been doing similar sorts of exercises innately. Maybe that's another thing good relationships do for you, they help your inner child find someone to play with and love and be loved by. Only started on the other one but it's looking interesting too, so thanks for the recommendations!

I dreamt I told my mum last night exactly what the issues were - I was very calm and coherent, explaining the labels and dynamics I'd found which described our family and my experiences, and what that had meant for my childhood and growth. She just sobbed throughout and looked so sad, like I was just destroying her. Then I turned to my dad and said, "and you enabled it all." Then I woke up.

In reality she'd never take it all in and if she did it would indeed destroy her. I don't think we'll ever have that conversation, but my dad lately has been prodding me and asking why I have issues with her. I'm ready for the next time he asks - I'll say if she has an issue she can address me directly and meanwhile it's none of his business. But maybe that's why this thread and the others have touched real nerves lately; without noticing it there's been another wave of flying monkeys lately!

I do feel sad that I'll never be normal, but a renewed feeling that I need to try and tackle this before we have kids. to all

What an amazing dream. Merd. Mine are all symbolic - it takes month/years for the real point to emerge Can you lend me your subconscious for a few weeks?!

Glad the book was interesting. Your relationship with DH sounds nice :)

Screen - I had a boyfriend, luckily only for a few months, who was a pathological liar, gaslighter, abusive etc. He ALWAYS used to lie about the stupidest things, even when he must have known I knew the truth! It was like an absolute compulsion to lie, bloody weird

I guess it all boils down to control
I was basically told to not speak freely around people because she'ld be angry if I told them something she didn't want them to know, and I'm not talking about family secrets! It could be something as seemingly innocent as which supermarket we used.

It could be similar to eating disorders in a way.. controlling food/ controlling boring facts?? She's secretive about things that nobody cares about and expected me to be in on it when it came to keeping random facts from other people.

Like "don't tell your best friends mum about the new garden furniture"
"what about when she calls over? won't she see it?"
"I don't want them knowing our business!"
"why would they be interested in our garden furniture anyway?"
"I don't want them knowing, you have no right to tell them what I spend my money on that's my business"

Merd I think it's natural for the subconscious to try to put some order on the chaos

I do feel optimistic that cycles can be broken.. I'm not out of the woods yet (we still have parenting through puberty to navigate yet!!) but I was honestly blown away with the love and patience that the babies brought into my life with them! I've never lost it with them and now I can't imagine doing so, I get cross of course but I never lose it. I was so scared that I would do so like my mother used to, but now, how she was with me seems so alien to me since becoming a mother myself.

Having a good relationship with DH was good bootcamp for parenting though, before him I didn't think I was destined to have that kind of stable loving healthy relationship with anyone, partner, parent or child! And I think I used to chose men who it wasn't going anywhere with so I was prepared for it and it wouldn't hurt IYKWIM (messed up men who "don't do commitment")

Liking your work on the GN thread, Garlic.

In fact there are several posters, and I don't think they're all MNers, who have come on and very calmly and lucidly tried to deconstruct some of the dynamics, and look at how some of the actions might be viewed from the other side. But invariably the resident posters react to this gentle probing as if the questioners had burst in, armed to the teeth, and machine-gunned a roomful of kittens to death.

And as for the poster who was takign out ads in the local paper on her estranged GC's birthdays... [jawdrop]

Jawdrop indeed Her 'justifications' cancelled each other out as she went along, too. I'm trying very hard to not comment any more, but the other "interfering strangers who don't understand their pain" are making such good points that it's hard to resist posting in agreement!

I was basically told to not speak freely around people because she'ld be angry if I told them something she didn't want them to know, ... It could be something as seemingly innocent as which supermarket we used.

We had this, too. Instant & violent punishment for dropping any information. I understood it when the youngest kids started doing their "What I did at the weekend" thing for school. I would have to go through it with them on the Sunday evening, sanitising it of any reference to arguments, bad moods, punishments and the like. The blanket ban was, in fact, designed to maintain the family secrets.

As balance and to perpetuate the silences, we were also taught it was very bad manners to ask anything about other people's private lives. Consequently there were never any meaningful exchanges; we are still strangely distanced from our cousins, etc, as we never properly knew each other.

I had a nearly lifelong fantasy of myself as a secret agent, keeping critical information from some evil entity - and 'training' myself to withstand torture, like the heroes in the WW2 films that were still mainstream then. One day I'll have to ask my sibs whether they had the same!

Might be why I tend to over-share these days

I don't exactly haunt these kinds of forums, I just started a thread on here about something I'd seen on a FB group, which then spawned its own GN spin-off. I did get sucked into reading that, mainly because the disparity between what was going on here and they way it was being interpreted on there was so striking.

I think it's been really useful to see that many of the things that I regarded as unique to my situation, and to some extent regarded as my own failure to communicate with my FOO in a way that could have resolved the estrangement, are in fact not at all unique to my situation, and seem to be part of a widespread 'script' and MO.

As ever, it's much easier to spot the underlying dynamics when its a situation that you're not personally involved in, which you can then apply backwards to cast light on your own situation. I think what has come out very clearly from this thread, and its parallel ones, is the profound resistance many EPs have to anything that involves critically examining their own motivations and behaviour, and indeed any suggestion that their own emotional reaction is not the sole determiner of what is right and wrong in any situation.

It's been depressing and frustrating reading, and sometimes actually quite shocking. But ultimately it's been really helpful in confirming that, no, it isn't just me, and no, there probably isn't anything I could do or can do differently that might change things.

And from reading the various responses over the past week or so, many others have had the same reaction, so glad it's been helpful to others too.

Screenshot, re "other people knowing our business" my mother seemed to work off the assumption that anyone who ever talked about her (in any way, not gossip, stuff as innocuous as "I heard that toomum visited London last year") was her enemy and really evil, which was odd enough on its own, but then she also gossiped endlessly to me about everyone we knew. I remember my horrified fascination aged about 10 when I realised that she really thought that nobody ever spoke about her. It felt like a small moment of power, albeit a very scary one, to be able to check this assumption against my own lived experience and realise she was wrong. I mean not just wrong - several miles off to the side of what the rest of the world thinks is normal.

I disagree Nina
It's about non compromise of the EP usually I think
My mother took me and husband to court to try and get 3 grandchildren aged 1 3 6 every weekend & all school holidays. Just because I said no to her taking them to Wales for a week with people I'd never met before including an alcoholic man and his ex wife, when the youngest child was only 13 months
The 'child arrangements' court case lasted 8months & she got 3hr per month supervised in a contact centre due to manipulation and emotional abuse (she has also started another extremely aggressive court case against us)

If you have a parent with a personality disorder (my mother witnessed domestic violence and her younger brother being adopted out), you cannot reason with them. It's accommodating accommodating them all the way. It doesn't matter what the needs of the EC or EC children are.

There are often huge barriers to communication that can't be surmounted in a normal manner. Particularly when a child has been trained all their life to respond to the parent in the way that meets the parent's needs, which was often not a healthy way or healthy role for that child to have, because that parent couldn't cope with healthy interaction.

Watching a conversation play out recently online:

Poster 1: A and B happened to me, I was really upset.
Poster 2: You caused K and Z to happen, that's all your fault and you're a terrible person for thinking and behaving that way!
Other Posters: er...wtf? There's no mention of K and Z anywhere in the post, you're seeing things that aren't there and then attacking someone about it! A happened and that was hard for Poster 1, and then B happened so naturally she's upset.
Poster 2: Replies angrily and in high distress that they are being attacked, belittled and kept from posting, insults the other posters individually and very disproportionately, admits a bit of B might have happened but completely ignores A, attacks other posters on misconcepted versions of what they have said.
Other Posters: Start to realise that what they say and what Poster 2 hears are not the same thing. Explain that a different point of view is not an attack. Say that it is not helpful to be rude and insulting. Try to re explain and reframe A and B to be more comprehensible to Poster 2.
Poster 2: clearly now very angry, very upset and feeling very attacked, builds more on their own perceived version of K and Z and add in M. They state that they are entitled to have their own point of view and people need to accept it (which completely contradicts their rejection of other posters explaining about it being ok to have different points of view) and that they are unaffected by criticism and never rude ( they have repeatedly demonstrated in every post this is not true) They do not seem to see the disparity in what they are saying.
Other Posters: Try variously to give Poster 2 examples of where they have been rude/samples of Poster 1's post to demonstrate points
Poster 2: Converts some examples into straw men and attacks those, ignores others that are harder to deny, insults ramp up higher
Other Posters: Gradually give up realising this is just never going to go anywhere. Poster 2's reality is their own, they are arguing from within it without awareness of illogic or contradiction, and perceiving any disagreement or discussion as a hurtful attack needing retaliation. They are becoming more activated and aggressive at each attempt to engage with them, their behaviour is controlling and intended to manage the threat they perceive.

The 'you should try never give up on someone who is basically well intentioned despite how distressed they are making you' theory is very understandable - but it expects the person capable of managing their behaviour to suck it all up and enable the one who can't. I was raised for decades to be a very co operative enabler and victim, to have no boundaries, to accept everything was my fault to avoid pressuring my parent into exploding (and verbally attacking me while demonstrating subtle threats of violence such as fists slammed on tables, doors slammed). I'm probably better at it than many who grew up in healthier households. There are many childhood incidences of this, however this behaviour has continued day to day and is part of the current relationship too. This is how this person does relationships.

I love that person and accept they don't intend to be abusive, I have insight into why they do what they do and accept that the root of it isn't their fault, although I recognise too that they choose not to control or accept responsibility for their behaviour. I recognise that they have very different standards for how they should be treated compared to how they feel others should be treated, and they don't see the dissonance in it. They need everyone they have a relationship to collude in never mentioning or indicating that their behaviour is in any way not typical or acceptable because this is too threatening to them, while allowing them to painfully criticise any perceived misdemeanors or slights, for which they will expect abject apology and still not easily forgive. This understanding doesn't change how it makes me feel or make me willing to let that person's need to let their stuff pour out everywhere to make my life a miserable one. I won't take on a disproportionate responsibility and pay an ongoing painful price the other person doesn't for keeping that relationship going. Particularly when that relationship's benefits are almost entirely to the other person.

Nina, I think most of us have tried and tried and tried for years to live up to our families' expectations of us until we can't take it any more. We've agonised over things we could have done differently. I can probably see things from another person's point of view better than having my own view - it's the way I was trained to not have an opinion of my own. So no, I don't really have much resistance to critically examining myself.

But one point of view I have that's my very own: It's not unrealistic to want and expect love and acceptance from my parents that isn't based on how well I meet their expectations.

Nina, I understand that you're saying the problem in your family has been a pattern of miscommunication passed along the female line. And that you feel sad about it, which is more than understandable.

But you'd be wrong to diagnose every split family as suffering the same. My parents were fantastic communicators. They were abusive. I went NC with my dad, then resumed contact because he'd stepped up his abuse of my mother. I worked out that he victimised her more when he couldn't do it to me - long story short, I developed a framework in a sort of sick collaboration with him, whereby he could be awful to me without causing me actual harm. It worked (ish) for some time and then went pear-shaped. Because you cannot compromise with a control freak. They'll always go for increased control.

Many of the stories here and, for instance, on Issendai are about parents who are addicted to power & control.

Regardless, it's sad, it's about failure and it's increasing in dramatic numbers in the Western world. Partly it's down to unrealistic expectation on both sides.

IMO it's mainly down to women being freer and having autonomy and not having to by default "respect" their abusers. We're not trapped any more like we would have been in the past or women (in particular, but also men) are in other parts of the world. We can leave abusive relationships. Whether they are partners, educators, carers or parents.

Harping on to the past when "families stuck together" is a rose tinted view, often they weren't together out of choice, and it often wasn't a happy ending. I'm glad my children don't live in such a society.

Love your "Poster 2" example, rumbling! I'm no longer surprised, but frequently shocked at just how many people live with an alternate reality of their own devising, into which facts cannot penetrate.

When some of those are members of your immediate family, your only choice is between joining in their game/illusion - and opting out altogether.

It's not just cultural it's about economic freedom too

My ILs are lovely, they're in our lives because we LOVE them
Not, as would have been the case generations ago, because our home and DH's livelihood is tied to the family farm, and we HAVE to take whatever they throw at us or be homeless and jobless with no other skills or qualifications to do anything different.

Families we're not more loving or more forgiving or less damaging in the past, they were just socially, culturally and economically stuck with each other! (likewise in some other cultures)

WERE not we're

In the West, we are a spoiled culture used to having our own way because post war we have become used to being so liberated.

Yeah, spoiled little me - wanting to be loved and all that. It's definitely my fault for not understanding at the age of zero that my mum didn't have parenting skills. As a toddler I should have realised she needed love and nurture

reconsider cutting off a parent especially if it's a case of 'you don't see eye to eye'. I know relationships can be difficult, they take effort. But if your mum loves you and your bond is otherwise strong,

What the ....? Are you reading the same thread I am? "Seeing eye to eye"?! Look - of course we can look at abusers and say "it's because of reason 1,2,3 that they're like that". We can understand. I do understand - I know my parents were fucked up by their childhood and I know some of the things they went through. That does not mean they automatically belong in my life. They muddled along doing their best, sure, good for them - but they damaged and abused me. And you know what, they didn't have to. Of course no one has a rule book but who the hell thinks it's ok to mistreat a child?

To emphasise - we didn't have a difference of opinion, we weren't quarrelling over what to have for dinner or something. We are fundamentally incompatible and do not make each other happy on any level, we really really don't.

I don't think for a split second that ANYONE cuts off a relation because someone "banded about the word no-contact" - that would be insane. Some people (not many, most just suffer onwards as you recommend) cut relatives off because it's like treating a cancer; there's a point where you can't let it fester away anymore and let it spread damage.

Don't "blame your family" - again, are you mad? I'm only just coming to terms with the damage they did in my mid 30s. Most people only begin realising as fully grown adults what's been going on. I may one day forgive but I'll never forget, and I will always be fundamentally different inside because of them. I do "blame" them. It's that or blame me for causing my own abuse all these years.

I expect I should have a relationship with a father that doesn't involve him:

• shitting on the floor and telling me I did it over a period of five to six hours, while not letting me move off a chair
• driving out to the edge of a cliff with my mother and telling us that he was going to kill us while revving the car with his hand on the handbrake
• sitting opposite me on a crowded train and "you're nothing but a fucking narcissist" into my face over and over
• telling me that I will one day realise my rape wasn't "real" because I am just "frigid" like my mother
• telling me in great detail about my mother's supposed frigidity and his hopes I won't follow it and destroy my marriage like she did
• telling me that that if I think my husband really loves me I'm deluding myself as he clearly only wants me for my body and he won't want me if I don't take proper care of it
• telling me it is important I make sure I don't "make girls of" my boys by expecting them to tidy up around the home

How unrealistic of me.

I should really be more like the women in the past who were more forgiving of this behaviour, like my grandmother, who was nearly killed when her husband (my grandfather) drove her into a wall in a temper, or my mother who freely admits she would never have left him unless he had gone first, despite him also trying to drive her into a wall.

The good old days, when people were less resistant to abuse.

Screenshot, re "other people knowing our business" my mother seemed to work off the assumption that anyone who ever talked about her (in any way, not gossip, stuff as innocuous as "I heard that toomum visited London last year") was her enemy and really evil, which was odd enough on its own, but then she also gossiped endlessly to me about everyone we knew.

um hmm, if anyone asked after her out of general politeness, she'ld tell me they were just using me to get information about her (which was really controlling because the implication is that those people weren't interested in being friendly with me and my relationship with them centred around her, and them milking me for information about her (according to her). If I dared say "they never ask about you, you didn't come up" it would blow up! I was being disloyal and "taking their side" (even if she was apparently on friendly terms with them.

Yet she is a massive gossip - she would try to tell me hugely personal/private things about her friends and family, some things that were not appropriate for me to know (i.e. maybe not age appropriate for me, or else told to her in confidence). And not just me she would tell other people too… and then swear me to secrecy! which was so hypocritical because she never kept anyone's secrets a secret except for her own.

I used to tell her (when I was an adult) not to tell me what people told her in confidence!, If she started a sentance with "I'm telling you this about X in confidence" I'ld stop her and say if it's her/his secret, you can't tell me!. And she would get really upset saying that she needs to be able to discuss the things she's heard because knowing them affects her emotionally.. and I'm being unsupportive of that

It was really a fucked up way to live, she involved me in things that were too grown up for me and got angry if I didn't relish being in the thick of her games

To pick up on this about estrangement as well: It's too painful. It's painful for the parents left behind and it's painful for the AC eventually.

No I don't buy that. Estrangement is peace, quiet and hope for the AC. And I don't care if the parents feel pain, maybe it's their turn. We've had our pain - decades of it. We'll still have it sometimes longing for something impossible.

But I am so much happier now. I love myself. Which sounds utterly wanky but is something I couldn't have said 10 years ago.

people leave abusive husbands and wives too

but I guess they're just spoilt, they're just bad communicators, they're just following the trend (cause divorce is so fun!), they should appreciate that their ex at least claimed to love them… and so on.

Replace parent with ex husband or wife.. it shows how mad the double standards are!

"I love myself" :) :) :)

In the West, we are a spoiled culture used to having our own way because post war we have become used to being so liberated.

Some of the trauma that pours out in behaviours from people of the previous generations and causes these issues is because they didn't have the liberation, they were just trapped in a world of awful.

The regular MiL bunfight that runs again and again all over the forum basically consists of two factions: one who look at the facts of the situation regardless of the named relationships involved, and one who hear the word MiL and rise like pack hounds to a horn being sounded, ignore the facts and shout 'All DiLs hate their MiLs/all MiLs are disadvantaged and innocent' and argue everything from that set perspective. There are no individuals or separate personalities involved: MiLs Are Good and Do Only Good Things and DiL's are Bad and Can Do Only Bad Things.

One the other day, having savaged the OP, let slip that she had had a terrible time with her MiL as a young wife and mother, had been very unhappy but had to live through it, there was no MN to help her form boundaries, replies, understand she did not have to live like this or helped her escape. So her expectation is naturally, ALL MiLs are like this; this is their right by virtue of the name; DiLs are second class citizens who must suck this up to be a good wife and mother (Like what she did) and anyone who does not do this is obviously a bad wife/mother/DiL. Because it's galling enough to see others getting supported when she had to numb herself and accept the abuse; when people make her question if she did the right thing then it's too threatening to stand.

That poor woman's trauma dumps all over many threads with MiL in the title; the word is a trigger. Many of the defensive EP type tactics and behaviours are visible in her post, and she sounds passionately supportive of MiLs everywhere. She's actually screaming out what happened to her 40 years ago. It's causing her a lot of fights and arguments and stress, I'm not sure she's better off or happier than modern generation liberated women who step away from relationships that feel intolerable. Her being so triggered by those women suggests she isn't sure either.