When did you realise you'd been affected?

[RandLequals]

I've always known my upbringing had an effect on my actions and relationships but it seems to have only just recently started to hit me exactly how much it has influenced my decisions and actions etc.

Without going into details..I always put the blame for everything on my absent parent and felt that my resident parent did their best / made the best of a bad situation. I've never really had a problem with the resident parent and sort of excused their behaviour for them. "They were young and left in a shit situation" and "They were depressed and dealt with it as best they could" ... Recently however I've started to realise that no excuse covers the, to be blunt, years of emotional and basic neglect that we went through with them. No they never hit us or intentionally starved us. But when I am age 9 and I am coming home from school and making me and my younger siblings dinner and waking up parent as they have slept all day ... After me getting us all ready for school in the morning because they were asleep. That is negligent.

My self esteem my whole life has been awful. I have made terrible relationship decisions up until my DH ... Ive let myself be cheated on and abused and treated poorly because it was almost what I thought was normal if that makes sense.

It is only now that I am in what I think is a secure, normal relationship ... Thinking about children of my own, medicated for depression and anxiety and a year into therapy that I am realising how much resentment I have and how affected I am.

I've never really considered myself a "victim" or even really considered that i have been affected by neglect or abuse or rape ... I just thought it was normal behaviours of parents, boyfriends etc. I put my bad choices down to low self confidence and being "promiscuous" to make up for feeling unloved. But no still means no. And having had a few partners in the past doesn't give you the right to degrade me or cheat on me.

Sorry. This has turned into a rant! My question is ... Did you have a "lightbulb" moment. What did it take for you to realise that everything wasn't okay?

I'm now questioning my every decision and thought and wondering if I'm alone in this.

It took me until my 40s and it was only when my mum treated my son as poorly as she'd treated me when I was his age.

When I asked my DCs for opinions and listened to them (from 30s) I knew my dad had been highly controlling. I married and stayed almost for two decades with a controlling man. It was what I knew and accepted. My relationship with DCs helped me start to realise that control isn't right. I'm fairly free from both now. Happily have very little contact.

I am now mid 30s and only recently have realised my issues stem from the non absent parent and her addiction issues, coupled with her narcissism. My amazing DP has been a massively steadying influence on my life and has helped me laugh at her behaviour and not take it on as my fault.

My DMs behaviour hasn't changed now her fortunes are better. There is nothing I can do to change her and that almost makes me feel freer.

I just do my absolute best to make my children's lives as good as they can be and consider their feelings rather than just making a shit decision and then blaming everyone else, including the children, when it doesn't work out. Which is and always will be my Mums way. She still expects people to make massive allowances for her lifestyle but we don't play her games and so it's better.

When my own child became a toddler, and I realised (gradually)many things that I had been told, and remembered were not only a bit odd, but completely not normal and as a parent myself I simply could not imagine behaving that way.

It is hard, and changes everything.

When I became a mother. I thought of all the things I went through and couldn't ever imagine putting DD through them.

When I got together with DH and realised I'd spent years thinking OK was what to aim for in a relationship.

Mum and dad were ok, not madly in love or made for each other. I didn't know what a relationship should be and spent too long invested in relationships that weren't right and being terribly hurt when the boyfriend ended it because it wasn't right, rather than being explicitly wrong.

Everything was about staying together and not failing.

I now know it's this that led me to not realise I was in an abusive relationship and minimise the rape to try to stay in yet another relationship that was not right.