ALittleBitofVitriol
I understand exactly how you feel. It took my dh years and years to see how my mother, brother and sil were with me. My dh totally believed I was the issue because they hid the abuse from him so well. They’d snipe and snipe at me until I exploded (name calling, brother threatening to punch me / beat me up, both defining me etc) and he was incredulous because he was unaware of the whole thing. I couldn’t then explain to my dh what they’d said because it was just so confusing. Or if I did explain it would be the last thing they had said. He then saw this one comment as triggering my disproportionate, “crazy” reaction (I truly went crazy sometimes). In isolation of course it was. But it was the absolute last straw and off the back of years of abuse. (My father wasn’t around for any of it and a long time dead and buried.)
In consequence I believed him and them and he also by default then became another of my abusers. My mother, brother and his wife were therefore able to continue to use me as their narcissistic supply and abuse me in my own home a thousand miles away by a dh, who
when I tried to explain thought I should learn to behave when around them. It nearly cost me my marriage. They must have been very happy my marriage was troubled, which then gave them a) more right to abuse me as I wasn’t protected and b) more ammunition that they were everything right about the world and me everything wrong.
Gosh reading that back is so awful. This lasted over a decade btw.
It took me a long long time for the penny to drop that I wasn’t the issue and even longer for my dh to get it as I picked the situation apart and could tell him blow by blow what had actually been said. And even longer for me to challenge any comment. I never managed with my brother and his wife. I’m too afraid of them. She has psychopathic traits and he has been violent with me even recently and I’m disabled and chronically ill. Nc was the only answer there.
Nanna
It isn’t useful to create a hierarchy of what type of abuse is worse and comparing who was subjected to the worst abuse. For then there is always someone, whose suffering may / will have been greater. I have read pretty extensively about the different types of abuse. Emotional abuse can have more of a devastating affect on a person than physical abuse. I have read accounts of survivors of both have recounting the physical abuse being easier to bear.
I didn’t suffer much physical abuse although I was forced to witness my brother and dog being being beaten, which made me both withdraw and be terribly good as a child. I also didn’t have a concept of unconditional love until I was an adult. I can tell you exactly when my mother stopped giving me any semblance of unconditional love as well. I was 5 about months old... about the time a baby starts showing their likes and dislikes - I was weaned well before this age. I know this because of my reaction and feelings when my dd reaches 5 months and explored this through therapy. Even now thinking about those feelings, I’m feeling terrible fear coupled with absolute rage. 5 months was the age I stopped being the live girl doll she so craved and so she rejected me.
I wasn’t starved half to death or beaten to within an inch of my life or had my basic needs neglected but I would definitely not describe my abuse as “trivial”. I don’t find this type of comparison useful as every child’s reaction to a situation is different and some have more resources than others or access to outsiders, who give them self worth, which I didn’t have. So what if a lot of what I suffered from my mother would today be considered low level abuse. What I suffered from my brother on the traffic light system was a red. And my mother let it all happen whilst barely intervening. Even without the sexual stuff from him (he didn’t touch me it was to destroy me), the vile taunts or the violence, temporary imprisonment and regular suffocation he subjected me to, I still suffered greatly. I had no one to turn to and no loving grandparent or trusted aunt to confide in.
Bearbehind
The assertion that a child traditionally gets the father’s name is incorrect. Traditionally they get the mothers name. It’s just the mother usually takes the husbands name in marriage. This has not happened in ops case and she has for reasons other than tradition nonetheless upheld tradition. Regardless of all this her in laws are absolute arseholes for going nc about a surname.