**This thread has been very cathartic. Thanks to all for sharing their stories and my heart goes out to you all.
I’m the eldest of 3 boys. Growing up seemed mostly ok at the time, but looking back it was punctuated with dreadful episodes where there was a brooding sense of anger and hostility in the house.
My father used to refer to my mother as “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” when she would go into her moods and sulk for days on end.
It could have been for any manner of things. Her sister maybe looked at her the wrong way or made a comment that she didn’t like. She had been shopping that day and hadn’t seen anything she liked. I had exhibited some independent thought and will perhaps, as I often did.
I remember a holiday in particular when my Dad lost his shit with her in the car. She could be so mean. He drove us all into a field and got out and walked away. Much distress but not from her. He came back of course.
All my life I was reminded that “I AM YOUR MOTHER”. I felt a need to please her or at least keep her sweet to avoid moods.
She and my dad were mostly estranged from his family. This was seemingly fine. I think they probably WERE dysfunctional and idiotic.
I remember her flying into a rage when I was about 14 at the idea I might have a girlfriend. Her rages were always just cruel speech, veiled threats etc.
Into adulthood I was still living at home aged 26. I had briefly moved into a flat for 6 months to look after it for someone and this caused absolute outrage. But it gave me a taste for freedom.
So I decided to change my life. I began to focus on my career and aspirations and met by wife to be. This caused visible discomfort, and a lot of “you’ve changed” chat. They then fell out with my brother and his wife after their first child was born. B and SIL were outraged by boundary infractions.
Wife and I got on fine with them for a few years but we always had to keep her and increasingly THEM, sweet. Even then, “what have you done for me lately” was a sword of Damocles hanging over us.
Wedding preparation required a lot of keeping Mum sweet and yet I got constant jibes including on my wedding day about how a mother’s a mother all of her life, a son’s a son until he takes a wife and how nobody cares about the mother of the groom etc. that day passed off peacefully and very well, thankfully.
My father is an enabler with some narc tendencies. I used to feel sorry for him but after he stopped working and his world and perspective became smaller, his narcissism grew. So now I had 2 to deal with.
This escalated quickly after our first son was born.
Wife had emergency C section and then some considerable PTSD and PND. We also had some other significant difficulties going on in our lives at the time.
Parents turned up ridiculously late to see our son at visiting in hospital. They apparently couldn’t find the right greeting card. Then as we tried to adjust to our new life at home we committed the heinous crime of saying no to a proposed lunch date for my wife’s birthday. We just wanted to stay at home that day and she was still really quite unwell but this did not suit.
I got busy and was no longer speaking to them in the phone every day. I called after a week and spoke to my dad to hear her shrieking in the background “he only phoned when we wants something, we’re no longer of use it seems!!!”
Stress levels rising.
To manage the situation I arranged another visit to see them and bring the baby. We had been there 2 weeks previously but I had heard through the family grapevine that she had been moaning about not having seen HER grandson in weeks.
We went only to find they had taken themselves out for the day. Mind games. I was mortified in front of my wife.
Then I started to get real heat for not having taken baby to see my grandmother yet. So I arranged that but on the way we bumped into my parents at a coffee shop and mother managed to wangle coming with us.
The visit became very tense with my mother constantly referring to our son as HER boy and criticising her hat we had dressed him in blah blah blah.
Very tense car ride home. My wife was furious but to keep some peace and for my sake sent an apology text which was received with no grace whatsoever.
Over the next few months we hardly saw them until a family wedding where my mother behaved appallingly and made a huge scene, shrieking at me in front of everyone because we were leaving at 7.30pm with our baby. All day she had been just awful, face like fizz for fuck knows what. I drove away that day, crippled with stress and just dropped the rope.
A couple of months passed and I was invited for peace talks. I went and received a barrage of abuse and list of where I was failing to meet their expectations.
I walked out. A long time passed and my dad then started asking me to meet for coffee. I did this but had to listen to the same absolute drivel over and over, reminding me of when he used to phone me constantly in the middle of the working day to moan about completely irrelevant nonsense or go on about the Illuminati and how David Icke might have a point.
So I stopped meeting him. Over the years then I would get sporadic sad messages which I ignored but then phone calls, messages, voicemails, him phoning my work, hanging around outside my work to catch me on the way out etc.
I blocked them on everything and lost contact with the rest of my family because I can’t bare to be chastised of be sucked back in.
No contact for some time and then I got an email a few months ago saying URGENT, please call! So I steeled myself and did. It was absolutely nothing. Having unblocked him to make the call, I was then sent lots of messages including photos of dead family members etc. Just classic emotional manipulation. Eventually I stopped replying and it’s been quiet since.
The pain and stress of it all has been incredible. Yet there have been upsides including the relief of not having to deal with them.
When I think back to my childhood I can honestly remember no actual affection. I was not mistreated or abused certainly but I don’t recall cuddles at all, unless there had been a massive blowup and it was being repaired.
I felt from a young age that they did not see me as an actual person but rather a thing of theirs.
My youngest brother moved to America after being enmeshed until his mid 20s. They have since fallen out with so many people and I noted growing up that they could not maintain friendships for any length of time.
In the beginning of it all I partly blamed my wife but I have long since seen that she was legitimately saying NO WAY to the dysfunction.
I see absolutely no hope of a reconciliation. The behaviours will creep back in and my mother’s ego will never allow it. In all this time she has reached out to me once, bee early on. A nasty text message about missing my dad’s birthday.
The also pull stunts like sending me birthday cards to my work saying stuff like “thinking of you on your birthday, even though you’ve dumped us”, crap like that.
There’s so much more but I can’t think just now.
And breathe!!!!