2 questions about abusive parent or parents

[Riop]

1. in what way were they abusive? I feel like the things that happened to me weren’t a big deal sometimes even though it breaks me sill so long afterwards

1. did the tables ever turn where they suddenly needed you and it was your turn to decide how to treat them?

Clearly numbering doesn’t work on my phone in the middle of the night!!

Bump 😊

I suspect, OP, you might get more responses if you share your experiences first...

@WhiskersPete mine hit me, mocked me, told me they wished they hadn’t been so unlucky as to have a daughter like me. Left me for a week age 15, nice big house so looked like all was fine.

I just want one of them to need me and for ms to be able to emotionally neglect them too. I know that makes me awful but I feel broken by what they did even at 40

I went NC finally in my 30s when I was able to understand the extent of the abuse and damage it caused me to still see her. I will never be in a position of her needing me because I removed myself as an option.

Do you still speak with yours?

@WhiskersPete mine hit me, mocked me, told me they wished they hadn’t been so unlucky as to have a daughter like me. Left me for a week age 15, nice big house so looked like all was fine.

These are not small things and they are very definitely abusive. I'm sorry you had to go through those things OP and they would certainly affect most people for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps some therapy would allow you to gain some clarity on this and how you can move forward?

What happened to you was absolutely a big deal. Physical and emotional abuse, and neglect. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I was abused as a child and it took me until I was 22 to acknowledge it as abuse. It’s not uncommon to downplay or question the abuse.

As for your second question, yes. I turned my back on my mum when I was a teenager and didn’t speak to her again until I was 30. I turned my back on my dad when he was dying. I would say that, despite how they both treated me, it didn’t make me feel any better and ultimately I felt worse. I’m particularly haunted by how I handled my dad’s illness and if I could go back and do it differently I would. It’s complicated though and different things work for different people. In my experience coming to terms with these things is about acceptance and compassion for yourself, not revenge or even forgiveness. Are you having any therapy to help deal with this?

I didn't have great parents OP. I can see that they were very damaged people which explains my treatment but doesn't excuse it. I'm no contact now.

I suspect I'm not useful to them anyway because there is a golden child sibling who runs around after them. But I've escaped from their orbit and will lead a loving connected life with people around me. They were deeply transactional in relationships and I don't want to be like them.

To answer your question about how they were abusive:

Belittling, 'treat 'em mean keep 'em keen' attitude, would never apologise after an argument, would never accept an apology ever, never encouraged, would always find fault. Constant undermining about my appearance - my acne, weight, underconfidence with fashion. When I was sexually abused by an extended family member and nervously told my mother, she said to me 'this is really awkward for me, how do you think this makes me feel...'

I remember wearing a little eyeliner to a family event when I was 14 and on the way back, in the car, they told me that I looked like a slut.

However they did put food on the table, took me to the doctor and dentist when I needed it etc.

...and my father didn't hit me but my mother would.

Parents never hit me, or even shouted at me. Not overly affectionate as it wasn't the thing to cuddle your kids all the time. Also 3 siblings so a very crowded household. Somehow I knew they loved me though so I wasn't abused. I look back and think how much nicer my own kids have it as they are cuddled and talked to. Maybe a generational thing as my mother was 40 when I was born? I was under 30.

The things you describe are not small at all! You've been conditioned by your parents to believe that you deserved to be treated this way. Therefore their actions were right and just, "how could we possibly be abusive???? You're just too sensitive" so you find it hard to believe that they are actually wrong. And they are wrong - very wrong. My experience has been that they will never, ever agree with you or apologise no matter how clearly you spell it out for them. They will willfully misunderstand, they will deny it, they will blame you, they will sometimes just pretend you have said absolutely nothing and attempt to sweep it all under the rug (till the next time, of course). It's maddening, and it's devastating.

I do appreciate what you say about turning the tables on them in a situation where they needed you, but I want you to honestly think about what the best possible outcome would be there. You'd still need to put up with so much shit just for a weak little payoff of being able to say no to them. And it would be a hollow victory, bc It's not likely they will say "you were right and we were wrong, please forgive us. We love you dear daughter". And that, I suspect, is what you really want. I'm sorry but it won't happen.

The hard choice is the better choice here. Accept your parents as they are. They have never been the parents you deserved, and they will not change. And then move on with your life, putting yourself first - if that's no contact then do that. If it's low contact with very strong boundaries, go for it. But nothing changes if you change nothing, so don't keep plugging away and expect anything different. My therapist said to me that the only way to win with people like this is to refuse to play the game. The relief I felt at "getting off the pitch" honestly it was the first time I'd felt I could breath in decades.
If you are not in therapy then I'd recommend it. Also read "children of emotionally immature parents".

My parents don’t think they’ve ever done anything wrong at all. I have raised it now and then and they say I’m a brat and don’t know how lucky I was.

I have read so much and had therapy and in a way it made it worse.

when my marriage ended, they said no man ever really wanted me and it was ‘probably my attitude’ that caused it to breakdown. They are not nice people and being single has actually made it worse as I often feel alone so it highlights their treatment.

I know I would likely feel worse if I neglected them too but just once I would love to kick them when they were down.

when I had a miscarriage years ago, I was near suicidal. They both refer to this as a time where ‘their lives were made hell.’ Quite literally everything is about them.

@Eatingjumper oh my gosh you describe it all so accurately! I will look up that book.

OP you would get some really good advice on the Stately Homes threads. I agree with @Eatingjumper completely. They will never admit to themselves that what they did was wrong or apologise to you for the damage they did. My mother still tells everybody how cruel I am for ceasing contact with her and that she has no idea why I did so, even though I explained this to her very clearly before I went NC.

The only way you can move on from this is to process your own trauma and the grief you feel at not having had a warm and loving parent, so that you can accept that they are not capable of being the parent you wish for. It is a loss that you will always carry with you, but processing the trauma can stop it from affecting your daily life to such an extent so that you can find your own happiness and contentment, and build your self-esteem.

Have you tried/ looked into EMDR therapy? It is highly effective for processing trauma.

@Riop these parents are rarely original. Go to any forum where adult children discuss this and you will hear the same things over and over. It would be funny if it weren't so sad. There's the stately homes thread on mumsnet, reddit has an estranged adult children sub, theres a lot of help to be found in practical strategies on baby Centre DWIL (although they do not mince their words), and in the forums on Out of the Fog. Something I found very interesting and really spoke to me when I first started on this journey was Down the Rabbithole by Issendai. Just Google it and read from start to finish. I bet you can identify with a lot on there.

@RainingRubies @Eatingjumper i am feeling particularly stressed as I am pregnant and DP is very ill - he won’t be around for the baby at all. We will have to visit infrequently until he gets better (hopefully). This means 1) I am worried I will repeat patterns and 2) as this has happened so close to birth I’ve had to rely on my mum quite a bit to sort the house etc and generally assist and that will continue for a little while at least. It’s too late to sort anything else as this all happened to me and DP so late in pregnancy and I have to go with it. I feel very apprehensive.

@Riop you have such a lot of stress going on right now, I'm not surprised it all seems to have come to a head. For me, it was having children that really forced me to confront my parents behaviour. Once I knew what it was to be a parent I saw the things they did, the things they said about me, and the way they treated me in a totally new light. I could never do that to my children. They don't deserve it, and that led me to wonder if maybe I didn't either. I also realised that I couldn't allow them to do to my kids even a fraction of what they did to me. So I had the responsibility of trying to stop the rot with me. Which is no small feat, and hard to to without it bleeding into your parenting. It's great that you recognise this before you even start. You've got a head start on most of us. You need urgently rethink how involved in your life your mum still is. You need a plan. What would you do instead if your parents were 1000miles away or had passed away? Any friends? Partners family or friends? You need to find a way to stop relying on your mum, you'll never know peace with this level of contact. You can't even think clearly about what steps to take while she is in your house, cleaning. If it is truly unavoidable, what is the shortest possible time frame for this. When will it stop? Is she to be this involved in helping when the baby arrives? Like a substitute parent? Because I say this gently, but that is something you will regret.

Emotionally distant, cold, extremely harsh father. Judgemental and critical mother. When CSA in family came out they guilted, shamed, manipulated and silenced me. Then came a whole pile of denial, minimisation and rationalisation. They were generous with money and other forms of support and they had a good side but they were not good parents overall.

I am so sorry to hear about your DP.

I can imagine how hard it is to think of doing this on your own. But honestly, it will be much harder with toxic people in your life.

I do not say this lightly: I know first hand as I've raised my two children alone since they were both babies. It is relentless. But not in a million years would I let my toxic mother into my life to make it "easier". And anyway, you know that it won't. It can't.

For me, the reason I cut contact with her was because I was planning children with my now ex-H, and while I'd tolerated a lot of awful treatment to me - and I mean really awful abusive behaviour here - I could not contemplate letting her near my own children without her acknowledging and addressing it. I tried to talk to her. She stood up and walked away and then sent me a letter saying I was a liar. When she knew what happened, she was complicit in it all.

These people will never change. I cut contact then and although it is hard with two kids and no family support and no partner, it is doable. I have a full time job, I have bought us a house, both of my children have additional needs and I'm disabled myself but we manage to support ourselves. I feel stronger now that ever. It can be done. The idea of letting my toxic mother near my children is not something I would contemplate. It is not a solution, it is not help, it would be harmful to us all.

Try to focus on what you need to do now. It sounds like you have been through a great deal and have yet more trauma happening now, on top of pregnancy. Have you spoken to the perinatal health team? Please do - they are usually very supportive. Ask for trauma therapy, you can work through this. It will be hard but it is much, much healthier to do it alone than to have toxic people in your life. They always make things worse, you know this in your heart.

And now, as a parent myself, I find their behaviour to me even more incomprehensible. As a child I assumed it was normal, just how families were. Looking back that is devastating in itself. As I got into my late teens/ 20s I met other people's families properly and I realised that they are not like this. None of them were. Not at all. Sure they had frictions or disagreements or even arguments but they were not abusive and neglectful and spiteful.

But my thought then was "how could anybody do this to someone else". I still had no idea what family meant, what it felt like to be loved, as I'd never experienced it.

The real shock came after my children were born and I had this intense love for them like nobody else, ever. Completely normal of course but alien to me, as that abused child. That made all my memories and how I felt about my own childhood much worse because you feel this overwhelming love for your children and would do anything to protect them so it becomes unfathomable then how someone could actively choose to harm their own child, and it all hits you again.

I don't mean to scare you. But I really think you need your parents out of your life and to find a really good therapist to support you through the rollercoaster of feelings that you will have when your baby is born and you experience what a parent/ child relationship should be. And you have to habe support too, about your DP's illness. So please, focus on that. And I will keep checking this thread too if you do want to check back in and get more support here.