Is it easier to be the scapegoat or the golden child?

[Simplefoke]

Just wondering which is the lesser of 2 evils?

That isn't a true GC, if she was expected to do everything (IMO) That sounds more like rigid gender roles. A true GC is spoiled to within an inch of their life and has all their tantrums waved away, not expected to work as a drudge.

It's equally bad but in different ways. Neither is 'easier' in the long run but I suspect that it feels easier to the golden child when they are younger because they can do no wrong.

My brother was the golden child and I was the scapegoat.

We've both had therapy for the impact and it was damaging to both of us.

Summed up - I've never felt I was 'good enough' and he became very angry and confused with the world because it didn't recognise his 'specialness'. I could see that it had damaged him before he could. He just believed he was well within his rights to feel like he did because he was 'right'.

We went no contact with our mother in our 30s and had some very long and candid conversations about it all in our 30s and early 40s.

He admitted that he had grown up believing our parents' version of me, which was damaging because he had been very dismissive and critical of me since a young child which continued into our 30s and had also believed that life would come easily to him becaise he'd done all the 'right' things.

Eg when my husband had an affair and I ended the marriage, my brother blamed me for ruining the memories of his wedding (my husband had been his best man) and denying his daughter an uncle etc. It was all about him and how he felt and how it affected him because, growing up, that had been the only thing that mattered. It was 3 years before he asked me how I was. When he did, I pointed this out. He cried and apologised and that was the start of us repairing our relationship.

We're both approaching 50 now and our relationship is much better. We don't see each other very often, once or twice a year at most, but it's always nice when we do.

Our mother, in particular, pitted us against each other and tried to create sibling rivalry between us. Largely so she could tell people how she suffered because of us/how I had negatively impacted him too. We have also realised there was a degree of 'emotional incest' going on between my mother and him. She was a very unpleasant woman.

In reality we have been a huge support to each other as we've grown older and are immensely proud of each other's achievements/who we are and we have both raised lovely childen who get on well.

But it's been a long road and we have had to build it ourselves

@GreyCarpet Ive come to understand my
partner and therefor me and our children are the scalegoat and his brother and his partner and kids are the golden child. It’s been awful over the years and I’ve decided to cut contact as it’s damaging me. I feel for my partner. He definitely has attachment issues as he hoards and he struggles with emotions and gets so anxious about his possessions.

Scapegoat lol

I don't know if my experience is typical, but I'd imagine it is in essence.

I think the dynamic is very complex and it requires 3 components. The parent, the SG and the GC. It can't survive if one of the elements is removed.

My dad left just before my 18th birthday. I didn't realise that she'd been just as emotionally abusive towards him until he left because then I 'inherited' the crap she gave him along with the crap I had anyway.

When I left home to go to university at 18 (moved to an entirely different city), my brother was required to fill both the role of SG and GC and would alternate wildly between the two. He would be everything to her - the GC who could do no wrong and the SG who could do no right. He didn't know which he was going to be on any given day and he would call me at university in tears because he couldn't cope. She'd puck up the other extension and scream at him for his disloyalty and at me for not being able to leave my brother alone to thrive without me. He was 15.

My brother wasn't allowed to leave home to go to university because she didn't want him to leave her. So it's not a positive dynamic/position, that of the GC. When he finally did move out (at 22) she considered it to be a huge betrayal.

One of her favourites, in our early 30s, was to rewrite her Will favouring one over the other. But it was never because I became the GC.

When the Will was in his favour, it was because he was deserving, when it favoured me, it was to punish him and designed to get him to correct his behaviour. It was never because she felt I was 'deserving'. It was her way of saying, "You're even less than her."

Tbh, it must have been exhausting for her - all that hatred, hurt, battling, manipulating...

I had a friend who was a family therapist.

He said this is quite common.

The SG seeks to put distance between them and create a life away from the parent. They don't have a choice.

Whereas the GC believes that they are 'better' and constantly craves the adulation that being the GC affords. He said it was far harder for the GC to break away because they will never find that anywhere else and struggle with that.

It was certainly true in our case.

My partner is Autistic and I think maybe it’s help shield him from the effects of being the scapegoat as he doesn’t really understand the social dynamics. But then again the hoarding and attachment to objects suggests the effects are there deep down.

Ironically I have been both.
My narcissist mother has two daughters and I was GC for about 30 years until I realised she was a narcissist and tried to distance - I refused her deep injection into everything I did.
Then I became enemy number 1 and sister became GC.
In my opinion being GC doesn't FEEL worse but IS worse.
I'm 51 and my sister is 41 and has no life. She is spoilt by all my mother's love and attention but has no independence - she is not allowed a single independent thought.

I am free. I have pain looking at SM and at Christmas etc. but it's better this way.

@Planetmuff the family photos definitely sting but deep down you know they come at a price. It’s hard.

In my opinion being GC doesn't FEEL worse but IS worse

@Planetmuff that is a good observation. I have been both. My sister and I were SG growing up but when I had kids my mother adored my eldest and she became GC and I benefited enormously from that. I got tonnes of practical support from my mother but I became very emotionally enmeshed with her. It felt incredibly good but it was unbelievably damaging.

Then my father’s GC’s (our eldest brother) abuse of my sister and I came out and the two of them (my parents) closed ranks because my father sided with his GC. I went to mediation with my father which was an utter disaster because he has such warped views and said all sorts of damaging shit in therapy so I just left as I started to see the reality of the situation.

All of us children were lacking from both of our parent’s lacks. But my GC brother and my other SG sister definitely fared the worst. My SG sister married her version of my father and that cycle has continued with their own children. I think on our family the ultimate SG and the ultimate GC have fared really badly.

It felt awful to be the SG growing up, but like so many have said, it meant I was motivated to get away; meanwhile my mother has turned my GC brother into her support animal and pseudo husband. She's riddled him with an arrogance/low self-esteem combo that ensures no decent woman will touch him (and she throws tantrums and fakes illness when he looks like he might actually be meeting someone), so all he has in his fifties is an unhealthy enmeshment with Mommy Dearest.

She has kept him deliberately helpless, but thinks that when she's gone a 'little woman' will slot in and take care of him. I think he's going to lose his goddamn mind. ☹️

It feels in my relationship that my partner was perhaps the GC growing up and the brother the SG. He left asap and was a father so young to a 17 year old girlfriend. I feel like he is in a competition with my partner and my partner being autistic is totally oblivious to it all. He calls my partner golden balls and said he was the golden child. Now that I’ve got with my partner his mum has abandoned him and us and seems really pissed off. The other brother is bathing in the limelight now and my partner is just getting on with life.

Thats why I was wondering if the situation is interchangeable.