"But we took you to stately homes" - Part 4

[oneplusone]

Can't beleive we're onto part 4, although i can't see this thread ever dying.

I was just reading through past posts to try and catch up on the months i have missed and something somebody said has triggered something for me. I know my mother didn't bond with me or love me and i think part of the reason why was because she thought i took after my dad whom she hates (although she is too gutless to leave him). I remember when i was young her saying things like my hair was like my dad's but she wouldn't say it an affectionate way, but quite a venomous way and it always made me feel uncomfortable when she said that but i must have been too young to figure out why.

The more i realise about my mother the more i despise and hate her. I remember she used to play hide and seek with me when i was very young, about 3. Only she would 'really' hide in a place i would never be able to find her. I remember crying and feeling completely distressed one time as i thought she had gone and left me alone at home. It was only after i had been crying for some time that she jumped out laughing from her hiding place. What a nasty, cruel, ugly piece of work and she parades around looking as if butter wouldn't melt and she has a lot of people fooled including my 2 sisters. I know my dad can see her for what she is which is why she hates him and i can see her true colours too which is why i hate her.

I know inside she is deeply insecure, lacks intelligence, strength and integrity. I have witnessed her lie, manipulate and cheat to get what she wants and the people to whom she lies and those who she manipulates are us, her own family. I just can't beleive my sisters cannot see through her, they are totally blind and deaf to her true character and have completely fallen for the victim role she has carved out for herself.

Cutting off my parents was the best thing i ever did and i have realised i need to set some boundaries with my sisters, my last remaining friend and even DH. How to do that is another thing, something completely new to me.

AN it is hard for me accept that i don't have the sort of relationship with my sisters that i would like. But we have never had the sort of relationship that i would have liked and it is entirely possible that we never will. What you said hasn't upset me and i'm glad you have described it as a loss. I think this is probably yet another loss i need to properly process and feel, am not sure i have done so fully at this point.

My therapist said something similar to your therapist, ie you can feel the connection you want with other people in your life even though they are not related to you. I am sure this is true but a part of me is holding back from making connections with other people or getting too close.....I suppose in case i am hurt again, or they betray me or let me down. I suppose i have to learn to trust again. Not sure how to go about doing that to be honest. Perhaps i'm not ready yet.

You have perfectly described the divide between me and my sisters. I would so like to feel a real connection and solidarity with them but i know it's just not there. I suppose also at this point in my life i don't have any really close female friends like i have had in the past. This makes the lonliness feel even worse; in the past i have nearly always had a really strong close female friendship and i suppose this has sustained me in the absence of any connection with anyone in my 'family'.

These days I feel a lot closer to DH, but he is a mere man (!) and i can never really have the sort of conversation with him that i could with my female friends. All i can do i suppose is hope that the future will bring people into my life with whom i can feel a strong connection.

Just going back to my mother's situation for a bit; I am slightly worried about the fact that if she dies my sisters will be grief stricken whilst i will be relieved...do i put on an act for their sake...or? What do i do...........? I really cannot pretend i feel something i don't ever again. I guess i will have to cross that bridge when i come to it.

Trust is so gradual I think. People in your early life destroyed your faith in human nature. It is not your fault you don't trust easily. You will hopefully learn to realise that not everybody is like them and lots of people CAN be trusted and DO have feelings for other people because they love themselves first, having been given the confidence from their normal childhoods.

Unfortunately people can be drawn to the same types of people as from their childhoods who treat them similarly badly just because we are drawn to the familiar. If this happens your negative view of human nature will be reinforced. It is hard to 'remember' to seek out people who will treat you properly rather than 'falling' into similar relationships to what you have had already.

AN, yes you're right again! Yet another thing i have to start learning at the age of 38. Still not sure how to do it though. I do wonder how I managed to meet and marry DH with so many fundamentals missing in my repertoire of life skills. It really is a miracle that I found a decent, largely undamaged man and have managed to hang onto him for nearly 9 years.

I am having problems with DD again. Sometimes I find it so very hard to like her. This will sound awful but she really is not how I imagined a girl would be like. She is extemely loud, brash, not in the least bit shy, a complete attention seeker, extrovert, lively, non-stop chatty. I thought if i had a girl she would be kind of quiet and shy and i really do not know how to handle the DD i actually have. I don't know why i had the expectations i had about a girl (and i have already mentioned on here before i didn't actually want a girl, i was DESPERATE for a boy and would have been happy with 2 boys and no girls).

DS on the other hand whilst a typical boy in many ways, is also quite gentle and quieter than DD and i find it so much easier to get on with him and just be around him. Whenever i am around DD i just feel tense. She DEMANDS to be listened to ALL THE TIME and i honestly feel like i am going to explode sometimes. I do on many occasions simply tell her to stop talking and she does for around 2 minutes and then it starts again.

I honestly don't know if it's something to do with my childhood and the bad relationship i had with my mother and sisters or simply a personality clash between me and DD. When she has friends round to play they seem so much nicer than her and i KNOW they are not like this at their own homes as their mothers always tell me, but i am sure none of them talk quite so much as DD or are as limelight seeking.

DD seems to have no concentration whereas DS who is only 2.8 will sit himself down with a book and 'read' for ages. DD has NEVER done that. She is extremely draining and ideally if i could spend only an hour a day with her it would be more than enough.

I never really miss her when she's at school whereas i think about DS constantly when he's at nursery and miss him dreadfully sometimes.

I am sure a lot of this is to do with the fact that DD was unplanned and tbh i don't think i ever came to terms with the fact that i was going to have her, and after she was born i had severe PND which affected how we bonded (well we didn't bond is the truth of it) and now she is 5.5 I still feel no real connection with her and sometimes i can't even feel any love for her.

The awful anger and rage she used to trigger in me has gone and i have not lost the plot with her for a long time now. I thought when the anger was gone, it would be replaced by love. But that hasn't happened. I don't feel anything for her if i'm honest. Surely this has to be connected with my complete lack of feeling for my mother? Even admitting i feel nothing for DD is a huge step for me. I have been pretending to myself for a while that i do feel love for her but the truth is i don't. Not in my heart anyway, it's more a 'head' kind of love rather than a heart kind of love.

Sorry, have to go DC's are calling.

Hi all, me again. I feel awful for what i wrote about DD the other day. I realise now perhaps i was stressed out about the 'walking talking group support session' i was planning on going to at the weekend and also i think i had pmt. DD can be trying at times but i know i love her with all my heart. Sometimes though i find it hard to actually physically 'feel' the love i know i have inside for her if that makes any sense.

I feel over the past few days all i have been hearing and reading about is people who have perhaps lost a parent and how grief stricken and devastated they are, about how they loved their parent so much and were devoted to them. I cannot imagine how it would feel to have such strong loving emotions towards one's parents as that is something i cannot remember ever experiencing. And i feel sad; it is another loss, to have never known that sort of feeling, of strong intense love and attachment to one's parents. Over the last few years i know i have recovered many emotions that i had previously shut down or numbed, but love seems to be one emotion that i still find it hard to feel. At times i think i can feel something, say for DS or DH but i know it is not the intense, powerful feeling that i hear other people describing.

I will be very sad if i never get to experience the feeling of love, i hope it is not lost to me forever. I imagine i must have felt it at least once, when i was very young, before things started going wrong in our family. I am scared of the possibility though that if i did feel love as a small child, it was only in relation to my dad and not my mum and that this will somehow impact my current relationships. ie perhaps this is why i can feel the stirrings of love i suppose for DH and DS as they are male like my dad but not for DD as she is female like my mum. I worry that somehow i was 'imprinted' from a very young age to feel love for males and not females. But at the same time i have faith in the capacity of the human body and mind to heal and to feel the full range of emotions and i do hope that given time i will recover the ability to feel love.

I have decided to try and just forget about my sisters. They are in a completely different place to me and are definately toxic in their own ways, particularly and mostly my middle sister and i think it is definately in my best interests just to stay away. Am going to try and do that, but i think i need something to plug the gap. Need to make more an effort to get out and make some new friends. I find that so hard if not impossible though. I hold back so much, am really not sure how to move forward on this.

Sorry for rambling on about myself, ended up bursting into tears this morning out of the blue, just need to offload. Thanks to anyone who has managed to read my ramblings.

OnePlusOne, I wanted to reply sooner but have been busy/ill/DH complaining that I'm on laptop too much. I was worried that you would feel if nobody responded that you were being judged for what you said. You are often very brave in saying exactly what you mean on here and that seems a healthy thing that you should carry on doing.

I sometimes think we should meet up because we seem to have had similar issues with our DHs and our daughters sound EXACTLY the same!

This described our situation SO well: "Whenever i am around DD i just feel tense. She DEMANDS to be listened to ALL THE TIME and i honestly feel like i am going to explode sometimes. I do on many occasions simply tell her to stop talking and she does for around 2 minutes and then it starts again."

Like you, I sometimes find it hard to understand her because I was so different to her growing up. The things she demands and doesn't seem grateful for when she gets them, are things I wanted desperately but didn't get - to be listened to, to be noticed, to be admired, to be made to feel important. I see her expressing things - REALLY expressing herself - and I recognise her feelings as things I wanted/want to express, but was/am just too repressed. I'm wondering if I would have been more like her as a child if I had had better parents. I'm wondering if some of my anger towards her has been JEALOUSY. And some of it was because it seemed unfair that she got things that seem really valuable to me, yet she seems to take them for granted and then act ungratefully.

I felt like saying "Can't you see how lucky you are?", but the fact is that she isn't incredibly fortunate, she is just getting what ALL children SHOULD get and what all children deserve, and I should have got it too. She doesn't have to be grateful, she didn't choose to be born, I chose to bring her into the world and willingly took on the job of motherhood. And a thought that really makes me feel better is that when she is an adult, she WILL be grateful for what I've done for her THEN, when I have taught her how to cope in the real world and how to be happy and treat people well and to expect to be treated well and not accept bad treatment. She is too young to be grateful for what I do at the moment.

Some of my anger was also to do with her triggering how I felt about my brother. OnePlusOne, have I asked you this before? - could your DD be symbolising someone from your childhood in your subconscious and triggering the anger? Who would she symbolise WRT birth order in the family, male/femaleness (this one probably obviously your mother) or her personality?

Could there be a link with feelings about your mother of "It's all about her" and "What about me and what I want" when your DD is being so demanding and just taking, taking, taking like children do (which is probably normal). It was not normal for your mother to do it to you (the other way round).

I had to keep telling myself DD is not my brother, DD is DD. I make a habit of really LOOKING at my children and really SEEING them and what makes them THEM. This really seems to help with breaking the association with my brother. I made a list of things I really admire about DD and there is loads and she really is amazing! I also look at the kids and look at what makes them CHILDREN, and think how lucky I am to have this experience of having children. This helps me lower my expectations of them to behave more like adults. I think my faith in human nature was so damaged as a child that deep down I thought of people, especially children as being HORRIBLE. I've been working on seeing people differently.

People often say don't they "Children can be so cruel to each other". And when people have said "ALL siblings are awful to each other and this is normal" it has made me feel I am being pathetic to be affected by my brother. But I thought last night, how would it be if someone of the same relative size to me NOW, did the same things he did then, to me NOW, how would I feel? I could imagine how hurt and sad and humiliated and violated I would feel much more intensely than I can imagine myself as a child feeling it, how weird! Then I imagined my little DS going through it and I couldn't bear to think about it anymore. Then I thought about how small and puny and timid I was and how vulnerable I feel DS is and thought if my parents had loved me as much as I love DS how could they bear to let those things happen to me?

Sorry for keeping on going off on tangents.

OnePlusOne, I used to feel empty about my DD and sometimes hatred, very similar to how you describe things, and now it is a lot less like this than it was and I DO feel the love most of the time and just occassional periods of reverting back to how I felt before. I want to tell you this to give you hope that things CAN change. I have worked REALLY hard on it and still work at my relationship with her but I feel it can be done.

Hi oneplusone,
I think giving yourself a break from your sisters is a good idea. It seems that they are a source of frustration for you that you can do with out, for a while anyway.

About DD...have you tried to block out a little segment of time just for her? Focus on her-she wants attention, give her some. Even if it is just 15 min-kids really don't have a concept of time duration. Then explain that you need time for you and give her alone time activities like drawing/coloring-set her up with a little place just for her to draw (with supplies). You will be doing her a great favor by teaching her that she will be ok and happy doing a few things by herself-that she doesn't need someone else all the time.
My ds was very, velcro-but the kidsized drawing desk saved us.

As to making friends... yeah, I know where you are coming from.

First of all DH is my best friend, whether or not anyone else is around.
But we're talking about women friends.

It seems like my role has been cast and that is just the way it is. I know that I have been dystemic-nealy depressed for years. (I still consider acute fatigue in this assessment-separate from depression- but still a huge factor.) Apparently giving the appearance of being depressed-and who wants to be around someone like that? Even though I've made a lot of progress and feel a whole lot better, who gives a second, or third chance? Or even after knowing people superficially through the dc for years (they are in high school)-would those people give me another chance? Nope-they are mostly school teachers-what a clique.

I did make a friend ice skating. We go out to lunch every month or so. After becoming pg with dd2, I had to quit skating, but we still keep in touch. But now she is moving away (as soon as the house sells)...story of my life. This is sad, pathetic.

And, um, yes-even with all the above, I dumped my Middle Sister. She was that toxic. So maybe I just need a little more time to recover from her, and I'll be able to feel more comfortable relating to other people. That may be the very key to my situation. That is a little piece of the puzzle- thanks!

Sorry to whine on about it.

AN, thank you so much for your post and why you posted. Even though none of us know each other in RL I feel such a sense of support and caring on this thread, it makes me cry sometimes.

I feel so heartened by what you said in your last paragraph. I suppose i was hoping somebody would say exactly what you did; I really have been worried at times that my ability to feel love has been damaged/destroyed for ever. I know it's a very personal thing, but could you tell me what sort of things you did that helped you feel your love for your DD?

I also think you have opened up something for me by asking what does DD symbolise for me, as I think perhaps it is something more complex than simply the fact that she is a female and thus represents my mother/sisters. In terms of her personality she actually is closer in some ways to my father. He was also someone who never stopped talking, he would just ramble on and expect you to listen to him when what he was talking about had no relevance to you whatsoever. He would call me up at work sometimes and just talk endlessly about inane rubbish without even considering the fact that i might be busy etc. And out of politeness/respect/obligation i would just sit there and listen to him but inside i would be seething and growing increasinly resentful about his selfish rambling. Any interaction with him was always one way, he would never ask how i was, what i was doing etc, it was always about him, he just wanted somebody to sit there and listen to him and there was no reciprication. Afterwards i'm sure he felt satisfied as he had said all he wanted to, but i felt drained, used and resenftul.

I think you have really hit upon something for me AN, i have never considered this as a possibility before but now i am beginning to realise that DD's demands for attention and to be listened to make me feel EXACTLY the same way as my dad used to. I feel obliged to listen to DD but i myself get nothing out of the conversation; indeed it is not a conversation but is instead a one way street of her talking and me listening.

AN thank you. I appreciate so much you taking the time and trouble to think about my situation and responding to my post. Could there be anything in what i have said that might help you? Could there be a less obvious connection between your DD and something/someone from your childhood?

I have also had another realisation this morning about how my dad has 'trained' me to always be suspicious of people and to suspect their motives and to always think they have the worst of intentions. I realised yesterday after dropping off DS at his nursery that the sort of thoughts that were going through my head were along the lines of "I'm sure the staff in there are nice whilst I'm dropping off DS but once I'm gone I bet they are not so nice whether to DS or the other children there".

There is/was no reason for me to think along those lines, however much i hate dropping off DS, he never cries when i leave him and always seems happy when i pick him up. And the staff are always lovely whenever i turn up. The only reason i think things like that is because of my dad; that is the way he thinks about EVERYONE.He is convinced everybody around him has bad intentions towards him, that nobody can be trusted, that the minute his back is turned they will be up to no good. These are all the manifestations of paranoid personality disorder and i realised he had this disorder a while ago, but i hadn't realised how much of it had rubbed off on me.

No wonder i find it hard to trust people and make friends, i probably have these kind of negative thoughts going on all the time without my being aware of it.

All this unravelling is endless. And draining and tiring. But at the same time satisfying as it makes me feel i am really detaching and distancing myself from my parents at a deep level.

TMSB I kind of know how you feel about being given a second chance by people. I am in a similar situation. DD started school a year ago so is now in her second year. When she started i was in a very bad place and made really no effort with any of the other mums at a time when they were all busy making friends and getting to know each other. Now i am a bit more open to getting to know people but all the groups seem to have been formed and friendships made and it seems impossible to for me to join in now. I have not completely given up, but just wanted to say i know how you feel. I need a second chance too.

Re my sisters i am going to keep my distance. I will reply to mails if they send them but otherwise i am not going to make any contact. I have things i would like to say to middle sister, and i intend to do that. Am not going to protect her any longer at the expense of myself. It willl be a good test of our relationship to see how she responds to what i have to say as i'm sure she won't like it. I will probably get the typical toxic response and all this will do is confirm my suspicions as to her toxicity.

Thank you once again to both of you, AN and TMSB, i can't tell you how much your thoughts and words mean to me.

OnePlusOne, we are all gradually untangling our thoughts aren't we. I find this thread so helpful for getting me to think about things along different lines and from different angles.

Your post has provoked these thoughts:

Thought no. 1 - My mum has quite a negative view of the world. I didn't notice it really until fairly recently. I had a few separate days with her when it felt like an ongoing battle to stay positive and to keep saying positive things in the face of her negative comments about situations, people, herself etc, and attitude of wanting to give up on things and feel crap about them instead of doing something to make it better. I think she did give me a view of the world as being a horrible place where people look out for themselves and you have to do what you can to get what you want and not worry about other people's feelings too much because nobody else will care enough to help you. God she seems lonely and her heart seems closed off from people. She seems weak to me because she hasn't made an effort to make her life what she wants and make herself feel better about herself.

But I've had some advantages over her I suppose:

• time away from the children during the week so that I can think about things.
• Labour saving gadgets.
• Therapy.
• More opportunities to meet more people than her throughout my life and find people who treat me the way I want to be treated.
• Also, seeing more people I have the chance to learn what 'normal' is and she has always been fairly isolated from the 'real world'.
• More opportunity to talk about things whereas in the 'old' days it was 'stiff upper lip'.
• Opportunity to have more than one 'living with someone' relationship rather than being subconsciously drawn to someone who treats you similarly badly to how you've been treated in the past but then getting stuck with them for the rest of your life because in those days you got married younger, had children and put up with things you don't like and don't get a divorce because it is not 'respectable' for that generation.
• She has always let the man have the power so she doesn't go out and do her own thing much and doesn't feel capable enough to cope without him anyway even if she did want to leave.

Despite what Therapist says about "There may be reasons behind what people did but this does not EXCUSE it", the reasons that I can understand DO help me feel less angry. Rather than seeing things as what people did TO me, I see it more as just a load of "bloody bad luck" (another quote from my therapist).

Thought no. 2 - DD is one of the 'cool gang' at school and the 'cool gang' always pissed me off when I was growing up. Feeling excluded from them because I wasn't cool enough made me angry. Feeling less important than them made me angry. It wasn't MY fault my mother dressed me in an old fashioned way, I had an uncool image because my dad was the deputy headteacher and I had no confidence due to bad parenting and abuse. I feel happy for my daughter that she is 'cool' and I feel admiration for her but I also feel jealousy and a pang of sadness for the difference between her and the way I was. When I look at girls in her class who seem to be not included in the 'gang' I feel awful for them and feel that DD should help them. The thought that she might be one of the girls making them feel as crap as I used to feel makes me feel very uncomfortable.

Is there anyone about? I feel I need to talk some things through.

Hi Nabster, don't spose you are there now as it's late. Sorry wasn't around earlier. Hope you are ok. What thoughts have you been having?

I am the complete opposite to my MIL and can't understand this as people do say you choose a woman like your mother, why would this be? oR maybe i am more like her than I care to realise!

A shift is going on in my head and I'm thinking I don't want to try to help 'them' anymore. I don't want the responsibility. I don't want to put myself, DCs and DH through what it takes to do the things I feel guilty about not doing. I might have the ability to help them but does that mean I SHOULD help them? It was their duty to help me and they didn't. I don't have a duty to help them (only a self-imposed one). I just want to escape from them. I just want my own life which I have worked hard to make it the way I want it. I don't want it 'tainted' by having 'them' in it. I want them to leave me alone. I feel like hiding away from everyone and everything today. I want to be left alone.

I feel lost.

I think the most important place we should look for if we are lost NAB is the place where we are a good mother to our own DCs and a good wife. If we are making our DCs and DH feel loved we are doing a good job and who cares much about all the other pointless everyday tasks if we can't be hyper organised and manage them all efficiently.

I wish I could see into the future (don't we all?) even just a few months and see that we are through all this cr*p.

I've read that if you visualise things being the way you want them and practice doing this, it makes it more likely to happen. It might sound like mumbo jumbo but I think there may be some logic to it. I think it might make your brain subconsciously work on how to make it happen and you might change what you do and do things that work towards what you want without even realising you are doing it.

What I want won't ever happen and I dont want to do what I should do and might be easier to live with.

That is quite a dilemma then and an impossible sounding situation! Is there a way to find some bits of contentment with what you have got and with the life you 'should' have? Otherwise how can you ever be happy if you can't have what you really want? Is there a way to make yourself not want the thing you can't have? I know this is easy to say and extremely difficult to do. It seems like you are really struggling with it.

I definitely need to stop wanting what I can't have. I have wanted it for years and never felt like I would have anything close. Now I have and it is actually causing me pain and upset but it is like I can't stop myself and I don't want too and it is like I deserve it somehow.

The deserving it bit sounds like turning your anger in on yourself because you feel you can't express it at the person/people who made you angry in the first place?

The not wanting to stop yourself wanting the 'forbidden thing' - something about thinking about it must feel good/addictive? Is it a kind of precious fantasy? If it is, would it REALLY be all that you think it would? Could you make what you have got resemble the fantasy more? Does anybody you know have anything resembling what you think you want? Or is it really an ideal which doesn't exist in reality?

Are you thinking that what you have got is ok but what if you are missing out on something that could be better?

I think if things are just OK, OK is quite a big deal, especially compared to what some people have got or compared to what you had in the past. I think contentment is quite a hard habit to learn.

I think they know I am pissed off with them but it is very hard when all your contact is emails with ages in between them.

I want my ex in my life. I know it could only ever be as a friend but I am finidng it so hard to let go.

I torture myself by clicking on emails constantly, I look at his photo and his name in my mobile. It is all completely mad. His life is unchanged as his wife knows nothing and it is all on his terms. If I email him he will sometimes reply but otherwise he doesn't.

Being with him might be better for a while while he takes me to bed (what he would want to so apparently and that is why we can't be friends) but then I can't see it lasting forever. I wouldn't leave my hubby anyway. I just want to be able to rely on him. Just for once. He is blowing hot and cold and it is driving me crazy.

Hubby blowing hot and cold or ex?

If you think it wouldn't last with ex then it seems like you think it WOULDN'T be the perfect fantasy relationship and you would end up with nothing! So it is illogical (as you probably already know) to want him.

What is it you specifically miss/want about your ex? Is it a certain way he makes you feel rather than HIM as a person? If you know what this feeling is then you know what you feel is missing in your life which you could work on with your DH?

It is my ex.

I would never leave my hubby but want my ex in my life somehow. I can't believe he has come back into it in a way and things have been the way they have.

I guess I miss how I felt when I was with him. I find motherhood really really hard and miss being away from all the friends I had when we were together and I guess it is all tied up with wishing I was back then again, being able to do things differently. What I had with ex I couldn't have with Dh but also the strong relationship that DH and I have, isn't anything like the one that ex and I had. We were teenagers, it was all rows and snogs.

I can't really explain how I feel about my ex and why he almost has this hold over me.

So is it a more carefree, fun life that you miss where you are allowed to be frivolous because you don't have the weight of responsibility? Does it show a need to escape from all the worries hanging over you and weighing you down at the moment?

I expect so.

I also put everything into him. He was on a huge pedestal. No one before him had ever liked me. No parents, etc. I miss what we had, I miss him.

I had always thought about him but being back in touch and him saying I am the love of his life and all the stuff he felt before and had been trying to find me for ages and thought about me over the years, just made me feel so