Our 6th visit to the Stately Home.....

[oneplusone]

Hi all, took the liberty of starting a new thread. Keep on posting!

Thank you TRSmithfield for understanding things. DH hates visiting my parents but does it for me. The kids are still too young to notice the 'weirdness'. Thank you for making me feel like NOT a drip for finding it difficult .

I can't bear the thought of my children having my parents as parents.

Yes I did start to see my dad as being selfish on the last visit and started to feel sorry for my mum and how it must have been for her for years. I couldn't really see that before.

Will write more tomorrow, but thank you

WTSA - the syndrome you describe of becoming dependent on and identifying with your abuser is known as Stockholm Syndrome, just thought I'd drop it in! It's something my therapist brings up quite often, and I think it's very very real, this process where you can almost fall in love with the person trying to destroy you. The most famous example I think is Patti Hearst, the daughter of wealthy financiers, who was kidnapped in the 70's and held for a long time by an extremist group, and ended up going over to their side and becoming part of their group, fighting for their cause. And lots of examples of women being abused over long periods of time and feeling like they have a "special bond" with their abuser - it's a way of protecting yourself against the awful reality, when the pain of that reality would be too much for you to handle.

Wrt to your eczema and you writing about it, just wanted to affirm that as a fellow long term eczema sufferer (though hardly at all now) I do get a lot of what you say, and it is something hard to understand maybe if you haven't had it. What it feels like to have this thing eating away at you from the inside, something in you attacking you, your own flesh that just won't heal. Of course now we know that it did come from somewhere.

OSAHM, my god, your father! That story about the stickers and your DD told me so much about him. He is a complete child emotionally, isn't he? I mean absolutely no adult's maturity whatsoever. To see himself as the victim of a gorgeous little girl's adorable little game - and it was really adorable - is quite horrifying. I'm so sorry for you that this is the man that was your father, that brought you up. It would have been terrifying.

Can I just ask about the link between eczema and abuse that you have been mentioning? It seems quite a few of us suffer from it?

However I am worried because my DD who is only six months has a bit of eczema on her back. I think I am being a good mum to her but now I am not sure

roseability - I wouldn't worry about your daughter having eczema. It is common in babies. It really doesn't mean they're all being abused That so isn't the case. It has a strong genetic component, and is also caused by environmental factors.

wanttostartafresh - what you said about friendships is interesting. About your sisters though - do you see a therapist? Forgive me if this is too blunt, but I do think you need to view your sisters with a fresh perspective. I'm a bit hestitant about lay people diagnosing others with mental conditions; I know that it is important for some of us to realise that our parents had severe limitations. I think my parents are narcisstic but I have got that term and view from the therapist I used to see, who said that my parents were so narcissistic, I'd done well not to become pyschotic . I just think, given you have diagnosed your entire family, that it is perhaps unfair of you to say that both your sisters have no self awareness. Maybe that is just your viewpoint because you're only seeing them in a particular way, and they're not seeing what you want them to see? I'm not just going on this thread, btw, I'm also going by a thread you wrote a while ago about your sisters and I know other posters on that were trying to get you to look at things differently.

I do really appreciate that it is v. difficult when siblings are parented differently. My younger brother wasn't physically abused by our mother like I was. They have a very different relationship. My brother sees my mother in a completely different way from me. This has been difficult and has affected our relationship, but I have never tried to get him to see things differently, I accept that it doesn't. What it has come down to is that I have had to say to him, this is your view, this is my view, I respect you feel the way you do, and you have to respect that I feel they way I do even though you don't agree with it. That means you have to accept that I have certain boundaries when it comes to our mother.

My brother got the message - it took a few gos! - and things are a lot more manageable.

WRT not responding to your sister's text - if you blank them without explaining why, then yes, they may well think that is you being difficult. That would be an acceptable viewpoint. I think that withdrawing from them and hoping that will force them to see things your way is game-playing, frankly. I would suggest that it is more mature to respond to the text but not make moves to see them, or, even better, explain that you need some time to process some stuff and will be in touch when you're ready.

OSAHM - it does sound possible that your father may not be able to help being so emotionally inflexible. He does sound very rigid. I know how draining that is. My father is incredibly controlling. My mother always marched to the beat of his drum, most of her opinions are his opinions. He is very dominant. I have always seen her as pathetically weak, and as she was the one who would physically beat me up, I have always felt a lot of contempt for her. But the therapy I've had, plus recently seeing her on her own as my father won't see me (which actually suits me), has made me realise that my father really is the one who controls the atmosphere. Like you, I would feel so tense at home. It has taken a concerted effort on my part to be myself round them.

Although I found Christmas difficult, I had a breakthrough in terms of finally putting to bed certain issues I have about two friendships. I have accepted that they can't be how I'd like, and I've moved on and appreciated what I do have.

Spiky, it makes me feel slightly better to think that my dad 'can't help it' and to feel sorry for my mum for how hard it must have been for her to be with him and appreciate how hard it would have been for her to contemplate helping me with bad things that were happening as a child. These things mean that it wasn't because I was crap and 'not worth it' but because of their own problems.

Sometimes I do feel bitter and sad still though and this 'fights' with my thoughts about the above. I think fuck it, why should I feel sorry for them and make excuses for them Who is going to feel sorry for me, for how it was for me. But now I have told people more of it, especially Therapist and they have made me feel they feel sorry for me, especially the people who make me feel they really understand and have really heard me, this feeling is easing as well. I have the odd 'flare up' though and start venting loads of drivel onto this thread I'm very grateful to you all for 'listening'.

WTSAfresh, in one of your posts you talked about wanting an excuse to hide behind. I feel this too. In some ways I feel that I have not 'achieved' my potential and that people in general see me as a bit thick and not very successful/hardworking/clever because I didn't have a mega career. I rely on a man to provide financially for me and I am not confident enough to be independent about earning money, driving anywhere further than my county etc. I sometimes feel a bit rubbish and that I need people to be more impressed by me. Going on about the difficulties I found with my childhood and how it has affected my long term confidence is my 'excuse'. When people understand/'believe' me I feel 'justified' in being a bit crap. I feel I don't have to judge myself for being a bit crap.

I feel I am 'improving' and becoming less crap all the time, but I achieve 'success' more slowly and gradually than other people I think. I don't want to feel I hold myself back by holding onto my excuse or that I'm letting those twats from the past make my life crap - why should I be crap and have a crap life just because they are crap?!
But at the same time my excuse makes me feel better about how much I have/haven't achieved so far. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, just drivelling as I think!

Right, here is how I'm going to think of it - I didn't have the 'headstart' I consider other people to have had so I haven't progressed with my own personal achievements as fast maybe, but as I'm beating/fighting the negativity from past experiences/people and learning some useful lessons from it even, I am 'catching up' and getting up to speed with everyone else! Achievement doesn't have to be a paid career. It can be in my abilities as a mother/wife/friend and in music and art, and knowledge and wisdom bla bla bla. I'm going to keep on making my life good to 'spite' all the twats in a way! They aren't going to 'beat' me or make me as crap as them. I think this can be part of what damaged people sometimes do - make other people feel crap and subconsciously influence them into being as crap as them because it makes them feel better - somehow justified by numbers, in being crap.

OSAHM, reading your description of your parents' reminded me of my onw. My dad was totally dominating and crushed my mother's personality (to the point where i truly thought she didn't have one at all but that can't be true); my mother was like a scared rabbit caught in the headlights whenever he was around. In fact when i lived at home, any time my dad was out of the house, it felt like the black cloud that had been hovering menacingly and threateningly overhead had gone. And whenever he was around there was that feeling of oppression and suffocation, we were all walking on eggshells and couldn't be ourselves at all.

And like your dad, mine wasn't particularly physically violent towards us (apart from on a couple of occasions) but somehow we were all scared of him, because he was very verbally vicious and violent and also passive aggressive and sulky; he could terrify you just with his cold uncaring hate filled stare.

I feel there is so much written about child sexual abuse and physical abuse but the sort of abuse i went through was far less overt and much more hidden and it seems it goes largely unnoticed and undetected and therefore is not written about or publicised as much or at all. But it sounds like you went through something similar and there must be many more people who had similar childhoods but who may not even realise it was abusive as it does not fit the more obvious types of abuse.

I have been thinking about why I seem so focussed at the moment on issues surrounding my eczema. For years i found it very hard to talk about at all, even on this thread when i first started posting, i remember wanting to mention it and talk about it, but feeling completely unable to. I am beginning to realise that my eczema has always caused me to feel a lot of very difficult and painful emotions none of which i have ever expressed. My eczema has also meant that i am 'different' from other people and the nasty, thoughtless, bullies in my life have used it to pick on me with, just like a school bully usually picks a target who is different in some way from the others. But ironically, i was never picked on or bullied at school because of my eczema (apart from a horrible dinner lady at junior school who i remember making a nasty comment to me about it when i was about 10/11), the bullying and tormenting and nasty comments have always been made by family; in particular middle sister, my dad and MIL. Over the years there has been the odd person who might have made a hurtful insensetive remark, but somehow these have never felt as hurtful to me as the nasty comments and remarks made by my own family, people who i thought cared about me.

And i have realised that i did believe that i was inferior and worth less than other people because of this condition. I believed it because that is what the people around me believed and i internalised this belief and thought it was the truth. It is only now that i realise it is not the truth that i can see what messages have been playing in my subconsious all this time, damaging my self confidence and self esteem.

Probably being able to realise this is tied up with also realising that my eczema was completely caused by the abuse and neglect i experienced from my parents. So my eczema is not just some inherent defect in my body, it is actually just a symptom of the damage caused by my parents, just the same as if they had physically beaten me and caused me to have a load of bruises and cuts and broken bones. I am so angry that all this time i have been made to feel that my eczema is my problem and i have it because there is something wrong with me. The only thing that was wrong with me all this time was that i had the wrong parents and wrong sisters.

I am sure also my NPD parents also felt that my condition might make people think less of them as parents. That they had somehow failed (which they had) or were not good enough parents (which they weren't). I remember them always being sneering and feeling superior to other people who had health conditions or whose children were ill even with ordinary coughs and colds. I think they thought those people did not know how to look after themselves and were also inferior in some way to my parents simply because they had a health condition which could have been caused by so many different things. My parents always used to boast about how we as a family were almost never ill and how infrequently we had to go to the doctors compared to other people as if this was somehow testament to how good parents they were. They would of course conveniently forget that i existed and was part of this so called 'healthy' family when they were boasting about how strong their immune systems were which only added to how un-noticed and ignored by them already. I simply did not exist in their eyes, they didn't see me at all, and they certainly did not want to see or even think about the fact that i did have eczema. They never talked about my condition, adding to my feeling that they were ashamed of me because of it and giving me the very strong message that I myself was also not allowed to talk about it or how it made me feel. And so i had to once again keep all my feelings to myself, and feel ashamed of myself as well for something that wasn't my fault at all but theirs, no wonder it has taken me all these years to feel able to even talk about it on here.
A
It makes me hate my parents all over again and so glad once again that i no longer have anything to do with them.

Hello everyone.

Long time no post on here.

I went to my therapy session today and the therapist said she thought my mother sounded like she had a narcissistic personality.

Not thought of this before and I also found it very hard to accept that she is to blame for giving me up as a baby. I have always understood it as she had a crap childhood.

I have to go and get the kids now but wanted to post it to get it out of my head. Sorry.

WTSAfresh, I don't think of my parents as abusive. My dad didn't have the characteristics you described in one paragraph about yours - not verbally viscious, no hate filled staring etc. He is a kind person with good intentions, which is why I can't be too angry with him, yet the way he was with his lack of emotional expression and fear/irritation by it had such a big negative effect. It's so hard to describe because my parents do/did have good intentions and are basically good people, but with deficiencies.

I guess I shouldn't be whinging compared to what lots of you have gone through, sorry. Maybe if I hadn't also had a psycho brother and a pervert grandfather it wouldn't have mattered that my parents were the way they were, I don't know. I feel they could have helped me and my brother with things that happened to us and we could have got over it and processed our feelings with them if they hadn't had their emotional deficiencies or whatever I should call them. They didn't do anything bad to us but they also didn't do anything to help us or anything to show they loved us and were impressed by us. I feel they only did half a job. I half forgive them but half don't on bad days.

It occurred to me the other day that my fear of people being angry/irritated by me doesn't just come from my brother's behaviour as a child but from my dad as well. If those people could get angry from such small things as expressing a bit of emotion when I often wasn't aware that I was doing anything irritating, long term I feel that it is likely that people could suddenly get angry with me without warning for very little reason. I am still on edge. This isn't a feeling that I need anymore as I'm not living with my old family so I need to get out of the habit of feeling this. Most people don't get angry about such small things.

OrdinarySAHM - It is good that you are able to see that your father wasn't abusive, and had good intentions. It is too easy to blame everyone else for everything rather than seeing people as complicated. I am very sorry to hear that your brother was/is psychotic and your father was a paedophile. They are obviously the two destructive forces from your childhood, but maybe your parents could have helped you deal with certain things but weren't emotionally able to.

I completely relate to people getting angry about small things and being on edge. I realised about five years ago that I was in a constant state of 'red alert' because that's how it was in my childhood. Both my parents were incredibly moody and could turn for no reason. There were big no nos - how I looked, not getting straight As, but then there were lots of little things too. They both blamed me for a lot of stuff that was out of my control - like getting head lice, or cancer when I was older - so it was tricky. For example, when I told my father that I was 14 that I wanted to study psychology at University, he got annoyed, stopped talking to me and walked out of the room. I'm not sure why - he studied psychology himself! (although emigrated before he was able to finish his degree, which he was doing as a mature student).
There were constantly lots of things like that. My mother would become verbally and physically abusive if I chose to wear something that, for some reason, she didn't like (even though she would have bought it for me). When I was 11/12 I decided to draw a copy of a parenting cartoon my mum liked, and which had significance for the two of us, to give to her as a birthday present. I saved up my pocket money and got it framed. I am not sure, but I think I may have had to ask her for an advance to pay for it. What I do remember is that after I had given her the picture, she later had a tantrum and complained that her own money had paid for birthday present. I laugh now at how ridiculous that is - 12 year olds don't tend to have their own income - but that is what she was like. And when my father was cross, he would just stop talking to you. For months. It must have been incredibly stressful.

wanttostartafresh - OK then, just ignore what I wrote about you and your sisters But as someone who was physically abused by her parents, can I just say that your comparison of eczema being like your parents physically beating you up does not sit easily with me.

Fab - Sorry, I don't know your history, do you mean your birth mother that your therapist thinks is narcissistic? Is she in your life? And do you mean that the therapist thinks her giving you up is to blame for your issues?

Spiky, just to clarify - my grandfather not father was the paedophile. I'm not sure if my brother was psychotic even though I called him a psycho. He wasn't actually diagnosed with anything like that. He was violent physically and verbally when he was younger and his ways felt like mental torture (eg not letting me sleep but keeping me awake to go on and on about all that was wrong with me). He didn't do anything bad to me after we stopped living at home and we started to get along well but then he committed some crimes against other people because some things about him had not changed and he is now in prison. I do however, believe he has changed now because he has done a lot of work on himself and talks and behaves in a completely different way. I am supporting him in his work on himself while coming to terms with the person he used to be and his effects on me. It's confusing at times.

OSAHM - So sorry, I meant your grandfather, please excuse the typo

"Fab - Sorry, I don't know your history, do you mean your birth mother that your therapist thinks is narcissistic? Is she in your life? And do you mean that the therapist thinks her giving you up is to blame for your issues?"

Yes, my birth mother. She hasn't been in my life for many years apart from when she contacted my inlaws and threatened to get access to my kids. She is not welcome in my life or theirs. I was in care so yes, a lot of what my mother did has caused me problems even now.

Fab, your birthmother made the decision to continue the pregnancy til birth and she made the decision to give you up so does that not mean that she is to blame?

It's confusing. I blame my birthmother for continuing the pregnancy (although I should be grateful I'm alive because I love my life) and I blame her for giving me away (although when I think about the alternative of being brought up by her I'm not sure that would have been good either as I don't think she was in a good mental state for coping with being a mother!). I can't really blame her for what my adoptive family were like though as she gave me up in good faith thinking that I would have a better life with other people than with her. Maybe it has been better than it would have been with her, I can't really know one way or the other.

Despite rationalisations I still feel bitter/sad/angry on bad days. Your therapist probably wants you to not stop yourself from feeling your feelings about it by rationalising because it might hinder you from processing your feelings. You are allowed to have your feelings even if you can come up with good reasons for people's behaviours.

I've had positive feelings as well as negative for the people who hurt me and this has sometimes felt really conflicting and hindered me from allowing myself to feel what I feel and processing it. Maybe people get around this by thinking of certain people as being completely bad instead of part bad part good, while they are processing their feelings.

I think I did this with my brother a bit. I had a phase where I focussed on all the bad bits and cut contact with him right down for a while. I let Therapist whip up my negative feelings about him and I really felt it for a while. It seems to have helped as now it seems like some of it is out of my system and the edge is taken off, and I've increased contact with him a bit again. I feel much more ok about things again most days.

OrdinarySAHM - I suppose I have always excused her as she had a rubbish upbringing. She told me once she did go to have me aborted and then changed her mind. She seemed to have wanted some kind of gratitude for that.

I was set to be adopted as a newborn and then the day before she changed her mind. The parents were all ready for me and were heartbroken. She then changed her mind about me for the next 16 years. I was like a flipping yo-yo between foster homes and children's homes. Where I was unhappy she seemed to forget she had a child. Where I was settled and calling the parents mum and dad, she wanted me. I was moved from one place after 3 1/2 years as she wanted me back. The next day she had changed her mind but they wouldn't take me back in case she did it again. I went to a children's home where I was and then to a foster placement where I definitely was not and was abused.

Oh Fab

That sounds really hard.

My father was in a children's home that was extremely horrible and abusive. His mother was in sporadic contact with him. However, one of her sisters, with a stable family, offered to adopt my father. My grandmother said no, even though it would have meant my father not being in the home any longer. I always felt quite negatively about her for that.

Fab, maybe she could be forgiven for having you and giving you away the first time (or maybe not) but if it was me (which is not so you can tell me to shut the F up if you want) I would NOT forgive her for keeping on changing her mind after that with little consideration of how it would affect you and your different carers!

spiky, i must have missed what you said wrt my sisters, can you cut and paste it? Thanks. Re my eczema and actual physical abuse, if you saw the extent and severity of my eczema and realised how sore and painful it is you would understand that for me there is a similarity between being actually being physically assaulted and my condition. But actually i wasn't making a direct comparison, i was saying that with physical abuse there is an obvious immediate visible physical consequence for the victim. In my case the abuse was not physical but has nevertheless had a visible physical consequence for me, the connection between the abuse and my physical symptoms is not as clear and as obvious as with physical abuse but nevertheless my physical symptoms of eczema are a direct consequence of the abuse i suffered.

Hope that makes it a bit clearer for you, it's quite hard to explain.

I will never forgive her for giving me up, and years ago I told her this, but I have wished she had never had me.

I found some letters from her that were just awful and I hate how I have no right of reply. Dh said she will never see things from my point of view and is convinced everything she did was for me. I have tied myself in knots trying to see what she did that was for me.

rose, just spotted your post. I actually didn't have infantile eczema, mine only started quite late on, around age 8/9/10, i guess around the time my dad turned 'psycho' and became abusive towards me.

However i agree that infantile eczema is a very different thing and is very often caused by diet, allergies etc etc. Please DO NOT take my own personal experience as applicable to everybody. Eczema is a very individual thing and each person will have a different trigger. The reason I am so sure that mine is connected to the abuse is because there has been such a huge improvement in my condition since i have been processing my 'stuff' over the past couple of years.

Both my DC's had eczema when they were much younger but now seem to have grown out of it. It is very very common.

spiky, just spotted your post wrt my sisters as well, no need to cut and paste.

spiky, you make a lot of sense in what you have said, thanks for your advice.

However unlike your brother, my sisters are not willing to respect the fact that i had a different experience of childhood to them. I think they have not even considered the possibility that we were not all treated pretty much the same by our parents and that we did not all similar relationships with each of our parents. They cannot seem to shift from their view that our parents treated me just like they were treated and therefore I am being unreasonable in cutting ties with them. They were not there when i was being abused and were just too young to be aware of what i was going through anyway, there is a big age gap between us.

Ultimately i thought about how they made me feel whenever i was around them and i realised they made me feel upset/unhappy and not at all good about myself. That is the real reason i have decided i want to take a break from them; i don't like them, i don't think they are nice people. I would rather spend my time with other people who do make me feel good and happy when i spend time with them.

But i think your suggestion of texting to say i need a break to process some stuff is a good one, i will probably do that. I want to see how i feel after i haven't had any contact with them for a year or so. Will i miss them? Will i feel like contacting them? I had no contact with a friend for nearly 2 years recently, but i did make a choice to get in touch with her again. The time apart gave me space to think about our relationship and process all the problems we had had and in the end my feeling was that she was a good person and i liked her, we fell out because of both of us being under lots of stress. However with my sisters, i really don't feel as if i like them, so am not sure if i will want to get in touch with them again. They are a lot younger than me so perhaps when they are a bit more mature i might find i do start liking them a bit more.

wanttostartafresh - just to be clear, my brother doesn't respect the fact i had a different experience of our mother to him. Maybe I wasn't clear before, but it's a tricky distinction: he respects the fact that I don't think of our parents in the same way. I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm being oversensitive and exagerrating things. He doesn't think my mother ever hit me, but then she didn't do it in front of him. Some emotional abuse stuff he can't remember. I have never tried to change his view of our parents, or to get him to see that our mother was abusive towards me. But what I have insisted on is that regardless of the fact he doesn't agree with my view, he has to respect that I have a very different opinion of our mother than he does. In the past he has taken my mother's side, such as it was, and did things like passed presents to DD on from my mother when she wasn't talking to me, even though I had specifically asked him not to. He knows now that if he wants a relationship with me, then he needs to appreciate the boundaries I set with my parents.

spiky, i don't really understand what you have said. Either your brother respects the fact that you have a different view of your parents to him even if he himself doesn't share that view with you or he doesn't respect the fact you have a different view to him and that you are justified in holding the view that you do.

My sisters do not respect the fact that I have a very different opinion about our parents to them and my opinion is based in my very different experience with our parents to them. I feel I deserve better than that. I don't want a relationship with anybody, whether it's my sisters or anyone else, who thinks i am lying or exaggerating or somehow mistaken about what I went through as a child. I don't feel i need or want a relationship with my sisters on any terms (although i did feel that way in the past, i was willing to accept their disrespect towards me because i was desperate not to lose my relationship with them). If they want a relationship with me, afaic, they will have to accept that our parents treated me very differently to them ie abusively and neglectfully, and i am therefore justified in how i now feel about them. I completely respect their different opinion towards our parents, i am not trying to persuade them to share my own view, but i do expect them to respect my view and my entitlement to hold my particular view.

But apart from me and my sisters differing in our views about our parents, i also feel i have been treated very badly by them in so many different ways over the years and that is an equally important reason as to why i want to have a break from them. If i try and express to them how they have upset me, they always blame me for being oversensetive and have never even once been willing to accept that they are responsible for acting thoughtlessly and insensetively towards me. I can either continue having a relationship with them on this basis, living in hope that one day they will change and treat me with respect and consideration for my feelings, whilst at the same time being continually hurt and upset by their lack of regard for me, or i can just walk away, cut my losses and spend my time and energy on developing and nurturing my relationships with friends, some of whom are far more 'sisterly' towards me than my sisters have ever been.

wantto - I think instead of the word 'respected', I should of used the word' accepted' instead. My brother has accepted that I have a different view. He doesn't think I'm justified in holding it, I don't think. When I first confronted my parents about how they treated me, they denied everything and stopped talking to me. My brother asked not to know why there was a rift, he didn't want to get involved. I respected that. My father however asked DB if he'd ever seen my mother hit me - DB said no (which as far as I remember, is true). A few years later, my brother and I did have an argument about things, and in the heat of the moment he accused me of exaggerating. I was angry that he accused me of that: he can think it if he likes, but not say it. We discussed things, and he did accept that my parents had behaved unreasonably recently.

But maybe that's the difference between you and me - I don't need my brother to accept I was treated differently, I just need him to accept that I think that. I don't actually care whether he believes me or not - I know that he didn't see the abuse, and that he views my mother of not capable of that. As long as he doesn't express any disbelief or disrespect to me, then as far as I'm concerned, he can thinks what he likes. Because I can't control what he thinks. And don't need other people's confirmation of how I was treated. DH believes me, as did my therapists (I saw a few) and my friends. My brother is different because he was in the family and he was treated very differently. I just don't think it's possible or reasonable for me to expect him to think I'm justified in saying my mother abused me. Because then he would have to view my mother as someone who physically harms her children - and that just isn't how he sees her. How can he still respect her if he sees her as I do? It would be a massive shift for him. Just like I can't see my mother as lovely and kind and caring like he does. So all we can do is accept that the other has a different view and not give them grief about it.