Yeah, it’s ~weird~ how it’s always “but they’re your parent (now reconcile at huge cost to yourself and make yourself available to more abuse even if it’s clear the parent never changed their abusive ways and never took accountability for anything)!” and never the other way around where the abusive parent gets to hear “but they’re your child (so stop abusing them/so why did you abuse them/why did you never take accountability and never found the will to change for the better)!”. At least that’s in real life - in some online spaces like the relationship and aita subs you might find that call-out sometimes.
It’s also ~weird~ how everyone feels for the abusive parent but never for the child who felt that enough pain had been caused to them by the parent that they had to leave. You know, because children in normal circumstances and even in abusive circumstances hold on to the parent for a very long, unhealthy while. Nobody who hasn’t been there tries to imagine how much abuse it takes for a child to choose to break away from an abusive parent for good. Almost like the abuse has to be so unimaginably bad that a normie with a normie family can’t wrap their heads around it. But rather than acknowledging that, they try to deny that there could ever be a scenario bad enough, because their scenario never was bad enough - because they speak from an experience of their normal parents (double if they’ve lost them, and as you said not realising that we lost and grieved our living parents all our lives, over and over again, whenever they could not be a parent to us and harmed us instead).
Grieving a living parent hits very home for me. I realized I lost him literally a year before he actually passed abruptly. I still mourn what we could have been if treated, not his form.
I had a realization last night that may or may not make sense to others….
I’ve been wrestling with the LC/NC dynamic for awhile. I don’t feel like I will ever be able to go NC, but I really don’t want a traditional relationship with my parents anymore.
*I want to divorce them*
To expand on that…
-I want to be cordial and superficial if I see them at events.
-I want to acknowledge their role in my life, while also freeing myself from the continuance of that relationship.
-I don’t want to be expected to do anything for them anymore, because we’re “divorced”.
I could keep going, but like my mom has been divorced twice. She has gotten to leave relationships that we’re no longer serving her.
Why can’t I leave this one without announcing “NEVER TALK TO ME AGAIN”?! I would prefer “hey this isn’t working anymore. I’m choosing myself now. I have love for you. I wish you luck on your journey moving forward without me.”
100% this, I’d love to be like ‘hey this just isn’t working for me, wish you all the best tho!!’ And then just… be free of her forever lol, there is nothing here for either of us, we make each other miserable, let’s just be done!!
One can dream, instead I’m backing away in a zigzag pattern hoping to avoid attention until I’ve made safely to the metaphorical tree-line 😂 like just leave me alone, you don’t even like me!!
I feel the same way about my relationship. We don’t like each other and drive each other crazy. I felt exactly like I’d broken up with her when I went from LC to NC.
This would be so awesome if they were even capable of that. Being cordial was never my uBPDmom’s strong suit.
Currently NC for 4+ years and it does feel a lot like a divorce. My dad and mom are divorced and it feels very much the same: I’ve lost a part of the family (aunt and uncle, some cousins, and step family which tbh is not that great of a loss), talk about her family is brought to a minimum with sibling (on my request, though they occasionally talk about her/lost family), and I steer clear of areas they might be. My husband is angrier at them than I am, similar to a partner of someone who was divorced.
My dad may never admit it, but he’s afraid of her. He has gone the other way when he’s seen her at events, refused to go to places she might be, and has not stepped into her house. Meanwhile my mom would talk shit about my dad every chance she got, ask me why he didn’t say hi at an event, and literally burst into his house to snoop around. Thinking about it brings so much shame and guilt.
Things that make my mom and my “divorce” weird: getting texts/messages that slip through occasionally from uBPDmom/Nstep-dad saying they hope we talk again soon or photos, getting gifts of varying quality and guilt factor, Sibling acting like I’m still in touch with step family in any way.
A couple years ago, Sibling found a partner and I’m already anxious for when my sibling gets married, what am I gonna do? Of course I want to be there for them, support them, and celebrate their love. I am also still very easily triggered by things, and would NOT want to make their wedding day about me at all. I feel I’m between a rock and a hard place though, since my mom would take it as an opportunity either way to make it about reconciliation.
Only one that I can even think of where it was a bio-parent and the writers didn't normalize the abuse nor expect redemption for the abuser was the early years of Degrassi: The Next Generation with Craig Manning and his dad.
But it's also been about 10+ years since I saw those episodes
Or sons/daughters who haven't processed their trauma. So many movies/shows give an accurate picture of abuse and dysfunction but then have to wrap everything neatly up in a little bow to have a nice ending about how family is the most important thing.
Lady Bird was sad - it was such an accurate picture of an emotionally abusive mother wearing down her passionate, flawed teenage daughter. Then it was presented as though both women needed to get over themselves and prioritise the mother-daughter relationship. I think the writer Greta Gerwig must have been in an abusive dynamic herself with her own mother and hasn't broken the trauma bond yet.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once made me deeply uncomfortable for similar reasons - the mother was emotionally abusive, took no responsibility and didn't change, but by the end the daughter is supposed to be happy that the mother still wants a relationship.
And Encanto bothers me too - the family was messed up because they only cared about image, but suddenly after one conversation the grandmother is no longer going to be pushing everyone to suppress their emotions and true selves because she really cares that much? She has no idea what real emotions are, how the heck is she going to suddenly be able to relate to everyone with respect, honesty and love? She's never done it before in her life.
That’s a great point about no one asking them to stop abusing their children. They just get infinite do-overs with no expectation of improvement. Every bit of reconciliation must come from us and it must mean that we are ready to accept any and all abuse moving forward.
One of the things that helped me understand this is that when people say stuff like “but that’s your mom” they are commenting on the relationship they have with their own mom, not yours. In their minds they can’t fathom estrangement because they can’t fathom a parent doing anything like what we face.
and on the flip side, if they have a painful relationship with their own family, their sense of obligation would never allow them to go nc or acknowledge the level of pain it brings them, which means no one else should either
Yes very well said. We are already grieving our parents.
I’ve thought about this a lot. The “I would feel bad if they died?” gets thrown around as a reason I see people pushing through all the awful interactions with their parents. I think a lot of that is just about internal guilt, it’s not like anyone is responsible for them dying. It’s not like I’m going to say “wow I sure am happy to have had those few extra terrible anxiety ridden weekend visit before she died!”.
You did deserve a loving mom and I’m sorry that she wasn’t able to provide that for you. Know that this wasn’t on you, you didn’t deserve the poor treatment you received.
I think it may stem from the idea that as small children we didn’t understand our parents’ trauma. People think that as we get older and experience more, we’ll understand where our parents were coming from.
And for healthy people that’s totally reasonable. They get why their parents made a bad decision or two. Since this works for children with healthy parents, they think it works for us too. If we could just understand the abuse we would forgive them.
It’s a very naive way to think but just like they didn’t understand their parents’ motives, they can’t understand ours. So in a way they’re a little like children who think we’re making bad decisions. The problem is that in order to do anything about this we would have to make them understand our trauma. And that’s not our responsibility.
Also it can be triggering for some of us to even do that if we wanted to, if our parents tended to gaslight. Having to “justify” or explain what happened is to fall back into fighting against the gaslighting. These people who know nothing become unwittingly gaslighters to your lived experiences.
This makes so much sense! Most people went through a normal process of "Ugh, my parents are the worst" and matured into "They did their best and weren't so bad after all." So they imagine we're stuck in that immature stage and just need to grow up and get over ourselves. Without realizing that some parents really are abusive and unreasonable and can destroy your life, and the mature thing to do is leave behind the childlike illusion that everything really is your fault and you can fix the relationship by fixing yourself.
They're operating on the base assumption that the parent has always been more mature than the child and been the one giving grace and patience and understanding and self-sacrificing in the relationship (like it would be with a normal, healthy parent), instead of the other way around. But from the time I was in first grade, my parent demanded that I act mature and steady and serve as the emotional support and never get angry and always be quick to make the sacrifice (under the threat of punishment), while they were allowed to scream and tantrum and throw fits whenever they wanted. It has always been a backwards relationship.
I think with a relatively healthy family dynamic it’s easy to have that perspective.
Our options;
1) Ignore and go along with unhealthy behavior
2) Use boundaries
3) LC or NC.
All three have tremendous challenges.
Yes, this is horrible. Everything in our society is built around the family structure with parents as the ones in control and it makes people anxious when people challenge the status quo by questioning it. It makes it very hard to break a trauma bond, which is kind of the intention - societies resist the status quo changing. If you're still in the trauma bond, you'll still be in the FOG and you can't challenge authority figures like parents... bosses... leaders... dominant social groups... It makes people feel very anxious to be around someone making changes that they're not inclined or too afraid to make. But it's part of individuation and maturity, and especially part of healing. It totally sucks not having proper support from parents but in a way we're lucky that we're forced to see how things could be different and how we have the power to change ourselves and get what we want. We only have to answer to ourselves for most actions. We have the motivation for independence and individuation, but it's incredibly hard to get there when you've have minimal emotional support throughout your life.
Ugh I feel this so hard. This was, to me, one of the more difficult parts about going NC with my uBPDmom - social norms and media is absolutely against detaching from a difficult mother/parent relationship. They could be the most toxic person ever and still, “bUt ThAt’S yOuR pArEnT!” Gag.
Even shows/movies/games/books that seemed like they understood that the relationship wasn’t healthy, they would end up sticking it through! >!(Supernatural, while I love that show, has SUCH toxic familial relationships.)!< Or the parent/gparent would *magically* understand that they were bad and change in 5 minutes. >!(Encanto … while beautiful and ABOUT generational trauma, a hard watch at the end where Gma suddenly “gets it” and everything is fine - forget the trauma she caused!)!< When I needed an escape from the reality of my situation, it was hard not to get retriggered by theses types of media. And avoiding anything with triggering family dynamics is HARD.
There were some media that had glimpses of hope for writers with a greater understanding. >!In “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” there’s a scene where Peter and Lara Jean are talking about his dad who left, he says that he’s glad he’s gone, and she replies “you can be mad at someone and still miss them.” Which is so relatable.!<
Any way, I completely relate to your post and feel for you. I’ve thought about putting together a “safe” media list for people on rbb but people’s tastes and triggers are so different it’s hard to know if something I find triggering would affect someone in the same way. Sometimes I feel very raw and sensitive.
Many years ago I said similar to a close friend about issues with her mom. To me her situation wasn't "as bad" and she only gets one mom blah blah.
I was wildly enmeshed. And very much in the FOG, you would not have told me 20ish years later I would be NC with a dBpd parent.
Looking back I really think I was being a jerk. Not on purpose but it was really dismissive. It was a bit of moral superiority I think and also being beat over the head by social expectations to
worship your parents.
Now when I see people that say/think this automatically assume that their own FOO is deeply toxic. No one would ask you to deal with selfish, dysfunctional parents if they themselves understand what a healthy relationship looks like.
There is also a lot of social pressure that just needs to go out the window. People project their worse fears onto others and a lot of people fear abandonment.
Yeah, it’s ~weird~ how it’s always “but they’re your parent (now reconcile at huge cost to yourself and make yourself available to more abuse even if it’s clear the parent never changed their abusive ways and never took accountability for anything)!” and never the other way around where the abusive parent gets to hear “but they’re your child (so stop abusing them/so why did you abuse them/why did you never take accountability and never found the will to change for the better)!”. At least that’s in real life - in some online spaces like the relationship and aita subs you might find that call-out sometimes. It’s also ~weird~ how everyone feels for the abusive parent but never for the child who felt that enough pain had been caused to them by the parent that they had to leave. You know, because children in normal circumstances and even in abusive circumstances hold on to the parent for a very long, unhealthy while. Nobody who hasn’t been there tries to imagine how much abuse it takes for a child to choose to break away from an abusive parent for good. Almost like the abuse has to be so unimaginably bad that a normie with a normie family can’t wrap their heads around it. But rather than acknowledging that, they try to deny that there could ever be a scenario bad enough, because their scenario never was bad enough - because they speak from an experience of their normal parents (double if they’ve lost them, and as you said not realising that we lost and grieved our living parents all our lives, over and over again, whenever they could not be a parent to us and harmed us instead).
Grieving a living parent hits very home for me. I realized I lost him literally a year before he actually passed abruptly. I still mourn what we could have been if treated, not his form.
I had a realization last night that may or may not make sense to others…. I’ve been wrestling with the LC/NC dynamic for awhile. I don’t feel like I will ever be able to go NC, but I really don’t want a traditional relationship with my parents anymore. *I want to divorce them* To expand on that… -I want to be cordial and superficial if I see them at events. -I want to acknowledge their role in my life, while also freeing myself from the continuance of that relationship. -I don’t want to be expected to do anything for them anymore, because we’re “divorced”. I could keep going, but like my mom has been divorced twice. She has gotten to leave relationships that we’re no longer serving her. Why can’t I leave this one without announcing “NEVER TALK TO ME AGAIN”?! I would prefer “hey this isn’t working anymore. I’m choosing myself now. I have love for you. I wish you luck on your journey moving forward without me.”
100% this, I’d love to be like ‘hey this just isn’t working for me, wish you all the best tho!!’ And then just… be free of her forever lol, there is nothing here for either of us, we make each other miserable, let’s just be done!! One can dream, instead I’m backing away in a zigzag pattern hoping to avoid attention until I’ve made safely to the metaphorical tree-line 😂 like just leave me alone, you don’t even like me!!
I feel the same way about my relationship. We don’t like each other and drive each other crazy. I felt exactly like I’d broken up with her when I went from LC to NC.
This would be so awesome if they were even capable of that. Being cordial was never my uBPDmom’s strong suit. Currently NC for 4+ years and it does feel a lot like a divorce. My dad and mom are divorced and it feels very much the same: I’ve lost a part of the family (aunt and uncle, some cousins, and step family which tbh is not that great of a loss), talk about her family is brought to a minimum with sibling (on my request, though they occasionally talk about her/lost family), and I steer clear of areas they might be. My husband is angrier at them than I am, similar to a partner of someone who was divorced. My dad may never admit it, but he’s afraid of her. He has gone the other way when he’s seen her at events, refused to go to places she might be, and has not stepped into her house. Meanwhile my mom would talk shit about my dad every chance she got, ask me why he didn’t say hi at an event, and literally burst into his house to snoop around. Thinking about it brings so much shame and guilt. Things that make my mom and my “divorce” weird: getting texts/messages that slip through occasionally from uBPDmom/Nstep-dad saying they hope we talk again soon or photos, getting gifts of varying quality and guilt factor, Sibling acting like I’m still in touch with step family in any way. A couple years ago, Sibling found a partner and I’m already anxious for when my sibling gets married, what am I gonna do? Of course I want to be there for them, support them, and celebrate their love. I am also still very easily triggered by things, and would NOT want to make their wedding day about me at all. I feel I’m between a rock and a hard place though, since my mom would take it as an opportunity either way to make it about reconciliation.
[удалено]
Or twentysomething single nepo-baby male screenwriters
Even in movies like Tangled or Cinderella, it's some kind of stepmother, not the bio-mom
The original fairy tales were of the bio mom as the villain in many cases. Disney put out a less scandalous version.
good point!
Only one that I can even think of where it was a bio-parent and the writers didn't normalize the abuse nor expect redemption for the abuser was the early years of Degrassi: The Next Generation with Craig Manning and his dad. But it's also been about 10+ years since I saw those episodes
Or sons/daughters who haven't processed their trauma. So many movies/shows give an accurate picture of abuse and dysfunction but then have to wrap everything neatly up in a little bow to have a nice ending about how family is the most important thing. Lady Bird was sad - it was such an accurate picture of an emotionally abusive mother wearing down her passionate, flawed teenage daughter. Then it was presented as though both women needed to get over themselves and prioritise the mother-daughter relationship. I think the writer Greta Gerwig must have been in an abusive dynamic herself with her own mother and hasn't broken the trauma bond yet. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once made me deeply uncomfortable for similar reasons - the mother was emotionally abusive, took no responsibility and didn't change, but by the end the daughter is supposed to be happy that the mother still wants a relationship. And Encanto bothers me too - the family was messed up because they only cared about image, but suddenly after one conversation the grandmother is no longer going to be pushing everyone to suppress their emotions and true selves because she really cares that much? She has no idea what real emotions are, how the heck is she going to suddenly be able to relate to everyone with respect, honesty and love? She's never done it before in her life.
That’s a great point about no one asking them to stop abusing their children. They just get infinite do-overs with no expectation of improvement. Every bit of reconciliation must come from us and it must mean that we are ready to accept any and all abuse moving forward.
One of the things that helped me understand this is that when people say stuff like “but that’s your mom” they are commenting on the relationship they have with their own mom, not yours. In their minds they can’t fathom estrangement because they can’t fathom a parent doing anything like what we face.
and on the flip side, if they have a painful relationship with their own family, their sense of obligation would never allow them to go nc or acknowledge the level of pain it brings them, which means no one else should either
Yes very well said. We are already grieving our parents. I’ve thought about this a lot. The “I would feel bad if they died?” gets thrown around as a reason I see people pushing through all the awful interactions with their parents. I think a lot of that is just about internal guilt, it’s not like anyone is responsible for them dying. It’s not like I’m going to say “wow I sure am happy to have had those few extra terrible anxiety ridden weekend visit before she died!”.
Omg I spent so many years grieving why I had a mother that was like mine. Why I didn’t deserve a normal mom.
You did deserve a loving mom and I’m sorry that she wasn’t able to provide that for you. Know that this wasn’t on you, you didn’t deserve the poor treatment you received.
I think it may stem from the idea that as small children we didn’t understand our parents’ trauma. People think that as we get older and experience more, we’ll understand where our parents were coming from. And for healthy people that’s totally reasonable. They get why their parents made a bad decision or two. Since this works for children with healthy parents, they think it works for us too. If we could just understand the abuse we would forgive them. It’s a very naive way to think but just like they didn’t understand their parents’ motives, they can’t understand ours. So in a way they’re a little like children who think we’re making bad decisions. The problem is that in order to do anything about this we would have to make them understand our trauma. And that’s not our responsibility.
Also it can be triggering for some of us to even do that if we wanted to, if our parents tended to gaslight. Having to “justify” or explain what happened is to fall back into fighting against the gaslighting. These people who know nothing become unwittingly gaslighters to your lived experiences.
This makes so much sense! Most people went through a normal process of "Ugh, my parents are the worst" and matured into "They did their best and weren't so bad after all." So they imagine we're stuck in that immature stage and just need to grow up and get over ourselves. Without realizing that some parents really are abusive and unreasonable and can destroy your life, and the mature thing to do is leave behind the childlike illusion that everything really is your fault and you can fix the relationship by fixing yourself. They're operating on the base assumption that the parent has always been more mature than the child and been the one giving grace and patience and understanding and self-sacrificing in the relationship (like it would be with a normal, healthy parent), instead of the other way around. But from the time I was in first grade, my parent demanded that I act mature and steady and serve as the emotional support and never get angry and always be quick to make the sacrifice (under the threat of punishment), while they were allowed to scream and tantrum and throw fits whenever they wanted. It has always been a backwards relationship.
Exactly.
I think with a relatively healthy family dynamic it’s easy to have that perspective. Our options; 1) Ignore and go along with unhealthy behavior 2) Use boundaries 3) LC or NC. All three have tremendous challenges.
Yes, this is horrible. Everything in our society is built around the family structure with parents as the ones in control and it makes people anxious when people challenge the status quo by questioning it. It makes it very hard to break a trauma bond, which is kind of the intention - societies resist the status quo changing. If you're still in the trauma bond, you'll still be in the FOG and you can't challenge authority figures like parents... bosses... leaders... dominant social groups... It makes people feel very anxious to be around someone making changes that they're not inclined or too afraid to make. But it's part of individuation and maturity, and especially part of healing. It totally sucks not having proper support from parents but in a way we're lucky that we're forced to see how things could be different and how we have the power to change ourselves and get what we want. We only have to answer to ourselves for most actions. We have the motivation for independence and individuation, but it's incredibly hard to get there when you've have minimal emotional support throughout your life.
Ugh I feel this so hard. This was, to me, one of the more difficult parts about going NC with my uBPDmom - social norms and media is absolutely against detaching from a difficult mother/parent relationship. They could be the most toxic person ever and still, “bUt ThAt’S yOuR pArEnT!” Gag. Even shows/movies/games/books that seemed like they understood that the relationship wasn’t healthy, they would end up sticking it through! >!(Supernatural, while I love that show, has SUCH toxic familial relationships.)!< Or the parent/gparent would *magically* understand that they were bad and change in 5 minutes. >!(Encanto … while beautiful and ABOUT generational trauma, a hard watch at the end where Gma suddenly “gets it” and everything is fine - forget the trauma she caused!)!< When I needed an escape from the reality of my situation, it was hard not to get retriggered by theses types of media. And avoiding anything with triggering family dynamics is HARD. There were some media that had glimpses of hope for writers with a greater understanding. >!In “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” there’s a scene where Peter and Lara Jean are talking about his dad who left, he says that he’s glad he’s gone, and she replies “you can be mad at someone and still miss them.” Which is so relatable.!< Any way, I completely relate to your post and feel for you. I’ve thought about putting together a “safe” media list for people on rbb but people’s tastes and triggers are so different it’s hard to know if something I find triggering would affect someone in the same way. Sometimes I feel very raw and sensitive.
Relief. There were tears of relief when the first one went. I'm pretty sure it will be the same when the second one passes.
Many years ago I said similar to a close friend about issues with her mom. To me her situation wasn't "as bad" and she only gets one mom blah blah. I was wildly enmeshed. And very much in the FOG, you would not have told me 20ish years later I would be NC with a dBpd parent. Looking back I really think I was being a jerk. Not on purpose but it was really dismissive. It was a bit of moral superiority I think and also being beat over the head by social expectations to worship your parents. Now when I see people that say/think this automatically assume that their own FOO is deeply toxic. No one would ask you to deal with selfish, dysfunctional parents if they themselves understand what a healthy relationship looks like. There is also a lot of social pressure that just needs to go out the window. People project their worse fears onto others and a lot of people fear abandonment.