The slow build: Getting details one drip at a time
Just came across this poster on an estranged parents’ forum and had to share.
This is her first post, from March 2018:
Its been over 8 months since my youngest son decided to tell me how worthless I am, spineless, weak and that my husband and I are idiots to live out in the country on a farm. This is all cleaned up since his tirade was extremely obscene. [….] Worst of all, as much as the other members of family think what he did was awful. No one will stand up to him and tell him. My mom and sister are traveling down to see him…some 1500 miles. Everyone will get together, my mom, sister, older son, his wife and my grandson, but I am not invited and they will be about a 2 hour ride from my house…….having trouble dealing with this
She posted a couple more times, repeating the same basic details. Then, this September, she talks about how her oldest son has started to pull away from her as well. In the middle of talking about her oldest son she drops a detail about the estrangement from her younger son:
Now [my oldest son says] we are violent ( because the day of the estrangement as my es was in my face, I reached up and slapped him before going in the house)
Oh.
and my oldest son will not allow my husband to see his grandson or attend grandparents day at his school. The baby shower for my next grandbaby is the weekend. Waiting for the call telling me not to attend and not sure if I even want to go
Now that is the issue. Mind you my ES at the time he did all this was 27. But that is all anyone focuses on…..You hit ES. Always what we “did” to him. Not one person in my family stood up for us…NOT ONE PERSON!!!!
The other forum members tactfully sidestepped the matter of the slap, apart from one member who applauded it.
From another post in October:
This all stems from when by youngest estranged himself from us in a vile, putrid rant. Telling me I was worthless, spineless and he wouldn’t name a dog after me among profanity laden, we ruined his life crap – inches from my face with spit flying everywhere…..so I smacked him several times. Now, that was 2 years ago and now we are violent people, condone hitting children (ES is 29). My boys were rarely hit, very, very rarely. But I was not going to let this ungrateful entitled kid that I did everything I could for berate me like that.
The estrangement was because her son loosed an obscene tirade at her. Wait, the estrangement was because she slapped him after the tirade. Wait, it was because she slapped him several times after the tirade.
The good news is that her extended family is circling the wagons. Everyone except her and her husband agree that she and her husband are the problem, the younger son replies to every one of her contacts with more “vile words”–very effective, since it took her two years to recover from the initial tirade alone–and her older son and daughter-in-law are at the stage where they allow supervised visits but aren’t happy about it.
(Note: Don’t do this. Your parents will accuse you of manipulating them and using your kids as weapons if you permit visits, and they’ll accuse you of manipulating them and using your kids as weapons if you don’t permit visits. So don’t permit visits.)
Meanwhile, the forum members are making her feel better. Not giving her advice that would reconcile her with her kids, not offering her insight, but definitely making her feel better. I used to wonder how much better things would be if the forum members offered real insight and didn’t feed each others’ worst impulses, but after seeing well-meaning forum members try to do just that, I’ve realized that it’s impossible. Suggesting that the member maybe shouldn’t have hit her grown son several times in the face would cause her to melt down.
And, well, if she were capable of thoughts like, “Maybe everyone sides with my son because I hit him several times in the face,” she wouldn’t be there.
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This kind of lack of self awareness sounds very similar to my mother (though she never hit me). I’m curious to know if you have any theories about why these types of parents are so lacking in self awareness, and why their entire mindset seems to resist acknowledging their wrongdoing or taking responsibility at every turn. What makes someone’s brain like this?
I just have trouble understanding how someone can continually do this over and over again for years, without ever questioning themselves. What goes on in their brain process?
That’s the eternal question, isn’t it?
A big part of it is an allergy to shame. People like this were brought up by parents who simultaneously engulfed them in shame and didn’t teach them the skills to deal with shame, so any hint of shame threatens to destroy them. They can’t handle shame long enough to deal with even basic questions like, “Was I wrong in this situation?” It’s not that they would rather be right than be happy. It’s more like–well, let’s say the key to your heart’s desire is two feet deep in a pool of lava, and you can’t use a tool to get it out. Are you choosing not to be happy, or are you physically incapable of doing what you need to do to be happy?
Thanks for explaining, that makes a lot of sense. And I think maybe it even has a cumulative effect, like the more they avoid examining their actions the harder it gets becuase then they’d have to admit to years or even decades of bad behaviour which would feel overwhelming.
I still wonder though, even when they’ve left this childhood environment and surrounded themselves with loving and supportive family and friends, why they can’t ever grow past this? Is the damage really that permanent and unchangeable?
Most people do grow past it. Problems dealing with shame are so common that they’re practically normal–shame is a primal emotion that’s meant to be powerfully aversive, and it’s easy to jam up a kid’s process of learning to deal with shame. Estranged parents’ forums aren’t representative of the general populace. They’re heavily self-selected for people who whose shame issues are insurmountable.
That said, some of the people aren’t unfixable, just slow to heal. A mod on one of the now-vanished DailyStrength forums, one of the rare mods who was saner than the rest of the group,* said that for the first few years she couldn’t bear to seriously entertain the thought that she’d done wrong. She had to regain her sense of self-worth first. Most members have been so deeply wounded by their kids’ rejection that they have to heal that wound before they can so much as see their kids’ side.** It’s been years since I followed a forum closely, but at DailyStrength, there was a slow driftaway of people who healed and successfully reconciled with their kids. They were mostly from the fringes, so you tended not to notice them unless they popped back in to talk about their life since reconciliation and give advice to the other members. (Who rejected it.)
The core group was SOLID. They were never going to budge. Every so often I drop into the groups where the DailyStrengthers moved after the demise of DailyStrength, and they’re still there. There’s an unrelated group, British-based, where the core has been equally immovable.
So… yes and no? Most people do grow past it. Some people are so damaged that the healing takes years and years, long enough that it appears they’re not healing at all. A few people are straight-up broken and will fight to the death to stay that way.
Also, some people get better when they’re surrounded with love and support. Some people are enabled by love and support. People who need enablers are scary-good at finding them.
* Most mods were more disturbed than average. Whenever someone showed up who was angry, not sad, I mentally tagged them as a future mod. Most of the time I was right.
** That sensitivity to rejection is explained by attachment theory, which I haven’t studied in depth but which I highly recommend to you if you’re interested in such things.
Is this why my mother consistently badmouths people who are helping her? It’s EXHAUSTING just listening to her smacktalk everyone from the church volunteer who didn’t show up on time to the family friend who alerted the authorities to a genuine emergency but also didn’t put the table together correctly. And then she gets mad at us for being exhausted. It’s like she’s completely blind to her own behavior, to an increasingly ridiculous extent as people who were once sympathetic become exhausted themselves.
Recently I was astonished to see that an estranged parent had the insight that she had an emotional emptiness, like a wound, from her uncaring parents, and then I was astonished again when she decided that it was okay to use people to fill that emptiness. The possibility of healing that wound and not depending on other people didn’t even occur to her; it was just something to live with. It was like she had bad teeth and her solution was to have someone there to chew her food for her. Sure it’s unhealthy and her teeth still hurt and the person who’s doing the chewing for her can’t feed themselves properly, but the important thing is that she doesn’t have to go to the dentist.
Long story short: a lot of estranged (and held-at-arm’s-length) parents are searching for outside reasons for their unhappiness when that unhappiness is within them. They’re just inherently unhappy people. I feel bad for them until I remember that they take it out on other people and don’t do anything to make their situation better
Good point. And it’s too bad they’re so heavily defended they can not conceive the pain and suffering *they* assert they experience with their EAC is every bit as real, as deep and enduring as we experienced *as a result of THEIR BEHAVIOR* towards us for decades. No Contact is the LAST resort, not the first option. And it hurt us too-deeply. Profoundly. We get significant Life Lessons very early and painfully courtesy of them in Powerlessness, Humility, Dehumanization vs. Self-Awareness and the exquisite pain of parental rejection inflicted on us by THEM. If someone hobbled them, bound and gagged them, refused to acknowledge their humanity, tied them to a fixed “spot,” how the hell can you expect that person to stick around when the opportunity to free themselves is within their reach-painful as it may be? It’s within the EP’s reach as well but they just refuse to set themselves free. It’s safer for them to continue to reject us rather than look inward where they could actually do all kinds of great exploration resulting in genuine self-awareness: Being genuinely Self Reflective allows one to be genuinely Self-Corrective.
Instead, they continue to dehumanize us-we’re just “extensions” of them, not unique ADULT human beings in our own right. Look no further than the repeated renditions of “how close we were” until the whoever-but not them and their behavior-somehow forced their AC’s into estrangement. They don’t have enough brain matter to recognize the first assertion of “closeness” is completely demolished by their subsequent surprise and outrage when their Adult Offspring leave-typically forever. Why forever? Because the EP’s continue to behave in a manner that ensures their EAC’s decision is confirmed repeatedly and spectacularly. They just never get anywhere close enough to following that ONE PRODUCTIVE PATH-work on yourself, EP-that’s where they absolutely need to go. No one can fill the emptiness that exists within them: That’s on THEM. They need to stop with the “out there” and start the work “in here” that other human beings do ROUTINELY throughout the course of their lives. We *all* experience existential aloneness, we all experience the search for Meaning in our lives, we all experience challenges and opportunities to expand our Identities, our very Humanity etc. All living things (hello! That includes all of us!) are prewired at the molecular/DNA level to be born, TO GROW, TO DIFFERENTIATE AND MATURE TO INDEPENDENCE, to reproduce (if possible) to age and ultimately, die.
This is why I refer to them as “freaks.” They’re aberrations, impediments to normal Growth and Development-their’s AND our’s. They’re so safely but unhappily stagnant as human beings because they don’t want to do the work on themselves regardless of who ever is or isn’t in their lives. The presence of absence of others including their loin fruit isn’t even a variable in a human’s ability and natural proclivity to grow, to live fully, to experience joy, contentment and peace WITHIN THEMSELVES. We can’t be and aren’t responsible for them becoming self-actualizing human beings IN THEIR OWN RIGHT. We are refusing to any longer do their Emotional and Life Labor because *we can’t do this-they demand the impossible.* We aren’t able to fix what ails them: It is NOT within our power to do so. We spent decades trying unsuccessfully to do that. And we bear the scars and learned the Life Lessons as a result.
OMG, the mental/psychological rent, the space, the time, the rumination, the ridiculous “explanations” etc. EPS try to fool themselves with DON’T WORK. And they never will. That’s what keeps them up at night. That’s what keeps them “safe” but in misery. That’s why they get stuck in this endless rut of chronic self-defeat, bitterness, blame, pettiness, power and control crap and fail at being fully self-actualizing humans because (they assert) of the absence of those “awful (30/40/50/60/70 yr. old) kids.” It’s not “out there,” it’s within them. And what ails very likely predates us-and they are absolutely CLUELESS regarding who we actually are: They don’t want to know us. Ouch. I wish it was just a “Blind Spot” we all have and work throughout our lives to mitigate. However, it isn’t: It’s a flat out refusal to accept the invitation to *truly live.* Instead, they remain stubbornly clinging to self-pity, false pride, arrogance and fallacious assumptions etc. they need to believe are facts. They Reject and Project rather than Accept and Self-Reflect.
And that’s a damn shame for all, a petty, self-indulgent, self-defeating, relentlessly childish but “safe” waste of the gift of life and the potential opportunities that beckon and encourage all of us to live fully-rather than just miserably exist. I refuse be the twin star endlessly, pointlessly, pretending to be helplessly stuck in the gravitational pull of another’s misery. No thanks.
🎵“…And I’m sorry that you don’t like your life, but I fought for the victories and for the beauty in my life
And my joy, my joy, my joy TAKES NOTHING FROM YOU, No my joy, my joy TAKES NOTHING FROM YOU…” 🎶
Frazy Ford, “Done”
“…any hint of shame threatens to destroy them. They can’t handle shame long enough to deal with even basic questions like, “Was I wrong in this situation?” It’s not that they would rather be right than be happy. It’s more like–well, let’s say the key to your heart’s desire is two feet deep in a pool of lava, and you can’t use a tool to get it out. Are you choosing not to be happy, or are you physically incapable of doing what you need to do to be happy?” This describes my mom to a T, and it is the part that breaks my heart. She wants nothing more than to be surrounded by a loving family, but her words and actions destroy that possibility and she doesn’t understand why.
It always reminds me of that scene from The Hobbit where Bilbo can hear the elves off in the forest – eating, drinking & having a merry old time – and wants desperately to join them but every time he gets close they just disappear in a poof. What a frustrating and sad way to go through life. Then they look to us to save them from this fate, and when we can’t they get angry. It’s so hard to witness this dynamic over and over.
I’ve followed this conversation since it’s inception and I keep thinking, “Someone please pull her off that bulldozer: When you’ve dug yourself into a hole, Step 1 is Stop Digging.” Bulldozer Betty is an excavating lunatic.
As the conversation evolved I noted the drip-drip of reframing the narrative in ways that are guaranteed to ensure she will be held harmless and will continue to refuse to accept full responsibility for her behavior. She’s also adds yet more emotionally laden adjectives strung together to increase the impact of her narrative regarding the younger fully NC son’s alleged tiraid, the newest being “putrid.” I’ve watched in awe as this poster cast about frantically, spreading her net wider and wider to account for why both her sons are now defacto Estranged. (At this point I think the net has reached Alpha Centauri.) And of course, the other posters chime in with “Everybody has a breaking point.” That’s true.
*And a not unsubstantial number of them are sitting in jail and prison.*
Da Facts: Poster is a 50+ yr. old woman. She smacked a 27 yr. old across the face several times. It does not matter what the nature of their relationship is anymore than what he said in alleged provocation is material to the situation: What she did is called ASSAULT. Period. It doesn’t get any more crystal clear than this.
While salubrious comments and gentle hand pats are certainly kind, they’re not assisting her in any meaningful manner at all. She already KNEW she was on thin ice with the older son secondary to her assault on the younger son. The older son’s wife gave birth recently and the poster decided constructing a bonfire on the thin ice was in order: Thus, shortly after the birth, the poster goes to the hospital and reports she “walks in the room and head(s) right over and pick her up (out of the bassinet.) My son kinda looked like he wasn’t gonna let me but tough shit, I was going to hold her. Stayed about 30 min. and DIL wouldn’t even look at me.” (Yeah, she just gave birth and you refused to even acknowledge her.) She returned later and was denied access because the infant was allegedly feeding. I don’t think she believes this-I sure don’t. The result: She has now irreparably damaged that relationship-which could been forseen from Google Earth.
I do view this as a manifestly “rather be right than be reasonable” situation because she knew damn well her intentionally provocative and aggressive behavior was now going to up the ante: How dare anyone tell HER to back off because she’ll show ‘em who runs this Shit Show. Look no further than the “tough shit” statement. As a result she is currently floating in the deep end of Lake Woe-Is-Me. Methinks even if she avails herself of the monitored visitation offer to see this allegedly beloved grandchild (still undecided) she’ll continue the same self-defeating pattern of behavior ensuring she torpedos that opportunity with the same finality she destroyed her relationship with her younger son and existing razor thin relationship with the older son’s family. The pervasiveness of the Black and White Thinking/“My Way or the Highway” is a common feature of all Estranged Parent’s narratives.
She can now visit this same son and DIL’s older child when both parents are present. Previously she had picked this child up from preschool and continued to exert pressure on her son to resume this arrangement during her hospital visit out in the hall before she flounced into the room and grabbed a sleeping infant out of the bassinet without parental permission. Prior to her hospital antics, the parents were clearly mulling this over. Her fearful anticipation of his “No” response was evident in her posts and continuing to push the issue resulted in her fear coming true: She started comment-histrionic melt-downs alleging she was “cut off” from this grandchild and later adds “well, with supervision” which further inflamed her and the other posters.
Welp, here it is: Play bitch games, win bitch prizes.
Suppose the younger son slapped her repeatedly across the face? How would the other posters respond? I guarantee the immediately result would be expressions of outrage and demands she press charges because he’s dangerous, “violent,” get an RO, go to the police etc. would be forthcoming. And would it be an unreasonable speculation to also consider her son of the “putrid tiraid” had reached *his* “breaking point?* How come she can have an allegedly understandable breaking point but he is not afforded the same?
If one has not mastered behavioral control by their 50’s, yes, they ARE designated “violent.” She also admits to “hitting” both her kids as they were growing up but keeps minimizing this behavior as “rare, very rare.” In view of her current behavior, I don’t buy that statement: What I’m seeing is a *pattern of behavioral dominance* via any means the poster deems necessary including violence. Another “Bulldozer Betty” statement while she was in the hall at the hospital with her older son pressuring him to resume picking the other grandchild: “I could have backed him (older son) up against the wall and let him have it.” As if her decision to engage in some semblance of prosocial behavior is a magnanimous demonstration of self-control instead of another opportunity to engage in yet another smack down. It’s also evident that “vile disgusting hurtful words,” further expounded upon as “lying, cheating, disrespect, *unwarrwnted anger (?!)* go against how they they were raised and we demonstrated” because pot is existing in another Projection Universe from kettle. Aaannnnd of course, she has dismantled/destroyed items from the room in her house she decorated for the grandkids and “has never been used.” The assumptions of these people, their insistence on their way or the highway, the relentless inappropriate demands etc. are jawdropping. They wax prolifically, frequently and loudly regarding “this entitled generation of spoiled brats…they are responsible for their actions and behaviors!” and immediately follow up their umbrage with “I DESERVE RESPECT, I DESERVE (fill in the blanks.)” Umm…who’s entitled much? And about that “responsibility for their actions and behaviors?” And which generation would that be as I’m an antique, “Estranged” long before the internet etc. And BTW, children do not “self-spoil.”
I do feel compassion for this woman. I give her massive kudos for recently initiating therapy, she has also started on medication and although she is gonna continue with her “Everyone is out to get me!/Imma victim!” stance for a while at least I really hope her T can hang in there with her, work towards a bond that will place her at ease enough to take an expedition in The Wayback Machine, because IMO there are clearly historical roots here. She is so very fragile, so very heavily defended and my sense is she has been depressed for years. What I’m seeing is a very frightened, very insecure, very lonely and alone little girl who is drowning in an ocean of Shame.
In terms of the latent rather than manifest shame as a dynamic, I agree with your take. Anger is a manifestation of depression and poor impulse control in an adult, a reflection of remaining psychosocially “stuck” at a much younger stage of development. And it’s also part and parcel of another phenomena we observe regularly. This is gonna be a haul for her: I really hope she hangs in there. She has managed to morph the slapping incident into a referendum on her very personhood. She often concludes her posts with “I am a good mother!” “I am a good person!” etc. as if words alone could staunch the hemorrhaging wounds inside her.
I find her so very, very sad.
Tundra Woman, thank you for that insightful and very kind breakdown. I’ve been following this woman’s story too and her entitlement is incredible. Not once has she ever referred to her older son’s children as anything but “my grandchildren,” to the point where when she announced her son and daughter-in-law were having a baby she said something like “I am having a second grandchild by my son.” It sounds bizarre- like he knocked her up? One thing that pops up sometimes on the estranged adult children’s forums is that a mother-in-law is treating a daughter-in-law like an incubator. That’s the feeling I got here, that there was no thought that the son and daughter-in-law had had children for their benefit and not for hers. (Her going straight for the baby reminds me of that line from Best in Show- “He went for her like she was made out of ham!”) And then we’re back to this obsession with grandchildren that I find so weird.
When I first read the description of the hospital visit I imagined the daughter-in-law crying at her husband afterward for not keeping his mother in line. That poor woman.
There’s definitely some undertones of emotional incest in a lot of these relationships too. I get a strong indication that a lot of them consider their children their *true* spouses, while their real world spouses don’t seem to really exist in their internal worlds except as proof of their normalcy. At best, the actual spouses seem to pop up as a prop to wheel out for their martyr monologue. They seem to exist only to validate the poster’s views and feelings – “I’m so upset because it hurts my husband” or “my husband agrees” type sentiments.
There was actually a comment I saw a while back on the forums that drew this aspect into pretty sharp focus. The original poster is a relatively new member, who is so convinced her DIL is out to get her that she thinks the DIL drugged her. The commenter, however, is a long-term member whose comment and post history is pretty gnarly. I was so shocked by the directness of the (literally) Freudian slip that I was sure that someone would (gently) point it out and it would be corrected.
The general gist of the comment is “Hold your ES accountable, he chose to support his cruel mean sadistic wife so he’s clearly to blame as well.” Down towards the bottom of the comment, she gave the poster a hypothetical starting with “Say your husband divorces the DIL” and went on to say that the ES would still be a terrible person without the DIL’s involvement.
She did not correct herself, and neither the original poster nor the 7 following commenters mentioned it at all. Which, to me, seems rather telling of how the posters view their own ES. I think internally a lot of them see their children as defacto spouses, so it makes a certain kind of sense that they see grandchildren as “theirs” by default and they feel so compelled to compete with and force ultimatums between the DIL/SIL and themselves.
The sad part is, a lot of them make it SO close to realizing the issue. You see so many posters talking about how their EC’s spouses see them as “the other woman”, but they never quite get to the part where they ask WHY their EC’s spouse might feel that way.
There are people who would far rather be emotionally comfortable than happy. Emotionally comfortable = living a life of high drama in which everyone hates you. They wouldn’t have to change much to be happy, but from my experience with them, not only do they refuse to change; they get uncomfortable when other people change to accommodate their ridiculous demands too. They’ll up the ante until it becomes literally impossible.
A calm, happy life is no life at all to them. They’re addicted to drama, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many of them are also addicted to substances.
I don’t know if this woman is one of these people. I know that “going to therapy” and “taking medication” means exactly jack and shit when the person doing it is a long-term abuser. I’m also getting warning bells that this woman is a gigantic liar. Maybe she believes her own lies, and maybe she doesn’t, but I don’t believe her when she claims her son told her she was stupid for living in the country.
I suspect the “he said we’re stupid for living in the country” comment actually refers to Mom making some awful bigoted remark, and the son responding by suggesting she might want to educate herself a bit instead of parroting whatever Fox News says on the big screen in her rural living room.
I agree, there is something way beyond the country/city divide that the EP poster is trying to leverage in her favour.
It may be my own issues in that area (city kid, then child of nasty divorce that had me straddling the divide), but it makes me really suspicious. So suspicious that I wonder whether she deliberately moved TO the country in hopes of finding enablers and distancing the kids from help. That would be a classic abuser strategy, isolation. With the gaslighting that the kids are supposed to LIKE it, because ‘small towns are so sweet and down-home’ or like nonsense.
(In THIS case, ‘We live on a farm and have so much to offer grandchildren’. Never mind, more significantly that ‘[elder son] told us we were not asked to babysit [from the start] because we use poor judgement’.)
Be the exact geography what it may, she did succeed in isolating her sons from their father and nominally replacing him as their dad. That enabler guy she insistently calls ‘my husband’ is just the stepfather.
(btw I am WELL aware that biology is no reliable measure here, so sadly there could be cumulative dysfunctionality with the real dad…but maybe not if the EP’s own family has seen the writing on the wall – from long distance, no less. Either way, enabler steps bring me out in a special kind of hives. It’s the same ‘compulsory relationship’ BS estranged parents try to pull, with a side order of fake (‘I’m the better-deal replacement for your real parent’) and gaslighting (‘Oh, you hate your stepparent? You *must* be JEALOUS and want your poor re-partnered parent to be all lonely forever so you can have them to yourself’).
Here’s how that thread spools out in this case (in chronological order):
“… As my husband got up to lite the grill my son told him “to sit down and shut the “bleep” up”. My husband put him in his place telling him that he will not be spoken to like that again, he was his father and will not tolerate it.
… he is my sons step dad, but has raised them for over 15 years and they are treating him like crap too …
…My husband keeps telling me that they have a problem, not us. We are good parents and have done what we could…..it is them that have the problem… [Hello, enabling]
…I cant take being told everything I do is wrong, standing up for myself is wrong, calling someone a liar who stands right in front of you and bald face lies… […Somehow ‘stepdad is father’ isn’t a bare-faced lie?]
…He [older son] is just like his father, my ex, *that I just found out he is talking to after 15 years*, so not sure if that is playing a part in this or not. …”
Here’s my take on it- the “Something way beyond the country/city divide that the EP poster is trying to leverage in her favour” is related to politics. In a comment she mentions that her estranged son wanted to silence people he didn’t agree with while she believed that everyone had the right to free speech, and in a letter he called her a Nazi; in another comment, she remembers her father-in-law saying that this son was indoctrinated into his beliefs in college. This was definitely the poster describing a political argument. Especially given the timing. Eight months before her first post was August 2017, when the Unite the Right rally took place in Charlottesville.
I didn’t watch the reboot of Roseanne last year, but I do remember reading about this episode (http://www.vulture.com/2018/04/roseanne-is-a-political-series-full-stop.html) and wondering when the show would wind up with the main character’s family not talking to her anymore because she treated them all so badly. It’s sort of interesting to see something so similar playing out in real life.
That clarifies the context; thanks, appreciated.
(I can’t and don’t try to keep dates straight in my head for the horror show under the US PettyFink. Not getting it live much. Can’t. Too often local parallels surface, or something weird and horrible and not comparable, but ugly.)
Aren’t you just clutching at clever-straws? It’s often complained that estranged parents don’t give enough info, but that doesn’t mean you get to fill in the gaps with whatever most closely fits. Your second-hand guess is worth less than whatever the parent gives first-hand.
Violet, you hit the nail on the head. Here’s more detail from a recent post by her: “Before your youngest son estranged himself by way of abusive, verbal attack against us. He started to bully and criticize everything we did. During this time we realized he had gone far left……we were criticized and called racist because of our political stance, love of country, love of god, the national anthem, history, what made this country great.
He was not raised to not value his country or persecute those who think differently. But he as with many of his generation, he went to college, met a girl and we were just no good.”
“. . . our political stance, love of country, love of god, the national anthem, history, what made this country great.
He was not raised to not value his country or persecute those who think differently.”
I guess it makes sense that people who think that their children only do things to hurt them would also think that the only way to be patriotic is to never criticize anything about their country. Which isn’t patriotism; it’s just enabling in a different area than usual.
I don’t have any insight to add to this, just that I see this part of the mentality a lot in abusive people–not necessarily parents, either; been seeing it a lot in American politics recently–where they can simultaneously state one thing as a fact that happened, and also deny that it means anything anymore than if it didn’t happen. “I hit him several times/I’m not violent,” “I’m a member of X group identity/I hold beliefs directly contrary to X’s philosophy,” “I believe her side of the story/I voted to confirm him.” There’s the facts of reality, and there’s their identity. One never touches the other. If I say I’m not violent, or I’m supportive, or a good person, or whatever, it’s true no matter what my actions are.
It must be a very comfortable place to keep your mind.
One of the things I find so infuriating about this behavior is the revelation packed inside “I could have backed him up against the wall, but I didn’t! Look at what a good person I am!” The fact that she *didn’t*, even though she wanted to, means that at any point in her life, she could have chosen good behavior. But she didn’t want to, so she didn’t.
When I was in middle school, my life was a living hell. My mom was a teacher at a private school, and in seventh grade I transferred to a more local public school. I was basically eaten alive by bullying, in class, at recess, on the bus. Some of the teachers even joined in. At home I was faced with my mom, who criticized me at every turn, giving me horrible home perms that were painful, rolling her eyes at anything I said—you know the drill.
Decades later, I attended a reunion with some of my private school classmates. One girl told me all about how my mom really helped her in seventh grade, the same year I transferred. My mom took an interest in her, and helped her feel like less of an outcast, mentoring her and just being kind to her.
Listening to that story was brutal. Mom knew how to treat someone kindly. But she made a choice to treat her daughter horribly. I’m sure her fellow teachers gave her plenty of praise for helping a girl through a tough time. And she wonders why I haven’t spoken to her for almost six years. I can’t roll my eyes far enough back in my head.
The parent who’s wonderful to everyone but their own kids is a super common abuse dynamic, I think.
Yup, that’s certainly a component in mine. No one would ever believe what she’s done behind the scenes to me and mine.
Definitely. My grandfather was extremely like that and my mother is like that but not quite as bad. It’s jarring to hear the third-party versions of the people who raised us!
“I was basically eaten alive by bullying, in class, at recess, on the bus. Some of the teachers even joined in.”
Chinny reckon.
There’s a very disturbing post on a forum, right now. It’s not an EP forum, but its relationship section attracts some estranged parents. The OP wants us to believe that she’s been stopped from seeing her grandchildren simply because she had a chest infection for a week, and that her cruel daughter is “enjoying my pain” – the pain of estrangement. She then provides us with MORE INFO.
We find out that the OP’s daughter is in an abusive, controlling and violent relationship. The daughter’s partner, the stepfather of the GC is masturbating in the house to an online site and is being blackmailed because of it. He’s also punching his 8-year-old stepson in the stomach and slamming his head on concrete (it’s difficult to follow as OP doesn’t tend to use punctuation, and we don’t know how truthful she’s being). OP doesn’t show any genuine concern that her daughter and GC are being abused. It’s all very “What about me?” and “Woe is me”, because she doesn’t have access to the GC. At the end of the post she mentions that she booked herself and family a holiday to Turkey, but that her daughter selfishly decided to go on holiday elsewhere, still showing no real concern for the daughter’s safety.
Later, OP says that she contacted social services and they didn’t want to know, but she could be lying about something. Social services will often check things out, particularly when there’s this level of violence against a child. According to OP, her husband decides that the only reason this is happening is because they spoilt their daughter too much. He then goes on to have a quiet word with his grandson’s school about the situation. The school is “sharp in telling him” that they only want to speak to his daughter. Does this mean that the grandparents have done this in the past or are in the habit of causing trouble? Does the school know something?
In another comment, the OP obsesses over how the stepfather’s biological children had head lice five times and kept passing it on to her GC, but still isn’t concerned about the violence. By this point, some of the of the other commenters have started to lose patience with OP. At the end, OP mentions that her daughter doesn’t want to leave her partner because she doesn’t want to be alone. OP then throws in a comment implying that her daughter would be better off living with her father and her. It’s a very strange comment about how her husband is far more easy going than her daughter’s partner, and feels so out of place – “she (the daughter) has not seen this at home her dad is easy going if I say to him I’m going on holiday for a week he’ll say have a good time. he does not like the sun.”
Why didn’t OP contact social services or the police before she was denied access? If OP is telling the truth, then this abusive and violent situation has been going on for some time. Her focus is clearly the GC, but she doesn’t seem to care what happens to them as long as she gets access.
I find the progression of the story that the EP tells interesting. She starts off with a seemingly normal understanding that admitting to violence against her son will be detrimental to her story, so she leaves it out. As time passes, though, and she gets nothing but affirmation and reassurance from the forum that she can do no wrong, she tentatively admits that she slapped her son in the face, just once, and then promptly walks into the house. Once again, she gets no push-back and only affirmation and understanding that “everyone has a breaking point.” So next, she’s admitting that she hit him “several times” during that argument. The overall affirming environment in that forum has clearly emboldened her to be more open about her actual violent behavior and stop obscuring it with selective storytelling and/or lies.
This makes sense, but it struck me as surprising because I’m used to seeing the opposite. My own estranged mother usually didn’t try to obscure her cruel and abusive behavior towards me if it had happened in the very recent past. However, as time went on and I kept pointing to something terrible she’d done, she’d start to try to obscure it more and more. For example, at first she was pretty honest with me about how she and her dad had kicked me out of the house for being queer. But when I kept bringing that up as a reason that I didn’t trust them anymore, suddenly it was “no, you misunderstood us. We never meant to kick you out of the house permanently. It was just a short-term thing.” And then it became “Actually, we didn’t kick you out at all; I don’t know where that idea comes from.” And then it became “we didn’t kick you out. YOU asked to be kicked out.” It was wild watching the story morph from conversation to conversation, but it was always in the direction of trying to further obscure the truth of what really happened, because the truth wasn’t getting her a positive response. It’s pretty funny seeing those same pressures working in the opposite direction, leading this EP poster to become more honest.
What I wonder is whether being in the EP forums and having her bad behavior rewarded is actually worse or has pretty similar outcomes to my mother having her bad behavior discouraged. In both cases, it seems that they gained no self-awareness. My mom just took the path of gaslighting and obscuring and the EP person took the path of being more overtly proud of her bad behavior. In both cases, they continue to be abusive. It’s interesting to see that divergence though.
I actually found one of this woman’s posts independently of this site and then came to check here because it was so striking to me.
A newer posts goes like this:
“Crazy parent stories
“As many of you know, my oldest son who is slowing estranging himself from my husband and I decided after my second gc was born that we are violent child abuser( of course we have never hit our gc or my son or DIL), I did slap my ES after he finished his vile, putrid obscenity laden rant. My kids were rarely “spanked” when they were growing up, so there is no basis for this Judgement.”
Like, she contradicts herself in the same sentence!
This poster has updated a bit. She did not go to Thanksgiving with her extended family in spite of her older son almost begging her to. It comes across as very sad- a son who desperately wants his mother to be affectionate and involved and can’t understand why she isn’t, and a mother who shuts down (or explodes) when she feels attacked, which is all the time now.
She also mentioned that she didn’t want to leave her husband (who she still refers to as her sons’ father) alone for the holiday, since he is forbidden to be anywhere near the older son’s children. There was no explanation why.
I can’t get over the “Wah, wah, we have to make APPOINTMENTS to see our GRANDCHILDREN, this is ABUSE.”
I am fortunate enough to have a mother I both love and like as a person. She’s a trained nursery nurse, has over 50 years experience caring for children, and she’s extremely risk averse. She is, in short, the perfect babysitter.
She would never, in a million years, turn up to see my son without having checked with me first.
The mind boggles.
There’s no hope here. She’s so deeply entrenched in her Victim Narrative with the support of the Enabling Forum members, she now completely leaves out assaulting her son and has become yet more overbearing and self-righteous, absolutely enraged her family members don’t support her. And why would they? They’ve had a lifetime of dealing with her explosiveness and flat out refusal to accept any responsibility for her behavior regardless of how clearly abusive she was and still is. She lies prolifically-and poorly. She has zero credibility coupled with all the rage of an (oversized) tantruming toddler-and she will remain a tantruming toddler regardless of her chronological age. She’d rather have no relationship with her allegedly beloved grandchild than acknowledge the right and responsibilities of THE PARENTS OF THE CHILD to determine what is in their best interests of THEIR CHILD. Ridiculous, nasty, despotic, odious womanchild. Shame on them all for enabling this behavior.
There are multiple marriages all over the place. Invariably they describe their ex’s as “abusive.” But somehow, their children magically escaped the fighting, screaming, stony silences etc. because they “protected my children from that.” It is impossible for a child not to be adversely effected by an “abusive” Parental Relationship while residing in the same home-and there’s a wealth of research on the *enduring effects* of such marital discord on children. I have nothing but contempt for parents who use their children as “excuses” for staying in an “abusive” relationship, deny the abuse effected their children (but effected the hell out of them-as ADULTS) and further alleging they “protected” their children. No, they did not; they “protected” themselves from making decisions they were absolutely responsible for making as responsible parents. That transparent Victim DARVO fails yet again. I can only imagine the number of partners in and out of their kid’s lives before they finally landed one that agreed to marry them. Shame on them for denying the impact never mind the enduring Legacy their behavior had on their children.
Bill Burr had a comedy routine on “An epidemic of gold-digging whores out there!” There certainly is no shortage Forum members who match that description perfectly. If this is Shame mediated, there must be some unfathomably deep shame (lack of $$$) in being single because nearly all have never spent any significant time alone, rather than engaging in typical Predator/Parasite questing behavior. They damn well should be ashamed: It is well warranted and self-inflicted.
There was one comment awhile back I took note of that I refer to as “The Thermonuclear Post.” A new person makes an Introduction:
“My husband and I had a tremendously explosive childish marriage all through our sons childhood. We yelled and physically fought constantly. I was too stupid to protect my sons from this…my 29 yr. old is full of anger and anxiety and will have nothing to do with me. My older son is more forgiving but has little to do with me. My remorse, regret and loss are indescribable.”
Ohhh, the collective panic: Immediately the posters minimized, rationalized, and basically denied the new poster’s reality because it was too honest and too close to home for them. They all engaged in some variation of the same in their own “abusive” relationships and no way are they gonna honor her Truth or honestly address their own culpability in their adult offspring’s decision to terminate their relationship. Not surprisingly that poster never came back: Healthy recognizes diseased when they’re pelted with it. Shame on them for refusing to acknowledge her honesty, integrity or Reality.
Because it’s allllll “this generation of spoiled brats”/their spouses/alienating ex’s (snort, like they didn’t PAS daily)/their immaturity (despite parentifying the crap out of their children)/the moon is in retrograde and Mars has bedbugs-that’s how ridiculous their accusations are, how desperately they paint ball blame and flame everyone and everything else for their own adult choices, the results of which their children were forced to endure. Shame on them for refusing to own their own choices and behavior-yet demand anyone else do so.
But let’s continue to ignore that Reality and blame the victims:
“I DEMAND the RESPECT to which I am ENTITLED as her MOTHER!” Shame on the bunch of you for your rampant dishonesty. Shame on you all for your lack of integrity. Shame on you all for your equally as rampant refusal to acknowledge your culpability. Shame on all of you for daring to describe yourselves as “the best” “brilliant” parents. Shame on every last one of you for the abuse and neglect you perpetrated on your powerless children. Oh YES YOU DID. Shame on every last one of you for your willful and complete moral and ethical bankruptcy.
These people disgust me-at best. Typically I view them with deep contempt for their inhumanity and degradation of all that is good and decent by their very presence in this world.
I have been following her posts for awhile now and she has gone completely off the rails. In November she was invited to Thanksgiving, but did not show up. She ignored them at Christmas. She made a “I am moving on” declaration which she followed up with a post about how her mother and sister told her to “stop playing the victim”. That really set her off. So after declaring she was “moving on” and not going ot the grandson’s birthday, she went to the grandson’s birthday. She walked in and her sister said “Oh, hi.” when she saw her and she lost her shit. She walked right out! WHAT?!? So she showed up because she wanted them to attack her and when they grey rocked her she couldn’t take it. She constantly refers to how her husband is the only person on her side, that her husband is not allowed to see the grandkid and that her family doesn’t care for her husband. She will not elaborate on that topic. I find her fascinating and sad at the same time. She has not yet realized that her own behaviors have led to her situation and that no one on that forum is helping her.
More information! I thought this poster might stop the info train but it’s still going (she’s said at least twice that she’s “done”, but the parents on these sites are never really done). Now she’s saying that the reason she’s not allowed to pick up her older grandson is because when her son needed her to babysit she took half the day off from work and her husband cared for the child the other half of the day. This is the same husband who’s not allowed to be with the grandchildren ever. She’s also upset that she gets out of work before her son but isn’t allowed to go into his house to see his children without him being there. I guess now that she’s found a place that will never hold her responsible for anything she’s able to list every time anyone has ever wronged her. She must be a nightmare to live with.
I saw that too. We’re just meant to politely ignore the fact that she left the kids for half the day with someone who is currently barred from seeing them at all (red flag), clearly without permission and probably against their express wishes, judging by the reaction.
But in the poster’s world, their reasoning wasn’t valid, so the boundary wasn’t valid, so they have no right to be upset at her for breaking it.
Yes! I’d love to find out why her husband isn’t allowed around the kids. But she hasn’t posted in a while so I get it will remain a mystery.
Such a classic missing missing reasons. All roads lead directly to her husband/marriage as the primary culprit in why her kids started to pull away.
She insists on referring to her husband as their father despite 1) their fairly open dislike of him, and 2) their living biological father, with whom at least one son seems to want a relationship. She actually seems to feel betrayed by her son’s interest in a relationship with his biological father, and lack of interest in a relationship with her husband. This combined with the fact that she reveals that her son has not spoken to his biological father in 15 years, and her husband has been involved in her sons’ life for 15 years, is… suggestive of some issues there.
Her YS’s “putrid tirade” is never fully relayed, but multiple times she comes back to him calling her “weak” and “spineless.” Clearly her behavior towards her sons and the family that support them isn’t particularly weak or spineless. But her son is obviously angry at her for not standing up to / protecting him from … someone.
Her husband is barred from being around the grandchildren under any circumstances, supervised or not. She lies, either directly or by omission, to bypass this boundary and leaves the grandchildren alone with him for 4+ hours. One gets the impression from her description that she thought she could “teach” her OS and DIL that her husband was a competent caretaker, and that would cause them to lift the restrictions on his access. Why else position it so he was the caretaker for the latter half of the day, so that the OS and DIL would immediately find out the situation upon picking up the GC? Why else focus on the fact that all the basic caretaking (diapers, feeding, changing) was addressed when telling the story? Her only takeaway is “Because I was unable to take full day, I am not allowed to babysit.”
So to recap:
Her Ys has a meltdown where, from the information she gives, he was angry at her for being weak and spineless in her relationship; She responds with violence and self-righteous anger at how “disrespectful” the YS was to her and her husband.
Her husband is barred from seeing her GC; She won’t even comment on it at all, and seems to assume they just don’t trust him with babies because he’s never had one. She blames her YS and violence against him and assumes her husband is being punished with her.
She is told, directly, that her access to her GC has been restricted because she left the GC alone with her husband; She walks away convinced they are simply angry that she didn’t take a full day off work for them.
Again and again, her husband keeps coming back up in her children’s reasons for distancing themselves from her. Again and again, she just keeps focusing on everything else. She refuses to absorb or acknowledge any of her sons’ issues with her husband, though they must be severe to not allow him even supervised access.
Of course, that’s not to absolve the poster of her own behavior. Her unrelenting attempts to use intimidation, pressure, and ultimatums to try and force a resolution of the family issues has probably shown her sons that much of the damage they had been blaming on her husband actually came from her.
“Her husband is barred from seeing her GC; She won’t even comment on it at all, and seems to assume they just don’t trust him with babies because he’s never had one.”
This is another thing that my mom does–makes assumptions about people’s reasons that are totally inaccurate, and doesn’t even think that maybe there might be something else going on that she doesn’t know about. I feel so sorry for this woman’s kids.
I don’t want to link directly per the commenting rules, but someone also tried to warn the EP about this post (as if Issendai had done something actually harmful, instead of pointing out her story’s inconsistencies and eventual escalation). It was titled “I would want to know about THIS…” although the same poster tried to warn the EP in one of her (many) threads as well.
It was interesting watching the regular posters, with incomplete information due to their moderator not allowing the full link, make a number of malicious assumptions about the warner’s attempt.
The entitlement is really striking. When the granddaughter was born, her son texted her a photo of the baby. She works at the hospital where the baby was born and asked to visit; the son texted her a room number “4 Hours later while I am already at home.” The fact that she mentioned this sticks out at me — it doesn’t seem to occur to her that her son and DIL were probably exhausted and wanted a few hours to recover and be alone with their baby before having other people in. All she sees is that they inconvenienced her.
Later, she repeats her request to pick up the older grandson at daycare. The son says no, but she can visit him and the grandkids when he (the son) gets home from work. She refuses to see the grandchildren because she gets off work an hour and a half before the son does and doesn’t want to wait.
Her story is so profoundly sad to me. She’s invited to Thanksgiving and doesn’t initially want to go because she thinks these people have rejected her. Finally after much hemming and hawing and encouragement from other relatives, including her own mother, she drops by the day before Thanksgiving. This is her account.
” I get there, I can hardly look at my son and all they are doing is shoving my gd, only 2 months old, at me. I didn’t want to hold her, I didn’t want to cuddle and kiss her, I didn’t want to fall in love with her. My mom is shocked when I wont pick her up.”
I mean here they are basically begging her to have a relationship with her new grandchild — which is what she says she wants — and she is so consumed with anger and mistrust that she sees even that as aggression, “shoving” the baby at her so she’ll fall in love and be heartbroken when they take the baby away. Soon after this she gets up and leaves. Her son (I think the oldest) comes running after her and begs her to return, tells her he loves her and wants her to come to Thanksgiving. She tells him she won’t come without his stepfather. Everything has to be on her terms 100% or it doesn’t count. Later in the thread she complains:
“I knew that when my boys married things would change…..old traditions would change and I am fine with that….maybe a little sad or melancholy for the past. But it would be nice to be included in these new traditions if only a little part.”
They literally just tried to include her and she can’t see it. This happens repeatedly with the rest of her family telling her they love her and want her around, and she rejects it and them, then complains that they rejected her. And of course the forum members back her up, tell her she’s right to keep picking her husband over her kids, back up her wacky interpretation of their attempts to mend fences with her. It’s just incredibly sad.
Oh, and in her last post in June 2019 the granddaughter’s birth story — the four-hour delay between being informed of the granddaughter’s birth and being allowed to visit the baby — becomes “not being informed of my gd birth in the hospital I work.”
Because of course.
She made it all happen, but refuses to accept any responsibility for her situation. She revels in her own manufactured misfortune and blames everyone else. Her family members have called her out for “playing the victim” and she denies it while playing the victim. I find her tragically fascinating.
The family seems to be stuck blaming all of the problems on the stepfather. Maybe the mother’s behavior at Thanksgiving broke them out of that. She chooses the stepfather rather than them over and over again for a reason, and I don’t think it’s that she’s “spineless.”
I do a lot of cultwatching, and adult children whose parents chose the cult over them regularly blame the cult 100%. Sometimes that’s warranted. But often, if the parent hadn’t chosen that particular cult to cut them off from their children, they’d have chosen something else. The same is true of relationships; stepparents get blamed, but why did the parent choose the stepparent in the first place?
Good point. The divorce happened and the stepfather came into their lives in adolescence, a rocky time in most parent-child relationships, so it’s possible that the divorce and the relative stranger in their midst took the brunt of their anger and criticism at the time, including anger and criticism that more fairly should have been directed at the mother. You know her “my way or the highway” act didn’t just start in 2017. And stepfather enables her, so it’d be easy to convince yourself that she’d listen to reason, compromise a little, if not for him.
Interesting also that at the time she started posting on EP forums, *she* was the one who wanted to draw out the estrangement. She makes repeated reference to not wanting to go to family events because her younger son, the one she hit, will be there. I assume he wouldn’t have been blindsided if she showed up (since the rest of the family seems to side with the sons, I doubt they’d do that to him). So both sons were willing to see her throughout much of the time she’s been posting on EP forums; older son seems to have been willing to let her see his kids regularly, including inviting her to meet his daughter on the day of her birth; but since the relationships they offered her weren’t 100% exactly what she wanted down to the last detail, she experienced their efforts as a rejection and treated them as if they’d cut her off. The result: they have now actually cut her off.
No doubt that the EP OP is controlling and authoritarian and would be toxic by herself. She seems to me aggrieved – not rightfully – because she is no longer the family hub. No longer are family events held at her house, nor do her family from where she used to live interstate stay at her place when visiting. She lays heavy emphasis on how she got slappy at HER house, like that gives her status as judge, jury and executioner over others’ place in the family. (Nope, in her dreams. Her people switched venues and stripped her of the ‘under my roof’ pretext.)
Quote:
”
It was my youngest ES that started the whole ball rolling when he came into m y house and because of a difference of opinion and foul language, he was asked to leave. That sent him on a vile, disgusting, hurtful tirade. As a result, I smacked him a couple of times. My boys were very rarely hit growing up, very rarely, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he came into our house and screamed vile, hurtful, disgusting, disrespectful words…..no. My family blames me for everything for smacking him. It was not m y finest moment.(…)
Now no one in my family with answer texts or emails from me…..”
The stepdud may still be the primary victimiser though. Though apparently this is not the classic case with a sexual victimiser stepdud and enabler bio mom (though mom took no exception to the ‘being called things like child molester’ comparison rather tentatively offered by another EP), or not likely, nonetheless there is still plenty of room for the artificial, imposed ‘parent’ to be the most toxic man and person in the sons of narc-lady’s lives.
Eg there was a stepdud in Wallerstein’s children of divorce study who made a kid with a heart problem iirc do a long list of physically taxing chores, destroying his after-school social life because he was wiped. The father was no prize either, but the stepdud did that wearing-down day-to-day damage.
I’d guess that stepdad is the primary abuser and the sons blamed mom for being “spineless” and not standing up to him…and now they’re learning, beyond any power of denial, that she didn’t stand up to him because she didn’t WANT to stand up to him, because she shares many of his abusive attitudes. It must be very painful.
Too true it must be painful. (But liberating, because nobody’s bending the truth out of shape around you.)
Avoiding the reality that mom had primary responsibility all along (she chose stepdud, and she moved her kids interstate with him; and *how in hell* she got relocation permission under family law I wanna know, cause normally you can’t up and move on a whim. You need compelling financial and/or social reasons. Yet there was no family where they moved and their lifestyle sounds less than frugal) would be a logical mistake for the sons to make, though that sounds odd. For survival reasons until escape is possible, partly, like the traumatic amnesia and not looking things in the face Jennifer Freyd writes on. And logical also because there is immediate as well as general causality. The (usu) gendered abuse specialists say partner abuse is the leading cause of child abuse. It would likely classify as partner abuse as well as (adult) child abuse to isolate the mom by making bigoted ‘biblical’ threats at the grown kids.
Appears that the mom did try to boss the younger son around on social media all on her own initiative, though.
Granted, that’s less ugly than the info I got linked to once from an acon site… (Worker from early days of women’s refuges iirc in London, said a big majority of users beat their kids. Guess it was more ‘fashionable’ in, like, the 70s, but it hits my ‘hypocrisy + power = disgust’ button hard.) Still, she precipitated things, solo.
And here we have an adult child who can no longer trust her mother to watch the grandchildren. Note: her mother tells everyone she’s “keeping the grandkids away” but fails to tell anyone why, in spite of having a clear explanation:
https://captainawkward.com/2019/04/03/1191-guest-postmy-moms-boyfriend-is-a-sex-offender/#more-46386
Delayed deep-diving and didn’t realise this for a bit, but unless I’m mixing up the timing, there are *prelude* incidents before the face-to-face confrontation with younger son: 1- the “tirade on FB” and 2- the letter/email including a “how you let me down as a mom” _LIST_ [my emphasis]
Add it up and that’s some forewarning / stormclouds on the horizon. Isn’t that all the less excuse for her (supposed) explosion when they met in person?
(It’s actually an “If I can’t control you, I’ll attack!!” thing, I figure. The control-freakitude fits with her trying to police his social media use – especially the part where it seems she did it via public postings, for his friends to see, rather than private message.)
These are the posts I’m basing this on:
[my emphasis with the underscores]
Post A
I don’t know how these EC expect us to go back in time and change decision we made 1, 5, 10 years ago. I too was presented with _A LIST_ by my youngest and first ES listing what I had not done for him…..maybe only about 6 or 7, but it was like….EXCUSE ME!!
Post B
I also received a letter from my youngest ES before we were totally estranged. I questioned him posting a violent video on FB…..just why would you post a thing like that […]. Well what followed was a tirade on FB, about how bad the guy getting beat in the video was…..I really just thought it wasn’t something you should repost….
so after a few weeks of silence I get a “well written” letter via email letting me know that his friends think I am a Nazi lover […] and then _A LIST_ of each occasion that I let him down, disappointed him……[…] When I questioned his brother, he was like it was very well written and this is what has been bothering him for sometime. […]
Wow, nice catch!
So it’s pretty clear that the “violent video” in question was a Nazi getting punched. Interesting that she’d take such offense to that, seeing as she feels it’s appropriate to slap someone in the face multiple times for being upset at her and talks about how much self control she has to not physically intimidate her son at the hospital right after hid kid was born. Sort of does make it seems like she doesn’t have an issue with the violence so much as the violence being against a Nazi.
I also find it very interesting that she does not expound on any of the things on his list, nor deny that any of them happened. So you… did fail your son in about 6 or 7 ways major enough for him to have still been upset about them in his mid-to-late twenties, and your response is to ignore his feeling about it until he blows up, then assault him? No wonder your whole family is tired of your shit.
True, it is all about the ‘target’ – not that ‘target’ is exactly the right word for racist terrorists when they’re being counter-attacked.
It’s even more telling if, extrapolating slightly from Violet1211’s estimate of the timeline, that video is from the Aug. 13, 2017 incident shortly after the Unite the Right rally (https://www.npr.org/2018/09/06/645177784/jury-fines-man-1-for-punching-charlottesville-rally-organizer), i.e. the one where its witless leader tries to blame-shift the murder of one of the “rainbow nation” counterprotesters, and the injury of others.
If that’s the story, then I bet the son was quick to see the parallel with his mother’s behaviours in private. Or not so private in some cases, since I think she started that Facebook debate in public postings.
As in, if I’m correct, she “outed” *herself* as having serious “personal is political” differences with her son. Tried to boss him around in public. Embarrassed him in front of his friends.
You just DON’T. You can have rude disagreements in private. (Including outright toxic ones, creepy attempts at domination and mind control that are wearing even when the target sees straight through it.) But drag it out in the open, where people are going to say “why do you put up with that?” NO. She really shot herself in the foot, if it played out as it looks.
Meant to reply to you in-thread, but I forgot how. Sorry for the format fail. My reply is misplaced as a fresh thread below.
They never do expound on any of these alleged communications and there are never any screen shots or any kind of documentary evidence to support their allegations. No way would this just be accepted without supporting documentation at an EAC site. There are no basic standards for reporting alleged events-which makes sense: The Forum members simply refuse to hold any one accountable for their obviously unacceptable behavior. We’re suppose to believe, in another Drip Feed example, two Estranged Daughters in their 30’s and 40’s who have been completely Estranged for three years suddenly, just out of nowhere decided to email a Forum member one day-without any provocation-to tell the Forum member they hope the member is “going crazy” because she has not been given access to a grandchild. (She’s another one who states if she had physical access, she wanted to physically assault her EACs as well.) EAC’s would NOT accept that ridiculous narrative and further, they would tell the poster to screen shot and post the emails. OTOH, all abusers like this Forum member and the Tantruming Toddler above conveniently leave out precipitating events and insist each of their abuses be viewed in situ so the Estranged offspring can be presented as meanies and the EP’s can pretend their abusive pattern of behavior over decades can be minimized to at best, “I know I wasn’t PPPUURRFFEECCTT!”
The Tantruming Toddler also mentioned she has SIX INDOOR DOGS. (I shudder to think of the total number in her Dog Herd.) That’s a dealbreaker right there for children: When you have this many dogs, the kids are going to get knocked over, there’s going to be fights between the dogs, marking behavior and sanitation issues in general and the very real possibility of allergic responses to the dander/environment by the child. These types of parents say they’ll put the dogs in another room but that still doesn’t ameliorate the other issues. And far too often, “Oops! The dogs got out by ”aaacccccciiiddeeeenntt!” Uh Huh, and then we have a kid that’s been bitten or mauled by one or more of the dogs. Just NO to that whole mess when children are involved.
When you are two for two, four out of five, a majority of your adult offspring are estranged etc., it’s YOU. *You are the only common denominator here.* Consequently no matter how frantically you try to cloak yourself in Professional Victimhood, claim not to know “wwwhhhyyy” etc., your attempts to avoid Accountability just make you look childish, foolish and keep one in a chronic state of unproductive rumination. I recognize some of these people from years ago and their canned “narrative” hasn’t changed any, just become more entrenched: Every day is Groundhog Day at EP Forums. That’s just one more indication of a Sick System perpetrated by others who are equally as psychologically arrested at a much earlier stage of development.
To people on the outside reading their narratives, the EPs present as transparently unreliable reporters-actually, straight up liars. The EP Queens have no clothes nor veracity, integrity, or moral compass. To claim you’re being “abused” because someone isn’t in your life is a wonderful example of how evil uses words to obfuscate just as those who are not malevolent
use words to illuminate. Yep, following that “logic,” the entirety of humanity on this planet who are not associating with the EP are “abusing” them and that alone is “evidence” to support their underlying belief, “Everyone is out to ggeeettttt mmmeeeee!”
Adults understand and fully accept they are accountable for their choices and their behaviors. There are no adults at EP sites-wait, excuse me, there is one I’ve come across and do respect. What makes her such an exception is her refusal to get pulled into confirming the unacceptable behavior, the transparently false narratives, the ridiculous, supercilious sticky sweet fawning attempts by a newer member to pull her into a Forced Teaming situation and her very genuine work on herself over years. While the other members spew fault at everyone and everything “out there,” this woman quietly steps back. She truly has achieved detachment without demonizing.
And the fools never notice her strategic absences from their threads or refusal to play into their Suck Up/Forced Teaming Tactics: She just side steps the baiting. This woman is truly an exception in her psychosocial maturity, outlook and well considered, non-reactive participation on an EP Forum. Too bad she’s such an obvious exception, a self-aware, mature adult among the pathological EPs.
No wonder everyone gets tired of their shit: Most of them have no friends, no hobbies, no interests, no activities, no employment, nothing that would require them to Adult. The only entity in many of their lives is a man/partner to support their lazy asses. Therefore, their offspring are required to keep them entertained, dance attendance on their self-pity and offer up their children for the EPs to play “mommy” to children that are NOT their’s-But they *demand* that doll-child/object to play with to ameliorate *their own* empty, selfish, bitter existence.
My theory is that it’s the day after the deadly Unite the Right rally Violet1211 mentioned, when its leader inappropriately called a press conference and was mobbed by the opposition.
(Actually not much of a beatdown based on the lawsuits. Just one guy went down for throwing a punch and the woman who decked the dude was trying to be a literal buffer, she just made her move a bit soon.)
Re her responses to the son’s list. There’s been some slightly more specific stuff mixed in with the blanket denials lately:
“ I KNOW I was a good mom. I KNOW I have a right to live my life on my little farm whether they think otherwise. I KNOW the man I married after divorcing their alcoholic father is and always was [a] good man and father and grandfather….oh until they met their significant others.”
[Btw ‘what the…?’ on the supposed grandfather rep. If de facto in-laws arrival on the scene coincide equals ‘no respect’ for the paternal unstately elders (in reality, helps reset the sons’ normality meter, more likely), then do the biol and it follows step-dude won’t be accorded grandfather status down the track.]
I associate these affirmations of the forum poster with her son’s letter and lists because in the same post she says [brace for rivers of denial]:
“I don’t think it is fair that our children make us second guess our selves, our decision, who we are.
I had signs hanging up around my house for months after the estrangement from my youngest son. They listed statements like:
I am and always was a good mother
I deserve respect
I am proud of who I am
I will love and respect all those in my life that
Statements like that hung in my bathroom, by the front door above the stove….to remind myself that they may not see my worth, but I need to remind my self that I matter.”
Elsewhere she says:
“What really mad me cry was that this ES [in ‘Mom’ the TV series] did have a trying childhood, living with a alcoholic, drug user, but my ES did not. He had a good loving encouraging home. Yes, his father and I divorced but I made sure both my sons lives stayed as normal as possible. I was not an alcoholic, drug user, abuser. I was a good mom and was a saint compared to the mom on the show…”
Now you see it, now you don’t. Now dad’s alcoholic, now he’s not.
And also:
“I would never have kept my kids away from their grandparents and my mother in law was a major alcoholic.”
So…double standards on exposing kids to stress from alcoholic relatives as well?
‘If they are my co-parent, or a fellow grandparent up in arms, it doesn’t count as a cause for resentment, restraint, and rejection.’
So she has essentially, as much as an EP can, confirmed that her husband has been directly ousted by her sons as abusive. And she has chosen to ignore and deny their claims of abuse while simultaneously pouting about how for *some reason* they don’t want her in their lives or around their kids anymore.
-“Your husband abused me.”
-“No he didn’t, I KNOW he’s a GOOD man!”
-“He definitely did!!! Here are a slew of examples! Stop being spineless and admit it!!!”
-“STOP BEING DISRESPECTFUL TO YOUR LOVING PARENTS!!!” *Slapping commences*
-“Your husband isn’t allowed to be around our children under any circumstances.”
-“Oh teehee, I’ll just go in to work for a half day and let my husband watch the grandkids while I’m gone to show those silly kids how good of a babysitter he is!”
-“Since you left my children with a man I have told you is not allowed around them who you have been told is abusive, we no longer trust you around our kids.”
-“STOP USING THE GRANDBABIES AS PAWNS AND PUNISHING ME FOR BEING VIOLENT!!!!”
“Until they met their significant others” sounds a lot like “until they met people who validated their feelings and told them that they way their step-father behaved was inappropriate/abusive” translated into EP-Speak lol. The lack of further examination of their supposed “reasons” is pretty amazing. They never think that maybe the fact that their NC corresponded with gaining new family of choice because the family of choice *treats them better* and gives them insight into how a healthy, loving family behaves. Oh no, it must always be a cruel and heartless brainwashing daughter-in-law! Never a thought to how, if both of her sons just so *happened* to wander into relationships with controlling, abusive women, how that reflects back on her and the precedents she must have set with them in their childhood
It’s hilarious how furious she is with the in-laws – and the kids’ extended family of origin – for supporting their spouse/de facto over HER. Like she’s not twistedly mirroring that in the way she enables her husband.
Though she doesn’t get that specific. Stepdud stands accused of badmouthing the maternal grandmother and aunt and youngest son and being “negative”. Maybe that means he’s the source of the fascist media tastes, the one who started off the Fox News watching or something?
And there’s a basis to suspect child labour, maybe (I’m very strict on such points, so ymmv):
“”My husband was talking about the time that him and our oldest ES got stuck in this little town in Mississippi on one of their trips down south to work on our farm before we moved down. He was talking about the car repair, but I heard how he an dour ES had an adventure….now my husband is forbidden to see his gk…….sad.””
Note how often she complains that her son’s in-laws think he “walks on water” and similar comments. To her this is actually a bad thing.
Oh, that comment about the program “Mom:” Apparently this woman is incapable of even telling the difference between a sitcom on tv and reality. On that basis alone, I concluded she was an unfit parent. When I saw it I thought, “Maybe her kids spent their earlier lives playing “Animal, Vegetable or Fruit?” Or “Bacteria, Virus or Fungi?” while attempting to elucidate the flavor of crazy to tell the Exorcist they would be confronting when jousting with Mommy-Dearest.
With that backdrop in mind, why would it surprise me assorted pieces of paper stuck on various surfaces of the house could easily convince her all those factually fallacious statements have any basis in reality? Hell, she could just write ‘em all over the “puppy pads” from her Six Indoor Dogs and fasten them to the wall with “produced fresh daily” dog poop. When she was all upset about the grabby granny contest she lost spectacularly, she was wailing about what other people would *think* if they saw her driving around with a child car seat in her vehicle. HUH? That’s like me wondering what other people would think if they saw me driving around with an snow/ice scraper in my vehicle in July. They would think exactly the same thing: NOTHING. (You’re just not that important, Wailin’ Wanda.)
The “significant others” /spouses of her sons are simply breeding stock. Other people have Livestock “Look Books:”
She has “The Family Photo Album.”
Truth to tell, the “Mom” reference did not bother half as much as EPs adopting the nanny’s suggested abused child self-affirmations as “kind, smart, important” from “The Help”. (To be fair, the EP in question only seconded or thirded that one.) Sure, flip the generations, EPs. Doesn’t make us wonder whether you parentified your own child(ren) the same way you’re distortedly conscripting pop cultural figures into supporting you AT ALL.
One of the things I will hate forever about country living is that some (trad) people seriously DO feel free to monitor you if info ‘falls in their way’. In my case, it did because I lived in sight of a major artery road. People did look for my parked car. And occasionally also me on foot, getting in my steps.
So I don’t think it’s so unrealistic there, though the whining is disingenuous. It’s all still this EP’s own fault, because she chose to move to the gossipy country and drag her kids there AND she works in hospital admin, so she’d know hospitals are hotbeds of gossip (I’ve just heard of it) and that you don’t do things like have child or baby seats installed in your parked car if you’re on the outs with the descendants and you don’t want colleagues to comment unawares.
There is a great passage by Margery Sharp about that last point:
“To possess a grandchild without the encumbrance of a daughter-in-law is many a grandmother’s unadmitted dream. “Dear Anne, dear Lucy, dear Susan!” cry the grandmothers—happy to welcome with small bottles of Chanel No. 5 at Christmas each necessary transmitter of a family face; but even happier to water with easy tears a rose-bush on an early grave …”
Anyone seen this EP’s latest foray? (Extinction burst?)
Cans of worms projectile-vomiting out.
I don’t even know what the latest popular forum is for EPs. I’m thinking that’s probably healthy for me as it means I don’t think about it so much anymore (though my EP is affecting my life again as she apparently needs care and no one made any alternative plans when it became clear that the assumption that I was going to take care of her was mistaken). I am still interested in hearing about things though from this safe remote location. It’s fascinating.
Understandable.
I’m managing my own exposure in this instance by checking only the minimalist profile page of the EP to see if there’s an uptick in the post/reply count. There rarely is.
I will confess to being really curious about that crazy volcano of toxicity that was super active on a few of the past fora. I wonder if she’s still active somewhere (though not enough to go looking).
To recap, OP dropped by older ES’s house unannounced to deliver a Final Letter (final-er than the last time she sent in a Final Letter in December?). It did not go well.
Later, she texted him that she wanted a relationship with her GD, “but not under your thumb, your control. Family doesn’t do that to one another.” ES told her to stop harassing him and his family. The extended family is still on ES’s side.
Forum response is fairly typical (occasional unwanted visits are not harassment, ES is keeping her in a one-down position, etc). OP has, unsurprisingly, vowed to take back her power.
They never get that they’re just not entitled to it and no one has to give it to them. My mother ordered me to, “Stop it!” Um, no? He may have to resort to legal action.
EP boards are so unlike other advice boards and columns- on the other sites, people who write in usually change their ways of thinking and develop their understanding of the situation. And the EPs* think they’re doing this, but they just keep trying the same few things over and over again because their understanding is so garbage. The whole thing reminds me of these lines from a recent Ask Polly column: “They’re like babies in rolling chairs who believe that they can walk. They’re so proud of themselves! It’s almost funny, except when it isn’t funny at all.”
*The one exception I’ve seen was a woman who posted twice on a board the possibility that her son as behaving this way because he was hurt by her inability to care for him when he was a child. Clearly she wanted to explore this, but the other board members told her that *of course* she wasn’t at fault, her son really needed to get over it, he was behaving horribly and should be more understanding. I hope she’s getting better advice and support somewhere.
Bulldozer Betty’s still not done. She’s continued to text the older ES throughout quarantine and again “stood up for herself” via text when her ES didn’t want to communicate.
Recently, she googled her older ES and discovered that he had been arrested for leaving his kids in a hot car. (Sidebar: oh, those poor kids!) Here’s how she describes her behavior: “So I could not leave well enough alone. I texted him and welcomed him to the club….the club of not perfect parents. That guess what you are human and make mistakes and are not perfect. Yes, son….welcome to the club. We dont look so bad now…do we? As you may have guessed I did not get a response. Guess I really found my backbone.”
I wonder about her perspective. What is her endgame, here?
My bet: She’s trying to curate the narrative so she looks better to others than she does to her immediate biological family, as in the ones who have actually been in her clutches. That’s why she separated her ‘you suck just as much as me’ hate letters from her account of elder son’s response.
[Btw I heartily disapprove of leaving kids in the car in summer in Texas, of course. Based on my visits to a similar climate and families with similar aged kids, I would reckon on locals leaving cars parked and running with air-conditioning on though. (Ymmv, plus I’m inferring here. I don’t have experience of people leaving kids unsupervised like that; impossible when I’m one of the older ones in the family who can be used as snap supervision.)
I also suspected Texas might be zealous enough to add charges if the car was hot, maybe? – not really my area.]
As far as I can defragment the timing, the ‘spewing hate’ (as first son sees it) is the ‘you suck as much as us [or more] because you left your young kids in the car’. (Plus, probably, the things she’s said in earlier Final letters.)
She pretended to be mystified about exactly what ‘hate she spewed’ in the earlier post, July 8. Then she goes for sympathy in the later post, July 12, based on the ugly facts, the kids in a car alone, but eliding how her unconstructive response met with a defensive response from her son.
She wants to make her son’s response look like it’s not proportional and predictable. Put the two events together and the sequence makes sense:
[July 12, 2020 post]
So, forgot to add this to my last post
“before text and my truth telling [about her son joining the ‘imperfect parenting’ club]. I figure I better google my ES and make sure I have the right address. They had moved recently. So I google his name, find the address, but just continue to scroll down the page and low and behold there is his name under a police report heading from July 2019. His full name and after that – leaving a child in a car….in July in the south”
[July 8, 2020 post]
“We get home [from mother’s milestone birthday in the North] and COVID. Weeks into this I text my son, “hope you and your family are staying safe”….no response. His birthday arrives –“Hope you had a nice birthday”….no response.
Something inside of me snaps. I tell him he could at least have the decency to respond to his mother. That I am done and to take my number out of his phone. He will never hear from me I am done.
His response was to the effect that hope I got the message and learned a lesson (wait, what). How could I walk into a party and not show affection and love to family. That he spoke to me at the party (never heard a word) and now he needs to protect his family from the hate that I spew. That the need to protect their mental health. That I need to get myself right. Needs to protect his family….really from me? So, He apparently said something to me in a crowded restaurant, that I did not hear and now I spew hate.”
Check out “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville” available on YouTube.
Wow. Here comes yet another telling dribble of information: “My husband has been forbidden from the gk because he quoted a bible verse my ES didn’t like – so his father condones murder and I am his accomplice – sounds crazy doesn’t it?”
I’m gonna go ahead and guess her husband was ranting about Leviticus and their god-sanctioned right to kill gay people…
It was interesting too that she went from “My younger son ranted at me with spit flying inches from my face so I slapped him” to “I walked up to him and slapped him.”
I totally did not spot that, the personal spatial element. Very interesting.
What really blew my mind was what happened when a fellow EP responded – laying the DARVO on thick and victim-blaming their descendants, naturally – and dropped that the parents (paraphrase) ‘have been labeled terrible things, like a child molester’. (Last two words verbatim.)
Wow…The respondent even gave the first EP/OP an out, a ‘this might not quite fit your situation/feelings, if so, that’s cool’. But this EP, the slappy one, agreed wholeheartedly!
What the…? I thought cruel people were keen to distinguish themselves from even nastier specimens.
(Not that they should succeed. Physical abuse is always suspicious because it’s a common method used to silence victims of sexual abuse. They don’t always coexist, but physical and emotional abuse do. Plus many modern abusers use control techniques like financial abuse in preference to a literal ‘heavy hand’.)
Ah. I did wonder what biblical quote that murderous quote could be. Sigh.
Interesting contrast to her unreasonable demands on the youngest son that kicked the whole thing off. She was all ‘don’t even *link* to a video of someone hitting a neo-Nazi – that stuff’s unsavoury.’
You reckon maybe that means that: ‘my youngest son 3 years ago…became critical of everything my husband and I did…places we traveled to’ = rallies?
Have a theory that the impetus behind the Final Letters [vocab and spotting credit: @Westerburg High] of Dec 2018 and 16 June 2019 (Father’s Day) is the stepdud’s health issues. The EP, his wife, feels entitled to support from her estranged eldest son in that context, regardless of his and her misdeeds making the couple untrustworthy and undeserving. In default of support, she feels entitled to vent on him.
The EP’s posts:
Jan 21, 2019
“My husband just about cut his forearm off and had 2 surgeries to repair….everyone in my family knows what happened, but no one asks how he is doing and I decided I will not give them information……they dont care and I dont want to waste my time.”
June 24, 2019
“Husband had 2 cancerous growths removed during surgery and was just recently diagnosed with MS.”
Oh that makes sense. I’ve seen this before where a difficult person gets disproportionately upset about someone they’ve driven away not caring enough about a crisis of some kind. It was the maddest at me that my ex had been since we separated — he had a medical procedure and I hadn’t asked him how it was, expressed my concern, etc. (we separated at his request because he had an affair and he wanted to pursue the relationship). It’s such a weird trigger but one of my mother’s primary behaviors was seeking unnecessary emergency medical care. I guess there’s a really strong sense of entitlement to attention during health crises. They have an expectation that all sins should be forgiven under the circumstances.
Been there. My EP (and enablers) also expected a sickbed reconciliation. Especially weird considering he told me when I was like 10 that he was relieved when his father died.
And I’d long ago warned him, as a child, to make his own arrangements if he was determined to continue on a path to an early grave. I’d vengefully put him in ‘the crooked home we saw on 60 Minutes’ and not visit. The ‘Simpsons’ quote didn’t mean I was being funny.
“The estrangement was because her son loosed an obscene tirade at her. Wait, the estrangement was because she slapped him after the tirade. Wait, it was because she slapped him several times after the tirade.”
At no point does she deviate from the line that the son began with a foul-mouthed rant. I know you have this persona of smug cool detachment, that the one who loses their temper must be in the wrong no matter how provoked, but what do you do if someone lets loose a foul-mouthed rant at you? Walk away smugly knowing you’ve won? Not everyone has your wonderful self-control. Doesn’t make them wrong.
“(Note: Don’t do this. Your parents will accuse you of manipulating them and using your kids as weapons if you permit visits, and they’ll accuse you of manipulating them and using your kids as weapons if you don’t permit visits. So don’t permit visits.)”
And here you are with one size fits all. “Don’t permit visits” – blanket advice delivered utterly devoid of context, regardless of who has done what. Estranged children are always right, the parents they’ve estranged are always wrong.
Just saw your drive by comment, WHS and how strikingly original! You present as the typical Bitter Bitch/Martyr Mommy Estranged Parent, faithfully reenacting Slap Happy’s choreographed “Flounce and Bounce” routine. OTOH, this is the Dance Of Doom on Axis II for providers who dare to code correctly. It ensures insurance won’t pay, thus resulting in the provider’s lack of professional renumeration for their services. You’re just the gratuitous grifter that keeps on grifting. In view of your lack of pretense WHS which I do sooooo deeply appreciate, I will respond in kind:
Once again, the “Flounce and Bounce” approach/avoidance tactic fails as completely as your reading comprehension and transparent agenda to play “No, no, look over HERE, not at the Obvious Offense.” Perhaps those disingenuous moves worked for you as an aspiring pole dancer but those days are long gone subsequent to the appearance of yet another “creep,” the inevitable adipose tissue creep of aging. What’s “wrong” is her ASSAULT on another adult. In fact, it’s a crime-so it’s not only “wrong” in too many ways to overwhelm your manifestly limited (and intentionally obtuse) *concrete thinking* and comprehension, her behavior is a prosecutable offense. Therefore, HER BEHAVIOR IS WHAT IS “WRONG.” Her opinion was never the issue and you damn well know it. You selectively ignore this reality, confabulate another distorted claim to divert and distract from the presenting event just as you selectively *chose* to ignore repeated pleas to receive professional assistance for your fission fueled rage and bitterness decades ago. Slap Happy is extremely fortunate her son did not choose to press charges resulting in her arrest and subsequent appearance in court as reported by her local news. Your sophomoric folly/attempt at Deflection and Diversion as well as your abysmal attempt to spin the discussion through frank bending of Reality to inflate your asinine foundational assertion FAILS as spectacularly as your parenting. By definition, an ADULT demonstrates self-control particularly when provoked and engages in prosocial behavior-in fact yes, “you walk away.” That is hardly “wonderful self-control;” it is the standard behavior of an ADULT. The “smugness” to which you refer is entirely your own: Own it and don’t embarrass yourself further by engaging in another spurious allegation through Projection. It simply renders you yet more manifestly unhinged. Pretend for a hot second you’re an “adult.” Don’t compound another tragic failure to play “pretend” to be a loving, caring mommy-dearest rather than pretending to be anything other than post partum.
Further, your attempt at segregating in situ this event from *her other multiple self-reports* (yes, Ms. Flounce and Bounce 2.0, BY HER OWN ADMISSIONS) manifesting a clear pattern of aggression towards her own offspring simply underscores another core tenant of abusive parental behavior: You never “age out” of your abusiveness nor do we, the recipients of decades of your abysmally cruel behavior and relentless demands heaped on the unfortunate loin fruit in your brutal quest to inculcate they *must* view the world in lock step with you, the demand they be you, mommy-dearest’s mirror and reach conclusions identical to your own “perceptions.” Your munificence and tolerance (as demonstrated previously by your willful obtuseness) is again overwhelmingly underwhelming.
Permitting visits with known abusers is not only a despicable abdication of our most fundamental responsibility as a parent-and one which you abusive parents are intimately familiar and engage in routinely-but a conscious CHOICE made repeatedly over decades. In language which you will no doubt comprehend:
YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT ESTRANGED CHILDREN ARE “ALWAYS RIGHT” IN PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN FROM KNOWN THREATS/ABUSERS. PERIOD. NO EXCUSES. NO EXCEPTIONS. NO DNA “GET OUT OF JAIL FREE” CARDS. WHEN ONE SIZE FITS ALL, ALL GET THE SAME SIZE AND WADDA SURPRISE! *ALL OF IT IS A DIRECT RESULT OF **YOUR** FUNDAMENTAL PARENTAL ROLE ABDICATION, A FRANK MANIFESTATION OF YOUR INHERENT LACK OF CONSCIENCE AND YOUR ABERRATION/FAILURE AS AN ALLEGED HUMAN.* Wild animals set a parenting standard with their young that eclipses your occasional attempt at simply exhibiting some modicum of humanity, of compassion and empathy even towards a small, helpless child instead of consistently free-ranging your rampant raging beast or at best, absolute disinterest in your children on a “good” day.
In view of the reality you are the author of your self-inflicted cyber-mouth trap in your ridiculous attempts to Divert and Distract and continuing in the same “always” vein, estranged parents routinely use the words “perception” and plead “unintentional” abuse. Therefore, if my fist just happens to connect with your jaw “unintentionally,” it is simply your “perception” I broke your jaw because it was not my “intention” to do so: No harm, no foul.
However, the unaddressed trauma and pain of your broken jaw will continue to “unintentionally” inform your thinking, behavior and “perception” of me for the rest of your slack jawed life.
And well it should as Human Growth, Development and LIFE itself literally depends on this scientific reality, the ability to recall prior experiential threats to our potential safety so they can be avoided in the future. We, however did not have the ability to escape your “motherly ministrations” as children. Be advised it’s no surprise to anyone else your Adult Children left your ass in the grass: The only “surprise” is what took them so long.
Yours In Equal Lack of Pretense and Equally Reciprocal Contempt,
TW
PS: We don’t troll your Wailing Wall, don’t troll our Protected Perimeter. I can assure you your ridiculous wailing regarding your alleged “love” for your (oft repeated) horrid, disrespectful, “brats,” your terminally ungrateful children (and which you use to double down on your same ugly behaviors) is a secret safe with you all the way to your grave. “There’s no fool like an old fool” and your antics fool no one, least of all us.
So, I just found Issendai’s site and blog a few days ago, and I’ve been absolutely hooked on it. Going through old threads, I’ve actually seen WHS comment several times – the same kind of drive-by BS that you so elegantly skewered in this response. I just wanted to say, your comments are very insightful, and just as much of a pleasure to read as Issendai’s thoughtful posts!
Thanks! 🙂 Generally I don’t bother with the Troll ‘Holes as even negative attention is better than none. Besides, “Ya can’t fix crazy” or reason with the impotent drive by displaced ragers either.
Every bell shaped curve has the waaayy outlier “tails.” For an in-depth view of another variety of Tales, you can’t beat the entertaining and highly informative (albeit unintentional)
Self-Revelations of classic psychopathology provided by “Tales from the Crypt of Estranged Parents” or the “Gimme Me A Do-Over Mommy-hood/Grandparents Rights” rabid odes to human hubris.
Apparently they subscribe to the theory “The simplest explanation is the intellectual height of the extraordinary simpleton.” Ergo, it follows their assertion “genetics trumps all!” is now the ol’ “XY Factor Made Me Do It” excuse for child abuse. And another unoriginal Straw Man is successfully torched to ashes. Their frantic inventiveness for the most implausible explanations for their estranged adult loin fruit is exceeded only by their unoriginality. I expect to see phrenology “discovered” shortly a la “s/he had a lumpy misshapen head as a new born! I KNEW I shouldn’t have pitched him/her at the wall regularly in an attempt to fix it but they didn’t come with a User Manuel, waaaaaa!”
Allow me to quote Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That?:
It is very much like abusive EP’s. They can treat their children (adult or not) however badly so long as they are ‘justified’ because it’s ‘different’ as they are the “parent”/super adult. It’s gross but shows the abusive mindset.
I saw this comment on that forum today:
“So when do you let go? When do you let your hope run out? Its like a dog whose master beats and beats their dog and one day the dog runs away. The dog knows he must leave for his own well-being.”
This was directed at an EP who is wondering whether to keep pursuing a relationship with her EC. Funny how they don’t consider that this is how the EC feel as well. For the EC, they assume it’s because they are nasty & ungrateful & want to hurt their parents (or they are under the nefarious influence of an SO), not for self-protection & loss of any hope that things will improve.
Well, scapegoating/projection/DARVO is way easier on the ego than realising that your consistent toxic behaviour makes you a hell on earth for others a la Dante: ‘abandon all hope, ye who come into my clutches’.
The EPs unfortunately get pretty widespread cultural validation from the all the wishy-washy, vestigial-religious unconditional forgiveness-healing peddling enablers. For me, the paradigm that helps is more Andrew Vacchs.
These forum EPs and ACs both have trauma backgrounds. But we’re not the spiteful, petty deserters among survivors, we’re transcenders, whereas the EPs aren’t, they’re victimisers. (Less awful than their parents is still not good enough, since their parents fell even shorter of the golden rule standard.) They won’t work on their own personal development and they try to drain away the time and energy transcenders need for theirs, to cope with triggers, fight FLEAs etc.
There are words for this, a lot of them vestigial-religious, like ‘evil’. Pity they don’t get the press and the pop culture ubiquity.
There’s a great example right now of forum members blindly offering comfort to someone who seems to be pretty actively engaged in harassing her two estranged daughters. OP claims that her children have told her that they hope “I’m going insane Because I’ll never see my grandchild.” This is OP’s battleflag/mantra, and always causes members to rush to her defense.
Based on OP’s posting history, OP seems to have ramped up around the time her younger daughter gave birth to a child (first grandchild). Before the birth, it sounds like there were two years or so of estrangement. OP’s daughters have told her that they believe she is mentally ill and seem to be on low contact/no contact with her, though there appears to be contact with OP’s husband.
Since early this year, OP has offered to be a full-time babysitter for the baby (though her daughter told her that she would never be more than LC with the child), sent a short mother’s day email and melted down when the daughter did not respond, debated reconnecting with an estranged in-law in hopes of getting that person to be a flying monkey, debated the pros and cons of announcing to her children that they will be disinherited if they don’t get in line, and manipulated her husband into getting in touch with one of the EC. (EC are only willing to have a relationship with their father.)
Forum posters, to their credit, always suggest that OP focus on herself, but always in the context that the children are evil, tricky, cruel, and enjoy being hurtful, etc. No one questions her story or even suggests that therapy might be in order. Overall, I can’t decide if the forum is helpful, on balance, because it appears that members have talked her out of contact. But they wade through a parade’s worth of red flags in order to do so.
Overall, I can’t decide if the forum is helpful, on balance, because it appears that members have talked her out of contact. But they wade through a parade’s worth of red flags in order to do so.
After visiting the forum off and on for a while, I’ve decided it’s a good thing. The tone is a hell of a lot more moderate than the old DailyStrength forums, which is where I did most of my research, and the fact that the forum moderator owns the website and has some official cred as both an author and an estranged mother means the group respects her and follows her lead. And her lead is, well… mostly good? I don’t like her basic assumptions, but she takes a moderate approach and is good at counseling people to stop focusing on and chasing their kids and take care of themselves instead.
It would be nice if there was more reality-checking, but there have been many many many many many attempts to do that in forums, by outsiders and fellow members alike. They were all rejected. People who need these forums can’t accept even the slightest hint that they might have caused any problems they haven’t already acknowledged. The only way to convince them not to do something stupid is to frame the advice in a way that buys into their belief system.
Buuuuut yeah. It’s hard to watch.
Westerburg High, I think I know who you mean. A few weeks ago (after some more attempts To contact her daughters) she said she was in therapy. There hasn’t been anything since so I actually have some hope that she is doing better. Her daughter believed that she had Borderline Personality Disorder, and the poster certainly seemed to have something like that going on, a good therapist might pick up on that as well and be able to do something about it. Apparently bpd is more easily treatable than other personality disorders, as well.
Even more recently a new poster came on complaining that her daughter-in-law wasn’t going to let her on the upcoming birth of her baby even though the poster and the dil’s mother are good friends (what?) and other posters responded that they wouldn’t want their mils watch them give birth. It was interesting to see, and I don’t suppose we’ll ever see that poster again. (They did agree though that her dil was overreacting when the poster yelled at the gender reveal “I’m finally getting my girl!” though.)
Yes, I was aghast when I read the new post yesterday & quite curious to see what the response would be. This new poster did 2 things differently – she asked for an opinion about whether or not she was wrong and she provided details on what was said on both sides of the conversation. That being said, I don’t know whether she will accept being told that she is wrong. I’m sure she was hoping for additional support for her position that she could present to her son & DIL.
But wow, the other forum members let her have it. Quite uncharacteristically. Again, she’s a new member without any alliances on the forum, and she provided details on both sides of the argument. Very interesting…
I just caught up on the thread and wow, they did not let up. The poster might not have been emotional enough, being in the delivery room seems to cross an unacceptable boundary (although there are way too many mils trying to get into delivery rooms for there not to be a few on the forum), and as the moderator said in her second post, the poster could understand the connection between her behavior and her son and dil’s response- why exactly that matters, I’m not sure. There were so many markers of “not one of us” that it was sort of fascinating.
It was also interesting to see the moderator say that now the “haters” can’t say that forum members don’t call each other out on bad behavior and suggest that this poster was a mole trying to bait them into doing just that, which considering that they sympathized with a woman who slapped her son in the face is really not necessary. The moderator was also the first person to respond and everyone else followed her lead. The whole thing makes me wonder if there’s something more going on. It’s exactly the kind of ridiculous petty internet drama that I love.
And the poster I mentioned originally is back so . . . so much for any hope about that, I guess.
I too have been following this and thought the same. So, for once, you do the right thing and take the correct stance. So that negates all the other times they did just that, validated an obvious abuser? How short their memory is when it suits them. It’s rewriting history and gaslighting but we just aren’t supposed to notice.
They only took the correct stance because their “leader” moderates all posts and made sure to set the tone of responses by leading all of them with the first reply to the posting. After she makes sure everyone played nice in the replies she then calls out the OP suggesting that she may be a mole and claims that everyone outside of their group was so wrong about how they would respond to her. Makes you wonder how they would have responded had she she not set the tone.
“Not emotional enough” is a big part of it, I suspect. If she’d acted more distressed, she’d have gotten a more protective response.
Iiiinteresting that Sheri McGregor points out that the new poster, unlike the regulars, knows why she’s in trouble with her family. There are a few other clues that the poster isn’t real, but that’s the one McGregor picks up on. I wonder whether other groups of estranged parents have noticed the same thing, or whether it’s unique to McGregor’s group. Estranged parents routinely say they don’t know why they were estranged, and when someone who does know why they were estranged comes on, there’s an autoimmune response in which other members repeat that they, personally, don’t know why and then try to undermine the new member’s understanding of their estrangement…
…But the part where a core member identifies not knowing as being central to one’s identity as an estranged parent is new.* It’s a sort of anti-insight. The blindness at the core of estranged parents’ minds, the burnt-out black spot on the retina of their inner eye, is now the proof that they’re good people. Only bad parents know why they were estranged.
What’s not surprising is how they go after the new member, as well as the member who tried to tell them about my site. There are rules to who you can correct. New members who don’t smell like One of Us are always fair game. So are members outside the core group who make people feel bad about themselves. It’s good old-fashioned defense of the in-group, with a soupcon of paranoia to add tang.
(They’re excellent at detecting fakes, but for every fake they catch, they run out two real members. I’ve watched forums run out an established member because the member was clearly me.
(Spoiler: They weren’t me. Or anyone I knew. Or anyone trolling based on my site. They were real.)
* This is not an English sentence.
I had to dig around a bit to figure out which Collection of Abusers Forum you all were discussing.
It’s very highly likely that new poster was *not a fake.* This is a very typical “Glamma” issue that shows up regularly, often a couple times a week at
Family Boards for Adult Children-or those unfortunates who married into these pathological families. Apparently Slap Happy can be happily supported in the commission of a Felony but the new poster was suspect because she knew what the problem was and disclosed it to the group?!
I call bull shit on that. The Drunk Diva I discussed below told the group EXACTLY what her young adult son told her were the problemS so yes, once again they DO KNOW. And they DO disclose albeit unwittingly to the group some facsimile of the Truth and in doing so, unmask themselves. Just a few of the son’s disclosures: She and his father fought all the time, Drunk Diva is a Screamer, he didn’t feel loved-and that’s a very raw and honest take particularly from a young man. When your parent is an addict, you know from a very young age you are not loved as the substance of choice will always be the love of their’s.
However, despite the young man’s veracity, once again the abusive Alcoholic Rageaholic Control Freak of a Mommy-Dearest dismisses her son’s vulnerably honest responses to her “why” question-none of which she denies are true, BTW-with minimizing, rationalizing and flat out dismissal in that “these young people
are just looking for reasons” to estrange to the confirmation of the other members. At the moment they have some kind of tenuous relationship, but the Drunk Diva hangs around because she knows it won’t last-because she won’t allow it: This poster is also a histrionic drama queen in addition to her flat out refusal to do anything aside from invalidating her son.
This Forum is “DailyStrength” with lipstick: There’s every bit as much rage, every bit as much lack of insight and refusal to accept responsibility for their pattern of behavior, a stunning lack of compassion or empathy for the kids they abuse, a limitless wealth of Self-Pity and endless self-awarded Parenting Michelin Stars despite the reality people who were on the receiving end of their “motherly ministrations” are the ultimate experts on their parenting. Their endless belief in Power and Control (as DS members also remained fixated on) as conducive to relationships simply underscores the reality what they call “love” is merely Possession.
Anyone can self-publish a self-help book. Anyone who thinks getting involved with that demonstrably crazy Elizabeth Vagina as a collaborative partner is just as crazy-and lazy. Offering “support” when in fact you’re self promoting is not professional particularly when that support is merely Enabling as a transparent grab for pelf. When a real poster who’s just. like. them shows up and is accused of being a fake
right off the bat based on the most cursory and arbitrary basis, is held to a standard the rest of them wouldn’t dare be accountable for, it’s not better:
It’s simply provides a bit more artfully presented excuse for abuse with exactly zero accountability. Again.
The things that make me think she’s fake aren’t what she said, but how she said it. It’s easy to make up a plausible story. It’s hard to tell the story the way someone would when they see the world very differently from you. I don’t want to go into detail because I don’t want to teach trolls how to troll better, but there’s an interplay of personal interpretation of events and social dynamics that’s tough for outsiders to master.
This is in response to Issendai’s Jan24 post- “It’s easy to make up a plausible story. It’s hard to tell the story the way someone would when they see the world very differently from you.” Holy cow, this is the perfect response to people arguing that the father of the first child to openly accuse Michael Jackson of molestation was a professional writer because he wrote Robin Hood: Men in Tights and therefore was capable of writing a whole Lolita-level story about how Jackson had sexually abused his son. Thank you.
Worlds collided and this thread came up on another forum I’m on, and the consensus was that this post was fake. I don’t know that it was but it shows *why* the EPs refuse to admit they know the reason for the estrangement. There was an identifiable reason here, so they attacked it. There’s no reason for their estrangements, after all.
Another frequently operative variable that ensures compound misery growing up with a parent or two who’s blazed through the DSM and the ICD also gets Drip Fed across the EP Forums: Addiction. Drunks and druggies. And ‘tis the season where they unwittingly abandon any pretense of discretionary use of their drug of choice, typically booze. Let the Reindeer Games commence unhindered: Addiction and ensuing hubris arrive like home delivery/clockwork from the local Liquor Store or from a bar every year-so plan for it. Booze ensures epic melt downs/fights with who ever over what ever-They won’t remember it the next day anyway. But we never forget it: How could we? It’s an unbridled Holiday jihad of Ho-Ho-Holy hell/ terror for a kid.
There is one character who has fascinated me from her initial post on one of the EP Forums as she’s such a classic parental mess anyway with a very transparent veneer of boozy “respectability.” Functional or somewhat functional drunks are tough to get into treatment for a lot of reasons not limited to just good old Denial but the reality they party with other semi-functional drunks because *all their social activities invariably involve alcohol.* ALL. OF. THEM. “It’s Terrible Tuesday, I’m thirsty, let’s scrounge around under the couch cushions” not for $$ for gifts for the kids but for $$ to underwrite a bottle of JD/wine/“truth serum” etc. which makes them even more of a predictably unpredictable enraged whine ass. Besides, they drink their’s out of a “real” container like a Whine Glass or a Highball glass instead of an empty peanut butter jar or a Micky D’s “Collectable” plastic freebie so they’re a better class of drunks-as if it matters. And it does because inevitably, they always find someone who they think is “worse” of a drunk then they are and upon whom they heap super sized derision, aka The Drunk’s Classic Diversion and Distraction Tactic. This poster has been laboring mightily from nearly her first intro to emulate (an admittedly drunk fest rendition of ) Gypsy Rose Lee peek-a-booze when the reality is, she’s an alcoholic pole dancer trying to tuck her deflated hound ears under her armpits. It’s not working. Not at all.
She has other Superpowers besides alcoholism including Teen Triangulation and Exploitation (her own kid), Intentional Baiting of Other Young People On Social Media (which only exposes *her* immaturity and pettiness, not the intended target) and Unbridled Umbrage, if necessary by strategic pot stirring or a faux moral outrage allegedly committed on her impaired self to get the fight going in public because the more the merrier-fights and audience. Booze loosens her up, so much so she careens all over creating drama on her moral high ground broom stick while casting aspersions like Scrooge armed with malicious Pre-visitation Crone Confetti. This particular drunk would throw down with a field of clear cut tree trunks if no other target of opportunity was available.
The tragi-comedic ironic element here is her booze addled, oft repeated Battle Hymn (And-Who-Knows-What-Else-Lurks-Beneath-This-Hawt-Mess of a Parent) War Whoop, “TAKE BACK YER PPOOWWEEERRRRR!”
If there’s a more commonly acknowledged true irony than, “The more people feel out of control of their own lives the more they try to control everyone and everything around them,” it’s the irony of a drunk who is completely powerless over their addiction screeching about the place, attempting to claw back some nonexistent “power.” Only a drunk, a despot or a child with a still developing brain desires “power over” others. When power or lack thereof informs your foundational concept of relationships and how they work, you’re either the former (a drunk despot combo platter) or a toddler. People with chemical dependency problems are typically arrested at what ever Stage of Development they were at when they first got into their drug of choice so barring whiskey bottle feedings, this one is an adolescent at best. In previous installments of this Drunk Drama Diva reality train wreck, she triangulated her 16 yr. old daughter into her feud with her other older kid. If there’s a more willing (hopefully temporarily) creature of dramatic effusive histrionics than a sweet sixteen teen-age girl suffering through those awful years, I haven’t encountered them yet despite decades of experience-sober, clean experience. And somehow I and the other adults-the real ones-managed to close on more property than I/they can remember and it never involved anything wet-besides ink. She clearly needs to get her ample impaired posterior to inpatient rehab instead of huffing and puffing and pointing her hung over haughty finger at her fellow alcoholics: She’s downright embarrassing. There’s Serious Stuff™️ goin’ on under all this booze.
Addressing any kind of addiction requires not only rigorous honesty but an admission of powerlessness over your own addiction-and the result is a necessary inculcation of a heapin’ helpin’ of humility. This poster wouldn’t know the difference between “humility” and “humiliation” if it danced bare-assed neekid on the bar in front of her at the VFW/American Legion/Amvets etc. Drink-drank-drunk, these “parents” are off the chain awful.
No wonder we’re middle aged by middle school. Children trying to raise adults can easily morph into a decades long exhausting slog/death march of futility. They just wear their kids out so completely there’s nothing left to “hate” them with as they frequently conclude. There’s simply no emotional investment left-they’ve destroyed every last bit of it-despite the EP’s delusional Projections.
Peaceful, Enjoyable Holidays to all those estranged adults who finally got humble enough themselves to accept the painful reality you can’t save another human being but they sure as hell will sink you despite your best efforts to assist them. Like all delusional drunks or the Queen who has no clothing but keeps sucking on a bottle, it’s everyone else who’s the bare assed full moon “problem,” never them.
And please, don’t let seasonal sentimentality make ya stupid-consider Estranged DNA a DNR.
Cheers 😉
“There’s simply no emotional investment left-they’ve destroyed every last bit of it.”
*clap clap clap*
I’m grateful it resonated for you as well. Estranged Parents hang on to “Hate” and other ridiculous excuses for their inexcusable behavior and the resulting Natural Consequences like Life Rafts. And yet, our exhaustion emanates from decades of trying, trying, trying. Why is it we are held to a higher Practical, Moral and Ethical Standard than they ever demonstrated? IMO, it’s our innate need to believe (despite decades of experience) our parents are “good” despite our uneasiness or frank internal acknowledgement of their dubious (at best) Characters secondary to our very personal experience with them over decades. This Need to Believe (and just plain luck) allowed us to survive into adulthood. What’s sad is observing adults in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, still hanging on because of fear, obligation, guilt or whatever and acknowledging we thought maybe our “Lion King” or “Lion Queen Moment” with the birth of our Littles we would somehow be “worthy.” We need to acknowledged they have Predated on our’s and the (ouch ouch ouch) nasty Reality we are responsible for that outcome.
Damn, that hurts. And asking over and over, “Why did I do this to my kids?” It doesn’t matter at this point. We exposed our children/our grands/great grands to our own Abuser/Predator “Parents” and “wasted” so very much of our own lives in futility reifying our parents as “Super Parents Above Us” or gods because that’s what they demanded. They alleged confidently they “knew more,” we’d “understand when we were older” etc. They lied. Again.
This “Need to Believe” is not only compelling in it’s very DNA wiring, it speaks to *our* innermost unmet needs. Even though we need to believe they would be and in fact may have been “different” initially with our kids, our grands etc. than they were to us…We were wrong.
We were and are so completely responsible and so completely wrong. Own it. Without Reservation. EPs never will but more importantly by doing so we demonstrate what they never have:
-We are wrong.
-We are deeply sorry.
-How can we make reparations? What and how can we manifest to each of them what they need now?
And do it. Every last day until the end of our lives. We can not change the past.
But we can own it and accept our Accountability for it. In doing so, we hold the ability to change the Family Legacy. It’s the least we can do.
And it is IMO the finest Legacy we can leave.
I have played Jo Dee Messina’s “My Give A Damn’s Busted” on repeat so much. For me, it’s entirely about my alcoholic father and the way he’s treated me my whole life. I was supposed to rescue him, be his sister and his mother and his messiah and his emotional punching bag and at the same time somehow his daughter. I do not care any more. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.
Ms. Emily, I can only imagine your profound sorrow, pain and finally, exhaustion. The outcome of your efforts are *not* a reflection of your that manifest another “failure,” on your part as a “human bean,” a child, an adolescent, a young adult, or your adult’s belief that somehow, some way your love, your repeated attempts to help your addicted parent will finally be successful.
And when they don’t, well…What are we to think or feel? We do our very best. We want them to believe we are “good,” to feel pride in our accomplishments. We make them our own little cards because we have no money, we want them to know they can do it, that our faith in them is as unshakable as is our forgiveness when we find once again, they relapsed. We step into the middle of fights when we’re jarred awake in the middle of the night or day. Maybe we got into the middle of another fight with our other family members or neighbors, loss of another job etc. We’re so “very mature,” and so very scared of what might happen next. We are such negotiators between our parents. We’re just not enough. We’re just not good enough. We’re just not doing this “right.” We just don’t…matter enough. We try to help in every way we can: grieving of such a long, long goodbye to a addicted parent. Even though it doesn’t make intellectual sense the reality is our parent chose a substance over us. Don’t they love us enough to put it down? Aren’t we worthy of more? Isn’t our love enough or good enough? If maybe we tried harder, if maybe we were somehow “more” than the substance of their choice, we live with The Legacy of a stark, Betrayal Reality. there is such a profound made manifest or somehow your efforts failed at all: Clearly, you loved your Dad deeply. It’s so very painful our bReality Chemical Dependency is the love and faith for Recovery we desperately “Need to Believe.
“No wonder we’re middle aged by middle school. Children trying to raise adults can easily morph into a decades long exhausting slog/death march of futility. They just wear their kids out so completely there’s nothing left to “hate” them with as they frequently conclude. There’s simply no emotional investment left-they’ve destroyed every last bit of it-despite the EP’s delusional Projections.”
Good grief. My parents had serious health problems as I was growing up, I took care of them then, but now when my mother has a health problem and someone says to me, “You must be very worried!” I’m like “Nah, I used up my lifetime supply of worry by the time I was 14.” I am so callous, huh!
Yep. We rescue as only a child can with only our child’s Toolbox of Hope with which to address adult problems in every realm of their lives. And we conclude *we’ve failed* when they remain mired in the same pattern of behavior, addiction or characterlogical as we learn to side-step, one more day, one more Holiday, one more Empty Promise, the Adult Child’s dodged, gut felt responses and unspeakable sadness. Sometimes words fail. “Hatred” requires energy that finally becomes exhausted secondary to their decades long pattern of maltreatment. Sure, there were some “good times” as no abuser is 24/7/365 abusive or neglectful. However, despite their adult offspring’s best efforts to have some kind of relationship with them eventually the parent’s pathology renders the relationship untenable, simply unsustainable. Addiction may be the obvious Presenting Problem but what lurks beneath that addiction even after years or decades of allegedly being dry/sober/recovering is the reality of who they are as a human being: It’s disappointing to say the least to have a parent “in recovery” who is still frankly, an abusive asshole.
The Grief just keeps on coming even as the Adult Child sees manifest the same behavior over decades with or without any substance of the parent’s choice. The illusions it seems we need to sustain in order to keep the relationship from capsizing, the hope that if we can just find the Right Magic Words, the Right Approach, the Right Form of Communication etc. ensures we remain somewhat protected from painful Realities including our most cherished beliefs :
-They don’t know what they’re doing
-The6
-They aren’t *always* awful
-It’s the booze, drugs, relationships, family, employment issues, traumatic backgrounds etc., what ever we need to believe to excuse their inexcusable behavior: Is their any other cohort that explains away, that assumes their badness, that believes they are irreparably broken or inherently “bad?” Yet, we believe
-We can find the Right Magic Words™️ to get through to them the reality they continue to strip us of our very humanity via their consistently cold responses, skin peeling criticism and highly rejecting behavior fail. For decades.
So we hang on. IMO, no one is 100% certain their decision to terminate the relationship is the “right” decision: This becomes a very solitary journey. When one can not use words such as “Abuse” or “Neglect” because it’s just too painful, when we see dynamics (but we want to believe they’ve changed) played out with our own children, when our truly embedded need to believe in their inherent goodness collapses under the weight of Reality, exhaustion and pain are our Legacy.
I wish for so much more: I wish our pain would be acknowledged as just as real, just as horrible, just as immediate, just as the *result of their behavior.* That they are surprised by our decision to terminate the relationship was not made hastily, in anger, in “retribution” to their response for our strangled pleas for suspension of their behavior, a scourge we have lived made over decades.
That we can live under the illusion that underneath it, They Really Do Love Us when their behavior is, No. No, they don’t.
Yep. We rescue as only a child can with only our child’s Toolbox of Hope with which to address adult problems in every realm of their lives. And we conclude *we’ve failed* when they remain mired in the same pattern of behavior, addiction or characterlogical as we learn to side-step, one more day, one more Holiday, one more Empty Promise, the Adult Child’s dodged, gut felt responses and unspeakable sadness. Sometimes words fail. “Hatred” requires energy that finally becomes exhausted secondary to their decades long pattern of maltreatment. Sure, there were some “good times” as no abuser is 24/7/365 abusive or neglectful. However, despite their adult offspring’s best efforts to have some kind of relationship with them eventually the parent’s pathology renders the relationship untenable, simply unsustainable. Addiction may be the obvious Presenting Problem but what lurks beneath that addiction even after years or decades of allegedly being dry/sober/recovering is the reality of who they are as a human being: It’s disappointing to say the least to have a parent “in recovery” who is still frankly, an abusive asshole.
With or without addiction, the Grief just keeps on coming even as the Adult Child sees manifest the same behavior over decades with or without any substance of the parent’s choice. The illusions it seems we need to sustain in order to keep the relationship from capsizing, the hope that sustains us, if we can just find the Right Magic Words, the Right Approach, the Right Form of Communication etc. ensures we remain somewhat protected from painful Realities including our most cherished beliefs :
-They don’t know what they’re doing
-They didn’t mean it
-They aren’t *always* awful
-It’s the booze, drugs, relationships, family, employment issues, traumatic backgrounds etc., what ever we need to believe to excuse their inexcusable behavior: *Is their any other cohort that explains away, that assumes their badness, that believes they are irreparably broken or inherently *bad?” *That no matter how we Labor we will never be “enough,” Be “good enough” be “worthy” of our parent’s
Yet, we believe
-We can find the Right Magic Words™️ to get through to them the reality they continue to strip us of our very humanity via their consistently cold responses, skin peeling criticism and highly rejecting behavior fail. For decades.
So we hang on. IMO, no one is 100% certain their decision to terminate the relationship is the “right” decision: This becomes a very solitary journey. When one can not use words such as “Abuse” or “Neglect” because it’s just too painful, when we see dynamics (but we want to believe they’ve changed) played out with our own children, when our truly embedded need to believe in their inherent goodness collapses under the weight of Reality, exhaustion and pain are our Legacy.
I wish for so much more: I wish our pain would be acknowledged as real, just as horrible, just as immediate, just as the *result of their behavior.* That they are surprised by our decision to terminate the relationship was not made hastily, in anger, in “retribution” to their response for our strangled pleas for suspension of their behavior, a scourge we have lived made manifest over decades.
That we can live under the illusion that underneath it, They Really Do Love Us when their behavior is, No. No, they don’t.
Yep. We rescue as only a child can with only our child’s Toolbox of Hope with which to address adult problems in every realm of their lives. And we conclude *we’ve failed* when they remain mired in the same pattern of behavior, addiction or characterlogical as we learn to side-step, one more day, one more Holiday, one more Empty Promise, the Adult Child’s dodged, lived reality, their parent’s Crusade of Unspeakable Sadness. Sometimes words fail. “Hatred” requires energy that finally becomes exhausted secondary to their decades long pattern of maltreatment. Sure, there were some “good times” as no abuser is 24/7/365 abusive or neglectful. However, despite their adult offspring’s best efforts to have some kind of relationship with them eventually the parent’s pathology renders the relationship untenable, simply unsustainable. Addiction may be the obvious Presenting Problem but what lurks beneath that addiction even after years or decades of allegedly being dry/sober/recovering is the reality of who they are as a human being: It’s disappointing to say the least to have a parent “in recovery” who is still frankly, an abusive asshole.
With or without addiction, the Grief just keeps on coming even as the Adult Child sees manifest the same behavior over decades with or without any substance of the parent’s choice. The illusions it seems we need to sustain in order to keep the relationship from capsizing, the hope that sustains us, if we can just find the Right Magic Words, the Right Approach, the Right Form of Communication etc. ensures we remain somewhat protected from painful Realities including our most cherished beliefs :
-They don’t know what they’re doing
-They didn’t mean it
-They aren’t *always* awful
-It’s the booze, drugs, relationships, family, employment issues, traumatic backgrounds etc., what ever we need to believe to excuse their inexcusable behavior: *Is there any other cohort that explains away, that assumes their badness, that believes they are irreparably broken or somehow inherently *bad?”* That no matter how we labor we will never be “enough,” be “good enough” be “worthy” of our parent’s occasional, grudging some what positive acknowledgement?
Yet, we believe we can find the Right Magic Words™️ to get through to them the reality they continue to strip us of our very humanity via their consistently cold responses, skin peeling criticism and highly rejecting behavior fail. For decades.
So we hang on. IMO, no one is 100% certain their decision to terminate the relationship is the “right” decision: This becomes a very solitary journey. When one can not use words such as “Abuse” or “Neglect” because it’s just too painful, when we see dynamics (but we want to believe they’ve changed) played out with our own children, when our truly embedded need to believe in their inherent goodness collapses under the weight of Reality and exhaustion and pain are our Legacy we walk away. Finally.
I wish for so much more: I wish our experience would be acknowledged as real, just as horrible, just as immediate, as the *result of their behavior” as those who dismiss this Reality. That despite the Reality they are surprised by our decision to terminate the relationship it was not made hastily, in anger, in “hatred,” in “retribution” to their response to our strangled pleas for suspension of their maltreatment, a scourge they proffered and ultimately a relationship they annihilated and we have lived made manifest over decades.
That we can live under the illusion that underneath it, They Really Do Love Us when their behavior is, No. No, they don’t.
Yeesch, that was redundant! A whole lot of redundant. Sadly, we have been as well.
Not for lack of trying, our redundancy has been futile.
“. . . when we see dynamics (but we want to believe they’ve changed) played out with our own children . . .” Tundra Woman, I’ve been thinking about these themes recently while reading a poster with an estranged daughter and a grandson. The poster sees the grandson about once a year and last year the daughter renewed the estrangement after the grandson, overwhelmed on Christmas, broke a door in his grandparents’ house and the grandfather yelled “Can’t you parent your child any better than this?” at his daughter.
Recently the poster and her husband got to see their grandchild again and the poster was upset that the grandson didn’t want to cuddle and didn’t look at his grandfather as a hero. This is a nine-year-old who last saw his grandfather yelling at his mother about what a terrible child he was a year ago.
There’s so much stuff going on with this poster, including her weird relationship with her husband where she seems to be putting a lot of her feelings onto him, but the situation with her grandson, where she describes his high energy levels as “behavioral issues” and his current reserve as the result of “deep-seated issues,” is really terrible because the kid’s basically being told he’s messed up for having energy and having his own opinions. I hope his parents are giving him a healthy atmosphere to grow up in so he can deal with his grandparents.
I’m not even sure that the daughter knows that her son saw her parents this time around.
Yes, I also was perplexed (and concerned) about this interaction as well in every way. The grandparents marital relationship is distant at the very best. Grandma is bored, her marriage grew stale if not non-existent long ago and she is clinging frantically to her only Identity as “Mommy” in *any* form. How this visit even came about is mired in a very hazy narrative. Issendai has made very cogent observations regarding the disconnect between terminating or limiting the relationship with the parent(s) and still allowing one’s children to have contact with the EAC’s parent(s): Don’t do it. No. Just OhHellNo. There’s no acceptable “reason” (despite a plethora of EAC excuses) and far too many compelling and clear imperatives for not allowing this so-called “Grandparent Experience” in the belief it is in your child’s best interests. Not only is it highly likely to be deleterious to your child but it is essential to understand this so called “Grandparent Experience” concept is a very recent pop-psychology/“self-help”/“life coach” evolution, a complete fabrication which supports only the Reality of trans-generational abuse and neglect which remain supported by a plethora of historical factual and Double Blind Research. The “Grandparent Experience” secondary to negative experiences with the EP or those who are Limited Contact and allow their own children underscores the social and scientific reality there IS NO SUCH NECESSITY NOR PREROGATIVE. This screeching of the “Grandparent Experience” as a positive for a child is a complete fallacy conjured up by certain financially vested parties and unsupported by professional literature/peer reviewed research in respected venues, period the end. Therefore, allowing your children to have these visits with “parents” whom you as a parent are NC (or are distant as a result of your own decades of experience with them) to take place is a reflection of your own internal conflicts, completely divorced from the reality of your child(ren)’s best interests.
Further, there is *no such thing* as “free childcare” but there is a Reality called “Grandparents Rights” and setting oneself up for such a case regardless of the likely outcome is a very compelling reason *in situ* for finding paid, competent Child Care. If you can’t afford it, stay home: No one said being a parent in a Consumer Society would be easy. Parents will protest they “can’t afford it” yet the cost of a GPR’s case that can drag on indefinitely secondary to allowing this childcare arrangement is beyond obscene. Beyond the reality you as an adult don’t feel safe with your parent(s) frankly what the hell are you thinking?! Remember: This arrangement can set the foundation for a GPR Case. The grandparents typically have far more resources than the parents so even if the abusive/neglectful parents have the world’s most ridiculous and unsubstantiated case never mind one which the AC (unwittingly or not, they rolled the dice) facilitated through such a gross and frankly negligent decision, the expense of defending oneself from spurious legal allegations is far more costly than would be even feasible had one refused to use the grandparents for childcare initially. When we have children, the *EAC MUST THINK STRATEGICALLY AND LONG TERM.*
The Reality is you as an adult are conflicted, are limiting contact and your kids are innocent Littles, just NO: There are reasons why you are limiting or Grey Rocking the relationship. When it comes to your children, *proceed as if any alternatives to NC are going to result in completely terminating the relationship with your parent(s) completely.* Convenience, cost, proximity etc. are bull shit reasons for setting yourself and your child up to fail. One of your Realities as an Adult is the Easy Thing is Rarely if Ever the RIGHT THING. Equally as ridiculous is the parental assertion they will always be present when their child is in the parent’s presence. This is not “protecting your child,” it’s deluding yourself: A look, a comment, an over-ride of your directive in the presence of your chid etc. takes a second for these manipulative parents to pull off as you well know. You have been the repeated recipient of their cunning machinations: Stop engaging in wishful thinking. “Monitored Visitation” takes place ONLY at the end of a very pointed sharp stick called a Court Order.
The Estranged Parents scream, rend clothing etc. regarding the children being used as “pawns” whether the EACs allow or don’t allow contact. Our children deserve so much more than that which was denied us and minimally, protection from threats. And in this situation where there is a KNOWN THREAT secondary to our experience with them, Adult Children must proceed with the understanding if the relationship with the Distant/Grey Rock or NC Relationship can be ameliorated *over YEARS* without your children involved in ANY WAY, in the event the grandparents truly *do desire* a relationship with you FIRST and later perhaps your child(ren) they will respect you and the primacy of your responsibility as the PARENT OF THE CHILD(ren) to make all decisions regarding the welfare of your children. And that is not going to happen.
The child you are referring to was clearly bored to tears with the grandparents and their sedentary lifestyle. The poster made references to what she did which in it’s distilled form was “what *I* thought should interest the child” whom she didn’t even know at all as well as lacking in the basic knowledge or understanding of normal Childhood Growth and Development. Many of these grandparents are not able to engage in activities which accommodate a child’s short attention span, need for physical activity etc. The grandmother is conjuring up all kinds of implications regarding the shortcomings of her daughter while promoting herself as “The Expert” regarding a child about whom she knows nothing. Grandma needs a hobby since she refuses to seek any kind of informed knowledge of childhood beyond her own wants and her starkly apparent need to support her worn out Identity as “Mommy.”
Estranged Parents or those with Strained Relationships with one’s adult children routinely denigrate their own adult children. Even an EAC as an infant, a 3 mo. old adoptee has been presented as defective secondary to the infant’s failure to make immediate eye contact with an adoptive mother the child has just met and who later became an EP. To foster a relationship between our own children or allow one to continue at all with these “parents” under any circumstances is beyond folly to negligence. The most common, heart rending, duplicitous, Rinse and Repeat examples of our own experiences have come from parents who for their own reasons (which they needed to believe at the time were compelling) have allowed history to repeat itself in some rendition of our own. “Behavioral Issues” in a child as young as the one to which you were referring reflect the immediate circumstances in which the child found themselves secondary to their parent’s poor, conflicted choices: WHEN IN DOUBT, DON’T.
For those decisions, we as parents are every bit as accountable as our own.
The final straw with me and my mother, is that she got involved in my custody arrangement in favor of my ex because I required her to get counseling to continue a relationship with us (she lied about our living conditions to try to convince him to file for full custody). Now I feel I have no choice about the matter — since she’s shown she’s willing to go there, we’re vulnerable until my child is 18. Now I simply have to point out that she’s not in a position to know anything as there’s been no contact in years. It’s playing with fire to allow contact with estranged grandparents, especially if you know they will stop at nothing to punish the estranged child. She claims not to know why we’re estranged, by the way. I have no idea how she thought she would have any kind of relationship with me after that, especially if she was somehow successful in having my child taken from me. Luckily the ex already knew what she was like.
I’m sorry-I bet that was a nightmare. She’d be dead to me and my family as well. I do hope the proceedings were not too protracted? I now tell people at the very first mention of “Grandparents Rights,” “Court,” “Custody” or reference to your baby as “mmmyyyyy baby” you’re *DONE* right there. This is no idle threat; it’s a clear insight into their agenda. You’re simply the Incubator and temporary care giver for THEIR baby.
Magpie, what you experienced is another typical Glamma move. Of course they don’t want our kids anymore than they wanted us beyond their utility as “possessions” they own and can use to continue their proxy abuse of us. Children make fine props for their social media Glamma Olympics. Oh, you don’t want your children’s pictures plastered all over social media? Oh, you and your partner plan to announce the gender/birth etc. of your children? Oh, what do you mmeeaaannn you’re not traveling to their house for the holidays in your last trimester/with your infant/small children in the middle of RSV season? “Tough shit:” Glamma is going to steal/destroy every parental decision, every single nuclear family occasion, every “first” you and your family are anticipating-and of course, make it all about them. Woe to the breastfeeding mom: Glamma is gonna throw down over that plan and will “loose” your pumped milk, pour it down the drain etc. She will decide when your baby “should” start cereal and feed it to them, decide ice cream is fine for babies etc. and not mention it at all or wait until you’re frantic, in the ER with an infant who is vomiting and near dehydration. They’re notorious for creating a crisis and then riding in to the “rescue.”
No one ever thinks “they’ll go that far…” Oh yes they will. Glamma insists on coming to prenatal appointments, being present during your appointment with your OB/Gyn, demanding to be notified “the second” you go into labor, decides what your baby’s name will be, shoves their camera up your hoo haa as your baby is being born or is literally fighting with the medical staff to get into the delivery room despite your specific “No.” They’re the reason Maternity wings in hospitals are now locked, records are password protected, incorrect due dates are given and people sign in to hospitals anonymously. I wish these were rare occurrences-they’re not.
As you’ve experienced, Magpie they never get better or more manageable. Ever. Glamma is in constant competition with their daughters, DILs, the other grandparents etc. in every way. They ensure the dedicated room in their home they call “my nursery” is elaborately decorated. They fete themselves with their “Glamma Showers.” Glamma is insanely jealous of anyone they believe “gets more time” with your children than they do: They keep score and use it to make yet more demands for relentless attention screeching, “It’s not ffaaiirrrrr.” The reality “fair” is not “equal” will forever remain beyond their state of arrested maturity. They and others will minimize their crazy behavior as “excitement.” It isn’t: It’s a clear picture of future behavior and it’s pathological.
I just hope people who now have access to far more information secondary to technology will learn and prepare from our’s and other’s gross miscalculation of the Glamma’s seriously disturbed behavior.
Again, I’m really sorry you experienced this appalling but common example of Glamma using an Institution to reap havoc on your already stressful situation.
It went nowhere as the ex already knew what she was like. A couple of years later, there was a court case between my ex and I, which settled quickly, but the full details came out then. That was the point that I knew that no relationship actually existed between me and my mother that was worth saving. As a mother myself, I knew that no loving mother could ever do something like that to her child. It gave me the emotional strength to shut things down permanently. In a sense I’m glad it happened because there are many things in my life that have improved since I cut her off for good. I was not aware of how much anxiety came from my relationship with her. But estranged children should not allow their parents to have relationships with their kids. I don’t know why they think it will be any different with their kids than it was with them. Down the road, I can see that her relationship with my child was also problematic and damaging to my child.
“…I knew no loving mother could ever do something like that to her child.” Exactly. They abuse everyone out of their lives and then facetiously wonder “why” they’re alone. They know exactly why and I suspect their “why” in part is nothing more than a fishing expedition to discern exactly what the AC has discovered so they can concoct some new and implausible excuse for their abuse.
Sounds like you turned that horror show into a positive-good for you!
For the most part. She’s apparently deteriorated, and the assumption seems to have been that I would change my mind and still be the one to take care of her when the time came, as I’m certain was everyone’s (unspoken) expectation my whole life. And that’s not happening. There’s only one other biological child — who is the GC and was raised to be helpless. The two step children have also largely estranged from her. My kind refusal to assist has not been taken well, but the reality is there’s nothing to do. She’s competent, married to someone competent, and still refuses help. At this point is really a matter of GC managing boundaries bc there’s nothing GC can do to fix her. It’s her demands that are overwhelming and they don’t have the strength to say “no more.” GC’s spouse has always been largely sympathetic to me and I think was persuaded once they heard all the things I had done in the past to get my mother help to no avail (and that GC had adamantly refused to assist with, saying there was nothing wrong with her). Something about sleeping in beds made.
Magpie, the EP’s have you cursed-“Oh you horrid, selfish, PAS-ed, genetically doomed, putridly partnered, disrespectful, entitled brat!” 😉
Welp, when you engage in decades worth of frigidly cold, highly rejecting behavior and skin peeling criticism of your adult kids, demand they immediately drop what they NEED to do as responsible adults/parents to attend to mommy’s/daddy’s endless WANTS, sabotage them repeatedly, undermine their parenting, spend more time on social networking sites than a teenager, call a Home Shopping Network your “ICU” and hit redial on that number PRN/daily to consult with your “Personal Assistant” (and have the credit card bills to prove it), claim to have more physical ailments than the ICD, ingest a staggering count of daily prescription drugs courtesy of multiple health care providers, pharmacies and/or other drug dealers, have a well thumbed copy of and are fluent in PDR-Speak, will breathlessly conjure up an encounter with a run away shopping cart in the grocery store parking lot into a Near Death Experience etc., why of course your Adult Offspring are your designated “Retirement Plan/Assisted Living Facility!”
The Mattress Matrix Result: It’s no shocker to any remotely sane adult when that “retirement plan” folds up like a Murphy Bed.
Adult Children are wise to engage in “Pre-Planning” for the inevitability of aging-and not just their own.