A parent responds to “Unwanted Contact Is Not Stalking”
On Mother’s Day 2016, a person who signed themselves “A Hurting Parent” emailed me about my article titled “Unwanted Contact Is Not Stalking“:
I just read your article on “Estranged Parent Forums” and I cannot believe a human being with any sense of connection to humanity would write something like that. Let me start out by asking you this, in your article you refer to every attempt at communication, or an attempt to tell your child that you love them as a being “terrorized”, would you be as supportive of that estranged child if they said, “every time I receive a message, I believe aliens from Alpha Centauri are helping my parents communicate with me”? Somehow I doubt you would be as supportive. What if someone says, “when I walk down the street I feel threatened by black people”? Would you blame the black person for for this person’s irrational fear? I doubt that too, so why would you refer, and support a parent expressing love your their child as “terrorizing”? My wife, and I are over two years into our estrangement from our son, and I, and anyone in our family will tell you that we did absolutely nothing to deserve this. I don’t know if you have ever mourned the death of a loved one, especially your own child, but I can tell you mourning the loss of a living child is even worse, and you should be ashamed of yourself for promoting, and giving support to these actions.
This is something I’ve encountered again and again since this site went live: No matter how succinct the explanation, how detailed the description, how clear the chain of logic, estranged parents don’t absorb anything that’s counter to their beliefs.
I’m not going to analyze the entire letter because when I tried, it ended up being a string of quotes from the article. “A Hurting Parent” does exactly as described: They frame their own actions as loving, deny the validity of the child’s reactions, and reject any grounds the child has for objecting to contact.
They add a twist, which I do want to analyze:
would you be as supportive of that estranged child if they said, “every time I receive a message, I believe aliens from Alpha Centauri are helping my parents communicate with me”? Somehow I doubt you would be as supportive. What if someone says, “when I walk down the street I feel threatened by black people”? Would you blame the black person for for this person’s irrational fear?
“A Hurting Parent” compares an adult child’s fear of his own parents, the ultimate known quantity, to a fear of all black people. It’s an elaboration upon the idea that there’s an epidemic of adult children estranging from their parents for no good reason. Why do they do it? In this version, adult children have been convinced that all parents are the enemy. Their fear of parents is fear of an entire class of people, no more founded than a fear of black people.
“A Hurting Parent” also likens an adult child’s complaints to the complaints of someone who thinks their parents are in collusion with aliens. That is, an adult child who feels terrorized by his parents’ unwanted attempts at contact is talking crazy, and deserves as much heed as if he was raving about aliens. After all, the parent knows they’re good and loving and did nothing wrong, so anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly mad.
As failures of empathy go, it’s spectacular.
On the primacy of pain
The end of the letter is the estranged parent’s traditional coup de grace: They’re in pain, and you should be ashamed. Pain is a holy state that washes all one’s sins away and allows the sufferer to decide how their actions affect others. Shame is the natural state of those who defy the holy sufferer.
Or, to put it less snarkily: When someone is in pain, the first order of business should be to relieve their suffering. It’s cruel to suggest they’re the cause of their own suffering, or to add to their suffering by interpreting their actions differently than they intended, or to insist that they take responsibility for actions they’re not ready to deal with. Telling them that their suffering is their own business isn’t an option. Nor is one allowed to tell them that although you’re sorry that they’re in pain, that doesn’t make the other party wrong.
This approach to suffering rests on several unspoken premises:
- Only wrongdoing causes pain.
- Pain is proof of wrongdoing.
- Only one side of an argument at a time can be wrong.
- Being in pain excuses behavior that would in other circumstances be considered wrong.
- Corollary: One cannot be hurt by the actions of a person in pain because their actions aren’t wrong, and only wrongdoing causes pain.
- Suffering outranks all other considerations.
This belief system isn’t unique to estranged parents. It’s our primal state, fully formed long before we first whacked someone in the head with our fire truck because they stole the plastic dinosaur we were playing with. We spend our childhood developing enough higher brain functions to understand that it’s wrong, and the whole of our adult lives trying not to slide back into it. Depression is like a greased chute. So is severe stress. Anything that triggers our psychological defenses can land us right back in the sandbox, psychologically speaking. Certain things can make people more prone to primitive thinking, particularly Cluster B personality disorders, but we all go there from time to time.
But that doesn’t make it right. Or healthy. Just common.
Update
My reply to A Hurting Parent:
From what I understand, you believe that I shouldn’t say that estranged
adult children experience unwanted contact as terrorizing, because you
feel that the adult children have no legitimate cause for fear.I… I don’t have a response for that. There are so many gulfs of
misunderstanding we’d have to cross, starting with “Continuing to demand
contact when someone has told you to leave them alone is a danger sign”
and “It’s natural for people to be fearful of people who insist upon
forcing themselves into their lives,” moving on through “You do not get
to vote on how other people feel” and “Whether you like it or not,
estranged adult children feel terrorized by unwanted contact,” and
passing into “Estranged adult children have real reasons for not wanting
contact; you don’t get a say in those, either.” There’s a lot more past
that, but that’s where we’d get bogged down.So you’re welcome to join the conversation here
(http://issendai.com/wp/estrangement/a-parent-responds-to-unwanted-contact-is-not-stalking/),
but further debate between us is unlikely to be fruitful.
A Hurting Parent’s response:
Well, I think the problem is that you really don’t get it, so I’ll try it another way.
If I was getting on an airplane and saw a Muslim person getting on then asked the flight attendant to remove them from my presence because I felt terrorized, am I being racist, with irrational fear, or should the airline remove to person to validate my irrational fear?
On a personal note your entire explanation of going “no contact” for no reason from people that have loved, and cared for you from before you were even born can only be written by someone devoid of empathy for the people you are hurting, and a complete lack of the ability to love another human being.
And, I’ll give you another scenario. Your child, YOURS (though I’m afraid the answer might be disturbing) tells you, mom & dad I’m moving out of the house, and moving in with this guy I met on the Internet. His name is Jim Jones, and I don’t want you contacting me after I leave. Do you let him go, or do you do everything you can to get your child home, because let’s face it we all thought we had all the answers at 18?
This email showcases an expectation that A Hurting Parent had from the start, and is going to repeat in each subsequent email. He expects that he can insult me, and I’ll still listen to him. I’m feeding his belief by ignoring the insults and continuing the conversation, it’s true; but tellingly, even after several rounds in which I don’t respond in kind, he continues to insult me.
My response:
Well gee, considering that Jim Jones the cult leader has been dead for decades and there are 28,080 people in the U.S. alone who are named James or Jim Jones, I’d be mighty silly to assume my kid was leaving for an appointment with a vat of Kool-Aid. I’d certainly try to get in touch with him. But “do everything I can”? No. First, the best way to cement someone’s resolve to stay in a bad situation is to turn it into a power struggle where leaving means the other person loses. And second, people have the right to decide where they go, what they do, and who they see–even cocky 18-year-olds.
I understand what you mean: It’s as irrational to fear your parents as it is to fear all Muslims. But that itself is a wonderment of irrationality. It’s irrational to fear everyone in a huge group of people, 99.98% of whom you don’t know; it’s perfectly rational to fear the guy across the hallway who punches holes in the walls when he’s drunk.
Of course, if you ask the guy across the hallway whether it’s rational to fear him, he’s not going to agree. He’s a great guy! He brings beer to all the neighborhood barbecues. Sure, he drinks, but only a little on Saturday nights. Those holes in the wall were an accident, and besides, why does anyone else care what he does in his own apartment? Are they afraid he’s going to come and punch holes in their walls? No? Then what are they afraid of?
When you talk with the other tenants who have been around for his drunk escapades, they’re going to roll their eyes at his excuses. (Except for his drinking buddy, who doesn’t see what the big deal is.) If you don’t want him to come to your barbecue, well, it may not be the choice your neighbors would make, but they’ll understand. And if he tries to push his way in anyway, to prove to you that he’s not a drunk and that you’re wrong not to want him around, your neighbors are going to understand what a huge and waving red flag that is.
Once he’s evicted from your barbecue, he’s not going to have a Moment of Realization, throw his half-finished beer away, and resolve to stop drinking. He’s going to stumble around complaining that you’re a jerk who’s jealous of his good looks and his new Maserati, that he invited you to HIS barbeque, that you’re a coward who can’t face him and that your barbeque is stupid anyway. When he sobers up, he may decide that you hate him because he’s Muslim. He may even pen letters to the editor describing the rabid anti-Muslim sentiment in your neighborhood, claiming that you’ve been stirring up the neighbors against him with stories of violent behavior (because everyone knows Muslims are violent, amirite?), and demanding that you go to mediation with him. For healing. Because it’s right.
When a local news team drops by the building with cameras, they come away with hours of footage of you and your neighbors saying, “We don’t care that he’s Muslim. If anything, we’d like it if he was more devout, because then he’d STOP DRINKING.” And one clip of his drinking buddy talking about what a great guy he is and how everyone else is a hater. The clip isn’t as helpful to his cause as it might have been because the drinking buddy is visibly soused.
When the news article comes out, he goes to all his work buddies and tells them what a hatchet job it is. He’s never been drunk at work; everyone agrees that the article is inexplicable and it’s frightening how deep anti-Muslim prejudice goes, even among journalists.
Eventually he moves to another building. But he still makes a point of trying to get into your barbeques. Because he wants to prove to you that you’ve got nothing to fear from Muslims.
His reply:
Whoa Buddy!!!!
First as to the Jim Jones analogy all you know is your child met a charismatic person on the Internet, knowing nothing else about them besides the person on the screen, then runs off to live with that person, without warning, and you would just let them go? And as you said, cocky 18 year olds bear no responsibility for the damage they do to a family when the do this? Human beings are social creatures, they build bonds with other human beings, and when they love one from before they were born, the chemical activity in the brain that is love doesn’t turn off. I seriously hope you do not have children.
As for the second part, if that is your story my heart truly does hurt for you, but you cannot apply that situation if it yours to all estranged children, or their parents. I see what you did there mixing in an individual’s personal, subjective experience, with an “all of them” story, and that’s just not fair, because an irrational fear is an irrational fear whether it’s focused on an individual or a group. I, and our family can assure you that our son experienced none of that. And the same goes for many other parents in the groups you targeted in that drivel you posted. What he did do was meet that charismatic person on the Internet, and taught him something his mother and I never taught him to do…..HATE.
My reply:
> Whoa Buddy!!!!
>
> First as to the Jim Jones analogy all you know is your child met a
> charismatic person on the Internet, knowing nothing else about them
> besides the person on the screen, then runs off to live with that
> person, without warning, and you would just let them go?I answered that part. There are responses in between “just let them go” and “hound them until they return.”
> And as you
> said, cocky 18 year olds bear no responsibility for the damage they do
> to a family when the do this?18-year-olds move out. Parents want them to stay longer and are sad when they go. That’s the way it goes. If the family is damaged when a young adult moves out, that’s on the parents, not the child–it’s not a child’s job to put off their own development until their parents are ready.
> Human beings are social creatures, they
> build bonds with other human beings, and when they love one from
> before they were born, the chemical activity in the brain that is love
> doesn’t turn off. I seriously hope you do not have children.Nobody’s telling you not to love your son. We’re just telling you not to stalk him.
Can you love your son without trying over and over to contact him when he’s told you not to?
> As for the second part, if that is your story my heart truly does hurt
> for you,No, it’s a device called an “analogy.”
> but you cannot apply that situation if it yours to all
> estranged children, or their parents. I see what you did there mixing
> in an individual’s personal, subjective experience, with an “all of
> them” story, and that’s just not fair, because an irrational fear is
> an irrational fear whether it’s focused on an individual or a group.Let’s try this:
If Person X is afraid of Person Y, is Person X going to consider their own fear rational, or irrational?
If Person Y thinks Person X’s fear is irrational, does that change Person X’s experience of their own fear?
Is Person X going to be receptive to arguments from Person Y, the person they fear, that Person X’s fears are irrational?
If Person Y ignores Person X’s fears, is Person X going to be less fearful, or more fearful?
> I, and our family can assure you that our son experienced none of
> that. And the same goes for many other parents in the groups you
> targeted in that drivel you posted. What he did do was meet that
> charismatic person on the Internet, and taught him something his
> mother and I never taught him to do…..HATE.If you’re trying to get your son away from a charismatic person, then you’re going about it in all the wrong ways. Hounding doesn’t work! It pushes the victim farther into the arms of the abuser.
If you sincerely want to help your son, you’re going to have to do some things that feel counterintuitive. You’ll need to navigate according to his perception of the world, not your perception. You’ll need to focus on what he needs and wants from the world, not on your own needs for contact. Getting people away from people who are bad for them isn’t easy, and it can’t be done with the set of actions people usually take in these circumstances. If it were that simple, it wouldn’t be a social issue.
But if you want to try something that works, take a look at how to handle cult members. Not the old methods of kidnapping and rebrainwashing, but learning how to use their natural inclination toward freedom to encourage them to take baby steps away. It takes patience, lots of patience, because you want them to come to conclusions on their own, and that can mean going back to the cult for a little while to remember how bad things are. You’re not convincing them so much as steering them into position to convince themselves. It takes a steady, light hand. But it works.
He replies:
OK, well here we go.
18-year-olds move out. Parents want them to stay longer and are sad when
they go. That’s the way it goes. If the family is damaged when a young
adult moves out, that’s on the parents, not the child–it’s not a
child’s job to put off their own development until their parents are
ready.Once again you are deflecting the responsibility away from the person that caused the situation in the first place. We looked forward to the day when our son would start his college career, then his own life outside of our home. Every parent wants to be there standing on the branch when their child takes off and flies off on their own, and we wanted to see him soar. What we didn’t expect was to have our throats slashed, and the branch we were standing on to be pulled out from under us when he launched. You must have an incredible hard time supporting the actions of every hate group on the planet, because in all of your writing, one message is perfectly clear, if you are over 18 you are free to do what ever you want, as long as it makes you happy no matter who it hurts. Pure selfishness.
As for your analogy, you wouldn’t be the first person the slide your own personal story and pain into an analogy.
And finally, an irrational fear, is an irrational fear no matter the amount of mental gymnastics you do to validate it. Or, the person is just lying and there is no fear, it’s just a made up story for someone needs to play the victim in order to justify their very wrong actions to either themselves, or the people they are trying to convince that their story is true.
Note the black-and-white thinking: I support one group he considers hateful, therefore I support every hate group on the planet. I believe a grown child isn’t obliged to put off leaving home until their parents are ready, therefore I believe anyone over 18 can do anything they want without regard for others.
My reply:
Does your son think his fear is rational, or irrational?
His reply:
If he believed he was a velociraptor, or the New World Order was reading his thoughts should that be validated too? Sorry, this is the problem with this millennial generation, no matter how ridiculous their position is it must be validated, and if you question it their egos can’t take it.And the answer is, I haven’t any idea because we as a family know there is no reason for it, so we don’t know if it’s just a story he is telling to strangers, or if he actually believes it.The funny thing is, the more our conversation carries on, and the mental gymnastics continue, I actually am beginning to think I am talking to my son.
My reply:
What I’m getting at is: Your son believes his fears are rational. Approaching him as though his fears are irrational and therefore can be disregarded is a guaranteed losing strategy.
As for why I validate the fears of estranged adult children, they don’t say aliens are influencing their parents, or they hate their parents because they didn’t get a pony when they were 9. They say their parents abused them. In detail. They give clear, rational reasons for wanting to get away from their parents. Why wouldn’t I validate them?
Now you’re going to say, “But my son has no such reasons, so it doesn’t apply in his case.”
And I’m going to say, “99% of all estranged parents say the exact same thing. Then, if you read long enough, they either tell stories like this (http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/stories-from-estranged-parents.html) about themselves, or someone else tells a story like that and they applaud. After a few years of reading situations like that over and over again, I write a page that lays out how they can do things like that and still claim not to know why they’re estranged (http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html). And yet, every estranged parent who has responded to my page claims to be the exception. Including people I’ve used as examples of clear-cut abuse.”
If you are indeed the exception, then, well… why did your son tell you he was leaving so abruptly, at such a young age? Perhaps his explanations contain a clue that I can interpret for you.
His reply:
So your automatic assumption is that the child is telling the truth, and the parents are lying, thus perpetuating the cycle I just mentioned that everything for this generation has to be validated, and you cannot question their actions. Got it, congratulations, you are part of the problem.
What’s bewildering is that parent after parent reads my site, absorbs nothing but “Issendai thinks estranged parents are poopyheads,” and emails me to say, “You’re wrong, and the proof is that my child left for no reason and I’m in pain,” while acting exactly like all the poopyhead estranged parents on the site they’re protesting.
My reply:
Well, I kinda have, y’know, AN ENTIRE SITE detailing how the parents leak dysfunction even when they completely control what others see and hear.
You do realize I’m old enough to be the parent of a millennial, yes? I’m Gen X, like you probably are, and like the younger members of estranged parents’ forums are. In fact, the oldest members of abuse survivors’ forums are old enough to be the parents of the younger members of estranged parents’ forums. On at least one abuse survivors’ forum, the average age is in the 40’s, and there’s another forum where about half the membership is over 50.
Whining about kids these days doesn’t hold much water when some of the “kids” are a decade older than you.
His reply:
“Old enough to be the parent of a millennial”, but don’t have any children then? If that’s the case then you really should not even be in this topic of conversation because A) you have NO idea what it means to love someone more than you can EVER love yourself, B) you have NO idea what it means to watch that child grow from an infant to an adult, and put that child BEFORE every thought you have about yourself, to be responsible for another human life, and C) you will have NO idea the personal devastation it causes when that very child you loved more than you can ever love anything, without warning, or reason runs off to live with people they met on the internet. Like I said in my first statement, and it sounds like I was right, you don’t have the capacity to empathize with the parents struggle we as parents go through, not mourning the dead, but mourning the loss of the living, and not knowing why. It also explains why you can nonchalantly say “They’re 18, they can do whatever they want”, you don’t even know what the parent/child connection feels like.
Avoiding not one, but two topics where he was proved wrong; ad hominem attack; insults as persuasion; and a return to the primacy of pain. Plus a huge whack from the “emotional boundaries” section of Dysfunctional Beliefs, particularly:
- If I’m attached to you, then you’re attached to me. You can’t consider yourself detached from me until I’ve detached from you.
- You’re still responsible for my emotions after you end the relationship. You’re abusive when you refuse to care for my emotional wounds.
- If I have an emotional reaction to something someone does, the other person is responsible for my emotions.
- If I have an emotional reaction to something, then that something is my business. This is true even if it concerns another person’s private life.
- Emotions cause actions. When I feel something, I can’t not act on it. (Or, at least, it’s wrong not to act on it.)
- My pain is the complete justification for why someone should resume a relationship with me.
- Refusing to have a relationship with me is abusive.
My reply:
There are two concepts here:
1. Estranged parents hurt terribly.
2. Estranged parents do things that hurt their children terribly.
These concepts aren’t opposites. A person can do things that drive other people away, and then be terribly hurt that other people are driven away.
You seem to think that if I felt estranged parents’ pain, I’d stop thinking they did something to drive their children away. But that wouldn’t change the reality of how estranged parents act; it wouldn’t make the stories on my site untrue. It might make me blind to how serious the stories are, but that wouldn’t make the stories untrue, either. Estranged parents might feel better because I stopped pointing out their bad behavior, but that wouldn’t do a thing to reconcile them with their children, because their bad behavior wouldn’t have changed.
By the way, you haven’t commented on any of the stories on the site. There are rather a lot of people out there doing rather a lot of horrible things to their children, and because they set the tone for estranged parents’ forums, the estranged parents who didn’t abuse their children are tarred with the same brush. Do you have any thoughts on that? Any idea how to resolve the problem so innocent parents can get a fair hearing?
His reply (Friday, 5:13 p.m.):
No, I think, well a couple of things.
1) You are an estranged child, you automatically believe the child’s story, while automatically convicting the parents because of what happened to you.
2) Your page specifically targets members of estranged children forums, and convicted all of us, while having no clue what it means to raise a child, to spend the sleepless nights when they get sick, the begging to switch places with them when they are sick, you have zero idea about what it means to be a parent, and then you are going to dismiss parents outright, and condemn them for their pain. What you are doing is equal to me writing a book about women, what it’s like to be a woman, get pregnant, and give birth while not having a clue as to what it feels like then telling them to get over it.
3) What’s this “tarred with the same brush nonsense? Does that mean because one black person commits a crime all black people are criminals? I’m sorry “tarred with the same brush”. The answer is of course not. You don’t condemn all parents, because of the actual bad ones, that makes you no better than your average racist.
His second reply (Saturday, 7:25 p.m.):
What happened? Did I strike a nerve, and hit a little too close to home?
Analysis
This is going to be partial and fragmented for a while as I collect my thoughts.
The point of this analysis isn’t to convince A Hurting Parent (or any other estranged parent) that I’m right. It ain’t gonna happen. The purpose is to dissect the attitudes and cognitive distortions that act as red flags for abuse.
Insults
- Insults routinely, right from the start; doesn’t mirror the other person’s approach, even after several rounds of polite replies. Dials back the insults briefly only when he becomes aware that his comments are being made public.
- Indulges in insults with no apparent awareness of their effect on others’ opinion of him, even in the middle of a discussion where others’ opinion of him is the lynchpin of the argument.
- For the first week or so, favored insults aren’t standard estranged parent insults (ungrateful brat) or culture-standard insults (asshole, bitch). They’re highly individual, with a focus on undermining the opponent’s claim to humanity:
- “I cannot believe a human being with any sense of connection to humanity would write something like that”
- “your entire explanation […] can only be written by someone devoid of empathy for the people you are hurting, and a complete lack of the ability to love another human being”
- “If you can’t figure that out, or the answer escapes you I’m not even sure you can call yourself a human being.”
Later he adds nonspecific sexual insults in between continued attacks on his opponents’ humanity and fitness to be parents.
- Gives the impression of using insults like shocks from a cattle prod: If you go in the direction he wants you to go, the insults will stop.
- Asserts that he doesn’t normally insult people, and that the current situation is different because of the level of provocation.
His lack of insight suggests that this pattern isn’t deliberate. This is how he is.
He displays the typical dysfunctional tendency to split off his unacceptable behavior. There’s the real him, which is empathetic, caring, intelligent, and polite, and there’s not-him, which is insulting and foulmouthed, and which is a completely understandable reaction to exceptional provocation. We all do me/not-me splitting, but normal people split under unusual circumstances and reconsider their self-evaluations when the frequency of a not-me behavior rises too high. Dysfunctional people split in ordinary circumstances (like reading a stranger’s web page) and resist self-evaluation, even–especially!–when the not-me behavior takes up a good proportion of their time.
Cognitive Distortions
- Black-and-white thinking
- Notable examples: Doubting of his version of events = “you are lying”; asking for details about what his son said to his wife in the fateful phone call = “demanding to know what was said verbatim”
- Profound failures of reading comprehension
- Highly selective reading
- Analysis by keyword – If a word or phrase in the opponent’s comment is the same as a word or phrase in Hurting’s mind, then the two instances mean the same thing. Joanna Ashmun called this “analysis by eggbeater.”
- Self-contradiction
- Inability to construct sound analogies in a way that implies that he has trouble determining which details are relevant.
- Inability to follow a chain of logic for more than one exchange. In Hurting’s case, he seems unable to focus on any argument other than the one foremost in his mind.
- Returns repeatedly to arguments that his opponents have rejected.
- Lapses of theory of mind
- Unable to understand that his son has a different point of view, and that he must take that PoV into account in dealing with his son. He seems to believe that there’s an objectively correct PoV, and all actions should proceed from it.
- Unable to judge which details his audience needs to understand him, even when given feedback.
Rigidity of Thought
- Verbal formulas: “taught him something his mother and I never taught him to do…..HATE.” “taught our son something we never did…hate.”
- Intrusion of irrelevant details and tangents into line of thought, indicating that sections of the story have welded into inseparable “chunks”
Both of these traits suggest that the story has lost its fluidity in his mind, hardening into a series of well-rehearsed formulas. It’s an indication that he’s no longer bringing fresh thinking to the problem, and may be unable to break up the “chunks” and think differently.
Rhetorical Devices
- Poisoning the well (thank you, Laura)
- Selective responding
- Strawmanning
- Appeals to emotion
- Goal-shifting
- Shifting the frame of argument from the personal to the general as it benefits him, without regard for the context of his opponents’ comments
- Evasive maneuvers to avoid acknowledging when the other side has made a point
- Appeal to authority, specifically his own
- Ad hominem attacks
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And when I gave you advice you ignored it, when I write a criticism you react like a maniac with a keyboard. That speaks volumes. I don’t think you want your son in your life, I think you just want to have him there to berate.
Because I don’t care for your “advice” and I just happen to dislike each and every one of you, get over yourself.
No wonder your own child left home as soon as he could. You really are determined to have him be estranged from you and bombard him with bile. It really is hard to have any sympathy. But again remember you are the one who claims to have a nasty selfish son who slit your throats and is so vile his words drive normal people suicidal, you are the one estranged from said son, you are the one following your own advice and failing.
If you actually want a good relationship with your son you have to work on your own behaviour. You can’t try to alter him. So far you have done what you think is best and failed miserably.
What was that you were saying about insulting people?
Thanks for being such a great case study hurting parent; enjoy your consolation prize of adult diapers and dying alone.
And back your crazy train up. I sent one private e-mail in response to a page I read, and it turned into an exchange, I had no idea it was going to be used as fodder for you assholes.
It just kind of turned into an exchange? You weren’t involved at all in that happening? And all your comments in this thread also, over the course of several days, and the image you presented in them — did that also just kind of happen by the mysterious operation of the universe and not have anything to do with choices on your part?
Stop _giving_ us fodder, then. Who’s holding a gun to your head, making you insult us and destroy your credibility?
Haaa!!! My credibility? To a bunch of Internet douchebags that have one fucked up, contradictory argument. Our son is free to end his relationship with us, but I’m the asshole because I didn’t “continue my parental duties” by putting my wife and I at risk by handing over our information. And, of course the very hypocritical “your sons word verbatim, or the story of your wife has no credibility” yet some cunt says I posted the same story on some relationship blog, which I can promise you, I did not, and it’s taken almost as gospel. Boy, I just can’t figure out why I would not have anything nice to say to you shit swizzlers.
So what did your son say to your wife? You had no problem quoting him when it benefitted you.
Are you really this fucking dense? I can quote him when I remember what he said, especially when he said it to me, what I cannot quote you asshole is what I did not hear him say, and I made quite clear that my wife does not remember and fucking why.
Your wife doesn’t remember, or doesn’t want to tell you? Either way, that isn’t a Lovecraftian magic spell we’re talking about.
So, are you claiming to not know at all what your son said, then? Not even in the form of a general overview, or as far as naming the topic?
It could have been anything — claiming he was molested, asking about the weather, calling your wife a “shit swizzler”, blowing an airhorn into the receiver, reciting a poem about cats? You have no idea whatsoever what he said? In that case, how can you say that he was definitively in the wrong?
So, you’re really only skimming the comments made here, yes? Like, you find a keyword, stop reading, and then form your conclusion?
Because your characterizations of a lot of this stuff is so beyond inaccurate that it’s like you’re reading a different thread.
And you have been completely full of shit from the word go.
Sorry, is that to Laura, me, or both? I’m very particular about my insults, I’ll have you know.
How on earth could you possibly know who’s full of shit and who isn’t? Your representations of the things being said to you are so wildly inaccurate that it would be foolish to trust your assessment.
Do you call your kids “cunts” and “shit swizzlers”?
Only if they provoke him, I guess.
Nope, just assholes on the Internet.
If you can’t exercise enough restraint to turn off your computer, how can you exercise restraint in real life?
You are seriously comparing what happens on the Internet to real life? Do you live in a cave?
Interesting that his focus is still on who is “the asshole” here. Like his son being proven “the asshole” will heal the estrangement in any way.
Well, whoever “the asshole” is, it can’t be the guy flinging insults at the hint of disagreement and plugging his ears to others’ words, right?
I’m not plugging my ears, I just think you are despicable human beings.
Never called my son that, and I wouldn’t.
But you would run roughshod over his decisions and accuse him of being brainwashed. You treat him like an object. Like a nice car, which you certainly love and treat well, and which cannot possibly drive off on its own. A thief stole your possession and deserves to be punished.
He was brainwashed. I don’t know how much more clear I can make that.
Brainwashing requires years of captivity. Your son wasn’t brainwashed. He made a choice.
And your responce confirms my suggestion.
I’m sorry, you’re an expert on brainwashing, and influencing the mind of a teenager now. Wow, impressive.
As a matter of fact, I do know a few things about psychology. and I have done extensive research about the psychological effects of abuse and torture. So, yes, in lieu of an expert – have you consulted one, by the way? – my opinion will have to suffice.
Look at the case of Patty Hearst if you would like to learn what “brainwashing” is and why this isn’t what happened.
In your first letter, you have said: “…would you be as supportive of that estranged child if they said, “every time I receive a message, I believe aliens from Alpha Centauri are helping my parents communicate with me”?”
And now, you say: “An evil woman mind-controlled my child over the internet”. Sir, that sounds most irrational. You wouldn’t believe if someone said that to you. Why should we?
Are you fucking nuts? Or did you just not read my story? How many times do I have to say the brainwashing came first, the story of fear, and being abused did not come until after he was already gone.
Okay. This could be a reply to any comment. Because I don’t see how it relates to what I just said. Congratulations, you have gone into Twilight Zone.
That the individual people posting here are asking slightly different things (and that these things are further misrepresented, though this is a side point) is an indication that the beast as a whole has “one fucked up, contradictory argument”. Because it’s not that, for instance, one person might have pointed out that your son is not obligated to be in a relationship with you forever and another person might have pointed out that you substantially misrepresented a request he made of you, it’s that the beast as a whole says your son can ditch you and the same beast says (in your interpretation) that you retain obligations toward him.
(Even leaving aside the fact that obligations between two parties can be uneven; I might have an ethical obligation not to exploit legal power that I retain over a person while they, lacking such power, do not have a similar obligation to me. The argument of the beast as a whole isn’t actually all that consistent.)
Let’s all sing the interpersonal boundaries song…
HP has been told he is wrong about the “financial risk”, asked where he got the idea of this financial risk, asked if he confirmed the existence of the financial risk, and has ignored those comments and questions. He just baldly restates his take on this again and again, with no justification or elaboration. He has his own facts.
Given that, I’m inclined to believe he knows on some level that he’s wrong. He’s refusing his son’s request to punish his son for moving out and choosing the wrong major — but keeps the “I would be personally guaranteeing the loan, no matter what anyone says” story as a cover. It convinces him of his own goodwill, liberalism, willingness to entertain differences (that’s likely the reason for the gratuitous Bernie Sanders/atheism/nominally anti-racist references as well: I am the kind of person who would support liberal causes, ergo I can’t have done illiberal, controlling or malicious things. It’s a common rhetorical move among abusers with a commitment to any ideology). And it likely convinces people on the EP forums. And anyone else is a cunt and a shit swizzler and not a human being.
No I did not say you posted the same story on a relationships blog. I meant that the story you posted here has been picked up elsewhere with people mentioning your wife laying on the floor and you being her enabler. So it’s not just here people think you are a part.
Next time someone emails you a link as part of their reply, click it. It might be important.
See, the thing I don’t understand about this, is that if you post on an internet forum, and then find that you feel the people there really don’t understand you, and are consistently getting the wrong end of the stick, and posting things you find upsetting, WHY would you keep going back to engage with them?
Surely the sane response to getting unhelpful responses from a bunch of random people on the internet is to close the browser window and find something else to do. Why keep going back just to argue with people and tell them they’re idiots? And then go back to tell them they’re still idiots, and you really really hate them some more? And over and over.
Interestingly, this is where I ended up with my estranged parents – I’d get long missives totally destroying my character, pages and pages, listing everything I’d done wrong since 1988. But when my response to that was to go Low Contact, and then finally No Contact, they kept on sending me letters and emails telling me how awful I was. And when I blocked emails and sent the letters back unopened, they sent letters to my place of work, and my partner’s place of work, and other relatives, all lacerating me for going NC with them.
So please, HP, explain to me, because I’d really like to know – what is this urge to keep following people who say things you don’t agree with, purely in order to argue with them and tell the how horrible they are? Because I genuinely don’t understand what that is all about.
I have to say, I feel really bad for HP’s son in all this. I know what it’s like to be a pawn in the mind of a parent who likes to play these rhetorical games. That sort of dysfunctional thinking really does a number on someone who has to suffer through it.
The constant shifting of responsibility (“I’m only acting this way because you vile, disgusting beings are making me!”) hits way harder and more subtly even than the actual bad behavior it’s covering for; when you have a parent who does these retributive, aggressive acts yet classifies them as REactions (because you can’t just ignore your emotions, when you’re hurt you have to act on them, right? Emotions cause actions… I wonder where I’ve read that before?) then you begin to internalize it, and it becomes a part of your model for how you interact with that person… and when that person is in a position of power over you and can influence your life like when you’re a kid, the concrete consequences tend to cement those reactions as more important than what caused them, or whether they’re justified. Your parents are treating you this way because you made them feel bad, and if you never get a discussion of whether their feelings are warranted, that becomes irrelevant to the metric of blame in your own head. They feel bad, they feel you caused it, end of story.
Both my parents were like that, and it took me years to figure out the ongoing effects of that, because there was this little, self censor voice in the back of my mind forcing me to question my memories in every moment where I might consider something they did an overreaction. “Wait, how can you not be at fault there, Laura? Your dad felt bad there, so his reaction must be justified, right? It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t made him feel bad… how is it not your fault?” I could clearly remember the course of events, objectively recognize that the outcome was a huge, damaging thing for kid-me over something stupid, yet the interpretation of events where I wasn’t directly and solely at fault seemed so false to me, because for my entire childhood everything that happened to me were just reactions from my parents, and they couldn’t possibly just not react according to their feelings in the moment, uncritically and without feedback. The abuse was just a series of natural disasters, impossible to stop and exempted from any form of moral metric: they weren’t good or bad actions, they just were, and if something I did instigated them, then they had to be justified responses to whatever it was. I yelled at my dad once. He tried to punch me so hard that his shoulder dislocated when he missed.
How could you have done that to your father, Laura?!
I didn’t even know how skewed my perceptions had become when I left home. I just knew things were bad, but I couldn’t articulate why, and that continued on until I was quite a bit older than HP’s 18 year-old is. Maybe this is all a bit personal, but it’s where I’m coming from: I’ve got nothing but empathy for a young man in a situation like that, potentially unable to explain because they’re fundamentally unequipped to properly assess conflict resolution due to how they were raised. It probably won’t even do any good, given how HP classifies his own bad behavior as reactions to the emotions he feels at the actions of others, with no regard to whether those reactions are warranted.
Of course they are. They have to be! He’s *hurting,* guys! That pain is the only thing that matters!
Shocking!!!! I would have never guessed!!!!
Never could have guessed what, I wonder?
That you would have “empathy for the young man”, and convict the parents. I sure didn’t see that one coming.
So, to be clear, I do two things: one, pour my heart out and discuss experiences that are evidently very painful and personal to me, and two, attempt to empathize with YOUR SON, and your first and only response is…
“Aha! So that’s why you have an invalid opinion of my situation, you’re biased! I win the argument!”
Your need to win is so overpowering that it’ll lead you to trample on the childhood traumas of someone you barely know, just so long as they offer a stepping stone to your victory. Holy shit, dude…
You know, I was hoping, truly hoping, that you wouldn’t do that. I debated whether or not to post that for quite a while- would anyone else appreciate me relating this to my own experiences? Am I comfortable putting myself out there like that? Would HP leap on it?- and I honestly thought that I would be safe doing so. There’s no possible way he could be so mindlessly cruel, I figured, because since getting out from under my parents’ influence I’ve found empathetic, kind people tend to outnumber the other kind. I’d gotten my first taste of being taken seriously.
But you’re not a kind, empathetic person, are you, HP? You’re the kind of person that sees someone attempting to understand your own child via exploration of their own experiences, and only takes in the avenue to disqualifying them that it represents. You don’t know me, you don’t know how delicate my mental state is, but you’ll take my story as fuel for point scoring anyway? And worse still, you’ve got a loved one with her own delicate mental state in your own life, of anyone you should be tuned in to the profound way words can influence someone else… and you’ll STILL go there to win an argument?
I haven’t convicted you of a damn thing, HP. Your own actions do a better job of that than I ever could.
Wow, that’s incisive reasoning and beautifully said. Applause.
“… and your first and only response is… “Aha! So that’s why you have an invalid opinion of my situation, you’re biased! I win the argument!” ”
I think it’s arguably worse. He didn’t even say “I knew that’s why you sympathize with the son,” he said “I knew you’d sympathize with the son”. So… you were right about the keywords. He ain’t read about your past, he read the first sentence “I have to say, I feel really bad for HP’s son in all this.” and unloaded.
…You tell him. The comparison with how he expects others to treat his wife and how he treats others is brilliant.
@Laura
^^^^
THIS COMMENT
COMMENT 505
Holy shit. Hannibal Lecter indeed. Profound empathy failure
Why in the holy fuck would I have sympathy for someone that has called me a liar, had zero sympathy, or empathy for my wife, and has done ridiculous mental gymnastics to somehow make the turmoil we are living through our fault. Is this all you cocksuckers have in your play book? Play the “poor me, victim” role, while being nothing but condescending, narcissistic, self-righteous assholes?
Every time you’ve said I’ve called you a liar, I’ve gone on record afterward clarifying to ensure you understood that was NOT what I was saying. Every time you came up and said I was treating you wife badly, I came back to clarify that no, I was actually just asking you for better detail to your story. The last time you said I thought it was all your fault, I made sure to go back to the post you were responding to when you said that to point out that I had said, in that post, that it was possible you were innocent.
Somehow, despite me coming to you time and time again, directly responding to you and telling you what I actually said, you still have this idea that I was telling you the opposite of that. I have literally come to your post and told you that I am not saying what you think I am saying, and even now you persist in misrepresenting me.
I cannot think of a clearer, more unambiguous way to tell you what I’m thinking than to… literally tell you what I’m thinking. I’ve done that, over and over. From here on in, your complete failure to take my own words seriously when forming your conclusions about what I think is on your head, HP. It seems there’s nothing more I can do to shift your insistence on only ever believing the first thing you think of in any situation.
Sir, what’s wrong with consensual oral sex?
It’s always bewildered me that “cocksucker” is an insult. Isn’t it a quality devoutly desired by those who possess cocks?
It’s rather “prison hierarchy”, the notion that people who take on a submissive, or rather, receiving, role in sexual relationships are inferior. Because who’d willingly do that. (Theoretically) for an average straight male it would be traumatic to be the receiving partner, therefore, nobody (women included because empathy failure) could possibly be the receiving partner willingly, therefore, they can only be forced to; and if a man is be forced to do something, he’s inferior, and we come full circle.
Forgot about the madonna-whore complex. See “Analyze this”: “She kisses my kids with that mouth!”
…Either way, I have the impression that HP’s choice of insult is _entirely_ unapplicable.
Oh, this is an old thread, but HP you make me miss my evil mommy and deeply regret abandoning her to stew in her own bile.
Thank you for your sincerity, especially in the middle of a battlefield. And I’m sorry.
It’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve this. Yeah, I know you’ve probably heard that, and that me saying it isn’t going to change to lifetime of protective mechanisms in your head. But take the word of an internet stranger: from as little as you shared, I can tell already – yes, you were abused. Hell, he escalated to physical abuse.
Ah, but he missed, and therefore the fact that he was willing to go there counts for nothing.
Thank you for your kind response, L. I’ve had to do some hard work decoupling the lessons I learned in childhood from my model of reality, and maybe it sounds silly, but even hearing an internet stranger agree that what happened wasn’t right, just… not being alone in that assessment, does mean quite a bit. It’s no longer just me being a selfish and ungrateful child.
Happily, I’m in a much better place now, married to a wonderful woman who takes me seriously and is committed to seeing me through all of that. But I can’t help but wince to see similar patterns play out elsewhere, feel that pang of empathy for the kid who’ll never get to have his own say here, and whose only defense is from a bunch of irredeemable monsters in his father’s eyes.
Worse still, that those defending him are evil, bestial creatures solely BECAUSE they are taking his side over his father’s. The implications of that aren’t great.
“Ah, but he missed, and therefore the fact that he was willing to go there counts for nothing.”
Hey, don’t be scaring me like that. I was getting ready to debate this before my eyes reached the end and saw the sarcasm.
It’s not silly, not at all. After a lifetime of being alone, anyone on your side, even mentally, counts.
“Hey, don’t be scaring me like that. I was getting ready to debate this before my eyes reached the end and saw the sarcasm.”
It was sarcastic when I said it. When my parents said it, it was totally serious. I didn’t even realize how fucked up that was until I related the story to my wife years later and saw her mouth hanging open in shock.
That’s why I tried, in the beginning, to get HP to question himself. What’s normal for one person’s lived experiences is not the same thing as properly normal or healthy, and until you’re out from under it that can be hard to see. Sadly, the guy seems incapable of that kind of self-examination, and so for his son, I fear the situation may be the same as mine, where actually confronting HP about his issues is impossible, since dear old dad is unwilling to entertain that there even could be issues.
There’s an awful lot of unattainable closure in that scenario.
“When my parents said it, it was totally serious. I didn’t even realize how fucked up that was until I related the story to my wife years later and saw her mouth hanging open in shock. ”
Holy shit to the power of WHAT?, this is totally fucked up. And, uh, if he hadn’t missed, then it would have been your fault because you didn’t dodge on purpose, right? …Fuck.
Please give your wife a hug, or get a hug from your wife, that’s kinda mutual, at the earliest convenience, because, well, seriously, just glad you’re okay, and have re-examined it all; and I hope you’re NC with your abusers.
“Please give your wife a hug, or get a hug from your wife, that’s kinda mutual, at the earliest convenience, because, well, seriously, just glad you’re okay, and have re-examined it all; and I hope you’re NC with your abusers.”
I’m… beginning the process of disengaging from them. Being on the other side of the world from them- literally the furthest point I could possibly be without going to space- really, really helps. I get to decide how much contact we have now, and it’s seeming more and more like “none” is one of the better options. A sentimental part of me still wants to improve things, but if I can’t even get them to see that there’s things in need of improvement, that’s sort of a lost cause. It’s very possible I’ll just need to give up on ever getting closure on that part of my life, which is a shitty feeling to have, but if I need to drop that expectation to better live my new life, with my new family and a more authentic me…
Well, there’s not even really a choice there.
“Closure” doesn’t mean “reconcillation”. You get to decide what it means, for you. It might be moving and not giving them your address, sending the NC letter, or just waking up in the morning and realising you don’t care about these people anymore.
Besides… if you need to explain to an adult that it’s not okay to punch people, he’s not going to improve. For them, it was okay to abuse you for your entire lifetime, and trying to tell them that now it isn’t permitted? Rid yourself of their presence, and them of the opportunity to abuse you.
You’re hella insightful, you’ll make it.
Laura – thank you. I found this very helpful
There’s a set of questions Tina Gilbertson returns to several times in her series of posts on estrangement, and I think they’re germane here:
Do you truly want a relationship with this person?
Or do you just need them to know that they misunderstood and/or hurt you?
With me, it’s almost a suspicion that the latter might be the only remaining path to the former. My parents aren’t cruel, I don’t think they are at least, just thoughtless and ruled by their emotions. They’re selfish, not evil. And frankly, their selfishness didn’t stop them from caring about the right things, just in executing on them properly; so I’d have a father who really, truly wanted me to get my education, but who would also attempt to illegally prevent me from attending tenth grade in high school because at the time I needed him to sign the paperwork for that, I’d also snapped at him. He cared about the correct things (and I hope, by extension, about me) but he also had this need to lash out when his authority was threatened, because of course all those ideals he tried to drill into me needed to go out the window in that moment: he was mad.
I want them to understand how poorly they treated me in part because I feel like it’s a way to move forward and have a relationship as adults, if they could just recognize the damage they caused then I’m sure I could forgive, but maybe that’s just me seeking validation, like convincing those voices that had most stridently doubted and gaslit and manipulated me would make it all easier to bear. Maybe I just want it to feel like they actually did care, and that I wasn’t just an item for their high minded ideals to be applied to, but that could be shunned or undercut whenever I wasn’t producing desired results. Maybe I just don’t want all that pain and self-doubt to have been for nothing. It’s not like I actually know that much about my folks as people, just as hypocritical adversaries I had to share a house with.
There’s just this hope I have that they can be made to see, because that’s an indication that they care about me as a person and not just me as an outgrowth of themselves. But I’m terrified to even bring it up to them in case it’s the opposite, because traditionally, any form of criticism would lead to the walls coming up, to “I don’t want to hear this, so shut up,” and “who are you to tell us something’s wrong, Laura?” I just can’t bring myself to walk right back into another one of those hours long diatribes that inevitably lead to lost tempers and attempts at revenge, after having been away from them for as long as I have.
I dunno. Is the fact that I’m so unwilling to take that risk a sign that I’m really after the validation and not the relationship?
Hrm. I can’t testify as to what you want, but from a situation with some of the same elements what I find is this:
I think I’ve gotten to the point of… closure, I guess one might say, on the point that I’m not going to get validation from my parents themselves. As a matter of verification (for myself, I mean, since this is intrinsically a thing that I’m the only person who can speak to), there is still a degree to which I feel an open need for validation from other people (hence, for instance, how I might end up doing a lot of reading in the down the rabbit hole genre), but I don’t feel that same desire with regard to my parents specifically.
What I do feel a desire for, when contemplating a relationship with them, is an assurance of safety. Not physical safety, in my case, but certainly psychological safety — the assurance that there is something I can point to that means I can engage in a relationship without at the same time opening myself up to a repeat of the same patterns that I know from experience are likely.
Because I want a relationship, but I don’t want to be stuck in a house with someone who is making passive-aggressive invalidating jibes about my sexual orientation — and my desire to not have the latter is greater than my desire to have the former, so if they’re confirmed to be a package deal then I decline the entire package. And if there’s an assertion that the two are not as tied as they seem to be historically — I want to see the chain of facts that leads to this conclusion. Of which a detailed statement of understanding and desire to do better would at least in theory be one (though… some people talk an exceedingly good game in the honeymoon phase >_>).
On the subject of risk, it seems like a common lie is to portray toxic behavior as being intrinsic to all relationships and unavoidable — that sure, you might like to not have folks attempt to punch you but gosh, we can’t have EVERYTHING we want. And sure, dealing with people has its moments. However a) you get to choose what risks you want to expose yourself to and b) there are many decent people out there with whom the stakes are lower. It’s been a continual pleasant surprise to me to find, despite what I was taught was normal, that most people try to figure out what I don’t want with an eye to doing it less.
So I think it’s entirely possible to want a relationship but to have that counterbalanced by the expectation of what is likely to come along with pursuing that relationship, without necessarily having the matter be entirely about a desire for validation. And if the desire is for validation, I can’t say as such a desire is even unreasonable — though it might be a desire that’s likely not to be satisfied, depending on the situation.
Hang on so your son has claimed he felt fear and was abused? That’s pretty major. And your response has been to call him selfish, and state he slit hour throats and then paradoxically call him brainwashed, refuse to give him the information which would let him get loans for study, call the police
When he tried to leave etc.
If you don’t know what was said to your wife you have no idea if her reaction was reasonable. You can’t claim that he must have been vile simple because of her reaction.
And your behaviour and language on here is not normal. It doesn’t matter if you think strangers refusing to comply means you have been provoked. That is another sign of abnormal behaviour. The fact you even think like this is troubling and it wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn you were an emotional abuser.
Your son chose to leave a hone where the mother throws herself to the floor if she has a nasty argument and the father is so disturbed he trolls blogs for children of abusers making violent and sexual insults. Not hard to see why he left.
Oh, good point. After days of saying his son has given no reason for leaving, HP is now saying he has claimed ‘fear and being abused’. So which is correct (I’m fairly sure I know the answer) and why has HP failed to mention it until now?
Also, if HP is involved in law enforcement, he will know that when trying to claim you are the victim or that you are only acting in self defence, it helps not to be having the argument on the doorstep (metaphorically in this case) of the person you are claiming is attacking you, having gone there with the intention of starting an argument. Unlike a real life scenario, this discussion can be halted at any time. All HP has to do is stop posting.
To be fair, he’s been saying or implying all along that his son claimed to be abused. One of his goals has been to convince us that the claim is wrong because, as per HP’s word and his account of the opinions of several other people, there was no abuse.
Which is to say, “He had no reason to leave” = “He had no reason I agreed with for leaving.”
And in particular, he has offered the timing of his son’s claims of abuse (after the son had left home) as evidence that the claim was, as they say in the biz, a “recent fabrication” and therefore not credible.
Whereas (ooh, I’m feeling stuffy this a.m., apparently), delaying a claim of abuse is also consistent with someone who felt unsafe in identifying abuse until he had some insulation by time or distance.
So I can’t draw a conclusion either way from the son’s timing FWIW.
I wanted to make sure I was not misremembering. This is a quote from a May 18, 2016 comment of HP: “The story of being an abused child came after he was already gone.”
And some children of abusers don’t recognize the abuse until they’ve had a chance to see the alternative. Even after that, some can’t let themselves see the abuse until they can get away, because seeing it and not being able to do anything about it is less bearable than thinking it’s normal.
So yeah, the timing alone isn’t diagnostic.
It has been fascinating to watch HP go from a person who at first stated his case fairly calmly & politely, if from a place of great pain, then devolve to a person who name-called & slung insults when he was questioned or challenged.
I am familiar with this dynamic with my own parent.
Me: “Mom – when you do this, it causes me great anxiety”
Mom: “I don’t do that.”
Me: “Here’s an example of when you did that.”
Mom: “You’re being mean to me, after all I’ve done for you! You’ve always been cold, ungrateful, etc., etc.”
And so we don’t get anywhere.
I finally reached a point where I am unwilling to put up with the anxiety & emotional turmoil that interacting with her causes me & we are currently NC. And my life is better for it.
LML …. our mothers must have read the same play book. However mine would finish the conversation by saying how her blood pressure was rising “through the roof”, then dramatically place her hand on her head and say it felt like her scalp was going to blow off, and add that no doubt she’d have a stroke and it was going to be my fault. I’d give up at that point. Ugh, glad those days are all in the past.
Hah! With mine it was her back and her ribs. She had legitimate problems with them, but she was always quite content to use them as leverage to get me to do as she wanted, especially when I was particularly young and didn’t know enough to figure out that her lifestyle played a huge part, and that stress is not something that can cause a skeleton and cartilage to act that way. When you’re seven years old and you hear “you are being bad and it’s physically hurting your mother,” you do whatever needs to be done to make that stop. I spent a lot of time alone in my room for fear of agitating a condition I now know I played no part in, which I’m sure benefited dear mother’s lifestyle immensely, not having to parent and all.
Of course, I’ve been gone for years, the woman has literally no demands on her time anymore, and strangely- I’m sure coincidentally- her problems are only getting worse. It’s almost like diet and a lack of exercise were the cause, and not her terrible daughter, stressing her out…
My sister and I (the only two who managed to escape) joke that their arguments always followed the same three stages: “That never happened. [We prove it happened]. Well, if it did happen it wasn’t that bad. [Sometimes we manage to show enough evidence that it was indeed objectively that bad]. Well, fine. If it was that bad, then you obviously deserved it.” Insert dehumanization and why you a miserable waste of space on this planet, plus significantly more colorful language.
They were always happy to skip to step three if they felt particularly emotional that day.
(In all reality, though, my dad was a particularly intelligent person, which made him much more frightening adversary. His use of abusive “logic” to trap you in your words, leave you absolutely shattered, and leave you absolutely convinced that the entire incident was obviously your fault as he walked calmly away, smirking, was horrifying. And it was always more sophisticated than what I’ve outlined above. I used to think my mother was the worst because she was the one who attacked more frequently, but my dad was so much more dangerous)
Issendai, you might want to update the section on insults. As HP regressed, he moved onto the more generic insults, most of which had a sexual undertone.
Good point. Ew.
Re-reading some of the earlier exchanges, I noticed this statement by HP to Issendai:
“The funny thing is, the more our conversation carries on, and the mental gymnastics continue, I actually am beginning to think I am talking to my son.”
So he is familiar with the circular conversations that occur when one person refuses to hear the other.
I’m not American. I’d never heard of FAFSA before. It took me literally 30 seconds (entering FAFSA and ‘parent won’t provide information’ into the search bar) to find that while a child usually submits the information, a parent can provide the data direct to the college without the child ever seeing it. The only reason I can think for HP to refuse to assist at all is to punish his son. I think it’s clear that while he says he wants a reconciliation, what he actually wants is for his son to obey, no matter what he has to do to enforce it.
Also (again, not American), is it usual not to claim a minor child living at home as a dependant or is HP splitting hairs when he says he didn’t and meaning his wife claimed their son on her taxes? Alternatively, does this mean there was a family breakdown earlier than HP is admitting?
In my experience it is unusual to stop claiming a child so early. My mother claimed me until the last year she possibly could, which put me in a difficult position as she could not help me financially with college (though the analysis said she could) and my father has not been a part of my life since I was a toddler. Fortunately college was still affordable when I went (definitely not a millenial) so I managed to get through it with the help of merit scholarships and jobs. It would not be manageable now.
It’s very interesting that he rewrites neutral, publicly available facts to maintain the fiction he writes about himself: I’m not controlling, I’m not vindictive, I’m just reasonably protecting myself and my wife.
It mirrors the earlier claim that stalking legally must include a specific intent to terrorise, with no reference to any actual laws that say this.
Usually when we talk about rewriting history in this context, it’s personal history that is being rewritten — but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a deeply disturbed person insist, against all evidence, that publicly available, widely known facts conform to their version of events.
There’s also a weird reluctance to do research and a failure to research deeply enough when he does research. It’s typical of the narcissists I’ve run into online, although every time I see it, it still boggles my mind. It’s like they’re so reflexively certain that they know what they need to know that even after getting bitten on the ass several times in a row, it doesn’t occur to them that they’re missing something. When they do finally concede that they need to learn something, they pick a source at random, skim it like they’re practicing for the Superficial Knowledge Olympics, and charge back onto the field. And get bitten again.
I also wonder whether it’s less painful to be mocked for ignorance than to indirectly admit that you’re ignorant by repairing your ignorance. After all, you can always devalue the people mocking you so you don’t have to listen to them. But admit that you made a mistake? The world might collapse.
Hi. I want you to know that I read your article and I feel that you are spot on. I am a parent like you describe. I do not want to cause my daughter to fear me. I do behave like a stalker. I know I deserve to be estranged from her. I was the adult that let my child down. I am going to stop bothering her, It is hard, but I love her and I want her to be happy. If getting rid of me makes her happy, then I will respect her wishes, It does hurt but I am the mother and I am the one that should put the feelings aside and let her have a life. I hope she forgives and wants to see me someday. I will not do this any longer. My poor baby. I am such an ass. I am all the things that the other parents tell me she is. THank you
I’m a daughter that estranged her mother- first went Very Low Contact, then No Contact. I wish she would show some of the self awareness and introspection that you seem to, but although leaving her alone, and respecting her wishes is an excellent first step, in my case at least, it wouldn’t be enough for forgiveness or reconciliation. I don’t know the circumstances of your estrangement, but I left a physically, mentally and emotionally abusive household of my single mother about 6 months ago, running away with a backpack filled with whatever I could fit and hoping for the best, and that the fallout would stay away from my 8 year old brother. It was, and is, a hard situation, and I told her (before I was forced for my own mental health to go no contact) what would need to happen for us to reconcile, so maybe you can see if any of this fits your situation, and if your willing to take these actions yourself.
I asked her first and foremost to seek mental help. Not for me, not in an accusatory way, but to go and have therapy, with an open mind and a willingness to work, to try, to make herself better. If she would consider this, go through with it, I told her that though it might take some time, 5 years, 10 years down the track, I would be there for her, waiting to reconcile as adults and to put things behind us. But she couldn’t. Her reaction was to lash out and cut me down further. Maybe you’ll succeed, and maybe your relationship will heal.
Just be honest with her if she does open communication with her again, show her through your actions, with out asking for acknowledgement or praise for it, that your willing to make it work and change yourself. Let her speak, and acknowledge her pain from this too. Hopefully, you’ll both move forward, together or apart.
You just have to try your best. For yourself, not for her.
Good luck.
I’m so sorry. That’s a terrible thing to have to swallow. But the fact that you can swallow it–the fact that you realize it’s on the plate at all–means you have a chance to do what you need to do to eventually reconcile with her.
Kiara Smith’s recommendation of therapy is an excellent one–not just to reconcile with your daughter, but to deal with the incredible pain of estrangement. I wish you strength.
I’ve been lurking on this thread for a few days. I’m not going to comment on HP, no need. You guys have said everything there is to say.
Relating to unwanted contact, I am estranged from my father. Everything was about him: our achievements and milestones, our mother’s wants and needs in life, our hobbies and hopes and aspirations… He made everything about HIM, HIM, HIM. No one could do anything in the house without his approval, and if you so much as asked (the wrong) question, or spoke back to him, or said, “no”, you were chased through the house with him screaming until his face turned purple.
I vividly remember hiding from him anywhere I could fit, but he always found me and screamed at me, telling me what an awful, horrible little s### I was, regardless of what the infraction was. A C on a report card? Tirade. Left my instrument at school by mistake? I couldn’t hide under the desk fast enough, and you can bet he grabbed me by the leg and pulled so hard, I’m surprised my leg was still attached. I was in 4th grade.
Later on in life, when I was an adult, if I did something “wrong” by his perception, he would attempt to corner me in the bathroom like he would when I was a child, and scream and scream these horrible insults until he was purple. I threatened him with the police and only then did he back off. He would call my phone, drunk late at night, and call me a wh### or fat or a “disgusting lesbian” and then demand I bring a man home. WTF?
When I told him I no longer wanted a relationship with him, that there was no point, he demanded to know why. I told him he already knew why. This was years ago, and yet he still creates new email addresses to get through my filters, just to talk about himself. Seriously, his latest one has a small paragraph about “us”, and a section three times than length to tell me all about himself. He starts it by saying, “I was respecting your request for a while…”
And he wonders why I want nothing to do with him. Do you guys think I should file a restraining order?
If you have enough evidence, certainly. Even if not – this creates a paper trail. I am not a lawyer, though.
This is a huge question, and because he’s been violent in the past, it’s not an easy one to answer. I think a restraining order would be a fantastic, and you sorely need the peace. Whether it’s a good idea to get one comes down to whether he’s likely to fear the law enough to back down and stop contact, or whether he’s one of the minority for whom a restraining order is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Since his current level of contact with you is occasional and nonviolent, it’s worth considering whether he’s one of that minority.
If your gut feeling is that he’ll back down, then by all means, get one. If your gut is more conflicted… Have you read The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker? It’s about the subtle signals dangerous people give off, and the subconscious, “intuitive” way we pick up on them. It can help you decide what kind of threat your father poses and how to counter him.
Seconding “The Gift of Fear” – this shit’s brilliant.
Reading HP’s comments, I can see why his son estranged and I’m relieved the kid got away.
I’m also pretty disappointed at how people are responding about the sons relationship with the 30 something woman (IF indeed that part of HP’s story is true- the part about her age and there being a romantic tie). Abused children are very vulnerable to grooming and finding themselves in another unhealthy or abusive relationship. There’s a reason why laws protect minors from romantic relationships with adults- you can’t go to court and say “well, this person is underage but they’re old enough to do *list of other things* so it’s fine for an adult to date them”. I and I bet many other people have experienced being taken advantage of by much older adults while trying to escape our parents and the various crappy beliefs they instilled in us… You can end up jumping from one shit situation to another, especially if you’re sort of looking for the parental guidance type of attention that you didn’t get at home. There’s a huge power imbalance in these types of situations and it’s not okay. Please don’t dismiss the seriousness of a grown adult (in their 30s!) taking up with a vulnerable abused teenager. The fact that HP is abusive, and that he hates the woman in this story, doesn’t automatically make her a good guy. If his claim that his son is romantically involved with her is true than this lady is also awful.
I didn’t get the sense that anyone was saying that the relationship with the 34-year-old is necessarily a good thing (though people did float more benign interpretations of the situation than HP’s). Issendai addressed this exact issue in the original post:
“If you’re trying to get your son away from a charismatic person, then you’re going about it in all the wrong ways. Hounding doesn’t work! It pushes the victim farther into the arms of the abuser.
“If you sincerely want to help your son, you’re going to have to do some things that feel counterintuitive. You’ll need to navigate according to his perception of the world, not your perception. You’ll need to focus on what he needs and wants from the world, not on your own needs for contact. Getting people away from people who are bad for them isn’t easy, and it can’t be done with the set of actions people usually take in these circumstances. If it were that simple, it wouldn’t be a social issue.”
HP is a highly unreliable narrator and we don’t have the son’s take on the situation. We don’t know what their living or financial arrangements are really like. We don’t actually know if there is a sexual relationship. We don’t know what the son and the 34-year-old woman’s husband said to HP’s wife on the phone (which might provide clues — but HP won’t even hint at the subject matter). The relationship might be profoundly abusive, but it might not, and regardless, the son is an adult and cannot be forced to cut it off.
The real tragedy is that IF this new relationship is abusive, HP is actually doing a lot to block his son’s avenues of escape.
Given that we have no indication that any grooming was going on, and that even when asked HP refused to answer about what the nature of the relationship is, I don’t think we can be blamed for focusing on what we could actually get responses on, rather than speculating based on no information.
As far as I remember, HP never mentioned a romantic relationship between his son and this woman, and given how he has behaved here, I can’t imagine he would have done that if he had any indication. Anything to make them look bad, right? That he didn’t leap on that idea with the same verve he leaped on everything else, and in fact only spoke about political differences, is pretty suggestive.
But I mean, we can only go off of what we’re told, and we *were* asking about that. It’s just that HP wanted to so tightly control the flow of information about the people he wanted to paint as bad that we never got anything substantive.
I agree that if HP’s description of the relationship is reliable, then it’s skeevy. Problem is, HP set up a false equation: “My son is in a questionable relationship” = “My actions toward him are A-OK.” People were focused on correcting the equation to “My son is in a relationship that’s legal and beyond my control” = “I must stop trying to control him.” The relationship was a red herring, one of HP’s many excuses for wanting to control his son, and debating its merits would have distracted from the main point. That led to us defending a relationship that–I can’t speak for the rest of the commenters, but under other circumstances, I wouldn’t have defended it.
Now that the argument with HP is over, perhaps we can have a discussion about the relationship apart from its role in HP’s defenses.
Everything you said, I agree with. I hope the woman and her husband are good people who just wanted to help the kid escape. But I also acknowledge that that’s just a hope, and add that I hope wherever he is, he’s okay.
HP is abusive as hell and impossible to argue but I’m still disappointed that there was a willingness to defend that relationship (tho I believe more from some other posters than you, like the one who tried to argue based on 17 being old enough for the military). I’m relieved to see people refusing to let HP get away with all the crap he’s spewing and the way he’s treated his kid, but I can never accept supporting something else abusive just on the basis of “he’s against it so we defended it”. I just don’t think that’s a good reason (and I’m disappointed to have been given a reason instead of “oops, we fucked up”). I don’t need to know why. There’s no acceptable reason for it. I’m glad you’re clarifying that you wouldn’t otherwise support that kind of thing but please, next time don’t support it regardless. Given how utterly repugnant HP is I understand just wanting to contradict every single thing he says but this went somewhere really disturbing, imo.
Frankly i don’t think the relationship needs to be discussed at all since we have almost no facts and no way to get any information (or reliable information) but I feel it was definitely not cool that people jumped on board defending that sort of thing. Hopefully people can try to look a little closer at this stuff next time and do better- those of us escaping terrible things at home are not aided by seeing justification or defenses of another type of abuse, no matter what the reason for that response. It is 100% possible to tear apart HP’s unending stream of bullshit excuses without saying things to excuse adults dating minors!
And I was pretty upset to see the situation just described as something you’d say “ew, skeevy” about. It’s not just skeevy. It’s a crime. It’s a sexual crime against a child. That deserves more than just a passing ‘ew’ even if it happened two years ago. I love this site because it’s really great when I start to feel guilty for escaping my family, but it’s hard when a situation mirroring my own comes up and I get to see one type of abuser condemned… And another excused and their behavior minimized. I suspect I’m one of many, many people who took the first opportunity to escape and ended up in another dangerous setting… It’s really important that exposing and countering abusive parents doesn’t become a justification for in any way downplaying or excusing the severity of other types of abusers. Predators target vulnerable people- those of us from messed up homes can easily end up being victimized again.
And in response to Laura- it was implied that the relationship was romantic. And the focus wasn’t just on trying to responses on what info was available- at least one person (d) outright stated that they felt 17 was an adult and old enough to date an adult over a decade older. That is not okay. That is not focusing on just the information we had. I’m not saying to let HP slide on their behavior or trying to defend estranged parents. I’m saying that there was no reason to explicitly or implicitly defend adult-minor relationships in the process, and that doing so is harmful to the many estranged or soon to be estranged kids who are vulnerable to adult exploitation while trying to escape their families.
I apologize, but no, this might not be a crime. 16 or 17 is the age of consent in many states. I agree that there’s not nearly enoughh info, though.
As for 17 being old enough for the military… if I recall, the point there was to show that, yes, at 17 the person can make their decisions. Maybe not the most mature ones, hell no. But the HP swung to the other extreme – he insisted his son couldn’t have decided to get out voluntarily, that he’d been brainwashed.
I know it was to show they’re old enough to make decisions. That’s exactly what I’m upset with. There are many decisions children can start to make for themselves in their teen years. A relationship with an adult is not one of them. It was an inappropriate comparison. And there are certainly people who’d argue that the recruiting age has been artificially deflated to feed demand for service members too, actually.
As for states with younger age of consent, those tend to apply to same age relationships, not to someone in their 30s. Even in states with a flat age of consent of 16 or 17, adults can and have been charged with things like corruption of a minor if there is a large age gap in the relationship.
I’m not sure why dating children is the hill so many people want to die on, but yikes. This is the problem I first ran into when I tried to escape my home at 16.. The community support available for children fleeing their parents is nice on the surface and good on exposing parent misbehavior, but also often made up of a bunch of predators of another sort. There is no defense to an adult in their 30s no less having a romantic relationship with a 17 year old. None. and that you’d have the gall to speak over a victim trying to tell you this, and give a faux apology full of excuses, is really sad. If you are being told that your confrontation of an abuser is done in a way that makes a safe harmful for victims, it’s time to step back and see what you can change, not continuing defending your actions. it’s like the flea of not wanting to admit being wrong without qualifying that is suddenly springing up all over.
HP had no right to take away his sons agency and invalidate his son’s choice to escape him. That does not give you the right to espouse the virtues of adults dating children. “But he did something bad too!” is not a defense. HP was wrong to say his son is brainwashed to want to leave him. You are wrong to say that a child being in a relationship with an adult is okay. You yourself swung to an extreme in a defending a relationship that I’m sure in any context you would recognize as harmful and wrong. And the unwillingness of many people to own up and apologize (without mitigating excuses) for contributing to the culture of abuse is frighteningly similar to the denial patterns of a lot of these parents. I feel like I’m in some kind of time warp having an argument with my mother.
I see your point. I’ll give it a more thorough thinking-over later.
For now, I sincerely apologize.
I agree that a romantic relationship between a teenager and an adult is, by its own, extremely inappropriate. I did not realise you were a victim. I see where you’re coming from, and I’m sorry for not clarifying my _opinion_ on this kind of relationship.
There are some points I wish to debate, but bringing them up in the same comment would invalidate my apology. Please tell me if and when you’re okay with that. If you’re not, I won’t comment on that.
HP implied that it was romantic in the beginning but then indicated later that it was not a romantic relationship. He also himself had some kind of previous relationship with this person (the son met her online but HP said he knew her already). He was asked several times to explicitly clarify both but would not.
I get the strong sense that it was simply a friend of the family trying to help a young person out of a bad situation when he was legally able to move out that has been colored many different ways by HP depending on how he wants to look during any given argument. IF the scenario were a sexual relationship I would agree that it was inappropriate. However at some point HP conceded that it was not. So, no adult-minor relationship to defend.
“And in response to Laura- it was implied that the relationship was romantic. ”
I disagree, but that’s okay. I don’t recall ever defending a sexual relationship between the two of them personally- my thoughts on age differences are complicated, but I tend to agree with you in this specific instance at the very least- so it’s a moot point. I just don’t think the implication was there.
“And the focus wasn’t just on trying to responses on what info was available- at least one person (d) outright stated that they felt 17 was an adult and old enough to date an adult over a decade older. ”
I’m not going to pretend to have perfect recall of this thread, and if that was said I’d disagree with it too: my comment was meant to address this specific instance and how I didn’t think a sexual relationship could be gleaned from what we’d been told, not to defend 17 year olds hooking up with 30 year olds.
“I’m not saying to let HP slide on their behavior or trying to defend estranged parents.”
Oh, don’t worry: you’re not going to get any binary thinking out of me. I’ll leave that to HP himself. 😛
Thank you for calling me on my shit. I was thinking in black and white, and it was Not Helpful. I’m sorry to have played a part in triggering you, and in downplaying the troubling aspects of the relationship between HP’s son and the woman.
Issendai, feel free to not allow this to post in the discussion, but I couldn’t find a way to get this to you directly. This showed up in my Quora feed today & thought you’d like to take a look. https://www.quora.com/My-daughter-is-not-inviting-me-to-her-wedding-but-wont-say-why-what-can-I-do
On another note, I see so much of my mother in these descriptions of estranged parents, it’s uncanny. Thank you for your research and this site!
That’s an interesting Quora question. The mother says she has no idea whatsoever, period, end of statement, and neither do her ex or her other grown children. Her daughter is 31, so it’s not a case of a young adult skedaddling as soon as they can afford to get away. She doesn’t mention mental illness, so it’s not a manic swing or a psychotic break. It just… happened.
It’s heartening to see the number of people calling her on it.
This quote is eye-rolling: “I find it difficult to believe that you are the toxic one because toxic people don’t seek out answers, they only blame others.” Hah! Toxic people seek out answers all the time. They ask the wrong questions and they accept only certain answers, but they do seek.
A twist on the “blame the partner” game: “[I]f the person marrying this female was really a good person, functioning on a full human level, he would have worked on working out his fiance emotional problems, which may or may not be coming to terms with a less than perfect childhood. Instead he’s going along with and/or causing this rif.” So the daughter’s fiance is either responsible because he’s isolating her from her family, or he’s responsible because he’s not healing her emotional problems. Either way, he’s not “functioning on a full human level” (HP, is that you?). Bonus points for referring to the daughter as “this female.”
I’ve never looked at Quora before (hey, I’m middle-aged and still resent all the time I spent learning DOS), but these are some straight-talking peeps. This here is just golden:
“I’m going to assume you’re a toxic person to be around that your daughter has ample reason to keep you away from her wedding day. Try some therapy. Figure out how to stop being such a horrible parent that your kids don’t want you around. Then, maybe, if you spend several years demonstrating that you’ve changed, your kids will spend a lunch date with you once a year or so.”
I still shy away from confrontation. Most of the time it’s just not worth it because people won’t get it anyway, but I enjoy the vicarious vindication.
Yes me too! I loved seeing that comment and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts the OP downvoted it.
And you’re welcome! I’m sorry your mother is lousy. “Uncanny” is a good word for how alike toxic people are.
Thank you, she is lousy and yes it really is a great word for them; frightening would be another good one too. I also caught the 1st comment you referenced. I rolled my eyes so hard it actually hurt. Quora has some really interesting discussion topics, worth a bit of time just scrolling through all the questions & answers. I’ll have to follow this question to see if the OP provides more details.
*squeee Issendai replied to me!!!
Do you have to register to see some of the content? The question refers to details in the comments but I don’t see any details.
I don’t think so Magpie. If you look just below the headline of the question you’ll see a greyed ‘comments 3+’ button; click that & her story is the second one. I had to expand her comment to see it in full.
I couldn’t see that so I did go ahead and register, and now I can. Another rabbit hole, I guess. There are still a few places I haven’t joined. Maybe.
Ha! I totally hear that! I’ve lost many an afternoon on that site & many others like it (i.e. reddit). Total and complete rabbit holes!
Is there a word to describe the squee one feels when someone else squees about them? I feel this should be a thing.
*squee!*
Schadensquee?
Schadensquee?
Squeefreude?
This post and its comments got mention over on Out of the Fog (specifically HP’s deterioration into insulting behavior over the course of discussion). Your site in general is consistently endorsed by posters there. I think for a lot of people it’s a gateway to healing because it really helps to explain the logical fallacies that a lot of us have absorbed as realities. This site is really important and you’re doing good work here.
Can you please give a link? Thanks. (substitute .com with (dot) com, please; athough since Issendai is back to modding, it’s likely okay not to.)
http://www.outofthefog(dot)net/forum/index.php?topic=21991.0
I missed a dot or something else indicating that it is a link so it’s in moderation.
Okay, thank you!
The forum itself is at outofthefog dot net. There’s a subforum called “Dealing with PD Parents” with a thread on parents’ forums in it. I like the climate of the forum a lot, but don’t read it all that much anymore.
Found it, thank you! (topic=21991.0, page 4)
Thank you. It means a lot to me to know that my work is helping people.
And I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, here. Abuse survivors’ forums and blogs gave me words for what I saw, validated that I was seeing something real, pointed out patterns I’d never noticed before, peeled apart behaviors with a precision and insight I only wish I could have. It’s a hell of a lot easier to put together a puzzle when someone else has already assembled most of the pieces. So for you forum members who are reading here, thank you. You’re the ones who made me able to do this.
Here’s a link – I spend lots of time on that site! Hope this goes through:
http://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=21991.30
Welp, this is exactly why I walked away from further participation in this thread. Certainly it’s illuminating but I also spent a couple years reading EP sites on a daily basis and the beliefs the HP stated, the manner in which they were stated and the strategic dropping of significant facts regarding the situation etc. are way too familiar. No matter how politely you ask for clairificaion, the responses become increasingly hostile and aggressive, spiraling further and further out of control. No matter how you say, “Can you please help me understand this? ” it’s perceived as an attack. The disproportionate responses are ment to obfuscate, not illuminate. The recurrent flounce offs with the promise of not returning were *repeatedly violated by the poster them self.* HP continually returned with yet more “you’re a poopy-head” responses and undercut their own credibility (even further) by doing so.
The poster was all about being “Right.” Therefore, anyone who asked politely for more information is eventually treated with contempt-and mounting abuse. So, the EP can be “Right” and their ADULT offspring will just be gone.
I don’t know any of you. I’m an old widow who NCd decades before the internet. No, it isn’t “this generation.” No, no Adult wakes up on say a Tues. morning and says, “I’m gonna terminate the relationship with the parents today.” Ultimately, EPs de facto push their offspring out of their lives and then scream “IMMA VICTIM!” while concurrently engaging in behavior that is alllll about Retribution, not Reconciliation and guaranteed to ensure the Adult offspring never “comes back.” Mine spent the rest of her physical life (decades) in a Campaign of Retribution that ensured not only would I never review that decision, but that others also became very aware of her pathology. The chronicty and severity of the behavior was not an “Extinction Burst,” or if it was, it’s the most lengthy one I’ve encountered to this day. Outside the confines of their Forums and occasionally a saner poster who will advise them not to stalk their offspring, they ultimately unmask themselves spectacularly. Typically, those threads just vanish within 24 hrs. as do the people who advise not to do this. Just as was seen here, give ’em time.
Yes, they most certainly do know why their “poopy-head” offspring NC. As George Simon Ph.D (“Character Disturbance,” “In Sheeps Clothing”) observed, ” It’s not that they don’t see, they just don’t agree.” And not only do they not agree, in their effort to paint the offspring black they have no compunction about engaging in illegal acts, chronic lying (as demonstrated by their own words) and then reveal how seriously cray cray they are to outsiders who “have no dawg in the fight” or even know them.
The dialogue here was classic pathological EP. Thank you, Issendai for allowing this “discussion” to proceed despite the abuse to which you and the other people here were subject to. Just let EP “out to play” and it will become abundantly clear the EP is out to extract “pay” on their “investment”-and anyone who simply APPEARS to understand the POV of the adult offspring or is in need of clarification will “pay” as well. Good Will, a desire to genuinely understand the EP will never subsume pathology. I’m sorry.
Reality is much like gravity: In the end, gravity always “wins.”
They “win” a pyrrhic “victory” because Reality never had a chance to participate.
EPs just don’t and will never get it.
There’s a series of posts recently at one of their forums about wanting to pass a law making it illegal to cut contact / forcing mediation on an adult child with jail time if they refuse. Horrifying. This guy would fit in well there.
I know this thread is dead and buried, but the occasional comment on it makes it pop up on the main blog page’s sidebar. I didn’t participate in this discussion, but I have read every post in it.
And as a queer man, I just have to point out the hypocrisy of a man constantly implying that the posters here are racists and Islamophobes (through his emotionally laden analogies comparing people who are afraid of their parents as just like people who are irrationally afraid of all black people) then turning around and using the highly homophobic and misogynistic slur “cocksuckers.” It really didn’t take that much or that long for the mask to fall away.
Quite the journey, wasn’t it?
Well spotted. (Issendai’s had a field day over that little gem.) I doubt that HP had thought about the implication of his slur, but the fact that he chose to use it (among other things) is very telling.
I just found this blog yesterday and it’s been exactly what I was looking for. I was hoping for a book that offered some advice and insight, but everything I’ve found so far (other than Susan Forward’s books) has focused on reconciliation or seems to be aimed at estranged parents whose adult children have cut contact.
I ought to say, I’m neither. I am the daughter-in-law being blamed for the estrangement between my husband and his parents. I won’t get into the circumstances surrounding that, other than to say their relationship was difficult before he ever met me, they sabotaged his brother’s engagement when his fiancee tried to set some boundaries, my husband was brought up believing he was responsible for his mother’s mental health wellbeing and was constantly letting her down by not doing everything her way, and they were exceptionally cruel to me over a period of three years when we lost two babies and went onto have a healthy third child. The estrangement happened slowly over a period of just over four years, with so many discussions, arguments, letters, phone calls appeals to their better nature, explanations of our grief and pain, and so many conversations where we begged them to consider the way they treated us as they were driving us away. It was organic more than engineered as far as we were concerned. It was a thing that seemed to grow rather than a thing that we designed. That said, they would tell you the estrangement happened overnight, came out of the blue, and they have no idea what they did wrong or what caused it.
My thoughts on what “A Hurting Parent” has to say about attempts at communication are not “terrorising” are these:
We would sometimes receive up to twenty phone calls a day trying to force us to speak to them.
They parked outside our house and watched it until we returned home.
They followed me when I left the house to check where I was going, and if they thought I wasn’t where I should be they would report me to my husband.
They sent letters that included lines such as “I know you said you wanted us to leave you alone but I don’t want to” and “We know you said you wanted us to leave it but we don’t think that’s working”.
They kept belongings of ours, including our wedding album and our babies clothes and toys, and refused to give them back until I listened to what they had to say.
They repeatedly tried to get my husband and other family members to “make her” do as we want.
They phoned my workplace, my parents workplace, they turned up at the house, they tracked down my parents mobile numbers, they sent texts threatening to drive around the streets looking for us, they had other family members copying pictures off Facebook, and we believe they took flowers from our babies grave and left weird items and mementos in their place.
When we were still seeing them, they would wait until they were alone with me to say cruel and hurtful things or to try to force me to commit to further meetings without my husband being there. Or they would lie to other members of the family about things I said and did.
At the times when they apologised it was “for whatever it is you claim we’ve done” but they would never admit or acknowledge to anybody else that they had done anything. They have lied so often about not saying or doing anything wrong that I think they really believe it, even when these things have been witnessed by more than one person.
They basically stalked me to the point where I was afraid to open any of the blinds and curtains downstairs in the house or the upstairs front ones. I was afraid to leave the back door open for the dog to go outside in case they came around the back of the house and walked in, and even now, having not seen them willingly for over six years, they still turn up outside our house to shout and make demands. I’m frightened to let my son play outside alone in case they are watching from nearby, and I worry every time I’m out in public in case they see me and cause a scene. Just the thought of seeing them makes me feel ill, I’ve had panic attacks caused by them shouting at me down the phone, ordering me to do as I was told.
If that isn’t harassment or terrorising then I don’t know what is. If they were an ex partner or a total stranger, you’d be telling me to go to the police.
If you want someone to take a step towards you, you can’t keep acting in a way that forces them to take a step back.
Forcing contact that is unwanted makes it very clear that you don’t care about the feelings of the person who has gone NC with you, and makes it clear that you don’t respect them or value what they want.
Had my in-laws been able to stop their behaviour when we first tried to explain how they were making us feel we might still be in contact, but their unrelenting pushing drove us away.
I don’t expect “A Hurting Parent” to listen to me or respect what I have said here. This is my experience, it’s not really my place to share my husband’s experience, other than to say that we’ve been through bits of this together and bits of this apart. As I said, his parents were like this long before I met him, and all of his siblings have had their share of issues with their parents too.
But I’ll repeat now, if anyone else behaved this way, it would be seen as terrorising, it would be called abusive, people would say call the police over some of the behaviour, if it were a romantic partner or a friend or a colleague instead of a parent nobody would encourage us to continue a relationship, they’d be telling us to run for the hills. Being a parent and doing this to your child doesn’t make the behaviour any different than if you were an ex partner doing this to someone who broke up with you. It’s wrong.
In the most simple of terms, you cannot bully someone into having a relationship they do not want to have.
And you will never convince somebody that you love them if you insist on forcing them into situations they do not want to be in.
You cannot change someone’s mind about you by behaving in a way that confirms they’ve made the right choice in cutting you out.
Issendai thank you for this blog and your comments about the way some estranged parents behave. I have no idea if my in-laws are part of a forum but I’ve recognised so much of what they do on your pages. We’ve always known that our estrangement was the right thing, even if it wasn’t a thing we wanted or planned, but it’s taken years to reach a point where we don’t feel we have to explain ourselves or justify ourselves any more. We’ve given my in-laws so many explanations they refuse to accept, eventually we realised that going over everything with them whenever they turned up at our house was feeding something in them. They didn’t want more explanations, they’d already had them and rejected them. They wanted the upset and the drama and the chance to tell us what was “wrong” with us, to tell us what bad people we are, to cry about how badly we’d treated them, and then to take all that away and ring other relatives to complain about how unreasonable we were when they were “trying to fix” things or “make us see” how they felt.
It’s been a massive relief to be able to say to them and everyone else “We’ve explained before, so whatever you do or don’t understand now is not our problem. You don’t have to understand our choice but you do have to respect it. We’re done.”
Hey, a great resource for you to check out for people in your situation (in-law issues, estrangement) is www (dot) reddit (dot) com/r/JUSTNOMIL/
There’s lots of daughter-in-laws sharing stories of their issues with their in-laws, advice about how to navigate no contact or low contact and generally a good venting space if you need a lace to read stories to make your world feel a bit more sane or to vent anonymously if you’d like or get personalized advice. I highly recommend it!
Bless you, Issendai,it’s so good to see that you’re still hard at work. Down The Rabbit Hole has been a lifesaver for my husband and I for many, many years now and I’m glad to see you’re still at it.
I almost forgot about you, but today I was surfing around the internet, and something I came across reminded me of your pompous arrogance. I thought I would let you, and the rest of the incredibly WRONG shitswizzlers on this thread that as I said in the beginning, this devil was actually not the devil. Our estranged child came home, and as it turned out IT WAS things that someone else filled my child’s head with. Not only is our child back among the family that NEVER stopped loving them, but never abused them in the first place. Our life is back on track, beautiful, and full of joy again. It is in fact so good that we became foster parents to a child that actually abused and neglected. That child is thriving, and living the same life of good fortune our child did until some hate-monger like you got into their head. So Issendai, I just wanted to tell you that you can take all of your bullshit and insert it right into that shithole of a mouth that you spew all this venom from. Ahhhhhh……….
My heart goes out to both your son and your foster child. I hope that they can both win their way free, and that the good state of Georgia rethinks its standards for foster parents.
I’ve no doubt they would if they read his posts. Just disgusting.
Damn, this dude lives in Georgia? I’m not pleased he’s near me, but I’m not surprised. Georgia is one of those southern states that’s a fertile soil for narcs to grow and thrive in.
Also, there’s way too many stories of some poor kid getting sent out to foster parents who are worse than their bio parents. The Harts come to mind.
Why your obsession that if a child ostracises their parents, the parents *must* be a bad person? *Must* have done something wrong? That there are real reasons, and the parents are just denying them? In this case it appears the reasons were extraneous to the parents; that the parents really did do nothing wrong? Why can’t you accept that? And why the snark (from someone who claims they don’t like people who hurl insults) that this parent isn’t fit to be a foster parent?
Sometimes, just sometimes, you’re wrong. Sometimes a child has estranged from their parents for irrational reasons. Can’t you accept you sometimes can be wrong?
You cling to the “sometimes”… “Sometimes, just sometimes, you’re wrong. Sometimes a child has estranged from their parents for irrational reasons. Can’t you accept you sometimes can be wrong?”
The way you write that states what most of us know is true… The vast majority of times it’s the opposite. Children estrange for very good reasons. Yeah, “sometimes” it’s something irrational but most of the time it’s the behavior of the parent that causes the estrangement. Sure, I and others can admit we’re sometimes wrong because the vast majority of the time we’re right and it’s proven by the behavior/attitudes of people like you and A Hurting Parent.
Returning to an online argument from two years ago to go, “NYAAAAHHH, I got my way after all!” Impressive level of pettiness, my dude.
Late reply, but: While I hope it’s true that all is well and you really are not an abuser, sadly, I don’t think it is uncommon for estranged abuse survivors to return to their abusers. I’m speaking from personal experience – I was the first to leave once I hit eighteen (and *stayed* gone, thank God), then my sister left at eighteen (only to end up in a much worse situation…) She ended up returning to our abusers for a few years, who, like you, rejoiced that life was finally “back on track.” She’s just now separated herself for the second (and last!) time and is finally in the stable, loving situation that neither of us ever got growing up.
(I’ve read this whole site recently and it was great. If I had known *any* of this when I first left, I would have lived in so much less guilt and fear. “Hurting Parent” doesn’t seem to realize just how appropriate his name is.)
Late to this party, but wow. The projection is so strong with this one you need an IMAX screen to show it all.
I highly doubt your son returned simply because he missed his ‘happy family’. More likely is the combo of your prior behaviors (such as denting him info for his FAFSA) coupled with garbage life skills teaching by you and your wife that led him back.
I agree with Issendai. Gods help your children for living with such a petty, trashy excuse for a father. I give you another year or two tops to enjoy their presence before you push them all away.
Ooo eee, your anger issues are out-of-control. And this is coming from someone with rage issues. You are a time-bomb and I’m worried you’re very close to hurting yourself or someone else.
You are the man Hurting Parent. I’m glad you showed these vile shitswizzlers here that they lost and you won. They couldn’t believe that they were the abusive ones and they were the devils. Can you put all their hateful questions to rest by saying why your son returned, what he screamed at your wife and how he got uncorrupted from the older woman’s grasp? I’m sure your unconditional love has something to do with it, and you are truly bighearted to unflinching accept him back. Thank you again, and best wishes for you and your family : )
Do we have any particular reason to believe the latest claims of HP?
I don’t. I think I made one comment very early on this thread and immediately shut it down when it became apparent to me this was a Troll. Consistent non-responsive replies are a dead give away. (After participating on ACON Blogs for years you learn the tactics.)
What was also apparent was the willingness of the responders here to continue in good faith to attempt to assist the Troll, ultimately to no avail. I spent the first 30 yrs. of my life attempting to assist my birth “mother” by patiently, gently pointing her in the direction of becoming human-ish because no one could willfully be this abusive, neglectful, cruel, conscienceless etc., right?!
I was a ssllooowwww learner. I had metaphorically handed the keys to my (life) car to a toddler and then wondered why I always landed in her bitch ditch.
In the ensuing decades I learned about and implemented this thing called Boundaries. I refuse to buy the bull shit ticket or take the bull shit ride. Works well for me.
A lot of the vitriol ‘A Hurting Parent’ has posted reminds me so much of my estranged, narcissistic, abusive spermdonor.
The mental gymnastics that I read gave me a splitting headache.
Narcissists have no concept of self-awareness and, boy oh boy, do they love having a pity party!
It’s everybody elses fault but their’s.
My parents separating and divorcing was the best thing to happen to my family.
I still think about this on a regular basis. God, I so sincerely hope the son in question made enough helpful contacts with the outside world they can find another way out, more permanently. Being trapped in the cycle of NC-living at home-NC-living at home with abusive, controlling family members is way too familiar.
As a parent who is trying not to become estranged from my teenager, this is interesting reading. I often feel like a failed parent because I don’t assert myself more with him. Other people tell me he’s just rude and needs to be more actively parented. I think he’s depressed and unhappy. I’m trying not to nag him too much, though it is emotionally hurtful to be constantly glared at and ignored, and physically difficult to do all the things around the house myself all the time. (He lives with me when not at college).
I’m really worried about his emotional and physical health. The pandemic has really taken a toll on the second half of his senior year of high school and then his freshman year of college. He’s always been kind of introverted, and being in isolation so long with Mom is a teen’s idea of hell.
But college isn’t going great, either.
My heart hurts so much. I’m so worried. I don’t need to know his deepest, darkest thoughts. I just want to know if he’s basically okay.
I want to know how I can help.
And yes, sometimes I want to shout at him and beg him to just talk to me. Just once, a real conversation with more than one-word answers. It’s fucking lonely living with a teenager who hides in his room all day. He literally doesn’t come out except to eat or pee.
Yes, he’s being seen by a mental health professional. That’s my last hope. That maybe he’ll grow out of it eventually, work through the pain that has him immobilized, and start living fully again. I’m not the person who he’ll allow to do that, but maybe eventually it will happen with someone else. (he’s been in therapy for 2 years now).
I don’t want to be an abusive parent. I also don’t want to be a doormat parent. It’s hard to find that middle line, but I’m trying.
“I don’t want to be an abusive parent. I also don’t want to be a doormat parent. It’s hard to find that middle line, but I’m trying.”
Well one of the best ways to find out or know that you are an abusive/narcissistic person or parent is the inability to let the words of the other person be heard. For my opinion and only my opinion, this inability is a virtual slam-dunk as to being a narcissist. I mean look at the countless examples of “hurting parent” lashing out in angry and bewildering ways when trying to avoid mentioning the son’s POV at all. And he succeeds: the only words out of the son are taken so out of context they become ad absurdum or are simply left out entirely. His horrific refusal is almost impressive if it wasn’t so abusive and sad.
So if you can say here what’s your son is feeling and thinking about this, congratulations you have eliminated yourself from the biggest red flag of being a
narcissistic parent. So the questions are:
How does you son feel about this situation?
Does he agree that you don’t assert yourself more with him and told you this?
Does he have any problems with your parenting? Has he ever expressed that he thinks you were wrong about something or the way that handled a situation? If so, what was it and what did he say about it?
Does he agree that you physically do all the things around the house? If he disagrees, what are his words on this?
Does he agree that being seen by a mental health professional is his last hope? If he disagrees, what does he think about this?
Does he agree that he has pain that has him immobilized, and prevents him from fully living? Does he think that you cause him pain? Does he think that you are the perfect parent? If not, what are some concerns he’s said to you about your parenting?
A narcissistic parent simply will not allow accurate recorded speech of the child to be reported. Answers will be short, heavily manipulated into giving a false sense of the situation and put the parent in the best light possible. And often vilify those asking like what happened here with A Hurting Parent.
So if you are able now to accurately report his words, then it’s virtually impossible that you are a narcissist.
Jerseygurl, you’re not going to drive your son away. It sounds like he’s in a bad place. In fact it sounds a lot like my mother when she suffered from clinical depression. She was physically present, but it was like her personality had been erased, like there was nothing there.
Talking about your concerns with your son’s therapist might help. They might not know how bad the situation is. I hope things get better for you and for him.
Why would the term “Estranged Parent” even enter your mind? Your lexicon? Estrangement from a parent is quite extreme. I need to hear more, my friend.
So he sees a “mental health professional.” Are you seeing one as well?
This argument about irrational fears isn’t the killer argument you think it is. You think that if Person X suffers an irrational fear of Person Y, Person Y should not criticise them, it’ll only make things worse. You pose four rhetorical questions about it to show why Person Y will just aggravate it. But at no point do you propose how to get Person X out of their irrational fear. It just has to be indulged and nobody must question it. What do you do about it? Just accept it, apparently. Accept the ostracism.
“at no point do you propose how to get Person X out of their irrational fear.” — What you don’t seem to grasp is, the fear is not irrational to the person who has it. Just because someone else (the parent) deems the fear to be irrational doesn’t make it such. This is a common belief with mentally unhealthy parents… They think they are the decider of truth/facts. Just because a parent *thinks* they were a good parent and that their off-spring doesn’t have anything to complain about doesn’t make it true. In fact, only your off-spring get to decide if you were a good parent. You didn’t parent yourself. The fact that you think you get to decide that someone else’s fear is irrational is in itself an irrational thought. People who don’t think rationally are uniquely unqualified to tell other people what is/is not rational. When you demonstrate a healthy mindset then MAYBE you can comment on the mental health of others. No one needs to fix their ‘irrational fear’ if that fear is actually and in fact justified. Like fear of a poisonous snake. It is in no way irrational to fear a snake that can bite, poison and kill you. It is no way an irrational fear to avoid parents who have in the past been emotionally/physically abusive especially if they haven’t demonstrated improved behavior whether the parent agrees that’s how they behave or not.
Yes, I’m thinking about this Elly and WHS, with my folks — how trauma can create an automatic fear response, and how my folks have a tendency to see a single truth, equate reactions with truth, and feel deeply threatened by anything which could be criticism. I think part of the issue is personal and part of it is cultural.
If you can’t conceive of the idea that a lens changes the version of “truth” you see (that truth may be shifting/kaleidoscopic, or that some truths I hold are shared/co-signed with other people/shown scientifically while other truths are based on my experience and very personal), or that structures also create us as we create them, it’s hard to grasp family systems, religion as a construct, or that any one of us can live into a dynamic we didn’t intentionally set up. It’s also hard to grasp intent vs. impact. I may have an impact on you which didn’t match what I really want to create between us.
My folks and I are Low Contact, we have been for a while. It’s a long story, involving evangelical religious upbringing, MH and emotional illiteracy.
I have been thinking more about what my parents have experienced which led them to this place. I think they probably experienced really cutting parental responses to failure. I think they legitimately tried to do better with us. I think when they hear me say, “That’s not kind, don’t say that about [me or other family member],” or “I don’t want to drink this wine, thank you, but it’s gone sour” I hear boundaries, they hear extremely critical, high-performing, do-or-die Greatest Generation parents, and go into a black sheep/failure/judged found wanting/”you’re not the boss of me”/”F your standards” place, with a mixed up “you’re so high maintenance” signal which is really about their relationship with themselves. (They don’t have words for any of this, because they haven’t unpacked any of the sad and scary stuff under the surface, so their feelings = my fault as with HP above.) I think my dad also needs to win as his dad needed to win arguments, surely they locked horns plenty of times. My grandpa basically set up a whole system around him where all questioning was eliminated or took place in the form of humor, a language which my uncle speaks easily but does not come easily to my dad. It’s hard to grok my dad as a mostly gentle/passive guy who also with particular provocation can rage and hit. I used to really relate to my grandpa, he’s empirically a bad-ass, kind of an old-school larger-than-life-hero type, but after he died I started to realize that he was weaving patriarchal games of domination, winning and masculinity in the family. Nobody’s opinion mattered but his. (Again, the analysis skipped a generation, I don’t think my folks have thought deeply about this, and tried to undo what they could.)
I try not to feel responsible for my folks’ reactions to me (mostly) but I do feel good about trying to understand that their strong emotions are not a rejection of me but evidence of their own unhealed feelings of rejection. It doesn’t help me to be around them, but it helps me to understand. It is a BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement) for me, better than “They don’t know how to love me, why did this happen to me, what is wrong with me, will I always be broken, will I ever know how to love someone else in a kind, grounded and healthy way.”
This took 20-some years to figure out, I never wanted to have to do this work or think about any of this, I wanted to live my professional and personal life, write books, travel the world and build my confidence. It just turned out that in the journey to confidence, all this was on that path and needed me to engage with it. I don’t want to be the age I am and still wonder some days if I am able to love and be loved. However, if I kept with the logic of my family and had never dealt with any of this, and stayed more afraid of their reactions than not living my actual life, I would probably be a shut-down, self-righteous public servant and willing horseman of the MAGApocalypse, shaking my head and trying to explain away police violence but feeling deep down I might be missing something.
To the mom above, it sounds like you are grieving emotional estrangement and seeing something is really wrong for your son right now. I’m sorry, that’s so scary. I think it’s not the same matrix of analysis as narcissistic parenting or doormat parenting. Covid hit everybody differently and some of us it sent down a really rough path. It is all a journey and I started to realize that I can learn from all of it, even when it feels really awful — I am just thinking about ways to connect that could feel bounded/not overwhelming, pleasant to you both. Is there a date you two can go on weekly, something you both like? Even if it is movie (no talking) and a coffee (a bit of talking), or GoKarts, or a neighborhood walk (lots of talking).
I like reading Dr Becky for my nieces and nephews, “Good Inside.” Her opinion, with a bevy of studies and neuroscience underlying, is that a kid’s job is to have emotions and a parent’s job is to help them connect the emotions to the logical part of the brain, and make decisions about safety and ethics. There’s lots I don’t know about teenage brains, I do know some things about depression brain, and sometimes doing the things that we don’t want to do (like exercise) are needed to shift brain chemistry. Wishing you well, it is super super hard to be in close partnership with someone in a depressive/anxious place. Codependents Anon is really helpful if you feel like you’re losing yourself in his issues and neglecting your own life.
Appreciate this whole page.
Thank you for this entire blog. I’ve read through all the sections about estranged parents. I went no contact nearly 10 years ago from my mother for my own safety.
So many of these parents insist that it’s not “abuse” unless it’s a child-in-the-basement scenario. Well, I was that child–kind of. My father sexually abused me and trafficked me. And my mother knew about it and protected him. She also protected my brother after he molested me too. I was forced to get a job and hand over my paychecks to her. She probably owes me somewhere in the realm of 20-30k from the wages she stole from me. I will never see a penny.
When she kicked me out at age 21 after I asked for my child molestor brother not to sleep right next door to me, I (once again) did as she asked and left. I went to my then-partner’s home and didn’t tell her where I was going.
She stalked me there and showed up with Christmas gifts, scaring the shit out of my partner’s family. She refused to see how awful that was.
I went no contact a couple years later. In the decade since, I have re-connected with women I grew up with who have known my mother for many, many years. They are kind and like real mothers to me.
They have said that over the years they of course asked about me, and every time my mother shows complete indifference. She doesn’t try to play the “victim” card. She doesn’t say “poor me.” She doesn’t tell them any details at all. They are disturbed as each and every one of them recounts just how unconcerned she is by the fact that (from everyone else’s point of view) her youngest child has simply disappeared and nobody knows if I’ve simply moved away, been kidnapped, murdered, etc. One of the women said, “If my child was so hurt by me that they felt they had to take that step, I would never rest until I healed that hurt. There would be no church, no work, no family, no friends. Just me figuring out where I went so wrong and ensuring my child was okay.”
My mother has never, ever tried. She has gotten what she has wanted since the day I was born: She’s gotten rid of me. I think the only thing that bothers her is that I got rid of her first and for good.