Dear Leocube:

I don’t think your brother is faking loving his parents. Young children naturally and automatically love their parents no matter who the parents are, no matter how unloving, manipulative and cruel they may be. When young children grow up, that love, that emotional attachment is still there, imprinted in the brain in many ways. Even when the growing child and adult realizes that the parents are manipulative and even cruel, that emotional attachment… is still there, sending the message: no, no, they are not manipulative, they are loving people underneath… maybe I am misunderstanding.

Your brother loves his/ your parents but that doesn’t mean they deserve his love or that his relationship with them is healthy or good for him. It is also possible that he was treated differently.

Cutting ties or contact with one’s parents is a very difficult thing to do because … people tell you that you shouldn’t, that you are a bad person if you do… The people who tell you that are motivated by their own emotional attachment to their parents and by what other people tell them, what society says, what the bible say (honor thy parents and such).

When you cut ties you go against society and against that emotional attachment which has been established in your own brain.

When I cut ties with my mother a few years ago, for a long time I felt guilty. It was painful. My guilt went from 100% to now, about… 0.5%.

anita