Sure, Anita. I feel I may have gotten too elaborate in my previous post so I’ll just summarize it here:
I think I grew up seeing my father treating my mother respectfully and as an equal and so internalized need of respect in my relation with R and thus, felt upset when he didn’t have time for me for weeks at a stretch, got irritated when i did anything wrong and shouted and verbally abused me. So I expressed my concerns but in return he either left midway or shouted at me and blamed me for being non-understanding or said ‘sorry now leave it’ but behaved the same. Here my low self-esteem came into picture and i believed what he said and believed that i was the problem and wasn’t good enough for him to treat me well. The same cycle continued and the very same issue till it reached a point where even my politely stating something made him snap at me and ultimately verbally abuse and by this time my self-esteem had sunk so low that I just couldn’t see if he was wrong or I.