Dear Tineoidea,

My question is, why? Did I actually do something monstrous to deserve all of this?

No, you haven’t done anything to deserve this. You as a toddler who was abandoned by his father and left behind without the bare necessities in a cold winter – didn’t do anything to deserve it. You were an innocent little boy, who needed and deserved love and affection. You as a little boy who, together with his mother was hurt and threatened by the members of his own family – didn’t do anything to deserve it.

Why did it happen? Maybe you heard the phrase “hurt people hurt people”: people who suffered abuse in their childhood are prone to become abusers as adults. If your father had been abused as a child (which is possible since he had a cruel mother), it wouldn’t be a surprise if he’d turn into a cruel, heartless man, who would even harm his own son. It’s not your fault whatsoever, it’s his blindness and his emotional scars that made him behave like that.

Are all the wonderful experiences of the past and all I have contributed to those two, just nothing at all now, as if it none of it ever happened?

We can have wonderful experiences even with people who will later harm us. It’s known for example that narcissists love-bomb the person in the beginning of the relationship, to get the person open up and get attached to them, only to later start displaying their selfishness. Or if someone is emotionally wounded like your ex, she was wonderful and selfless for a while, until her wound got triggered. Once it got triggered, she became very defensive, almost like a different person.

With your former friend, you also said you had precious memories, but they were interspersed with his possessive behavior, as well as irresponsible behavior which endangered your livelihood. The relationship with him was a mix of pleasurable moments (I guess when you did everything like he wanted) and frustrating moments, when he was emotionally abusive to you.

You allowed this abuse to happen because you didn’t even register it as abuse, and I believe it’s because you thought that’s how love looks like. Growing up, you didn’t have an experience of a healthy, loving relationship, but it was interspersed with harm, suffering and abuse. So having a friend like that probably felt familiar to you. At least he was loyal to you, he wouldn’t abandon you like your father did. And you valued that a lot.

Now, after all this, you would need healing. The little boy in you needs healing. Because probably a part of you (that little boy) believes that he did something to deserve all the abuse he’s been put through. You’d need to tell him he did nothing wrong. And you’d need to give him the love and appreciation you never received as a child.

How do you feel about this?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Tee.