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MarkParticipantDear SallyDaisy
I have spent a lifetime running away… I was always screaming out that the people who love you shouldn’t be the people who hurt you…. but I have come to realize that the people who are supposed to love you (Mother) know how to hurt you the best. I felt like all my nerves were exposed and people just kept stepping on them…. intentionally….I have always used distance to try and keep the pain away.. I have recreated myself 4 times (2 divorces, 4 houses in different areas of the country).. and guess what, no matter how far I run, no matter how I try to recreate myself as a new person, I bring the same baggage with me… I bring me with me…. It always feels like I am the toxic one and since I have failed repeatedly it must be me…. right?
But no… as much as it seems to be the case… I believe it is my reactions to others that cause me to feel this way.. It is not them, it is me… I found someone who now calls out my BS .. when I cover myself in my victim person, she calls it out and points out where my thinking is not accurate…. This has been a big reveal to me.. it helps keep me from losing hope…
As for my Mother, her opinions no longer count for much…. She wants me to be dependent upon her… in her thoughts , she is always right…. I used to say she was an evil genius but now I see where that was giving her to much credit… She is just an unhappy person and wants me to be unhappy along with her… again, who knows you better?… who knows how to manipulate / abuse you better than your own Mother…. sometimes its very subtle … sometimes it is very obvious…. but that desire to have her love continues to drive us back to the one person who knows how to hurt us the most…. This impacts all of your relationships… My reactions to other folks is really based on my historical reactions to my Mother … I judge others through her eyes… I really despise this yet I find myself repeating the same crazy cycles over and over again… therapy helps with Awareness … awareness and mindfulness … seem to be the biggest help for me…
I hope you work it out for yourself… I have been self hating for 59 years tomorrow… as far back as I can remember … and some of that has stemmed from physical abuse as a child … but a lot of it comes from the mental abuse from my Mother…
Again, I wish you the best and sorry for your emotional pains,…
Mark
MarkParticipantOr at least get a smaller place that would be closer to work… 1 hr to 1:20 commute is unsustainable with your schedule and your responsibility’s… being the stay home mom will add tension to the finances and as Jana expressed… staying home brings it own set of complications… but if you could save an hour or teo each day from commuting… that could have a huge impact of the quality of your available time..
Good Luck, and Let us know how it goes…
Mark
MarkParticipantHi Happyme1,
I have been in a similar situation… I feel your anguish… My choice was to support my new relationship… I felt that my daughter was trying to blackmail me to get me to do what she thought I should do.. she always supported her mother… and still does to this day… I showed up, did my “duty” and my wife and I left out as quickly as we could… but I made sure that I expressed my choices to my daughter beforehand… to tell her that my life is now rooted in my wife and my newer relationship… My daughter could participate with my wife and I if she so chose to … but I would not disgrace or embarrass my wife because my daughter was pushing an agenda…
Good luck… I hope it all goes well for you …
MarkParticipantHi Rosie,
Life is too short to live in misery…. If it is beyond salvation, end it and move on.
Best of luck and I hope you can convince your parents that it is suffocating you to stay
Mark
MarkParticipantHi Frey,
I ended a sexual relationship with a women I knew about 6 years ago now. I am currently married (2 yrs ago) and everything between us is okay.. but.. every so often, i find myself thinking about this person from 6 years ago. I had to block the number from my phone… I closed down my FB page altogether mostly because it was too tempting for me to keep checking on her. It was the best sexual relationship I ever had, but the everyday part of the relationship was not healthy for me… I knew I had to break it off… and I did… but I also struggled to distance myself early on after the breakup. Thoughts of her just pop into my head, or my dreams sometimes… so I know it is still there … almost like a wound that won’t heal.. but time heals all things and i just keep waiting for her to fade away … I would shut down any methods to keep an eye on these people.. they will eventually jeopardize your new and successful relationship… Do what you can to leave them in the past where they belong. ..but I know its not easy…Good luck and stay strong….
mark
MarkParticipantThanks Anita.. I won’t be back on here til Monday.. so no rushing for a response. Have a great weekend and thanks for all you do for each of us…
MarkParticipantStay Strong Liam James,
and thanks for the poem.. i liked it alot…
MarkParticipantIt’s why I want to live on a mountain by myself… with my wife… and now her mother…. It ‘s why “Mother” has such a bad connotation for me. It is why having her mother in the house drives me so crazy… well .. one reason why..
It is also why I can’t deal with bully’s, overly aggressive people, or why I couldn’t deal with the ex wife when she would tell me how I wasn’t good enough for her… .because down deep inside… i believed her truth.. called it my own truth…My mothers truth about it being a “little problem” … even though it wasn’t reality. It explains why I can’t take a compliment, why I hate my image in photographs… It is probably why I became a police officer … so many years ago… and tried to be a priest… saving others because I couldn’t save myself… why I went to Haiti after the earthquake… My ex told me that all my good works.. all my good deeds stem from that history.. and I guess she was right about that .. I had a therapist one time tell me not to get into a relationship with anyone as I would only bring them pain… and it seems to ring true… although I resist that notion …but… certainly my self loathing makes it difficult for anyone to be in a relationship with me…
I keep thinking that surely I would remember seeing a cat burned alive in a 55 gallon drum… but my youth is a blank slate… I was in a men’s group once where the conversation was about whether it was better to remember or better to have blocked it all out… there was no consensus… remembering would be awful.. but in the absence of memories, one has a tendency to imagine all sorts of things… but I guess those imaginings couldn’t be much worse that whatever really happened… I wonder if it is why I seek comfort in food.. maybe keeping myself overweight keeps me unattractive and keeps my life simpler .. keeps people at a distance …
I only see my parents about once a year or once every two years… My sisters don’t see them often or when they do… they have to be drunk or high… I just stay away,,…these experiences did not bind us together… they just blew the whole family apart. The sisters don’t talk to each other.. I hardly ever see them or talk to them either. When I brought the history up to my father, he just said none of it was true and that both of my sisters are lying… but that’s not possible.. they both told me the same but slightly different stories.. they both said that they remember most of it and they both independently sought out therapy for it.
This didn’t blow up in my face until I was 50… so they found support 30 years ago and no one bothered to ask me or say anything to me.. sorry this is rambling and so long …
MarkParticipantHi Anita,
I always had difficulty with a sense of “unfairness” and lack of control but never knew why. I have struggled in all of my relationships and again was at a loss to explain it. I always thought of myself as an intimacy vampire… always seeking intimacy and not sex.. which seemed a bit wired compared to all the other guys I grew up around. So at the end of my second marriage ( this one is number 3) .. I sought out counselling…
I started to see Doctor Ellis in Cherry Hill NJ. After 8 sessions, he asked had there been any child sexual abuse in my past. I said no, that I would remember such things. He said that I wouldn’t remember and that my inability to handle Chrissy’s (2nd wife) verbal abuse and alcoholism might have some roots in my childhood experiences. He told me to consult my two sisters. When I pushed them, they both related the same story in detail with only one slight difference. I have absolutely no recollection of any sexual abuse in the past but now both of my sisters have said that yes there was a history….
We had an older male cousin who started babysitting us when I was 6. My younger sister relates six years of rape, my older sister relates stories of getting molested in the stairwells of the house but since she was older, she appears to have been spared the more aggressive aspects of Stevie’s appetites’… Stevie moved into the third-floor apartment of our new house when I was about 9. I believe the abuse started before that, at the older house, when I was 6, but cannot verify that for certain. My older sister was the one who initially placed me in the scene… saying I was helping Stevie rape my younger sister. There is some uncertainty as to what role I took on but certainly I was in the middle of everything. My younger sister says I was raped and tortured, tied up, forced to watch the mutilation and burning alive of cats and dogs. She also states that she would be locked up in a closet for hours not knowing what was happening to me as I was left alone with Stevie in the bedroom. I can only imagine and since I have no recollection, that’s all I have left, is my imagination…
Stevie apparently died in prison in early 1980’s… for beating his mother almost to death …there is no one to ask about the incidents that took place. My parents are typically unsupportive and as a matter of fact, my mother recently stated… “You know, outside of that little Stevie problem, Sally was a great tenant” … I am left with supposition and conjecture… but it explains why I struggle with aggressive people…
MarkParticipantMy wife is from the Ivory Coast… West Africa… and she is the oldest. Culturally, I am told that the oldest is the most responsible for everyone else. so she feels obligated to take care of her mother. My wife is 48 and has never been married although she did have a child at 24. She has often said she felt like a man.. having to bear the responsibility of making sure everyone else is okay.
She never felt like she needed or wanted a man in her life..(until she met me) .. . Her father left the family when she was 18 and she had a hard time forgiving him but seems to have come to terms with it. She feels sorry for her mother and on some level, II think she wants her mother to follow in her footsteps… come to America, learn English, get a green card, get a job, become a citizen, have a whole new life … but her mother is much older and I cannot see this happening.
Her daughter is a social butterfly… gets bored easy with the man of the moment and moves on quickly… The daughter got married young and pregnant and left her husband withing a year … she is 24 and has moved in and out of 3 or four different men’s houses/relationships in the last 2 years. She never had a father in her life (though she has gone to France twice to see him now) and I think she is constantly looking for a father figure in her life. My wife continues to try to support her emotionally and while I think the young lady is a few french fries short of a happy meal, she is a sweet person… My wife keeps telling me how smart her daughter is… and i just nod in agreement although she really isn’t very intelligent .. (cannot figure out what 20% off on a sale means dollar wise) I have a fear that at some point she will move her daughter and grand baby into our house also…which will present another opportunity to test my patience ..
MarkParticipantThank you Anita,
It feels right.. that I’m still dealing with the “unfairness” and “the lack of control” of the past situations and seeing/feeling that pain in every day exchanges that are not as dramatic or as destructive as they currently feel. The sense of fairness is a big trigger for me… as what happened to me when i was seven wasn’t fair…which is why I am trying to find another therapist … to help me deal with the present instead of projecting the past into the present.
Yes, my wife works too much… it is admirable but I keep suggesting that she find something else.. she works 7 days a week and often they are 14 or 15 hour days… it’s not healthy … she comes home and sleeps and goes right back out again… One of my frustrations is that her mother being here is empowering her to to work all the time.. her mother cleans and cooks so my wife doesn’t feel guilty about not being there to do so herself. … although i cook and do the laundry oftentimes myself.
And Yes.. moving away from the world … doesn’t move me away from my own past… everywhere i go.. i take me along… so running away is the very definition of insanity… The fact that my mother paid our abuser to babysit us when we were kids was a surprising awareness that just came to me recently through therapy… so my tolerance of a “mother”.. any mother is pretty low…The fact that our parents could not/ did not keep us safe has a lot to do with my motivation to run away from everyone… and to not want to tolerate her mother being there all the time. The fact they my parents let this individual move into the upstairs apartment in our childhood home and have access to us (my two sisters and I) means my own home has to be deemed safe and my wife’s mother destroys that safe feeling in my own house … again, not her issue, but my own..
She has to go… and we will have to have some rules about how often she can come back and how often she can stay with us….but I get the impression that no matter what agreement we come up with, it won’t be adhered too… I have to hope that the green card process doesn’t take more days than I can tolerate … Again, I shared all of this with my wife, she knew of my past and my issues.. I was unaware of my own past until it came out in therapy 10 years ago. The therapist had me verify with my two sisters who told very similar stories about horrors that I have no recollection of… yet, i still react in strange and unusual ways to triggers that i am unaware of …
My point is my wife knows all of this.. but she still cant seem to comprehend my feelings about this situation. I still feel like a little kid screaming out my discontent with no one listening to me… but it helps to have this forum for me to vent
MarkParticipant1. I have tried many times to explain how uncomfortable this is for me… She seems to dismiss it because she can’t understand it… She thinks I am wrong in feeling this way. I have discussed this with our priest, and my previous therapist and both have said that an upset child just screams louder.. so each time, I try to be more assertive and more vocal. She knows I am not happy with the situation.
2. Her accommodation was the suggestion for her mom to live with her daughter .. but that was doomed from the start … again culturally, no 23 yr old American girl is going to want the old world perspective on how to live her life. She never spent much time with her grandmother, so there isn’t much in common there. The other trips were my suggestions in trying to get this woman out of my house.
3. They speak all the time in French.. I just sit there and try to zone it out, and I do not know the content of their conversations. My wife told her mother that i want her out, as the woman was crying at me on the couch.. I couldn’t explain my feelings to her any more than i can explain them to my wife… They just don’t understand… I tried to tell her is wasn’t her as a person.. it was just an unwanted presence in my house… my own mother, or anyone else for that matter… but that didn’t go over… or make much of an impact…
I even suggested that my wife and her mother go find an apartment close to my wife’s job… but that would end the marriage .. so I am trying to be patient and hold myself together .. until I just can’t .. and everything blows up ….
MarkParticipantHi Valora,
I don’t get a sense of appreciation but that might just be me.. expecting too much….I struggle with my wife because she can be the most wonderful person .. i have literally seen her give away her coat off her back to someone more needy… but I have also seen where she will lie (small white lies) to get what she wants… I resist the urge to jump to the conclusion that she is taking me for a ride.. taking me for an idiot.. but I keep struggling with this over and over… I told her to proceed with paying the attorney for her moms green card.. but there is no telling how long this process will take .. she says 3 to 6 months…
We continue to come up with plans for her mom to be somewhere else .. but each time we set an agenda.. it falls through and I get angry/hurt by it .. We didn’t have any time together as a newly married couple without her mom being with us.. If we had been married for 10 years and her mom needed a place then maybe I would feel differently … less agitated .. but it feels unfair that the woman has been here from the very start …
MarkParticipantThe summary is very on point.. you are every good at this… I am a childhood sex abuse survivor so i am always”timid” and always subject to feeling taken advantage of… 8 years of therapy has gotten me (at least) aware of some of my baggage…..but I believe that i somehow set myself up for repeated “abuse” – being taken advantage of … which immediately kicks me into a depressive state… I am on wellbutrin which has removed the suicide ideation (monkey off my back ) … but I am still careful about getting too far down that rabbit trail….
Yes, I would agree that most people, that her mom knows, don’t seem to be tolerant of her for some reasons… i am not sure… i don’t speak French so I cannot understand her or what she thinks/believes/ or rants about … I am oblivious… and she doesn’t speak English so… we don’t communicate …
I bought the house that we live in about 5 years ago… it is a nice house sitting on top of a mountaintop with 13 acres of woods .. away from everybody… my family, friends, neighbors, strangers, trick or treaters…lol… I bought it for my own peace of mind and heart … distance is my coping mechanism… so some of my issue is just having someone else in my space… someone uninvited by me… I was happy that my wife enjoyed being a bit isolated.. but we haven’t had much time alone since even before we were married…i just feel shortchanged ,,.. I had to explain the concept of bait and switch to my wife.. she didn’t understand my reference… as she works all the time and I come home to her mother in the house… drives me crazy …
I have not yet found a new therapist ,.. still searching … hate to start this all over again… but last one couldn’t see me outside of business hours .. i digress… sorry
This woman has 12 children and none of them seem to want to deal with her.. She has two houses .. albeit not very nice ones.. back in her home country.. i wouldn’t want to live in them… i saw them first hand… and she has been separated from her husband for many? years… though they participated in our wedding together…
I am trying to be patient, trying to be a good husband… trying to be a good person… trying to be someone lovable … but I am afraid… afraid to go through divorce again (losing my home etc) afraid of failing at another marriage… afraid of losing …
MarkParticipantYes Valora,
Thanks .. I am trying not to feel so taken advantage of… trying not to feel betrayed… its a struggle.. i still feel wounded … but I do not want to end the marriage… i don’t want to lose her… I just don’t have the same relationship with “family” .. so I cannot understand her position and she cannot understand mine … My wants should weigh as much as hers… here I go sounding like a 6 yr old again… I feel like I am being immature… but I need to feel “heard” …
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