Dear Peaches:

You wrote about your father:  “when things don’t go his way or someone doesn’t agree or do something to his liking the whole world is to pay…He has never been much of a listener always in need of the last word… obsessing over his computer, his phone, dvds…  a functioning alcoholic… temper tantrums.. breaking dishes… yelling at the top of his lungs.. cursing God and himself saying no one gave a f*** about him… Blaming my mom for how she raised us or angry with her… envy of her relationship with my brother…jealous of him because he felt like my mother puts my brother before him and babies him… Not being able to trust… talks down on his kids behind their back and then smiles in their face like everything is ok”

What I see is an angry boy still stuck in his childhood (often the case, being stuck there). He didn’t feel attended to nd loved as a child so he is jealous as an adult of his own son being attended to and loved. He was an angry boy, he is an angry man. He threw temper tantrums then, the throws temper tantrums now. He didn’t trust his parents (understandably, I am sure), he doesn’t trust his wife and his children. He faked it as a child, nice to his parents in their presence, angry at them otherwise and he still does the same, nice to his kids in their presence, angrily talks about them outside their presence.

Basically, the child in a man’s body, troubled by the voices in his head telling him he is unloved and unlovable, the voices telling him that if someone disagrees with him, it means he is wrong and unlovable. Distressed over it he fights the voices, that is, he fights the people into whom he projects these voices.

Your mother, “the doormat in the scenario. Always loving, understanding and giving him the benefit of the doubt no matter what”- he is still the child who needs his parents’ love and understanding. Your mother’s love and understanding doesn’t sink in. He is not available for it.

And your mother doesn’t realize it, does she.

Do you think I am understanding correctly so far?

anita