Thanks so much for answering Mark! It means a lot that you are giving me your time.

I totally agree I have issues to work out. My trust and anger problems are something I am starting to accept and try to fix. In fact L has persuaded me to talk with my mother again after a few years of no contact, and helped me to have a healthier outlook about my family in general. I still have anger issues and they all seem to be rooted in my past. But I gave up years ago on the possibility of closure or even a meaningful apology from the causes of pain from back then. So I feel if I can just learn to find peace in myself I will be able to be happier in general.

I’m not sure what you mean by “nothing to forgive”  are you saying you wouldn’t even consider forgiveness?? or that I shouldn’t blame her?

thanks.

Dan

Anita.

Yes, you have it right that not only alcohol, but drugs and the environment we lived in were big factors in our behavior at the time. We were essentially homeless, moving squat every few weeks/months (sometimes 3 or 4 times in a week) living a totally unstructured lifestyle, and taking recreational drugs/drinking almost every day for years. A pattern which we helped each other to break. She was becoming addicted to ketamine (which I have strong feelings against) when we met, I helped to convince her was unhealthy and destructive even though most of her freinds were taking it and offering it to her. And she made me question the way I would say yes to “fun” drugs/drinking all the time, regardless of weather I should (or even wanted to) in the moment.

Thanks for those points about my brother (I will call him O from now on) and his memory. I also know that when L stopped the second time from going all the way, she told O she had been with me and he said sorry and that he didn’t know we had been together.

I do feel betrayed by my mother. I have for my whole adulthood, although there are some events that really stand out. Why I stopped talking to her is a big question so I’ll try not to write my entire life….When my mother had her first child, she joined a religious cult called “The Family” or “Children of God”. Me and my 8 siblings were split into age groups with lots of other kids and didn’t interact normally as a family. I barely knew them, except O who was grouped with me because we are close in age. We lived a strictly controlled life. EVERYTHING we watched read or listened to was made by or approved by the cult leaders. It was a very sexually charged atmosphere. And children were sexualised by the adults when they barely reached puberty.

Although O and I were fortunately too young to directly experience any sexual abuse ourselves (as far as I remember….I’m not certain), there was physical and psychological abuse. My oldest siblings weren’t so lucky and they have clearly been struggling to live happy lives. In one case the abuse continued from one brother to one of my younger sisters, who later tried to kill herself. I blame my mother for this happening in the first place, for failing to address it properly when she found out at the time, and not ensuring my little sister got the help/support she needed.

My family left the cult when I was 8 yrs old (my oldest sister had run away previously but I didn’t know). So at that tender age I discovered that everything I been taught in my life previously, everything my elders/parents and role models had said was lies. I had to try get over the weird beliefs and find out what was true. Since then my mother has consistently denied any wrongdoing, never even bringing up the past at all. She will say she doesn’t remember traumatic events, or that she “made some mistakes but did her best”, without ever apologising (to me at least). Which makes it extremely difficult to resolve any of our issues.

I had quit secondary school aged 14. A year before getting any qualifications, but just managed to get let into a college as the youngest student there, my mother split up with the man who left the cult with us who we had called dad. She married someone else almost immediately, eloping to Hawaii alone, before moving miles away into a 1 bed apartment with her new husband and my little sister. O was practically on the street already dabbling in heroin and I said I didn’t want to move, but stay in the area and finish college, so she left me with a guy I’d never met, who put me up until I was kicked out of college not long after. I went into homeless shelters and different places at the age of 15. That was when I stopped talking with my mother. Although she did barely maintain contact with a phone call or two per year. I basically had nothing to say to her for a long time.

GL and Kkasxo.

Thanks for reading and leaving your input. I’m going to reply to you both because your points are connected.

I can’t argue that she was free to do as she liked. It’s hard to accept but I have told myself this and I know its true. Your both right that my insecurities about myself and my brother O, plus the fact that it was him who she slept with, have made this into a much bigger deal than it should be. I would definitely not have been as upset if it was anyone else. I have lots of unresolved issues and perhaps L has been an easy target to blame for everything bad I’m feeling, including my anger towards O.

O has made me feel very bad at some times in my life and I’ve found it hard to accept that L would sleep with a person like him. But at the time she hardly spoke English and was just getting to know us both so I can’t really blame her for that. We were just friends with benefits, but I do think she betrayed that friendship by her actions and didn’t show me much respect as a friend. Sure we weren’t exclusive, but my brother? Of course I have made mistakes in my past too which might make people say the same about me… Of course she couldn’t know about my family issues, my past with O, or how it would effect me to this extent. She’s told me O didn’t know about us, that he initiated it and she just went along, so I believe there wasn’t anything malicious in it. I know my actions at the time probably made her more likely to sleep with other people and I hated myself for that a long time after. She told me (about the once) without having to, but I had to push her to get the whole story. Technically she was honest the first time (they only “had sex” once), but it didn’t feel very truthful when I found out the rest. Perhaps she wasn’t obligated to tell me anything but we had promised to be honest with each other so hiding it doesn’t seem right either. At least now I know everything, I can put it where it needs to be and perhaps move on.

I absolutely trust that she’s honest with me these days and I have given up any thoughts of hurting her back. I do know she wants this relationship to work and she’s been amazingly patient and supportive of this process. I actually want to forgive everything (including myself) and stop making her live with my pain and I don’t want to live with it either. Basically I have gone round and round both sides of this in my head for too long and I just want it to stop. What I’m learning as I write these posts is that staying with her or not isn’t the biggest issue for me. I do believe the good outweighs the bad and I want her in my life. When it come down to it, the truth is I should get over it and stay with her, or get over it and let her go. I need to sort my head out, regain confidence and find myself again. Then make decisions from a place of peace.

Thanks for bearing with me through my arguments with myself. It’s helping me so much just to talk about all this and organise my thoughts/feelings.

Hi Anita.

It’s true that unstable behavior came hand in hand with that lifestyle. I was not in a good place at the time and neither was she. The more I write these things and put it into words the more I realise that we shouldn’t blame each other for anything we did back then. I really appreciate your thoughtful words and it helps me put things in perspective.

I am starting to realise that my family are bad for me. They need to heal themselves before we could ever start to have a good relationship.

L suggested I reconnect with my mother because she could see I had a lot of anger towards her. I had cut things off with her in anger and never really stopped being angry, even though I had stopped thinking about it all the time. She thought it would be good for me to have a mother figure in my life and not be so angry at her. L was not aware of the full extent of my mothers failings. She couldn’t understand how I could speak so harshly about her. To be fair, my mother was helpful at first when we came back to live close to her and we have been on ok terms. But the old issues have never been talked about or acknowledged. So we just slipped into a pattern of small talk and being civil to each other without fixing anything.

I still don’t feel I have a mother figure, and I’ve found myself trying to deal with her newly discovered racism and nationalism. It has been exhausting and ultimately futile.

I think I’m making progress with my pain. This back and forth is helping me to see where my hurt is really coming from. Thanks again for your time, kind words and the effort you put in every day to help everyone who is hurting on this forum!