Dear Gw3n:

You shared that after your parents divorced when you were 3 or 4, you lived with your father and his relatives. Because your father has not been financially responsible, you had to move “from relatives to relatives as his debts have caused debtors to come to our house and collect money in a very scary and abusive way”.

Relatives who were doing well with their family business helped you go to university and graduate and you are currently working. But even though they helped you get to a place where you are educated and employed, your relatives treated you in lesser ways than they treated their own kids, even teasing you.

You managed to repay your father’s car loan in five years, pay the household utility bills, but your father is not grateful, instead, “my father would threaten me if I did not give him enough money.. My dad is verbally abusive and would curse me any time if I do not give him what he demands (mostly money)”.

Your father had a stroke, you and your partner of two years, F, took care  of your father, but as his pattern is, he cursed and yelled at you and at F. You are currently staying at a relative’s house, without F, because your father bad mouthed F and your relatives dislike F as a result.

Your relatives “‘threatened’ me that since F is such a hot- tempered person, if I choose to go with him I better not  come back crying to them (relatives) and beg them for any help.. If I move out the relatives threatened that I never come back anymore”. You asked: “Is it ok to leave everything behind and start my own life?”

My answer: yes, it will be okay. It will be better than okay. In fact it will be very much not okay if you stay in this lifetime abuse. No wonder F is angry- anger is a natural consequence of being abused. Your father abused him-> he felt anger. When we are abused, cursed at, yelled at, especially when we are trying to help the abuser, we get angry.

Your relatives are blaming F because he is not family and they protect your father, because he is family. They mistreated you throughout the years (treating you as less-than) because you were a child/ a very young person, and they protected your father because he was an older person.

The tradition practiced by your relatives, of protecting the abuser and threatening the abused, protecting the adult and harming the child is despicable. It is not a tradition that you should be loyal to.

Your father has no moral rights on you, you owe him nothing.

Leave them all and join F because he has been there for you, he was kind to you. It is not an imperfection on his part that he got angry at your father- it was a consequence of your father selfishness and cruelty.

I understand you feeling guilty. Your feeling of guilt has to do with that filial teaching you mentioned. What we are told as children (to be loyal to  family) sticks, that’s where the guilt comes from. But talk sense to yourself every time you feel guilty. In your case, you owe nothing to your father or to your relatives.

Leave them all in a way that is safe for you and for F. See to it that your father and relatives do not hurt you or F as you leave them. Make a safe life for yourself away from them and do not look back.

anita

Dear Gwen:

I mentioned you being your father’s slave. I want to expand on that.

Wikipedia in an entry on Slavery reads: “In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto (practices that exist in reality, even though they are not officially recognized by laws) forced to work against their own will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labor or forced labor to refer to such situations.. Slavery existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations. A person could become enslaved from the time of their birth, capture, or purchased. Slavery was legal in most societies at some time in the past but is now outlawed in all recognized countries. The last country to officially abolish slavery was Mauritania in 1981. Nevertheless, there are an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide subject to some form of modern slavery… In other areas, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slaver today”

Wikipedia’s entry on Debt bondage reads: “Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery or bonded labor, is the pledge of a person’s services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation, where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated.. Freedom is assumed on debt repayment. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services’ duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely.

Currently, debt bondage is the most common method of enslavement with an estimated 8.1 million people bonded to labor.. The practice is still prevalent primarily in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa… It is predicted that 84 to 88% of the bonded laborers in the world are in South Asia… Figures by the Human Right Watch in 1999 are drastically higher estimating 40 million workers, composed mainly of children, are tied to labor through debt bondage in India alone.

Wikipedia’s entry on Involuntarily servitude reads: “Involuntary servitude or involuntary slavery is a United States legal and constitutional term for a person laboring against that person’s will to benefit another, under some form of coercion…involuntary servitude does not necessarily connote the complete lack of freedom experienced in chattel slavery (“Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as chattel, personal property, of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities).”

My thoughts; your father and your relatives treat you de facto like a slave, aka an involuntary servant, aka a debt slave, all different terms that mean that you are expected to labor for your father/ relatives  so to repay a debt (food, clothes, shelter provided to you as a child, plus university costs) while the terms of repayment were never specified, a contract of debt and payment was never discussed and agreed upon, so what happens, is that you are expected to repay an alleged debt indefinitely.

As you described, your father expects you to pay a debt, so he never says thank you for money you give him, money you spent to pay his car loan over five years; he doesn’t say thank you for your labor to take care of him.. he expects your money and labor as an indefinite repayment of unspecified and un-agreed on debt forever more. They hold you a slave by the false teaching that you should be loyal to Family, and that you should feel terrible emotional pain, that is, guilt and shame if you are not loyal to them.

Only there is no love for you or respect for you in your family. Basically, you are a slave, de facto, and your slave owners are your father and relatives. The “Tough Situation of parent & Relatives” is not a situation of Family where there is love and respect, but a situation of slavery.

anita