Thanks for that, Hops.
I feel like I'm at a place where I need to focus on what's mine and do what I can about those things, particularly. As priority.
Learning to release resposibility, or perceived responsibility for grown children..... release them from codependence and associated habits...... release myself. I agree with women being blamed unjustly with regard to child rearing. It's a tough job description. Not much good training available, lots of opinions out there.
What you said about modeling something different..... ABSOLUTELY! Modeling healthy boundaries, how to set them, enforce them without anxiety and drama/trauma.... I'll teach as I learn and practice.
Everyone is healthier when I find and set healthy boundaries..... and I wasn't raised with them. I didn't know what they were. I wasn't allowed to have them IF I ever tried..... I was steamrolled in a family of people who knew what they wanted and didn't think a lot about other people's needs. I fell in line worrying about their needs. They didn't know how to teach an empath to care for herself, if it ever occurred to them.
Oh....and my father, who was spoiled silly by both his parents, was a mysoginist with ideas about women being selfish, shallow, greedy crybabies who used tears to manipulate men. I think he was fearful of women and rejection and being abandoned, which he actually engineered in his marriage to my mother, and with his gf of 18 years..... who he stole from his best friend while explaining to his children....."Integrity is everything... all that matters." Ummmm, Dad... what the hell? You had an affair with best friend's wife for years, while they lived 2 doors down, TOOK HIM INTO our home when your gf (his wife) filed to divorce him. Holy cow, Dad. How does one shove INTEGRITY down his daughter's throats while doing THAT to his best friend, who eventually found out you were stooping his wife and engaged to her. I've often wondered what went through Dad's head when he and GF went to visit her ex h in the hospital, on his death bed, dying from cancer...... what did Dad think about.... sitting there... facing the friend he'd betrayed in the all the says he SAID women betrayed HIM and all men? Really.... I'm just gobsmacked at the hypocrisy..... such nerve. To raise us feeling responsible for BEING that in the world...... when it was HIM BEING THAT in all of our worlds.
I've never cheated. I've told the truth, even when it didn't serve me well. I'm nothing nothing like what his view of women was. What he talked about ALL THE TIME.
I can tell you..... it rubbed off on me and my sister. We're unintentionally more masculine in our speach and ways of moving through the world, bc father's views on women washed into our subconscious. We were shamed badly for showing emotions, God forbid you cry.
At the same time, and oddly, wer'e also more prone to baby talking our children and perhaps SOs....... like we...... turn it on and off, maybe? I know balance would be a good thing.
Maybe we did a strange baby talk with my father... this sounds SO ICKY, but maybe the sing songy things was a belly up, surrender, lets not be enemies bc we're women and you're the big strong he man who KNOWS we deserve to be treated less than.....
Fawning.... rather than fight or flight, and I would have chosen flight every time. There were times I could barely stand to be near my father..... my sister would have to talk me into getting into the car with him. Dependence dictated I had to be in his space.
At the same time.... I remember missing family vacations to Florida with my father...... and I asked dad why we weren't going anymore. He said it was too much work. Never mind he, IMO, failed to teach us how to help, set expectations and guide us in learning. I could have been taught. My sister could have been taught. My brother could have been taught. My brother said he wasn't taught by my dad, btw.He said he learned everything he knows on his own, which is SO SO SAD.
I think my Dad felt shame about NOT teaching us. I mean... what happens when "God", my dad's nickname in his family, fails at marriage, fails to honor his best friend, fails to give his children an in tact family? Did he just give up? Because it wasn't "perfect?" Maybe.
I know he spent MORE time feeling angry at women, and talking about it. His family treated my sister and me differently. I think my Grandfather was more touchy feely, if you get my meaning. Sister and I kept our coats on when time to greet the Grandparents. They considered my brother as special, bc....BOY...but during and after the divorce they sort of considered boy THEIRS, girls belong to the mother's side. What a f'd up gross way to throw it all away, bc YOU f'd up, Dad. Just..... splendid. Andit was all Mom's fault.... SHE was the slut, the lazy as cat shit, the greedy, the one who cared only about herself selfish person and you wwere the victim, "crying" about it, never shutting the F up about it, from our POV.
All that anger and hate and vengeance.... directed at Mom..... but delivered TO your children. WTH, dad?
Really F'd up and I can see how I've set out to protect my children as best I could and nevr ever ever blame them for the stupid shite I've done. All the shame and blaming....... how terrible you must have felt about that. Just buried so deeply in it you couldn't begin to undo it. Sitting in that chair, paralyzed...... might have been a splendid relief in many ways.
You should have chosen the love of your life.... and you said so..... instead of choosing the third world woman who worked for peanuts and promised to take care of your parents FOR you. And so you chose her, and kept both women until the ultimatum came down.....and you chose poorly. Yu admitted it.
I think the most scathing piece in this, for me...... my sister and Iwere accused of behaving "like women".... or how toxic masculine men FEEL women behave .... when the truth was.... the men in our lives were the ones actually behaving that way. I remember being so frustrated by the hypocrisy but not understanding what IT WAS I was looking at. I was rendered speechless by the hypocrisy. Just...... speechless.
Being unjustly accused......was really.....
the HYPOCRISY.... after I'd sucked it up, never whined, always tried to carry my weight...... really and truly, I think my having so much masculine energy drew men with feminine energy TO me. I think it happens with DD18, as well. I think it's f'd up to have a belief system LIKE THAT in my brain... in my dd's brains..... it's not fair to anyone, frankly. It serves no one.
So... that's a lot to unpack.
Thanks for your input, Hops.
Lighter
P.S. Apologies for the long post on your thread, Amber.
