Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Why did you take it?
write:
even my relatively happy/ normal-family friends, their parents seem to play a bigger part in their lives than they like at times, and they interfere, especially with grandchildren.
There's a lot of inter-dependency between generations in most cultures.
Acappella:
Simon,
are you free/more free of your father's ambushes (or the impact) since your delightfully described epiphany? How do your choices manifest day to day or should I say encounter to encounter?
Are you taking a hatchet to the umbilical cord (like that metaphor Seeker) or snipping away at it? Both?
My mom kept mine LITTERALLY in a little wooden box for decades. :shock: When I told this to my then therapist years ago she noted how vulnerable and frightened of loosing me my mother must have been. That was a circuit breaker for me too as it was a primal and I found creepy, secretive distorted way of expressing her vulnerability AND the therapist was right.
Has your choice making been a process? Taken longer than you initially thought/hoped or was it faster than you'ld feared?
Acappella:
write,
--- Quote ---Ironically the lack of extended family support is now a factor in me staying with my N-husband.
--- End quote ---
I believe that is a very real obstacle write and one I am working through myself too.
When domestic abuse (limited to physical only though) first got so much attention there were many advisors who told people in those situations "run, run now!" and while in some cases that is the only option I also heard a few people in that field urge the importance of getting a support network FIRST and preparing for departure whenever possible. That is part of learning to care for my needs!
I hear so much about how vital family is and family values and on and on and yet in actuality sometimes it isn't until one is totally without a family that I believe we really understand the value of families, genetic, extended and communal (like this forum).
Making our own extended families is one of the ways that we adults individuate from our roots and evolve even and especially as Seeker noted from families healthier than ours. To me, this forum is a tentative, virtual first step towards building a real time extended family with whom to evolve (into what ironically future generations will likely look back on as no longer functional. :shock: :D).
I'll be posting more about the process of getting out at the "what helps" portion of this forum. read ya there i hope so we can support one another.
Acappella:
Hi CC,
thank you for your encouragement. I am getting out of this relationship as soon as I can - and that is part of my point - that real sustained change takes time and patience with the process is part of making choices. I have been talking about it AND doing things too. Talking about it is part of the doing also. Learning HOW "not to take it" and what to take in "its" place (alternative choices) and to leave in a way that is responsive to my needs rather than reactive to his issues is my goal - I am working towards it also in some ways that I don't feel enough privacy here to communicate. And I believe you wrote in one of your posts that you believe there are degrees and variations of Nism - I am just noting (lamenting too) that those shades of gray are part of making choices about staying and going and when.
I like your "if it sucks..." approach (or reproach :D ) in some instances and in others it just isn't the tool for me. Sometimes facing what sucks (facing not enduring it) is where I feel I learn what I've been hiding from - I may still want to hide AND I'll do so making a conscious choice of what I am leaving (when time and resources allow - when not, the good ole subconscious is always there and ready and the suck/no suck rule is especially effective. :D )
write:
What you say is right Acapella, and I'm sure many women who flee domestic violence in haste find themselves returning for practical reasons, then feeling even more disempowered: setting up a support system first makes a lot of sense.
If you live with a successful narcissist who has an adoring fan-club who buy into his projected charming self and dismiss unreasonable behaviour as eccentric or inevitable in a genius etc it's hard to set up that support system too.
People don't believe it can be that bad, or they can't accept the reality of their idealised friend...I just about cannot bear to discuss it with other people who think they know him better than I do and try to give hints on how I can keep him happy!
Our own families or closest friends are often the worst support system too: they have all been raised to keep the same image alive, and not to tell or even see things how they really are.
In trying to straighten things out you lose over and over again: and this is too painful for many people. I found myself clinging to N in many ways because he is all the unbroken continuity I have. But I have let go of the idea that it's love.
There's a poem
Defining the problem:
I can't forgive you. Even if I could,
You wouldn't pardon me for seeing through you
And yet I cannot cure myself of love
For what I thought you were before I knew you.
I wonder if the poet Wendy Cope knew any narcissists?!
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