People tend to do whatever it is that makes them feel good.
People who do good things generally do them bc it makes them feel good.
Nothing special about that. No redemption involved there.
Conversly, Bad people do bad things bc it makes them feel good.
Nature of the beast. Nothing extraordinary in either case.
Right?
Now, we get to the interesting part, at least, for me.
IT WOULD BE EXTRAORDINARY for Bad people to do something that didn't make them feel good.
fighting their instincts to do the right thing?
Doing the right/good thing, even though it makes them feel BAD.
Now there's redemption for ya!
I think the hope for redemtion is one thing I'm going to have to give up in order to heal and it breaks my heart.
What a sad state, to think this way.
Redemption was something I used to hope for... it made me weep when I witnessed small signs that it might still exist.
Really.
It's true.
My N would sneer at the thought.
He knows there's no such thing in this world, as redemption.
It's just a ploy people use to manipulate weaker chump types.
Maybe he's right?
Finally, I answer the original question. What is the worst kind of betrayal?
The worst kind of betrayal in my opinion is one where someone, anyone, humiliates and belittles, steals, cheats on,deceives and or manipulates someone more vulnerable and especially when they've placed that person in that position more firmly
in order to damage them.
Imagine if they purposefully raised them up to be the perfect little pain receptacle because it feels good to prey on them?
HOW CAN IT FEEL GOOD TO PREY ON THEIR CHILDRen? OUR/YOUR OWN CHILDREN?
Yes,l, I I'm screaming.
Sorry, I'll take it down a knotch.
Visions of mutilated sexually assaulted children dance through my head.
Well, I can't take it down, yet, apparently.
But this is where I live right now.
Wondering about the kind of people who take pleasure from injuring, doing damage and trauma, destroying small vulnerable cute cuddly children.
What happens to people that makes them feel this way?
I'm talking about the process now.
Not he actual physical acts that ate them and digested them and spit them out in this deformed twisted state.
Yes, I've taken it down a knotch.
Good.
Just so glad.
How can a mother systematically destroy her child's soul?
CB, you know, don't you?
Can you tell us in just a few paragraphs so we'll understand?
Is it becuse this mother, this person who eats her own child's soul, isn't really a mother?
She's just another victim who couldn't overcome her own sad abusive story and experience the human capacity to love someone?
She's an eternal victim too?
Too many moving parts for this simple mind to grasp.
I can't even begin to think about the cannibal fathers doing the same thing to Jr.
Truth be told, I don't want to.
Too close to home.
There's more dark oily-ness and behind the scenes activity set on a secondary stage eclipsed by more important things. Money and sketchy "other's" and clandestine secret lives.
Mom's a bit more THERE. The children are her "thing."
I'm weak and I don't want to face either N parent.
I just wanted to do better for my children.
Yes, bc it feels good. Not bc I'm rising above.
Weakness. I'm so weak when contemplating the seriouse difficulty of curtailing the damage bad people do to others.
This is Hero work, for goodness sake!
I'm no hero.
At the risk of sounding paranoid, I believe my little weak frightened hands may actually be a bit busy with the court system. Perhaps even, dare I say it, tied?
Cr<p, did I say that out loud?
And society does have this thing it does.
Where it doubts and blames the victims?
Doesn't want to admit what is right there in front of their faces, all the time, because it's not fun to have to respond and DO something about domestic abuse.
Heck, a lot of this abuse is considered NORMAL interaction between family members.
Now that's a kick in the pants.
Again, my reality.
When I think about the kind of abuse N's create, sustain and naturally force down our throats, as easily as they breath, it makes me weak.
Tragic position to find yourself in when you have children depending on you to mount an unseen secret war on their behalf that no one will ever understand and you can't talk about in regular company bc folks will say you're a bit touched in the head, eh?
Certainly, a bit over dramatic, don't you think?
And anyway, I'm not smart enough to think one evil manipulative step ahead of an N.
I can't become a bigger better more secretive puppet master of the universe working unseen scenarios by saying one thing and doing the opposite and comoflauging it so it doesn't become apparent under any circustances to anyone.
I think it's important to know one's limitations. <nodding>
But maybe that's what I signed up for when I allowed myself to be taken in and committed to a life with an N?
So, really, I've got to learn how to do these things bc I asked for it?
I can understand that.
I must have wanted it when I put on that cute little t shirt on that 3rd date and enticed N into systematically demoralizing and stripping me of my self esteem and will to live, lol.
I cerainly did dress a bit attractively.
It could be all my fault.
Thinking about keeping the damage to my children to a dull roar regarding their N father again.
Ahhh there it is.
My muscles going a bit slack and defeat enters my mind.
HOPELESS is the word that comes to mind.
Not anything dramactic like the word EVIL or DIABOLICAL.
Society should collectively be pleased with my choice of undramatic more easily digested words. They won't feel so bad about doubting and doing nothing.
Not that it's their problem anyway.
Right?
Heck, maybe they wore ugly shoes while dating and didn't ask for an N to torture their children? Oops.
Sorry.
Society doesn't like the word TORTURE either.
I'll make another selection.
DAMAGE?
Nope.
Still too strong.
How about, um,
negatively impact the self esteem building process of their offspring?
It's a room full of bitter for me, today.
We can't count on bad people doing things that make them feel BAD. That IS MY DEFINITION of REDEMPTION gosh dern darnit, lol.
They're going to do what makes them feel good.
Just like the do gooders are gonna do what makes them feel good.
I think that when an N mother does terrible things to her children, and remember, I can't just wrap my mind around that in one piece, I think of a damaged BEING, unable to do better. A "real" mother wouldn't conceive of doing that to her children.
I suppose I'm saying that my first instinct is to let the retarded tragic woman "off the hook" because she's obviously so damaged from her childhood she can't see what she's doing?
Maybe that's what I'm saying?
So... do I have to say that for every N?
DO I say that for the N who's doing that to me now?
And, if so, what IS that saying?
I know I can't let them off the hook entirely, if at all.
There has to be responsibility and
accountability.
They KNOW they're doing the wrong thing.
I believe that on some level.
Sort of.
Kind of.
Ah geez.
Confusion is my reality.
Just as it's supposed to be.
N's plan for me going along swimmingly.
I couldn't plan a picnis as well as he's layed out the confusion in and around my life.
How much of this did I cause?
Allow?
Permit?
ASK FOR?
EYE YI EYE.
I'm in so much trouble, aren't I?
Eh, I'll continue with the thought process.
Even if I can't fathom a mother doing that to her vulnerable little children, the N mother KNOWS on some level, what it is that she does.
Right?
See, I still can't wrap my mind around that.
Is that what makes me so easily targeted by N's?
That I can't hardly believe and therefore I'm basically unarmed?
Easy pickin's?
The perfect victim?
Like a child?
Geez.... that really feels bad.
I feel bad about that.
I have children I'm supposed to be protecting and I can't even protect myself so far!
As a full grown adult I've failed to protect myself and I've made children with someone who eats their young.
I will leave him, that's only a matter of time and struggle before I don't have to deal with him.
Much.
But the children will still have to deal with the person I invited to teh party. They can't escape him.
Ouch.
More gulit.
The courts will force me to serve them up X times a month and let him gaslight and backdoor assasinate their self esteem while feeding them complements in the same sentence sending their little minds swimming dizzy and confused.
Same as mine.
And I can't straighten that out.
Yet anyway.
How will I keep him from warping them?
Heck, my mind tells me they NEED their father in their lives.
The Therapists say they do.
Don't do anything to taint their image of dear ol dad.
For goodness sakes they consider themselves 50% him!
CULTIVATE their relationship with him!
Help him be the best darned dad he can be!
My mind screams this sometimes.
And when they come home to me.
When they come home from visits with their dear father,
I'll be looking into their eyes and searching for the damage.
Trying to pin it and catch it.
Trying to explain it and disarm it.
That's my life.
Right?
From here on out, with so many other things I have to figure out and do for the first time as a parent, A SINGLE PARENT, that's my life?
And the parent N? This person I chose and made these beautiful vulnerable children with.
He doesn't even have to spend time thinking about what he'll do to them/me next.
It just comes naturally.
He spends his time going about his life, preying on others, free to mount new campagns of horror against new nice people, vulnerable people, desperate people, unaware people who do or don't deserve what they get.
Other mothers with young children.
Other women who had nice FOOS or dysfunctional FOOS.
Oh darn, do you think "campagns of horror" was too dramatic?
Poo.
So many victims, so little time.
But there's still OUR children.
I suppose the best I can hope for is that he runs away and becomes a dead beat father.
If he's not paying child support, then he's running and hiding right?
Hiding could be good. <nodding>
Another moving piece I can hardly wrap my mind around.
I'm a mother who finds herself hoping the father of her children runs away and disapears, abandons children bc he's so toxic,
in this poster's opinion,
that less damage would result to the children from being abandoned than if he stayed and parented.
What a thought.
What a tragedy and most people, if they heard me say that out loud, would think very bad things of me, indeed. <nervouse giggle?
What kind of mother would hate her ex so bad she'd wish her children punished with being abandoned by their dear father?
Right?
Maybe he'd just hang around a little and lose interest for the most part and eventually slip into the distance, but not exactly gone?
Now there's thought.
I could drive myself crazy.
No doubt anyone reading this is thinking I am and maybe you too, just a little?
Well, welcome to my world.
Some of you live here too.
I know.
In any case, N thinks he'd be doing the little people a favor by bullying and hitting(disciplining) them.
He was bullied, after all, in his childhood.
Look how he turned out lol?
He thinks he's perfect and he's always wanted to bully the children.
He'll get his chance with society nodding in approval.
It's for the children's own good, after all.
Most people use shaming and punishment as their primary form of perceived child discipline anyway, it's normal.
For their own good. <nodding>
OMG, what can be done to protect the children? What happens if he doesn't do the most spineless cowardly thing I can usually count on him to do?
That sounded so dramatic, even I sneered at it.
Pity really.
She used to be such a nice normal person.
OH cr^p, I forgot to feel badly about giving up hope for redemption.
It's new.
Forgive me.
It'll take some time to ad it to my normal routine.
Maybe if I start setting the old egg timer?
One hour for being horrified and frightened for my childen.
BING
One hour for mourning the death of redemption
BING
One hour for fearing I'll do something whacked like invite another N into our lives
BING
One hour for fearing for my children
BING
These things have to be broken down and eaten by bites, after all.
Cr<p. I forgot to set the timer to fear what N will do to ME the rest of my life and how the typical steryotype of a siingle mother will bother me even though I'm told there's no longer any steryotype and sure enough, I forgot to worry about how even my close peeps doubt what's happening to me and go in and out of wondering why I chose this man then wonder why I don't let him have another chance.
So much fear, so little time.
