Not sure if there's some sort of "Board etiquette," but I am new here, and suppose I should offer an intro, of sorts.
I ended up here thanks to a link on another message board. I've previously been part of both "N" and "BP" survivor communities, but they always struck me as filled with too much damage and stridence. That's not really a statement about anyone else's experience, but a statement that either my experience has been "milder," or I am still stuck in some kind of denial. In any case, the term "voicelessness" made a whole lot of sense to me....
Who am I? Well, I'm a 44 y/o male. I didn't have a "horrible," childhood. In fact, most would say I lived a "charmed and privileged" childhood-- a child of older upper-middle class(+) parents, it would seem like nothing was ever lacking. Always had a roof over my head, new clothes, toys, great education, exciting trips to foreign countries, not beaten, not yelled and screamed at, not "actively" abused.... what's wrong with this picture? I've hear psychologists call it "benign neglect." The child-- that would be me-- appears to have everything, except for the fact that they are born into a situation where they are more like an "asset" than a human being.
My father was a distant and self-absorbed man whose life was all about his "image" as an International Man of the World. My mother was a social climber who'd gotten exactly what she asked for, when she married for money and status. Except.... at mid-life (before I was born), she realized that her life had no emotional content, so she coerced my dad into having a child... using the "threat" either we're having a baby, or I'm buying a black poodle. My dad loathed babies and dogs alike, but chose a child as the lesser of two evils. On a subconscious level, my mom got what she wanted-- a chance to get unconditional love and emotional intimacy from SOMEone. Cuz it wasn't forthcoming from my dad.
So how was life? The family paradigm (for many generations) was one of "Children may be seen, but should not be heard." It was more or less "meaningless" for me to have a voice.... I remember two standard "phrases" used, whenever I'd express an opinion of any kind: "Oh, what ABsolute rubbish!" and "Well, that's nice, dear. Now here's what we're actually going to do." Pitching a fit was meaningless, too; I'd just be sent to my room to "cool off" without there actually being any "action" on that fit. And so, I lost my voice.
My dad was mostly absent. He had an explosive temper, but it was generally directed at inanimate objects. My mother fluctuated between "overly present" (clingy) seeking to get the closeness from her son that her husband couldn't provide, and "absent" when she was drowning her sorrows with alcohol and/or prescription drugs.
I have thrown many $$$ at therapy to learn that my anger at my parents boil down to one single thing: "That they HAD me." That may sound brutal, but the long and the short of it is that they brought a child into a place where NO effort was made to create a nourishing enviroment for children. They just continued their "old glamorous globetrotting ways" and treated me (and expected me to be) a "little adult." And because of the endless travel and moving around, I was never really "socialized" by my peer group, but by adults.
My folks divorced when I was 12-ish, and I went to live with my mom. She soon "replaced" my dad with a wealthy retired Englishman, living in the south of Spain, so I went and spent my teen years, living in a retirement area. Again, there were no extremes of anger or happiness, just a persistent background "grayness." Between ages 12 and 18, most of my company came in the form of people over 65. At 16, I could have an intelligent conversation about oil exploration in Saudi Arabia, and new procedures for cancer treatment, but I couldn't have named the most popular "boy band" or clothing style of the moment. Sure, I went to school-- in a place where the English-language school serving 100,000 housholds had 130 students. For several years, the nearest person my age lived 7 miles away.
When I left home, I pretty much had to learn to define myself from scratch-- needs, values, desires, the whole nine yards. Of course, I didn't exactly do an exemplary job. When you have no voice (and the associated lack of self-value) it's hard to make smart choices. Nah, cancel that. It's hard to make ANY choices. OTHER people "make the choices." As did my ex (A BP with many emotionally abusive tendencies)-- a match "made in heaven".... for me, getting with the first female who was nice to me; for her, someone to be her emotional and financial wet nurse. That lasted 13 years.
Then I sortof did it again.... now in my 8th year with the daughter of an actively malicous N and an abusive father. She has a high level of self-awareness, but sometimes that isn't enough.
As for me, I am on an ongoing journey of self-exploration.... I suppose, in an effort to find voice and self-identity. It's not easy. I have found interesting prejudices along the way. The "Girls' Club." This voicelessness is evidently "Not A Male Problem," at least not in the context of the mainstream paradigm. I can feel very isolating to practically be "branded a leper" (or at the very least "deeply defective") if you happen to have these issues and are of the male persuasion. But it's all learning.
And so, here I am, learning some more.
--Peter
