Gaining Strength...where are you?

[Gaining Strength]

CB - just a quick thanks to you for reaching out.  It was bizarrely perfect timing.  It felt so warm and inclusive.  Thank you.

[Hopalong]

GS, I'm so glad to hear you again.

Does "constant assault" feel true still, or was it just in the moment of reliving it that the extreme descriptor felt true?

love to you,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Oh it DEFINITELY feels true still.
It was relentless and it required relentless counter work on my part - both to get ME through it AND my little boy.  It was daily, morning, noon and night from the little girl and from the mother.

Here are a couple of more examples - the same meal where the mother said it was bad manners for people to leave the table before everyone was finished her daughter got up to whisper in her ear.  When my child said that it was bad manners to whisper her mother said that she was just being silly and the whispering continued.  

The message - what my child does is ok, what others do is bad manners.

If I put a book or a notebook or a glass or a cup down for a short period it was moved or gone through or something.  When she cooked she left all the dishes for me to wash.  When I cooked she left all the dishes for me to wash.  What I purchased at the store became community food.  What she purchased was for herself and her child.  What she consumed from the house she expected us to both replace including for instance honey even though I brought my own honey.  

We brought bed linens and she asked me to bring towels so that the night before we left we would not have to launder the house towels.  She said that she and I could share one.  I chose to bring one for each.  She didn't ask me to bring towels for her daughter.  The first day she appropriated both towels for her child and herself.  Two wet towels when I went to take a shower.  I washed and dried them that night.  The next morning she washed her hair and used the hand towel and bath towel and then moved them both to her private half bath for the duration.

She rearranged the things in my car, reset my clock, took charge of the heat and air and radio, decided what we would eat and when we would eat.  Told my son which toys he needed to share with her child and when (no reciprocity.)  On and on and on.

It still feels very much like a constant assault.

When I got home I had lunch with a friend from Virginia who was in town with her family visitiing her sister.  We haven't seen each other in 7 years.  She and her husband have raised many, many foster children.  They were talking about the differences between horseplay, conflict and bullying.  Bullying in their definition has the characteristics of being an issue of power happening repeatedly over time.  My precious son definitely experienced bullying.

Did I mention that the last evening she demanded my son come vacuum the stairs.  Then her daughter said, "mommy, I want to vaccuum."  So she oversaw how that was being done.  I could not be around it because I was suffering from real strain with asthma (and no medicine) but even though I was in ear shot I'm not sure what happened but my son wasn't doing what she wanted him to do and she snapped at him and hit him on the back.  Then she sent him up to get the whisk broom which was where i was.  He came up in tears.  I was so very angry and simply held him in my lap and told him he would be staying with me and we would go get his bath and go to bed.  Shortly she came up and asked me if he had gotten the whisk broom and I told her I would do it later that it was time for his bath and bed.  She was not happy.  We had only the 6 hour drive left to endure.

It was definitely a constant assault.  And I am indescribably thankful that it is over.

I am often drawn to others who have had difficult family of origin issues but I have reached a point that I will be less likely to choose them as friends.  It is simply far too difficult.

[CB123]

....or you could say that you are glad you tried it, but that this woman and her child are not a good match for you and yours.

This situation sounds as though it is beyond spending limited time with them...they dont sound like people that can work for you.

I dont know if you remember the illustration that I use in my own head over stuff like this:  relationships occur in concentric circles --the relationships that are closest to the "center" or the safe ones.  Further and further out are rings that include relationships that I may enjoy, but that are (for whatever reason) are not safe to have close up. 

This one may need to be in one of the outer circles.  Seriously. 

These kinds of things are hard... you are trying to match FOUR people.  I have found that sometimes I get along with the mom as another woman, but NOT as a mom.  So that woman might be someone fun to go have coffee with or go to the movies (maybe we share the same enjoyment of goofy british comedies, but little else). 

Sometimes it might be the two kids that have a blast together... the moms like each other, but maybe not enough to spend a long weekend.  So then you have playdates where one of you takes the kids.  Who play together, have a blast and you get some closets cleaned out. 

Once in a blue moon, all four of you will click and that's magic.

CB

[sKePTiKal]

Jeez, I misread your explanation of this, in the first post. I had no idea the struggles were so constant! I thought you were relaying a random incident. I am sorry!

You handled the situation really well, though. I think this shows how far you've come - the real, established progress you've made.

[Gaining Strength]

CB - you nailed it.  here is a bit of history.  I have known the mom for a very long time.  We have been in a group that meets weekly for certain periods of the year to pray intercessory prayers for individuals.  I have always liked her but had a clear sense that she was normally in charge and had a tendancy to be somewhat judgmental in that special Christian way.  She married late to someone I have known (and never particularly liked) since high school and with great difficulty she finally had one child born 4 years and one day after my own.  That was one thing that we had in common.  A couple of years ago she helped her husband fight a very difficult battle of cancer which he miraculously survived.  It was, of course, poignant for me to watch her be in the forefront of that battle, working hard to keep her only child's father alive.  Then in June a friend told me that she and her husband were separated.  I gave her a call.  It was a case of reaching out just when a person needed it and I have been there for her ever since.  We have been getting up early each day during the week praying together.  Until this summer I was never an early riser.  It has been a good experience.

Our children have been around each other often across the years, usually at church activities or for several years we all had breakfast at the same restaurant on Saturday mornings.  The have always gotten along but it has been for such brief periods - an hour at most.

I will continue to be friends with her.  Surprisingly she has been calling this week. Honestly, I wasn't sure how things would shake out after last week.  But I won't sign up for a family activity again.  That's a definite no for me.

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks PR.
It was such a victory for me to NEVER give in and lose my cool.
It took me two or three days to figure out that her behavior had to do with her operations through her daughter.  That insight gave me some fascinating healing insights.  To actually watch her do this puppetry through her daughter that will do some N type damage to her daughter and see the effect on others around was so revealing and helpful.  It was like peeling back the membrane of human psychology at work, seeing behind the scenes of things other humans simply don't get to see.

On about Tuesday, I was sitting in my room racking my brain and beating myself up about what is it in me that keeps getting into similar situations.  I knew that she had just come back from a long weekend with long time girlfriends and it had gone well so I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out what in God's name do I do to trigger this kind of behavior over and over and by the grace of God I got it.  I saw, truly in a lightbulb moment way, that it had EVERYTHING to do with her daughter. That insight gave me enough knowledge to prepare myself to protect myself and my son and develop a psychological defense, taking myself out of the process, recognizing that this was about her and her defenses and not about me nor my child.   That understanding singularly helped me but it was not enough to save me.  I had to keep working at my defense (fortifying myself, building myself up, not taking the knocks, knowing I could do it.  AND I DID!  AND I protected my son and got him through it.  That was no small victory for BOTH of us.  I am so extraordinarily thankful. It gives me courage and a kind of budding confidence that I will build on. 

Thanks so much for your comment.  It helped me think and write this through and cement the achievement and utilize the healing.  To have gotten through this with our "friendship" in tact is so important to me.  For so long I would begin a friendship and it would implode/explode and leave me with a gaping wound untended.  I think I have finally moved to the razor's edge where I might fall that way but I might as easily fall on the other side as well.  This has been such an extraordinarily long and perilous journey to get to this edge.  Honestly, I'm not sure I really thought I would get here.  And quite frankly "here" is good enough but I rather doubt I will stay here.  I think it will only get better.

I have been in such a dark valley for so very long.  To see the light, a light I thought would elude me lifelong, is like the dawning after the disastrous hurricaine night.  There is life but there is still a massive clean up ahead.

[Hopalong]

recognizing that this was about her and her defenses and not about me nor my child

That's huge, GS!
You were rational and saw that it's not about you.

You did not take it personally! WOO HOO!

What a huge step into being less hurt as you interact with (all sorts of) humans.

Happy for you,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

There is life but there is still a massive clean up ahead.

AH! but it will soooooooo much easier than in the past! I believe that the "life" = "energy" or motivation or desire... and so will fuel an exponentially deeper, faster movement through now. Sure, there will still a "hangover" effect of the old patterns... they'll stick around, but I think you'll find that the fear surrounding them and the intensity of the power of the patterns is way diminished from what you've experienced up till now.

So that you'll have a lot more of the kind of experiences where you'll realize in a quiet moment - OH! that's gone! I haven't "done that" in a while... or "I don't do that anymore". And sometimes, in stressful periods, you might notice some of that starting to creep back in - I've noticed this myself. It's like we hold those old dysfunctional patterns in our brains as a default, fall-back, "if all else fails" way of coping. But the "pay off" - or what these old patterns used to provide in the past - isn't as satisfactory; maybe don't have the same kind of energy... as before. So, they also don't have so much "power" over us and are easier to change, even if that change is  - "again". (I'm more than ever convinced that the concept of "practice" is essential healing.)

Some of my & hubby's old habits have crept back in, while we've been grieving MIL and adjusting to a new reality of life without her presence. Sure - hubby & I had our own patterns of being together pretty well established prior to living with her the past nine months. But now - the situation is still quite different from the past and while we've "tried on" the old patterns they just don't "fit" as well now. There's a sense he & I both have, that we're in "new territory" and while there's the comfort of the "old & familiar" (which was really toward the dysfunctional side of the spectrum)... that comfort is a lot less than we'd both hoped for.

So it's onwards... towards new things. And while that doesn't feel as "natural" and doesn't come totally without some intention and effort... the "pay off" of making those changes has more value than the old patterns of coping we used.

On another note: have you thought yet about changing your moniker here? I'd say you've got plenty o' strength now! It shows through the new "voice" I hear, in what you've been writing. Very strong; very clear... and between the lines, I sense there's still more to discover.