Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: pennyplant on February 15, 2007, 02:14:54 PM
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Thank you, Stormy, for all you have posted on triangulation. Today is the day that it finally sunk in and answered a big question from my childhood. This idea of parents each choosing a child to stand in for the other parent and having the result be constant fighting and bickering between the children is exactly what was going on for my entire childhood.
I just want to cry when I think of all the terrible, violent fighting that went on between my sister and me. And my parents blaming their terrible lot in life on that constant fighting. Every painful and dysfunctional event in my childhood can be traced back to this.
And no wonder I was the neighborhood scapegoat so often. Actually my sister was, too, in a lightening rod kind of way. She almost demanded being treated like a scapegoat or martyr. In our family, both children were trained in different ways to stand in for someone who must be punished. The perfect recipe for being a general scapegoat. My sister received all the punishment my father couldn't dole out to his wife. I received all the rejection, resentment, and disdain my mother couldn't dole out to her husband. After all, he was a man, a husband. No higher calling in life for a woman than to be married. So all that venom had to go somewhere. How about the stand-in? Yes, this ugly redhead will do.
They were both martyrs to the sibling rivalry, yet they fed it. Then used it as an excuse for every little thing in life they were reluctant to do or try or spend money on. We can't take vacations, you guys ruined our trip to Florida by fighting all the way down there. We can't visit people because you kids would ruin it by fighting. People can't come over because you kids would ruin it by fighting. On and on and on.
Yet, they did everything possible to subtly encourage the fighting. It became our identity. It was a real attention getter in many ways. It required special treatment in certain situations. Every summer when we went to Y camp, my mother enclosed a note with our applications requesting that "these sisters be kept separated". All kinds of stuff like that. We were actually kind of well-known for fighting all the time. And disliked, partly because of all that fighting.
Even realizing that in real families kids do fight--ours was something on a whole other level. And it was because of the triangulation. This gives a whole new meaning to me of parentified child. We each had to actually become a particular parent psychologically. That seems really sick to me.
I almost emailed the excerpt to my sister thinking she might find the insight useful. Then I remembered her Nishness. It occurred to me that she or my mother could use the insight as ammunition on some level. I am not responsible for her journey through the mess of our childhoods. If she is N, then my "help" won't cure her because nothing will. If I was a stand-in for my father and she was a stand-in for my mother--well, who are we now? Does that dynamic still hold true somewhere in the background? I think it might since nobody has actually had any insight about it up until now. And it has taken me a year of study to be ready to learn this.
I think I am just blown away. Click, click, click, click, click. So many answers slipping into place all in one day.
I have a feeling this also happened to my husband. There are five siblings. One of his sisters, the one he is closest to, was an especial target of his father. Terrible, frightening verbal and physical abuse. And my husband was always treated differently by his mother. He had to wait on her all the time and be a little man yet she often forgot about him and treated him like he was different from all the other children, like she had no idea what to make of him. Stories about him, that she thinks are funny, I think are tragic coming from someone's mother.
Maybe this is why we "recognized" each other at 17.
This insight is going to be so valuable. Stormy, I don't think I can properly convey what this means to me. This is the key and I don't think I ever would have discovered it on my own. Thank God I didn't get called in to work today. Absolutely amazing.
Pennyplant
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Penny, thanks so much :oops: :oops: :oops:
I'm so glad that it helped. :oops: :oops: :oops: :-)
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It has helped and will help tremendously. I read the particular paragraph to my husband a little while ago and his first words were, You probably shouldn't tell this to your mother and sister. He still gets angry over some very odd, critical comments my mother has been making to and about me the last couple of years. But those comments actually make some kind of sense when viewed from the triangling perspective.
I'm sure I'll remember more things from the past because of this insight. Perhaps I will also bring up some more anger due to the injustice of it all and the wasted years. But I also feel like a huge burden has fallen off me. Some of that garbage got washed off me. It makes them all seem so much more smaller and pathetic. I truly was raised by a couple of snotty little brats. It is good that my father was finally capable of some growth and understanding. But I doubt my mother ever will be. Just can't imagine it.
I feel like a real survivor. I feel very lucky to have been able to learn these things.
It is so good to be able to SEE.
Pennyplant
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((((((((((Pennyplant & H))))))))))
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They used me as a Hoop-La stand
suffered near Strangulation by over Triangulation
Yes, yes, Leah. And it lasts such a long time, with such repercussions. It is so much to understand.
Way better to know, though. I would never want to be ignorant. And I am glad for answers. Because I have always wondered and always would have too. It ate away at me for much of my life. Why, why, why? I always thought there had to be an answer to that. I am getting those answers now because of this new understanding. It is good to know that I was on the right track. And it is more manageable now that I know some things. It feels like it wasn't my fault after all. I'm even leaning toward not being concerned with blame any more. I mean, it starts so early. It's a trap for them as much as it is for us.
There's still a lot to process, though. It's not going to be all sweetness and light. When I read that sentence yesterday, Dad picks the oldest and Mom picks the youngest..... my jaw just dropped. I'm still absorbing it. And this might sound odd, but Stormy began that paragraph by saying in a particularly damaging version of triangulation.... and I felt vindicated. I thought, wow, I'm a survivor.
Pennyplant
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PennyP,
Sincere congratulations.
I can imagine how much this epiphany means to you, and what a liberation it is.
I know what you mean, that reality isn't necessarily easy (hardly).
I think, reality is my friend.
The more often I say that to myself, the better I feel.
Kudos to you and to Storm for having the right info for you at the right time.
Wonderful serendipity.
Hops