Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Twoapenny on September 20, 2009, 02:53:03 PM
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It's very strange, but I've never thought about it like this before. I've always thought that they loved me in their own way and that their problems weren't entirely their fault. I had a very strong therapy session during the week and my therapist asked me a lot of questions about our day to day living when I was a child and I came out feeling very uncomfortable. In the past I've had lightening bolt moments where something's really hit me and it's been quite sudden and quite severe, but this was very gentle and just popped into my head this afternoon. My mum and step-dad don't love me and they never have done. I don't know why, but it's made me feel calmer about the situation. It means that I don't owe them anything and I don't have to keep excusing their behaviour and the things they've done to me. It also means I don't have to keep on questioning myself - I can confidently assume that the things they've told me about myself aren't accurate because they've told me things to make me feel like the one in the wrong rather than facing up to the stark truth - my mum didn't love her own children and my step-dad ony moved in with her because his wife threw him out and he had nowhere else to go.
It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I think I'm finally starting to really believe that I'm not crazy/selfish/a slut/jealous of them and all the other things that have been thrown at me over the years. Anyone else experienced this kind of thing?
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Welcome to the club Twoapenny,
I think it dawned on me when they left the house we grew up in without even telling my sister and I that they were considering selling it. They left all of our stuff and many of her wedding gifts for "the movers" to deal with. The movers left many things behind and stole many things. They did nothing about that and even denied the things were ever there, so they wouldn't have to deal with the ugly reality of what they let happen. If your cherished things don't matter.....you don't matter either.
As you have discovered there is a good part to all of this........ How could a person who has no real meaning in their life possibly hurt them?? Nothing I ever did really mattered.
Sometimes its a relief when you fully come to terms with how little power you have over them....you can let go of second guessing and pull all that power back into yourself where its needed.
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It means that I don't owe them anything and I don't have to keep excusing their behaviour
That's exactly how I feel. When I finally came to terms with the fact that my parents never loved me, I felt that I had been relieved of any further obligation to them. If they ever needed elder care or assistance in their old age, well, call my brother, the golden child. I've had a few therapists tell me the same thing, that I'm free of obligation at this point.
Sealynx, my parents also discarded my cherished possessions when I moved out. My NM refused to return anything to me, and eventually gave things away, and worse, gave anything valuable to my brother to sell on eBay.
As painful as it was, I think it's a good thing to have finally come to terms with it. For me, it was like being given permission to move on, rather than continuing to beat myself up over never being good enough. I was finally set free. It still hurts, and probably always will, but I'm happier and healthier for allowing myself to put that life behind me and move forward to a life without them in it.
Kathy
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(((Twoa penny))))))
Alice Miller calls this the beginning of healing. It really hurts terribly. It did for me. I have you in my thoughts , Twoapenny. I am sending you a BIG hug, Sweetie. xxxooo Ami
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Hi Sealynx,
What you said about your parents selling up and leaving your stuff behind really struck a chord with me. I have spent years puzzling over why my mum and her husband said and did the things they have over the last thirty or so years. I've always been led to believe everything was down to me and I was selfish to expect more from them. I never told my mum I was going NC - I just stopped contacting her. She's never once tried to get in touch with me in two and a half years. I've gone through a whole range of things, from my mum's drink problems to her abusive childhood to possible mental health difficulties (she's not a diagnosed N) and yesterday it just struck me - they don't care about how I feel and that's why they've always done whatever they wanted without considering what it's doing to me. And the reason they don't care is because they don't love me. It all seems so simple. I agree with what you say about someone who means nothing to them not being able to hurt them - I can see now that my mum's histrionics about not seeing her grandson are all for effect - she's never once asked how he was or asked if she could see him. I feel relieved that I don't need to keep blaming myself for their inability to love me and I suddenly felt a huge sense that I am a good mum - because I do love my boy, with all my heart and I'd never neglect his needs and emotions the way they did to me. Thanks for your thoughts xx
Kathy, what you say about moving on really rings true with me at the minute. I saw my step dad when I was out today and it was like looking at a stranger - that whirlpool of emotion just doesn't seem as pressing any more. I know I'm a lot healthier without them in my life but I've always felt a bit guilty about it. But now I've realised they don't care that I'm not a part of their life - as soon as I refused to take the abuse anymore I was worthless to them and they moved on to my sister instead. One thing that struck me was, now that the role of parent is vacant, maybe there's space for nice, healing people in my life? I've always attracted abusive types but that's been happening less lately - maybe that has something to do with it? I seem to be spending more time with nicer people who don't put me down and belittle me constantly - it feels good! Thanks for sharing xx
Ami - xx and hugs to you! I appreciate your sympathy and your kind words. Funnily, I'm not finding it painful at the minute, instead I'm feeling relieved and at a new place. That might change, I know sometimes it takes a while to really sink in, but I feel like I've known it for ages but only just acknowledged it, if that makes sense? Anyway, today I am feeling good and I grab those days and enjoy them when I get them! Thinking of you and sending hugs back, Twoapenny xxx
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Twoapenny,
Sometimes I can see things more clearly when I imagine what would have happened with a "normal" family interaction. It would go like this:
Phone calll: "Honey, your dad and I have decided to retire to X. We'd like you and sis to come over and see if there is anything in your rooms that you want to take home."
A meeting would be arranged and we would sit down, reminiscing over treasured objects and times past.
Apparently they have no fond memories of me or the times those items in my room represent.
On the opposite end of this spectrum, I once went to the home of a family who had lost their adolescent son whom they loved dearly. They were elderly now, but had kept his room just as he left it. It was like taking a step into the 40's with old perfectly preserved Lionel trains mounted on the wall next to sports pictures, all waiting for a boy who would never return. To them every item was precious.
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Hi S,
This is exactly what my therapist has been getting me to work on and I think that's why the penny's dropped. Her questions have been based around whether I, as a mum myself now, would do the same things. So it's stuff like "would you drink every night and all weekend and have your children put themselves to bed because you're too drunk to do it?" My answer's no. In relation to my step-dad, she asked me "if you met a guy and wanted him to move in with you would you just have him show up one morning and say 'that's it he's moved in' without your children even meeting him before?" My answer was no. I was suicidal for nine months and my mum went on holiday twice, once over Christmas, without the slightest concern about what might happen to me. She bad mouthed my dad after he died and wouldn't let me see any of his family. She moved my step-dad in without a bye or leave, had very loud sex for hours at a stretch whist my sister and I sat watching TV and didn't bat an eyelid when he turned his attentions on me, at the ripe old age of twelve. When I had my son she complained that the day was inconvenient for her and when I went into labour at 28 weeks she left me sat in the front room on my own having contractions while she went and showered and changed before taking me to the hospital. The list could go on and on and on. But this is what my therapist has been getting me to look at, do you think this is normal, is this what you would do with your child? And my answer is always no way. I think that's what made the penny drop
I can identify with the family who lost a son. They were clearly devoted to him and wanted to keep him living in their home. My mum has given us back all the photographs she has of us; she leaves them on doorsteps on birthdays and anniversairies with nasty letters. I wish that your mum had thought of you when they were moving. It's heart wrenching to know you don't matter. ((((((((())))))))
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My mum has given us back all the photographs she has of us; she leaves them on doorsteps on birthdays and anniversairies with nasty letters.
OMG! My NM has done the same thing. She never returned any of my treasured possessions, but has sent back every photograph of me, including all of my school photos starting at kindergarten. And all with nasty notes. What a way to stick it to you, eh? Send back the one thing that a parent should treasure - photographs of their child.
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My mother has a two photographs of herself on her desk. Both are professional photos, one seated in a studio leaning over a bench and the other as a ballerina. She is about 24 in both pictures...She is currently 85. There is also a picture of my sister and I taken when I was 7 and she was 3. She has no interest in photos of us as adults. It is her own private world with her as the young and beautiful mother of two perfect children.
Unlike your moms she is a hoarder of things. I recently smuggled my father's old Navy photo album out of the house. They are from before he married her and show him dancing with local women in Mexico. He's been dead for two years and I figured that it was only a matter of time before she decided to pitch them having never liked the thought of him having fun without her.
Just as she had no respect for our things, she gave all of his clothes to the yard man the day after he died. It was probably the only nice thing she did because the yard man liked my father. Unfortunately the motivation was simply to have more room for her stuff. She has now filled that closet too.
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My mother has a two photographs of herself on her desk. Both are professional photos, one seated in a studio leaning over a bench and the other as a ballerina.
This is almost scary. My NM also has two photographs of herself as a young woman hanging at the house, as a ballerina! Professionally taken photographs from when she was in her late teens. Also one photograph of her with my sister and I when were about ages 3 and 2. The same thing. The perfect young mother with her two perfect children, who were at that point too young to have independent thoughts. Once I got old enough to talk back, the photos got thrown away. She only kept the one where she was still in control.
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It's very strange, but I've never thought about it like this before. I've always thought that they loved me in their own way and that their problems weren't entirely their fault. I had a very strong therapy session during the week and my therapist asked me a lot of questions about our day to day living when I was a child and I came out feeling very uncomfortable. In the past I've had lightening bolt moments where something's really hit me and it's been quite sudden and quite severe, but this was very gentle and just popped into my head this afternoon. My mum and step-dad don't love me and they never have done. I don't know why, but it's made me feel calmer about the situation. It means that I don't owe them anything and I don't have to keep excusing their behaviour and the things they've done to me. It also means I don't have to keep on questioning myself - I can confidently assume that the things they've told me about myself aren't accurate because they've told me things to make me feel like the one in the wrong rather than facing up to the stark truth - my mum didn't love her own children and my step-dad ony moved in with her because his wife threw him out and he had nowhere else to go.
It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I think I'm finally starting to really believe that I'm not crazy/selfish/a slut/jealous of them and all the other things that have been thrown at me over the years. Anyone else experienced this kind of thing?
I read this in stunned silence, Penny. I can't believe how moved I was, and still am! I know EXACTLY what this feels like and I felt it all over again reading this post. I just had a moment like this earlier this week and I had such a sense of calm realizing it. It was weird the way it happened. Almost like a death of a person that has been suffering for sooo long and in so much pain, this person has just passed away and I felt relieved about it or something. My Nmom never loved me. Period. She thougth she did, but reality speaking she didn't. She didn't know HOW to love a child...now I see this as she interact with my 2 year old daughter, her only grandchild. Nmom doesn't know how to love her unconditionally and when my daughter gets clingy with me and wont go to her grandmother (my Nmom) she gets jealous and acts hurt. Like it's about her!
It means that I don't owe them anything and I don't have to keep excusing their behaviour and the things they've done to me. It also means I don't have to keep on questioning myself - I can confidently assume that the things they've told me about myself aren't accurate because they've told me things to make me feel like the one in the wrong rather than facing up to the stark truth
This is outstanding! I'm in!
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JustKathy,
You hit the nail on the head!
"who were at that point too young to have independent thoughts. Once I got old enough to talk back, the photos got thrown away. She only kept the one where she was still in control."
That is exactly what it is about.
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Bearwithme,
My parents started having "issues" with my niece as soon as she could speak her mind. My sister lives a long 8 hour drive from them and they didn't visit often. You would think they could deal with a few days of not having their routine. No, it was all about them from the minute they walked through the door. They would demand to watch their favorite news program which came on at her cartoon hour, sending her off in tears. They would object to her hairdo which she liked and try to badger my sister into cutting it, all without asking the child a thing. A child is a THING to them.
My niece is 11 now and it is fun to send her little gifts and buy school stuff for her in the fall. Occasionally my mother will send her a few dollars at the beginning of school and on her birthday but there is never any negotiation about what she actually wants, nor any attempt to "surprise" her. The few times she's made the mistake of telling my mother what she wanted or what she'd asked her parent for, instant criticism followed of both parent and child. There is also none of the normal reinforcement for good behavior like sending her a few dollars when my sis tells mom she had a great report card. It just doesn't occur to her that this merits any attention.
Her behavior reflects the same combination of control and neglect that we were subjected to.
Its like watching a rerun of our lives. No input allowed, just output. Children who are raised to speak to their parents and ask questions won't put up with this....At some point expect to hear, "Why is grandma so mean! "
S
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Ah Sealynx, you are so right! I told one of my aunts that my Nmom left my house dissappointed about my daughter and my aunt said this: "well, maybe you daughter 'sensed' something about your mother that she didn't like and that is why your baby was extra clingy."
I think about how smart kids are and ya know. It may be true
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My Nmom never loved me. Period. She thougth she did, but reality speaking she didn't.
I've often wondered about this - if Ns really do love their children, but are unable to express it properly because of their disorder. Or do they really not love us? Or do they even hate us? I've never felt that my mother loved me in any way. I do think that my co-dependent father loved me, but didn't know how to show it. And ultimately, he loved his N wife more, so made the choice to throw me under the bus to protect HER. So he tried and failed, but M never even tried.
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It's tough to realize we didn't get from our parents what we saw, and see in other families. To realize that often our parents were just kids running from their own messed up family of origins who crossed paths with each other, shared a mutual attraction, had some good sex and out popped us. It helps me to realize that we are all the same, they just got here before we did, as did their parents. Try to imagine your parents experiencing the same thing as children you experienced with them as children. My mother is severely N. It helps me to have compassion for her to know that her father sexually abused her and her mother preferred her brother. What kind of hell that mustve been for a little girl. I have 2 little girls and cant imagine them cowering in their rooms at night afraid of dad and hating mom.
I have begun to really explore my own spirituality and that would be my advice. Not the religion of our fathers but our own individual experiences. If there is a God and we were created in his image, then regardless of who put us here, we have a purpose. That purpose may be simply to do the best job we can for as long as we can until he calls us home. I try to live each day like its my last because one day I'll be right and live by the golden rule.
I'm beginning to see why people get more religious as they get older. At some point people like those on this board get OK with whatever is in the next life. They almost look forward to it. As you get older, the pain of loss will increase and you will learn to lean on God and really begin to search him out diligently. Good luck in that walk :)
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Justkathy,
I think this disorder has some organic roots and though there are many reasons why someone may be incapable of love or understanding others, I think the fact that our mothers tend to be so similar points to something other than just upbringing. There are some things I hear repeatedly.
1. Shallow feelings....Can be rageful one minute and sweet as pie on the phone when a friend calls. Real emotional states don't turn off and on like a light switch. This suggests to me that they don't feel anything very deeply, so the question of do they love me or hate me might be best asked as do they feel anything with passion? I don't think so.
2. A preference for negative feelings...I have heard again and again how they will start an argument if at all possible. But then if you think about it, a person who doesn't understand what a feeling is will get frustrated when other people began to express this "intangible". They are more at home complaining about something because they can use reasoning. I remember my mother would always say how silly any show was that featured complex emotions. None of the content made any sense to her and there was no way to explain it to her...you just had to feel it.
3. An inability to express genuine physical affection. Sometimes expressed as an addiction to sex which may be the only thing they want from their mate.
All of these things suggest to me that the person is lacking development in the part of the brain that controls emotion. Sex is very primal and not really an emotion as such so they sometimes rely on that. Love is much more complex. Thinking that they don't love us suggests that it is a choice they had. I'm not sure it is. There certainly isn't anything anyone has ever done that seemed to work in the getting love deparment. It must just not be there to have.
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Hi Poly,
Thanks for what you said about the terror of a little girl in those circumstances. And for your compassion for recognizing that your mother was once a little girl, to whom terrible things happened. And broke her. So she was formed/forced/made into an N...some awful coping strategy, some self-obsessed thinking...and it's gotten her nowhere, because she doesn't have a self, just an endlessly circling Nbrain that is like a desperate fox in a trap, or like those heartbreaking elephants I used to see chained by the leg in the Baltimore zoo, gone completely out of their minds from their imprisonment, rocking from side to side endlessly, completely insane.
I think NPD is truly a form of insanity. Guile and cleverness and charm and even functioning, and even moments of pathos, they're all just like a big whirling dust cloud that swirls around the core creature -- a child who was so damaged they just broke. And went on and grew up and inhabited adult bodies and aped adult goals and had children and grew older and had jobs or raised kids and all the while they are really just that child. Broken, driven mad, and never coming back.
Some damage IS that bad.
I think my mother was broken by what happened in her childhood. I'll never know whether she was forced to have intercourse with her father (her story is she successfully resisted by threatening to tell her mother, but she remembers what he did to her other sister...for years). And he was a preacher.
I think it broke her. (It sure would have snapped my heart in two.)
So that's why, as much as she damaged me...it was only her fox child, that used to have a self, but was made feral (hidden in her propriety, but still feral) by the terrible things that happened in her house whne she was young.
She didn't love me much, though I defend a flicker in her that I know was real.
It's not all or nothing. I learned to look for that flicker. Every few years, there would be a moment where if I stretched my thinking way open, I could see something that I realized she intended as love. It was almost...primitive, compared to what I know love can be. But it was all she had.
Sorry to ramble. But I was moved by your compassion for your mother.
Hops
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This is an interesting discussion.
Sealynx, you may be on to something when you say that Ns may be lacking in brain development. Aside from the NPD, my mother also displayed other signs of having an emotionally undeveloped brain. She seemed to be in a state of arrested development, as if her brain stopped developing past the age of ten. The baby talk, temper tantrums, even the movies she would choose to watch (Disney animation over anything complex). She always seemed like a child.
Hops, I also agree that it may be a form of insanity. The hard part for me (and I'm sure for many of us), is not knowing the origin of the trauma that was the trigger. My NM tells the story of a fairytale childhood, being an honor student, popular, etc. Some of her siblings have told me that she was a "problem child," who failed in school, and was abusive to her siblings. She has six siblings, who all grew up healthy, happy, and normal. I've never seen any evidence of M being abused by anyone in her family. If anything like that happened, no one is talking, so I've been left to try and piece things together on my own, and I'm drawing a blank.
Maybe some Ns are just born mentally ill. My mother does seem to have the capacity to love inanimate objects, like dolls and teddy bears, and also pets. Things that offer unconditional love don’t talk back. I've NEVER sensed that she loved me, and never saw that flicker that Hops speaks of.
M told me when I was a little girl that she rushed to get pregnant, because she knew that if she gave her mother her first grandchild, that she (M) would inherit more money. So I was created for profit. When my grandmother died, she split her inheritance equally between her surviving children and 13 grandchildren. My grandmother loved all of her grandchildren equally and never played favorites, was always very fair, which makes me feel that she wasn't an a N, nor did she abuse my mother. My NM, conversely, is currently using her will as a weapon, so I don't think she was cut from the same cloth as her own mother.
Some of us may never know the answer to that question: WHY? In my case, I think I just have to accept that it was what it was, and learn to move forward from there. I'd like to know the truth, but I doubt I'll ever find it.
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I think you guys are on to something here. There's a concept called "alexithymia" (literally translated: no words for feelings). People with Narcissistic Personality disorder are thought to be alexithymic. Gaslighting is a phenomenon in which they use others in close relationships to "tell them what they feel" --- they deliberately provoke emotions in others because they don't have direct access to their own emotions. Then, when the other person has an opinion or emotion (e.g., "tells them how to feel") they resent it as "being told what to do." Because they are narcissistic they of course resent being told what to do! That is why as a child or spouse of a narcissist you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Also, apparently it is common for narcissists to idealize their childhoods. You can't trust their accounts of their childhood. Sometimes in big families where everybody else is pretty normal, there may have been a bonding interruption with just that one child --- the mother was ill after the birth, or the child was horribly colicky, or there was a family crisis at a critical time in infancy. Sometimes the relationships just never recover.
All this is coming from my studies in infant mental health, not because I understand how this happens at an intuitive level. How can you have feelings but not be aware of them? Intellectually I can believe that it happens, but intuitively I can't grasp it.
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Me again ... for some reason the length of my last post was limited.
Anyway, apparently the sense of grandiosity and entitlement comes from a combination of alexithymia and a deep sense of alienation. Apparently alexithymia tends to be especially pronounced in relation to negative emotions. So it tends not to be as bad with positive emotions. So, they have more conscious access to emotions when what they are feeling is positive. So, you combine relative access to positive emotions with a deep sense of alienation, of being alone ... and you tend to interpret your sense of not belonging as being because you are special, better than everybody else.
I got these ideas from a team of Italian researchers ... can't remember everybody (there was a whole string of authors) but DiMaggio and Semerari were two. If you have access to psychology databases, I can find the name and journal if you are interested and want to read the whole thing.
I post this kind of stuff because I think it is positive when forum members' intuition dovetails wonderfully with what research is saying. It is very very validating (not that we need validation for our experience, but often we feel as if we need validation).
I don't think forgiving somebody and realizing that they are the ones that are defective means that we have to get back into a relationship with them so that they can continue to beat us up and destroy us. I just think that realizing the depths of their problems strengthens our understanding that WE were not the ones that were defective. After realizing the depths of the damage inside of my own mother, sometimes I look into her eyes and instead of seeing the judgment that's always been there, I see somebody who doesn't have all the puzzle pieces connected.
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I don't think forgiving somebody and realizing that they are the ones that are defective means that we have to get back into a relationship with them so that they can continue to beat us up and destroy us. I just think that realizing the depths of their problems strengthens our understanding that WE were not the ones that were defective. After realizing the depths of the damage inside of my own mother, sometimes I look into her eyes and instead of seeing the judgment that's always been there, I see somebody who doesn't have all the puzzle pieces connected.
Very good points. I feel like the hardest part of recovery is coming to terms with the fact that they may be incapable of feeling and therefore thinking like US. Our empathy is a two edged sword. It allows us to relate well to "most" people, but as long as we use our "empathy" to assume their motives, we are looking at them from a point of view they can never assume.
Because we have gotten angry at times, not played fair and then felt bad about it, we assume they are capable of the same process and keep judging them for not going there. As you pointed out, the process for them, either because of organic or inorganic mental illness, is likely to be very different. They may not start out with anger, but confusion, after which they go through a process of trying to obtain information to react with. However, just because this part of them is broken and we can understand that doesn't make them okay to be around. Whether a person is intentionally or unintentionally dangerous to your emotional well being does not matter.
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This is an interesting topic. With my FOO, I've come to realize what the parents think of as "love" really isn't. It's a form of twisted attachment. They love playing a certain power role. They love having people who provide narcissistic supply. They love the exciting "event" when offspring come to visit. They love having people they can forever feel superior to. But all of this doesn't add up to real love or concern for a separate independent human being. Real love is not something they are capable of.
I was confused about this for a lot of years, because when the offspring left the house, all of a sudden the parents started talking love and family on a continual basis. I never heard the word love in my FOO until I was in my 20's. But when the offspring started leaving and the parents were threatened with facing up to their own problems, all of a sudden they started to talk "love and family" It was too little too late. Later I realized it's much easier for them to pretend to love somebody when that person isn't around on a daily basis and they can "love" the images in their own heads.
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Silverlining,
I have seen a similar pattern in my FOO. When we come home our mother has "appearances" planned for us where we are chauffeured around to the homes of her new friends. They often seem as puzzled as we are about the visit. It is as if we are commodities and not people.
My N aunt did the same thing with my niece. Her father is Vietnamese and one Christmas when my sister's family came to town my aunt planned for her to visit with a friend's son who collected "Asian Things". It was all about my aunt making a grand entrance with an "Asian offering" for the boy to play with.
Never did it occur to her to wonder how my niece would feel about being singled out in this manner or that the ethnicity of the child had no bearing on whether the two would get along. To her it was the perfect way to entertain my niece.
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Silverlining,
I have seen a similar pattern in my FOO. When we come home our mother has "appearances" planned for us where we are chauffeured around to the homes of her new friends. They often seem as puzzled as we are about the visit. It is as if we are commodities and not people.
Hey SL. That's exactly how a visit with the parents goes for me. My mother always has a series of "appearances" planned, and there's no discussion of whether the offspring might prefer some other sort of activity. It's an exciting event for the parents, but meaningless for me. I've gone along with it for the past few years, but it might be time to crank up the "chill" level a bit more. I feel like any time spent around the FOO is a total waste.
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Rings a bell for me too.
NMom was obsessed with appearances (so I felt I didn't really matter) and orchestrated appearances.
She used to say when her guests were over (about me):
Doesn't she look like a young Jackie Kennedy?
Speak some French for my visitors!
Poor thing. She was kind of hollow.
Poor young me too. (Older me is much happier...)
love
Hops
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HI Twoapenny and Sealynx,
I am just saying hello. I miss chatting with you both,
Hugs,
Bettyanne
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Hi Bettyanne,
Great to see you here!
S
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I don't think that N's have ever or will ever love. Hate seems to be what I have experienced from both my NM and then from my NH. The better I do the more hurtful they become. That's not love. They can say the words but that's about it. I hate looking into their eyes because all I see is masked hatred!
It's just way too sad for me to know that I have allowed this to happen to me with my husband after going through this with my mother. They are real swindlers with no conscience. I haven't talked to my mother in about 15 years after my children began hiding from her and physically getting sick when she came around to belittle us all. When we let her know that her behavior would not be tolerated any more, she responded with, "I don't do that", that same old story. She moved last year and I received my school pictures sent to me by one of her neighbors...it is so good to have this board. Not many people believe what I have been through. N's have a way of hiding and attacking behind closed doors really well.
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I don't think that N's have ever or will ever love. Hate seems to be what I have experienced from both my NM and then from my NH. The better I do the more hurtful they become. That's not love. They can say the words but that's about it. I hate looking into their eyes because all I see is masked hatred!
It's just way too sad for me to know that I have allowed this to happen to me with my husband after going through this with my mother. They are real swindlers with no conscience. I haven't talked to my mother in about 15 years after my children began hiding from her and physically getting sick when she came around to belittle us all. When we let her know that her behavior would not be tolerated any more, she responded with, "I don't do that", that same old story. She moved last year and I received my school pictures sent to me by one of her neighbors...it is so good to have this board. Not many people believe what I have been through. N's have a way of hiding and attacking behind closed doors really well.
((((((getnbtr))))))
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Thanks Ami, I really needed that!!!
((((((Ami))))))
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I am so glad ,getnbtr. Our hearts have been so broken by the NM's that love and care is so precious. xxxooo Ami
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Hi to BettyAnne! Good to see you too! xx