Waiting for freedom

I am in my forties and my mother still has an immensely, torturous negative impact on me no matter how much I have worked to overcome this. She blatantly favours my siblings, takes my weaknesses and uses them against me to hurt me, and happens to be the dominant matriarch of my clan; my siblings having been treated so well and sweetly by her that I am easily turned into the asshole loser sibling. I have tried many times to do the no-contact thing because she is a classic narcissist, but my father--the only one in my family with whom I am close, and who was basically castrated by her from the day they met--loves me and cannot accept my having nothing to do with the family. He is deeply hurt by how, let's say, challenged I have been for my entire life by the woman / shrew he married, and the most important thing to him is having the family as a unit. I confess: I don't care if she bullies him into cutting me out of their will because I always stood up for myself. I will only realize freedom and self-esteem when she has shucked off her mortal coil.

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Everybody Involved

May 24, 2017 at 5:52am

We all play a role in a closed system. When we drop out guess what; you dont make it easy for those left, they like you to keep your role. So Dad is not really any better he is a part of the problem. If your mother is an untreated Narcissist then she needs help therapy.

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Yep...

May 24, 2017 at 10:41am

Seems from what you've said your mother is at least nice to some people. Mine is simply not a nice woman. She was raised by a woman who was abused, who had a string of abusive marriages (which worked out well for her financially) who then settled with my grandfather, who sounds a lot like your Dad---very into family, very sociable, but _very_ henpecked.

And you seem to, from your post, have avoided physical infirmity---I have one dead sibling, and due to being unable to cut ties with my mom, I'll probably follow, tho not soon after. Decades of not only neglect but emotional abuse.

My father actually made out the best of us all because he saw the writing on the wall by the time she'd had my brother, and he split because he did not want to live with an emotionally stunted, domineering woman.

Of course, there's no support for men to leave their abusive mothers, there are no "men only" facilities where men can avoid women who "remind them of their abusers."

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@Everybody Involved

May 26, 2017 at 11:11am

OP here. My mother has never, and will never, seek help or actually confront the fact that she has mental-health issues. That is classic narcissism. She started telling me from a very young age that I was mentally ill as she carried out her vicious attacks on me, hating me for existing and, possibly, hating me for being in the thrall of my father, whom she considers her property. She has done everything in her power to try and turn him against his own family, outright insulting his sister and mother in the open, and this is considered normal in my family. She has also never respected personal space, as she used to read my diary on the regular when I was young, and would clean out my bedroom and go through my stuff as she saw fit; she has access to my father's email account so I am unable to communicate with him privately; she read the emails of a close family member when he left his laptop open during a visit; she checked the text messages of another family member when the phone was nearby. All of this is considered funny, wacky behaviour on her part by everyone else. Yet I am the outcast, the "crazy one," because I don't accept it.

And my siblings--who, again, have brilliant relationships with her because they relinquish control to her and have never gone against what she wants--will never admit that our mother is mentally ill and always has been. They bore witness to her abuse of me, they are indulged and coddled to this day (all of them middle-aged, all of them vacationing annually with her, all of them in full support of her using my life's challenges as weapons to attack me), and all I can do is wait for her to die. I don't know what to do about my father. All I can do is hope she croaks before him and he can remarry and start anew, but he's been enslaved by her for his entire life and I doubt he would know what to do, smart as he is.

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In the same boat

May 30, 2017 at 12:20am

I hear you! Reddit has a good thread "raised by narcissists", some of it is just whiney kids, but a lot of good advice and shared experiences as well. You are not alone. You are worthy and deserve love. Remember that. Always.

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