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This may not be the typical rant of a betrayed spouse. This is the cry of a betrayed child. This is my adult child issue with my mother. It's the pain of my wounded inner child asking...

It's the pain of someone who doesn't want love from his parents anymore, doesn't want to see them, doesn't want to have anything to do with them. Doesn't want THOSE people to be part of his life, part of his hopes or part of his heart anymore. The hurt me, SHE hurt me. Her and her mental illness, her blameshifting, her ruthless emotional manipulation.

I'm having the biggest conflict right now in my faith. My religion teaches about how important families are that we can be a family forever beyond the grave into eternity. The highest religious covenants involve sealing families together forever. I however am in conflict with this because I don't WANT to be sealed to my ancestors, my ancestors past on a heritage filled with rage and deceit, addiction and alcoholism, sadism and masocism. The last thing I want is to be connectedt to any of them and the idea of being bound to them forever terrifies me. I know their eternal stubbornness and denial. I know their damdable egotism. I despise them all.

I'm feeling pressured now to raise my own son in the traditions of the faith which has this family sealing culture at it's core. I can't bring myself to indoctrinate him with the code. I want to vomit.

The scriptures teach that before the coming of the Lord God will send the spirit of elijah to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the hearts of the fathers to the children lest the whole earth be cursed and wasted at his coming...

This spirit is obviously impotent in my family because it is not sufficient to cause even the slightest inkling of any desire to repent or change in my ancestors hearts. It seems that all that is wanted is for me to subject myself to the tyrrany of continued emotional betrayal and suffering in this life and to live the lies and perpetuate the deciet in the next life.

How can I ever be joyful? How can I forgive what continues to be perpetrated on me spiritually and emotionally by a family in denial and judgement, mostly by a mentally ill mother? Can I reject my own mother and find peace?

Can I reject my deepest fondest hopes and beliefs and be content? I feel so lost and bereft. So wounded. I don't know what to hope for now. I don't feel any power in the universe that can and will heal this rift and I fear all is hopelessly lost forever. I feel hopelessly lost forever. It seems my greatest anxiety is the only reality. I despair in my family and I can't go on like this.

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This is so terribly sad. I love my family with all my heart and can't imagine wanting to break away. However, that might be because I live on the other side of the world from them!! My grandmother, God rest her soul, manipulated my mother until her dying day. My mum visited practically every day for at least two hours, usually 4, cooked for her, bathed her, cut her rotten stinky toenails. She did it out of a strange sense of duty because my grandmother was really quite wicked to my mum. She mocked her and told her how she wished she'd never been born. To say my mum has low self-esteem is an understatement. I don't think she ever heard a loving word from her mother, and yet she loved her purely because she was her mother. My grandmother went to church everyday of her life until she was too frail. It didn't matter how mean she was, she thought she just had to go to church and it was all right with God. I wonder!

I'm not sure you're in the right place for the advice you need. This is a whole other realm but it sounds like your spirit is being destroyed by your family. I hope somebody else can come along and help you out. I can relate to your situation but I don't know what the hell to do about it. TT

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thankyou for the reply. my wife really chastised me this morning. she doesn't know what to do about it either, nor do I. my spirit was actually destroyed long ago perhaps from the beginning. I've just lived with it like that despite it all. It just doesn't seem to be in my hands. my wife tells me i'm condescending to other people's trials. that I hate anyone who doesn't think I'm God. she mocks my self concept of myself as a cuddly bear who has been put upon. perhaps she's right. I don't know. If I'm not in the right place I'm not suprised. I'm never in the right place.

<small>[ January 17, 2005, 09:35 AM: Message edited by: Kasey1 ]</small>

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Kasey-
2x4 coming with caring concern....many of my FOO issues are incredibly similiar to your own...

Get thee to a meeting! Soon! Today is soon enough!! I see warning signs! From what you are saying, either this will be a big breakthrough for you or a set-up....your choice.

I think I may have some things to say that have helped me with my parental stuff, but wanted to get this to you first.

Let me know.....

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oh goodie another caring 2x4, haven't all the bruises I've got come from just such caring? sure why not, maybe we can get blood to actually come out if you swing hard enough.

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Geez Kasey-
Wasn't trying to swing the 2x4, just nudge you a bit maybe. Why would someone wanna make you bruised and bleeding on the outside when you are obviously bruised and bleeding on the inside? Did you even read the rest of my post? Or did you stop at the point where I said "2x4"? What do you think?

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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by HelenWheels:
Geez Kasey-
Wasn't trying to swing the 2x4, just nudge you a bit maybe. Why would someone wanna make you bruised and bleeding on the outside when you are obviously bruised and bleeding on the inside? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I dunno that's just what family does, all with the best of intentions of course.


</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Did you even read the rest of my post? Or did you stop at the point where I said "2x4"? What do you think? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">yes i would like to hear what helps you.

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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> ...her blameshifting,... </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Isn't this what you are doing? You are constantly blaming your FOO for your issues. What is it that you want from them that you think you will get at this website? They cannot change the past nor can they change your perception of the way you were/are treated by them.

Your fear of confronting your FOO seems to be the biggest obstacle in your marriage. Your confidence level is zero.

It is affecting your marriage, it is affecting your ability to maintain employment, it is affecting your sanity.

What will it take to get the monkey off your back? Seriously. You attempted to confront your mother around Christmas time. That was a start. Maybe it's time to try again. Maybe confront your father this time.

Dragging this anchor around with you all your life will be your choice. No one to blame but yourself. You've named it (the source of your issues) now claim it and deal with it.

I realize that this thread like most others that you begin will probably be quickly abandoned the moment you perceive that you are not getting the responses that you desire. Again, just another indication that you are probably seeking help/answers in the wrong places.

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I didn't expect the 2x4 to come from helen. I knew there were too many others with axes to grind at me who wouldn't miss the opportunity to take a healthy swing. There are a few other people I'm sure that when they discover the opportunity will want to join the festivities and make popcorn. Evidence that it doesn't really matter where i am.

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Yes, Kasey- that's what families like ours have always done best. And it hurts. Big time. I think that calling it betrayal fits. I feel that way too. Mental Illness on one side of the family and rampant Alcoholism on the other. Great combo, huh?

What works for me? Alanon. ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics). Extreme detachment as necessary while I work thru the pain.

You can't change them Kasey. You can only change you. What I call RADICAL ACCEPTANCE.

I've decided that in my case, the best way that I can honor my mother and father in the Biblical sense is to continue to FIX ME. And do the durned best that I can to break that cycle of family crap with my own daughters. And now my grandkids, too.

I apply the same program principle with my family that I do with meetings- Take what I can use and leave the rest.

There's likely more, but I'll have to gather my thoughts here a sec....OK?

Yeah, Kasey, this stuff HURTS. No getting around it. Only getting thru it SOBER matters. No running away from it, either. That's why I'm suggesting a meeting---or three, if necessary---but then you knew that... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Kasey1:
<strong> . My religion teaches about how important families are that we can be a family forever beyond the grave into eternity. The highest religious covenants involve sealing families together forever. I however am in conflict with this because I don't WANT to be sealed to my ancestors, my ancestors past on a heritage filled with rage and deceit, addiction and alcoholism, sadism and masocism. The last thing I want is to be connectedt to any of them and the idea of being bound to them forever terrifies me. </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Kasey,

I have posted to you before over on the EN board.

Every family has it`s share of painful history. I am a genealogy buff so I have uncovered ALOT of unseemly things. Alcoholism, infidelity, mental illness, shiftlessness, slaveholding and yes even murder.

You find these things in ALL families, anyone who is into genealogy will attest to this. All you need to do is dig and you will find it.

Now how you take what you find is up to you. I think what disturbed me the most is when I uncovered slaveholders. That for some reason repulsed me like nothing else. I lost alot sleep over that.

But then whan I got thinking about it I started to believe that I uncovered that unsavoury tidbit for a reason.

I use that disgusting knowledge to make me a better person. I am the least bigoted person I know. And I pass this to my children. I have let my ancestors shortcomings make me a better person and to teach my children to be better people.

Now would I have been able to do this had I not uncovered the past? Maybe...

But I also have ancestors I greatly admire too. I try to learn from them as well.

My point is my ancestors do not define me...but I can learn from their mistakes and from their triumphs.

You ARE NOT your family...you are who YOU decide to be.

And there are valuable lessons to be learned even from the blacksheep.

I understand that you are dealing with issues with your mother...but if she is in fact mentally ill...is it not possible to forgive her? It would not be her fault if she were mentally ill.

And don`t forget that in our parents/grandparents generation alcoholism and mental illness were dirty little secrets. People didn`t talk about it much less seek help for it. While discussing my grandfathers alcoholism with my mother I asked her why neither she nor my grandmother sought help from Al Anon...her answer "Al Anon didn`t exist back then"

I didn`t even think of that...but now that I do it`s helped me to forgive some of my mother`s shortcomings....stuff she passed along to us children. She could not have gotten help because there was NONE to be had.

Kasey don`t deny your family history...take it and use it to make YOUR life better.

<small>[ January 17, 2005, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: Daisy37 ]</small>

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I've started going to a new fellowship helen. I went to four meetings last week. I could go to one today at noon if I leave early to be home for my one oclock appt with a person I traded massage with.

I could list the fellowships I've been in in the last 10 years of recovery, SA, Alanon, ACOA, SCA, I founded ACDF, I abandoned ACDF but it's content still exists online. Actually I was chased out of acdf by another codependent clingy person and the only sober option was to cut all contact with that fellowship in order to cut all contact with that person. I've also looked at workaholics anonymous and emotions anonymous, i've popped in and out of SLAA and it never seemed to really fit me. i've looked at CODA stuff but can't get connected with it really. I've done a variation of SA which is a SA for LDS (religious group).

now it seems i'm in a lds all addiction fellowship that welcomes codependents too. while i'm unconfortable there telling people about my lust I find it easy to talk about my rage with this group. I can say 'f**k' and they still seem to accept me despite my open emnity. Each time i go it seems to help but I still feel alone. I still feel distanced from hope of happiness in my own home.

I suppose I'll get in half a meeting today by driving across town and back in an hour or so. I havn't gotten any names to call from that group yet. I'm half surrendering my lust each time I go and half letting myself get high looking at certain hot babes in the new fellowship. ya I'm sick, really really sick. i know. I don't like myself much this way but I think it will get better. I'm not lusting as much as the first meeting I went to. I have almost stopped objectifying even the hot lookin ones now.
I have a sponsor I can talk to. I'll bend his ear for a while now and see where that goes.

thanks for your sharing helen.

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Daisy thankyou. I hear what you say, I just don't always know how to do it...

what triggered me so much recently was that my mother came to me for help, I even invited her to let me help her. I thought I could do it. I thought I could help her and I tried I really tried to. I've gotten told the same thing, that the help didn't exist back then. I know it didn't. I know that the older generation considers their need for help the most terrible of things that they could possibly imagine that they must cover up and hide at all costs.

it's just heartwrenching for me to witness. it's even more heartwrenching for me to not be able to really help her. the sense of betrayal I think I could live with if I knew that progress was really being made that I was making a difference. But when i see the rejection of help, the casting of aspersions and the ducking when help is offered. Well i don't know how to handle it. I reciprocate in kind as a defense sort of knee jerk reaction to the pain. the truth is always sacraficed on the alter of generational belief system. This is far too big for me to change. Far too deep for me to delve. I have to make it back to the surface for air, to not dive so deep. I have to live more superficial around them, if I can. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

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Forgiveness. Daily or more often, use liberally and as necessary. Forgiveness is a choice.

It helped me to realize that my parents couldn't teach me what they didn't know. Or their parents, either for that matter. All the way back.....

Once I realized what I DID'T KNOW and was NEVER TAUGHT, it then became my responisibility to learn and teach these things to my kids....

But- I am very sure to this day that my parents LOVE ME. They always have. They always will.

Just as God loved us while we were yet sinners, you see....

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I thought I could forgive. I thought I had forgiven. I found that my forgiveness was incomplete, that my charity was/is insufficient for the depth of the pain. that my efforts to heal the sick is thwarted by the lack of complete pre-forgiveness. the joke's on me.

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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by HelenWheels:
But- I am very sure to this day that my parents LOVE ME. They always have. They always will.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I know my parents love me but I can't endure what they/SHE calls love.

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Kasey,

You don`t live with your mother anymore right?

So why would her reluctance to seek help have such a negative bearing on you?

When my mother and I had our alcoholism talk I asked her why she didn`t try out an Al Anon meeting now.

Her answer "What for...I don`t need it"

I would beg to differ but my mother is a grown women. And I am not responsible for her. I am responsible for myself and for my children for as long as they are young and live in my home. After that they will be responsible for themselves.

Our cycle of dysfunction, co dependance and substance abuse will end with me...I hope...I hope I have caught things in the nick of time before anything negative could be passed on to my sons. Time will tell.

I am doing the best that I can and that`s all I can do. Really that`s all anyone can do.

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There's hope as long as your Mom is still on this Earth, Kasey.

After 20-something years since I first sought help with my addictive problems, my Mom has been off the sauce long enough to talk to me some. A year or so ago, she was threatening her oncologist that if he didn't increase her pain meds (advanced colon cancer), she'd start drinking again.... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

Confrontational-type discussions have been had in a definite non-confrontational style intermittently thru the years.

My mom remembers things I have said over the years, Kasey. Stuff I don't even remember saying.

Believe me Kasey, when I say, you ARE making a difference!

Stuff like this doesn't get fixed overnight.

Progress, not perfection! ( <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> in case Pep is lurking this thread!)

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indeed, well it's not been overnight either. In my case it's been 43 years and it's still not fixed. I guess I lose faith when I see the LACK of progress over that time. I really need some new glases. there must be progress. sometimes I just can't see it, much less FEEL it, much less have CONFIDENCE in it. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

and that's just the pain of it isn't it? I dared believe that because she seems to say the things that perhaps she understood what she was saying... <img border="0" alt="[Teary]" title="" src="graemlins/teary.gif" />

the truth really bites.

<small>[ January 17, 2005, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Kasey1 ]</small>

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Kasey, you said...
I dared believe that because she seems to say the things that perhaps she understood what she was saying... <img border="0" alt="[Teary]" title="" src="graemlins/teary.gif" />

Can you dare to believe that you are called to plant seeds and that it's God that causes the growth? That only God can open her understanding, not you or anyone else for that matter?

Can you dare to believe that God is a God of Restoration? In His time, not mine or yours?

Can you find some confidence in these things?

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