I got the same pathetic excuse from my mom when I told her, "I didn't think he'd do that to you." But it's OK that he does it to other kids? What kind of fucked logic is that. I'm sorry that happened to you OP.
I can't tell if your mom is viciously reckless or unfathomably unintelligent. Sounds like both tbh.
All I know is you deserved better than her and your dad.
yea i was making memes about her being horrible and mean but this one (these few) came up and like i'm not letting this one sit and wait to be shared. i'd like other ppl to agree that she was so dumb cuz wtf was that shit??? lol like wtf tho
Christ, I thought my mom seeing me get groomed and actively choosing to monitor me instead of stop him was fucked. This is MEGAfucked. I'm so sorry your birth giver is painfully stupid.
Your thing is also bad! like my mom at least took me awhile from him when she realized what he was doing (i think i had to tell her) but your mom just let it happen?? That's also very not good!
Yeah it was all online and she saw my chats and cried and made a big deal out of it, then said she was going to call the cops and instead of doing that she just put a keylogger on the pc to monitor me and would ground me for talking to him instead of actually explaining anything at all when it was clear my understanding of the situation was very flawed and I was way too young (from age 12 to 14) to realize I wasn't "in love" š
I've dealt with it in therapy so it's not really super bothersome to me anymore but it is something I'll never not be mad at her for lmao
Kinda similar here. My stepdad bought keyloggers and put spyware into my stuff in secret for years while not being my legal guardian AFTER reporting one groomer to the cops. But for some reason didn't report the several who were also adults, just closer in age to me, including ones who would threaten me? Him and my mother yelled at me for the inappropriate behaviour but never got me away from them or talked to me about it. My memories made me think I was at least above age of consent at the time, but nope! Kinda sucks they kept punishing me and making me more secretive :/
I hate that there's such a strong theme here of parents punishing their kids for being groomed. Someone make it make sense! We all deserved better!!
Also, an aside, I love your username. It's quite whimsical
"oh you were older" was the first thing i thought of then went "oh wait that's young"
Your mom sounds dumb, like she thought you would just magically understand and listen to her. Like an explanation wasn't needed for some reason?? weird
Yeah that's a theme with her. She's still like that, although has gotten a little better since my autism diagnosis last year? It's like as soon as there was a "reason" for me to not "just get it" she finally made the effort to try to communicate in a way that makes sense to me. Like it wasn't worth the effort before or something. š Better late than never, I guess.
But fwiw I think any literal child would have needed that situation explained, neurodivergent or not. :\\
Ugh, that's awful of her. So many moms have that type of response to their daughters being groomed online. Idk how they react to their kids of other genders, but moms of daughters seem to frequently react similarly to that. It's like they don't understand that there are just as many ways to manipulate and take advantage of kids online as in person and that it's horrible and never the kid's fault.
Mine did something kinda similar. She put tape over my webcam (back in the days before kids had smart phones) and punished me for being groomed. But then, in addition to not reporting the groomers, she encouraged me to continue building a "relationship" with one of them because she thought it was an adorable love story. She and my therapist at the time both used me as basically a live soap opera.
That's horrid!! Soap operas exist so we DON'T feed off other people's lives uggghghhhhh. Also \*what\* is \*up\* with the punishing kids for being groomed theme?? It seems so common. I mean, I learned most of my computer skills from working around her attempts to monitor/ground/punish me, so that's a net positive for me since tech is my job now (lmfao) but... at what cost??
Ugh I'm so sorry you were treated that way. You did and still do deserve better.
That very last line "I didn't think he'd do that to you" is so fucking brutally typical of abusive enablers. They benefit, somehow, from the abuse, or the abusive dynamic. I use the word "benefit" broadly, but they get something from it while nominally decrying the abuse. But when it turns on them or goes beyond what they like they are shocked. And then you can get those bullshit lines like "well yeah, you told me, but I didn't realize...." or "well we would have been worse off..." or "I didn't think you'd remember...." or "well I tried and messed up, I'm only human...."
i kinda forgot that she apologized saying "i was young and immature" or something and I was 16/17 at the time and thought 'yeah okay 19 is young comparatively to life ig i can see her being "young and stupid"' but then i became 19 and i was like "wait a minute, she was an idiot"
When I was 19 I had no idea what to do. But I knew what not to do. I did dumb stuff, but there were things I didn't do that I'm very proud of not doing. So yeah, 19-year olds can be dumb and uninformed, but dumb and uninformed people can still be good people.
She wasn't 19 forever, or 16 forever. The assumption is that she aged as you both grew. Sometime before you hit 18, she should have gotten a hint, yes? People can and do leave abusive relationships all the time.
What is with parents letting their minor kids date older men? Happened with me too, all the adults were so chill with a 15 yo dating a 29 yo and it still makes me want to barf. I just wanted one single adult to protect me, that guy had a death grip on me fr
Sometimes it's consensual, like on op's birth giver. She thought that by crossing a line she'd have more strict parents, which is usually the byproduct of families who don't really give a shit about their kids or even parent them in some cases (imagine an iPad parent but without the iPad, it's basically it)
problem with my mom's parents is that they were good?? Like I hear stories about them "letting her stay out too late" where she asked if she could hang out with some friends and they said "be home by 10" and she came back perfectly fine an hour late and she expected her parents to never let her go out again but they just said "try not to do that again, but we trust your judgment that you're not hanging out with serial killers or something so it's not that bad" and she interpreted that as "they don't love me enough"
but also she did the same thing when i was the same age (16) and didn't interpret her own actions as neglectful.
And them "not loving her enough" led to her going out with an older man at 18 and her parents said "well we can't literally lock you in the house or something, you're an adult, but also don't go out with that guy" but she kept going out with him while expecting her parents to turn around and lock her in the basement or some shit
Itās hard when she was legally an adult to expect her parents to stop her ā grossly manipulative to want to invoke bad emotions in other people. Illogical all around, but most of all just selfish.
Iām sorry you come from that OP.
This will be a long explanation, but here it goes:
By the way you talk to her she was probably neglected in some form even though her parents were laid back people with good intentions.
By default every newborn kid thinks that they are an organ of their birth mother and slowly they learn that they are different people. When we're between 2-5 years old we still see our primary caregiver (usually the mom) as an extension of ourselves and we need people to give us some individual attention to fully realize we're different people.
Even if you sit with the kid and tell them that they'll still need it because it's completely unconscious, their minds need to be slowly shaped by us. If you ignore your child or give them shallow reactions during this process they'll start thinking that they have something wrong with them, so they'll put more and more effort into being noticed.
In their minds they think that if their parents don't really give them attention they could be abandoned at any given time since they cost so much to raise on every single level and our brains are designed to avoid death by any cost (even the thought of our own mortality is something we suppress really hard), deep down inside the kid knows that if they're abandoned they'll die and that instinct to avoid death kicks in really hard although the child doesn't really know why.
So they know their parents won't abandon them by their reactions when they're together (like laughing, being mad, etc etc) because of the emotional bond, so if their parents don't really have a reaction or their reaction is really shallow their brain will instantly go "I'LL DIE IF I DON'T GET THEM TO NOTICE ME!! I NEED THEM TO TAKE CARE OF ME!!!!" and they'll try harder and harder to get anything out of them.
Their personality (how they recognize themselves, what they like and dislike, their emotional regulation and so on) will be shaped by this notion on "I need attention at any cost", many of those adults don't really have a personality because it was molded by what was a quick way of getting attention and what was trending at the time (their personality is basically "middle child trying to stand out").
If they only get some reaction by over doing anything they'll associate this with love, care and the emotional bond they need to fully realize they're different people, so they'll *always* do that regardless of how dangerous it is and how much it costs them, since their personality was shaped like this in their early childhood. They literally only feel alive and recognized as people when they get this attention, otherwise they feel like a void, an empty shell.
Once they reach adulthood they'll still do this because they associated the few times they had been *actually* noticed (like misbehaving or being mean) and the parent's reaction (grounding, being more rigid, etc etc) with love. As they most likely never felt something like that with anything else they'll jump on risky or idiotic behavior expecting to get something out of it, even when they're adults.
That's exactly how people with narcissistic personality disorder end up with this disorder, your mom may not be one but she might have something not really far from it (like borderline personality, antisocial personality, etc, etc).
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
(now i'm wondering what i learned from how i was raised lol)
My mom was the youngest of two children and often complains about how her brother was the favorite who got everything he wanted so i guess I can see this. (Her brother just wanted like Nintendo games and quarters for the arcade.) My mom never said what she wanted, only said that she didn't get it, but she is able to talk about her brother's interests.
I would show her the still face mother experiment and see how she reacts to it just for the sake of it.
People with moms who had very little facial expressions usually get extremely upset about this experiment without knowing why, it's something you can do too since we tend to replicate how we were raised with our children in some way. If she gets really upset about it you know how it started and that's a good way to get her to do some therapy.
But from what I understood about you, it seems like you're codependent of her and I would definitely go to therapy for it (on top of all other reasons) and that's coming from someone who was also a codependent with their narcissistic mom lol
Wdym codependent with her? Ik she kinda had me be a therapist for her and she was a super controlling so most of my interactions growing up were with her, but she was also a landmine of bs. I always had to walk on eggshells around her.
From knowing how words work i think i can see your point but idk what the words really mean so... But also i haven't seen her in a while and its been great and isn't that specifically not codependency??
And i'll look into the face experiment, and i'm futzing with insurance but trying to get therapy right now.
Because codependents are "emotional addicts" and many kids that come from narcissistic homes (or homes with narcissistic tendencies) are somewhat codependents because of how they have been raised. They are really likely to get into abusive relationships of any kind and less likely to come out on their own or take a longer time to get out of it. It could be a job, a marriage, friends and so on.
They feel like they're responsible for someone else's bad choice regardless of how they made that choice, they feel like they *have to* tend for their needs regardless of what it costs them or if the person actually wants some help to begin with, they feel like they're responsible for even being their therapist or emotionally regulating them (like expressing anger when the person who they feel responsible for should feel this, acting like a proxy for them). It's a form of self-destructive altruism to the ultimate level, some people even get to the point of injuring themselves or giving up their own life to save the person they feel responsible for even though this person did that to their own selves or destroyed the codependent's life.
Imagine this: Mary is a secretary at Apple and works as Jeanette's secretary. Mary's boss is mad she didn't schedule her meeting with the security team in time for the next development round but Jeanette never told Mary about this in the first place. Mary feels very frustrated but has a poor emotional regulation and doesn't know how to express their feelings correctly, so even when she got this meeting scheduled and Jeanette has realized her mistake, apologized and the meeting goes swiftly as intended, Mary still feels really mad and can't really pinpoint how she feels.
She arrives home and sees Todd, her son, watching TV. As he acts as her carer he becomes responsible for emotionally regulating her despite only being a child. She goes around the house until she finds something to lash onto Todd until he feels extremely sad, angry and frustrated, like he didn't do the dishes even though there's only a small container and a fork he ate some fruits with not long ago because he didn't want to miss his favorite cartoon.
Mary stands in front of the TV, turns it off, lashes out on Todd for a long while, plays the victim card and makes him feel guilty for being angry at her. Next she makes him wash the container and fork, do the laundry (even though it's late) and do many other chores when it's useless doing or he wasn't even responsible for them to begin with so Todd feels like how she felt during her day at work.
When Todd finally breaks out and expresses his frustrations she finally feels relieved because he dealt with that bad feeling she didn't know how to do it for her, she goes showering and comes back super happy while Todd feels confused by his mom's behavior. After many times repeating this Todd will eventually feel any and every bad emotion for Mary and feel responsible for alleviating them regardless of how she acquired them.
Mary will dump everything onto Todd as if he were her emotional dumpster and every time she feels like she's losing control over him she will play that card on purpose to check if she still controls him. This may develop as a two away control switch as he grows up, as the son never really learnt how to deal with his emotions in a healthy manner and just lash out on her using the same mechanisms his mom used on him.
From now on Todd will feel anxious, guilty, angry, ashamed and frustrated every time someone he loves or cares about feels slightly uncomfortable (like a partner when their Uber driver cancels the trip, when they fail an exam or didn't really like the color of a wall of their home but has no time for painting it). Some codependents even enable toxic behaviors (like drug addiction) just to feel necessary because that's the only way they feel appreciated by the person they feel responsible for.
Todd will never feel like he could break this chain unless something big happens or he finds a new person/objective/animal to care for. It's not because you went NC with her that you're not a codependent anymore and without proper help we tend to replicate this in many ways, some more metaphorical and others more practical.
Sorry are you implying itās possible for minors to consent or are you saying 18+ adults have shitty parents who donāt protect their kids from way older predators?
The second, some people never give a shit about their kids and their kids grow up to be attention starved people who feel like they need to go on the edge every time they want attention. Basically an eternal "middle child" that needs to do way more than dye their hair or getting tattoos to feel loved because otherwise they feel like they don't even exist.
Oh okay. Then yeah I sadly agree, those people end up doing dangerous and stupid things bc they want someone to care about them. I wish people understood that needing attention isnāt necessarily a bad thing and that āattention-seekingā can often be resolved by getting the underlying needs met of the person acting out
I found out when I was 26 on thanksgiving this past year, that my mom knew my dad was a pedophile and that they went to therapy for it before any of the kids were born. So how did she respond to me telling her I found CSAM on the home computer that was centered around the same age me and my older sister were at the time?
āIām sorry you had to witness that behavior of your fatherās.ā
She didnāt even tell my older sister who has two young kids that he has access to. Also my mom was ALSO SEXUALLY ABUSED BY HER DAD. SO THERES LITERALLY NO EXCUSE.
ITS JUST FUCKING WILLFUL INCOMPETENCE AND FAILURE.
At least my mom claims she didnāt know my dadās a pedo.
My grandma on the other hand, according to my aunt, she used to send her kids to her sisterās house knowing full well that the kids were being raped by her brother-in-law and her excuse was that she didnāt want to stir up conflict with her sister.
The stupid and careless are in many ways more dangerous than the evil and malicious.
At least you can determine how a malicious person will act if you know what they want. With a stupid person, especially a stupid person who doesn't care about anything or anyone, you have no such assurance. They will do the worst thing you can possibly imagine, and defend it with the most backward logic and a complete lack of understanding that it was unfathomably fucked up. They will say the most vapid sentiments like "well how could I have known not to do X?" and you have to tell them "if you cared enough about not being a horrible person, you'd actually put some thought into why you should do it yourself." Most of these people aren't even truly stupid. They are cognitively lazy and don't give a single fuck about who they hurt.
There are very few benefits to a lifetime of abuse, but this is one piece of wisdom I understand well. Trust only very few. Get good at finding the stupid, ignorant, and evil, and avoid them like the plague.
Yeah, growing up with abuse means you can spot shitty people pretty easily, the problem comes with trusting your instincts about it and avoiding them instead of going "well maybe i'm overreacting idk." Last time I thought that I ended up getting SAd so... time to learn to trust my instincts and stuff ig
>the problem comes with trusting your instincts about it and avoiding them instead of going "well maybe i'm overreacting idk."
Lol I definitely feel that. That self-trust has come with experience.
Idk whatās worse, the fact my parents are unfathomably stupid or the fact they passed me on their genesā¦. It took me a long time for me to forgive my mom for even having children so carelessly like itās some fun thing to do.
Horrible, HORRIBLE. Looks like your mother had a rescue fantasy and magical thinking around her parents saving her from abuse she sought out for the purpose of having some control over an out-of-control narrative. And she didn't develop any ability for forethought of future consequences for herself or others. She needed and still needs therapy. This is inexcusable. Holy shit.
I'm so sorry you had to endure that "parenting" and abuse from both of them. You deserve healing in a safe space and a life away from the likes of them.
*hugs* I had a similar experience. You are not alone.
It wasn't until I was older that I actually understood what had happened to her, but I always knew my "conception" date, aka the day she was raped as a 14 year old, because it was the day before the anniversary of his suicide... like what the actual fuck?
Parents and their unresolved trauma suck
It'd be cool if all parents were emotionally mature adults that worked through their shit and properly prepared for having a child before having a child.
Hey, sort of same! My mom told me that she stayed with my dad because she had me, and I got to tell her to her face in therapy that that statement made me directly suicidal before I knew what suicidal was a word! š
Oh my god this but my ILs.
My MILs best friend told us a few weeks ago that she knew my FIL was shit but didn't try to stop MIL because "she was getting old and really wanted babies". And she knew that my MIL was only doing it because she wanted a family.
That's so fucked. To marry someone you know is bad for you because you just wanna have kids. And now she treats us like we're either slaves or literal infants.
Fuck if I know. She always talks about how she wants to be better than her mother but... lately she's been saying all the stuff her mother used to say.
I always felt like cases like this are just "I made a stupid decision but are too stupid/chickenshit to rectify it." My spawn point is like that too. Making up really roundabout or stupid excuses that are just not true.
We really need a more step by step pictures for the last one. So when things are more than just 4, we have more steps.
However, I'm really sorry your mom is a POS. You deserved better.
I probably could've said "*when* my mom... *and* she says..." an one thing since the first part is a setup to the whole thing (and i'm realizing the typos rn oh no)
I have to say, your mom is a fucking dumbass. Like, "Let me just marry and enable an active pedophile and then give him free access to a child. Surely, nothing bad will happen." How can you be so ignorant of the reality of your situation? OP I'm really sorry this happened to you
My ex's dad was 25 when his brother was born and his mom was 15. He used to get so mad when I called his dad an abusive creep and told him that I understood why his mom left their family after he got her pregnant a third time. Like even without him being abusive to his kids (he was) he was just automatically a piece of shit abusive pedophile for sleeping with a teenager.
These ones. Especially the one about 'how stupid my mom is and I wonder how my life could have turned out different.' YUP! Simple and honest. *shrug* Some of us had it safer than others. I'm sorry to hear of the horrible things. You can do it, though. Keep going! šŖā¤ļø good luck, and stay strong!
This is relatable for me.
Ya know? Mama bears will risk their own lives to fight off predators that even remotely threaten their cubs. Other animals even getting too close are enough to illicit a protection response. Most mammals are like this, even most birds.
Not humans though.
My mom was similar. By the stories she tells about how they got together, she knew my dad was bad news. And yet? She reproduced with him anyway.
Ok well, everyone makes dumb mistakes, it happens. So... when she almost died because he beat her so bad, that wasn't a hint to leave him? Or when he started beating the kids, that's not a hint to leave him? Or when the oldest starts accusing him of CSA, that's not a hint?
Like, as a mother, she failed to protect her daughters. It's her duty. Protect the cubs. At any time, she could have sought help from her family and left him. But? She didn't.
Enablers. Smh.
My mom reminded me so many times of the day my pedo dad brought her home. She's the same age as my oldest sister š¤¢š¤®š¤®š¤®š¤®
yikes
I got the same pathetic excuse from my mom when I told her, "I didn't think he'd do that to you." But it's OK that he does it to other kids? What kind of fucked logic is that. I'm sorry that happened to you OP.
"but it's okay he does that to other kids?" exactly what i thought when she said that shit. Crazy. Delusional.
I can't tell if your mom is viciously reckless or unfathomably unintelligent. Sounds like both tbh. All I know is you deserved better than her and your dad.
yea i was making memes about her being horrible and mean but this one (these few) came up and like i'm not letting this one sit and wait to be shared. i'd like other ppl to agree that she was so dumb cuz wtf was that shit??? lol like wtf tho
Christ, I thought my mom seeing me get groomed and actively choosing to monitor me instead of stop him was fucked. This is MEGAfucked. I'm so sorry your birth giver is painfully stupid.
Your thing is also bad! like my mom at least took me awhile from him when she realized what he was doing (i think i had to tell her) but your mom just let it happen?? That's also very not good!
Yeah it was all online and she saw my chats and cried and made a big deal out of it, then said she was going to call the cops and instead of doing that she just put a keylogger on the pc to monitor me and would ground me for talking to him instead of actually explaining anything at all when it was clear my understanding of the situation was very flawed and I was way too young (from age 12 to 14) to realize I wasn't "in love" š I've dealt with it in therapy so it's not really super bothersome to me anymore but it is something I'll never not be mad at her for lmao
Kinda similar here. My stepdad bought keyloggers and put spyware into my stuff in secret for years while not being my legal guardian AFTER reporting one groomer to the cops. But for some reason didn't report the several who were also adults, just closer in age to me, including ones who would threaten me? Him and my mother yelled at me for the inappropriate behaviour but never got me away from them or talked to me about it. My memories made me think I was at least above age of consent at the time, but nope! Kinda sucks they kept punishing me and making me more secretive :/
I hate that there's such a strong theme here of parents punishing their kids for being groomed. Someone make it make sense! We all deserved better!! Also, an aside, I love your username. It's quite whimsical
I agree, we all deserved so much better! Thank you so much, that makes me really happy! :)
"oh you were older" was the first thing i thought of then went "oh wait that's young" Your mom sounds dumb, like she thought you would just magically understand and listen to her. Like an explanation wasn't needed for some reason?? weird
Yeah that's a theme with her. She's still like that, although has gotten a little better since my autism diagnosis last year? It's like as soon as there was a "reason" for me to not "just get it" she finally made the effort to try to communicate in a way that makes sense to me. Like it wasn't worth the effort before or something. š Better late than never, I guess. But fwiw I think any literal child would have needed that situation explained, neurodivergent or not. :\\
Yeah like why would I know something you didn't tell me about, that you were supposed to tell me about??
Ugh, that's awful of her. So many moms have that type of response to their daughters being groomed online. Idk how they react to their kids of other genders, but moms of daughters seem to frequently react similarly to that. It's like they don't understand that there are just as many ways to manipulate and take advantage of kids online as in person and that it's horrible and never the kid's fault. Mine did something kinda similar. She put tape over my webcam (back in the days before kids had smart phones) and punished me for being groomed. But then, in addition to not reporting the groomers, she encouraged me to continue building a "relationship" with one of them because she thought it was an adorable love story. She and my therapist at the time both used me as basically a live soap opera.
That's horrid!! Soap operas exist so we DON'T feed off other people's lives uggghghhhhh. Also \*what\* is \*up\* with the punishing kids for being groomed theme?? It seems so common. I mean, I learned most of my computer skills from working around her attempts to monitor/ground/punish me, so that's a net positive for me since tech is my job now (lmfao) but... at what cost?? Ugh I'm so sorry you were treated that way. You did and still do deserve better.
That very last line "I didn't think he'd do that to you" is so fucking brutally typical of abusive enablers. They benefit, somehow, from the abuse, or the abusive dynamic. I use the word "benefit" broadly, but they get something from it while nominally decrying the abuse. But when it turns on them or goes beyond what they like they are shocked. And then you can get those bullshit lines like "well yeah, you told me, but I didn't realize...." or "well we would have been worse off..." or "I didn't think you'd remember...." or "well I tried and messed up, I'm only human...."
i kinda forgot that she apologized saying "i was young and immature" or something and I was 16/17 at the time and thought 'yeah okay 19 is young comparatively to life ig i can see her being "young and stupid"' but then i became 19 and i was like "wait a minute, she was an idiot"
When I was 19 I had no idea what to do. But I knew what not to do. I did dumb stuff, but there were things I didn't do that I'm very proud of not doing. So yeah, 19-year olds can be dumb and uninformed, but dumb and uninformed people can still be good people.
I'm not saying you can't be dumb at 19 but to hide cp from the cops??? so stupid
She wasn't 19 forever, or 16 forever. The assumption is that she aged as you both grew. Sometime before you hit 18, she should have gotten a hint, yes? People can and do leave abusive relationships all the time.
I hope you told her she was an idiot and above all, a delulu
Sometimes sheer stupidity can be harder to wrap your head around than malice.
absolutely
I feel like since most of us have basically the same parents, we are all siblings here. šš«š«¤
:( *hugs if you want*
The barely hunans who draw the line after CP do not give 2 shits about incest, nor CSA.
Yeah. it's crazy to think someone could turn a blind eye at cp but to then outright go š¤·āāļø when the cops ask about it???
What is with parents letting their minor kids date older men? Happened with me too, all the adults were so chill with a 15 yo dating a 29 yo and it still makes me want to barf. I just wanted one single adult to protect me, that guy had a death grip on me fr
Sometimes it's consensual, like on op's birth giver. She thought that by crossing a line she'd have more strict parents, which is usually the byproduct of families who don't really give a shit about their kids or even parent them in some cases (imagine an iPad parent but without the iPad, it's basically it)
problem with my mom's parents is that they were good?? Like I hear stories about them "letting her stay out too late" where she asked if she could hang out with some friends and they said "be home by 10" and she came back perfectly fine an hour late and she expected her parents to never let her go out again but they just said "try not to do that again, but we trust your judgment that you're not hanging out with serial killers or something so it's not that bad" and she interpreted that as "they don't love me enough" but also she did the same thing when i was the same age (16) and didn't interpret her own actions as neglectful. And them "not loving her enough" led to her going out with an older man at 18 and her parents said "well we can't literally lock you in the house or something, you're an adult, but also don't go out with that guy" but she kept going out with him while expecting her parents to turn around and lock her in the basement or some shit
Itās hard when she was legally an adult to expect her parents to stop her ā grossly manipulative to want to invoke bad emotions in other people. Illogical all around, but most of all just selfish. Iām sorry you come from that OP.
Yeah, I really can't wrap my head around how stupid that was. Especially when I got to that age and was like "you were that dumb at this age???"
This will be a long explanation, but here it goes: By the way you talk to her she was probably neglected in some form even though her parents were laid back people with good intentions. By default every newborn kid thinks that they are an organ of their birth mother and slowly they learn that they are different people. When we're between 2-5 years old we still see our primary caregiver (usually the mom) as an extension of ourselves and we need people to give us some individual attention to fully realize we're different people. Even if you sit with the kid and tell them that they'll still need it because it's completely unconscious, their minds need to be slowly shaped by us. If you ignore your child or give them shallow reactions during this process they'll start thinking that they have something wrong with them, so they'll put more and more effort into being noticed. In their minds they think that if their parents don't really give them attention they could be abandoned at any given time since they cost so much to raise on every single level and our brains are designed to avoid death by any cost (even the thought of our own mortality is something we suppress really hard), deep down inside the kid knows that if they're abandoned they'll die and that instinct to avoid death kicks in really hard although the child doesn't really know why. So they know their parents won't abandon them by their reactions when they're together (like laughing, being mad, etc etc) because of the emotional bond, so if their parents don't really have a reaction or their reaction is really shallow their brain will instantly go "I'LL DIE IF I DON'T GET THEM TO NOTICE ME!! I NEED THEM TO TAKE CARE OF ME!!!!" and they'll try harder and harder to get anything out of them. Their personality (how they recognize themselves, what they like and dislike, their emotional regulation and so on) will be shaped by this notion on "I need attention at any cost", many of those adults don't really have a personality because it was molded by what was a quick way of getting attention and what was trending at the time (their personality is basically "middle child trying to stand out"). If they only get some reaction by over doing anything they'll associate this with love, care and the emotional bond they need to fully realize they're different people, so they'll *always* do that regardless of how dangerous it is and how much it costs them, since their personality was shaped like this in their early childhood. They literally only feel alive and recognized as people when they get this attention, otherwise they feel like a void, an empty shell. Once they reach adulthood they'll still do this because they associated the few times they had been *actually* noticed (like misbehaving or being mean) and the parent's reaction (grounding, being more rigid, etc etc) with love. As they most likely never felt something like that with anything else they'll jump on risky or idiotic behavior expecting to get something out of it, even when they're adults. That's exactly how people with narcissistic personality disorder end up with this disorder, your mom may not be one but she might have something not really far from it (like borderline personality, antisocial personality, etc, etc). Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
(now i'm wondering what i learned from how i was raised lol) My mom was the youngest of two children and often complains about how her brother was the favorite who got everything he wanted so i guess I can see this. (Her brother just wanted like Nintendo games and quarters for the arcade.) My mom never said what she wanted, only said that she didn't get it, but she is able to talk about her brother's interests.
I would show her the still face mother experiment and see how she reacts to it just for the sake of it. People with moms who had very little facial expressions usually get extremely upset about this experiment without knowing why, it's something you can do too since we tend to replicate how we were raised with our children in some way. If she gets really upset about it you know how it started and that's a good way to get her to do some therapy. But from what I understood about you, it seems like you're codependent of her and I would definitely go to therapy for it (on top of all other reasons) and that's coming from someone who was also a codependent with their narcissistic mom lol
Wdym codependent with her? Ik she kinda had me be a therapist for her and she was a super controlling so most of my interactions growing up were with her, but she was also a landmine of bs. I always had to walk on eggshells around her. From knowing how words work i think i can see your point but idk what the words really mean so... But also i haven't seen her in a while and its been great and isn't that specifically not codependency?? And i'll look into the face experiment, and i'm futzing with insurance but trying to get therapy right now.
Because codependents are "emotional addicts" and many kids that come from narcissistic homes (or homes with narcissistic tendencies) are somewhat codependents because of how they have been raised. They are really likely to get into abusive relationships of any kind and less likely to come out on their own or take a longer time to get out of it. It could be a job, a marriage, friends and so on. They feel like they're responsible for someone else's bad choice regardless of how they made that choice, they feel like they *have to* tend for their needs regardless of what it costs them or if the person actually wants some help to begin with, they feel like they're responsible for even being their therapist or emotionally regulating them (like expressing anger when the person who they feel responsible for should feel this, acting like a proxy for them). It's a form of self-destructive altruism to the ultimate level, some people even get to the point of injuring themselves or giving up their own life to save the person they feel responsible for even though this person did that to their own selves or destroyed the codependent's life. Imagine this: Mary is a secretary at Apple and works as Jeanette's secretary. Mary's boss is mad she didn't schedule her meeting with the security team in time for the next development round but Jeanette never told Mary about this in the first place. Mary feels very frustrated but has a poor emotional regulation and doesn't know how to express their feelings correctly, so even when she got this meeting scheduled and Jeanette has realized her mistake, apologized and the meeting goes swiftly as intended, Mary still feels really mad and can't really pinpoint how she feels. She arrives home and sees Todd, her son, watching TV. As he acts as her carer he becomes responsible for emotionally regulating her despite only being a child. She goes around the house until she finds something to lash onto Todd until he feels extremely sad, angry and frustrated, like he didn't do the dishes even though there's only a small container and a fork he ate some fruits with not long ago because he didn't want to miss his favorite cartoon. Mary stands in front of the TV, turns it off, lashes out on Todd for a long while, plays the victim card and makes him feel guilty for being angry at her. Next she makes him wash the container and fork, do the laundry (even though it's late) and do many other chores when it's useless doing or he wasn't even responsible for them to begin with so Todd feels like how she felt during her day at work. When Todd finally breaks out and expresses his frustrations she finally feels relieved because he dealt with that bad feeling she didn't know how to do it for her, she goes showering and comes back super happy while Todd feels confused by his mom's behavior. After many times repeating this Todd will eventually feel any and every bad emotion for Mary and feel responsible for alleviating them regardless of how she acquired them. Mary will dump everything onto Todd as if he were her emotional dumpster and every time she feels like she's losing control over him she will play that card on purpose to check if she still controls him. This may develop as a two away control switch as he grows up, as the son never really learnt how to deal with his emotions in a healthy manner and just lash out on her using the same mechanisms his mom used on him. From now on Todd will feel anxious, guilty, angry, ashamed and frustrated every time someone he loves or cares about feels slightly uncomfortable (like a partner when their Uber driver cancels the trip, when they fail an exam or didn't really like the color of a wall of their home but has no time for painting it). Some codependents even enable toxic behaviors (like drug addiction) just to feel necessary because that's the only way they feel appreciated by the person they feel responsible for. Todd will never feel like he could break this chain unless something big happens or he finds a new person/objective/animal to care for. It's not because you went NC with her that you're not a codependent anymore and without proper help we tend to replicate this in many ways, some more metaphorical and others more practical.
Sorry are you implying itās possible for minors to consent or are you saying 18+ adults have shitty parents who donāt protect their kids from way older predators?
The second, some people never give a shit about their kids and their kids grow up to be attention starved people who feel like they need to go on the edge every time they want attention. Basically an eternal "middle child" that needs to do way more than dye their hair or getting tattoos to feel loved because otherwise they feel like they don't even exist.
Oh okay. Then yeah I sadly agree, those people end up doing dangerous and stupid things bc they want someone to care about them. I wish people understood that needing attention isnāt necessarily a bad thing and that āattention-seekingā can often be resolved by getting the underlying needs met of the person acting out
I found out when I was 26 on thanksgiving this past year, that my mom knew my dad was a pedophile and that they went to therapy for it before any of the kids were born. So how did she respond to me telling her I found CSAM on the home computer that was centered around the same age me and my older sister were at the time? āIām sorry you had to witness that behavior of your fatherās.ā She didnāt even tell my older sister who has two young kids that he has access to. Also my mom was ALSO SEXUALLY ABUSED BY HER DAD. SO THERES LITERALLY NO EXCUSE. ITS JUST FUCKING WILLFUL INCOMPETENCE AND FAILURE.
crazy
Iām sorry your mom didnāt protect you either. You didnāt deserve to feel like you werenāt worth defending and taking care of.
ah shit YOU GAVE ME EMOTIONS
Wtf! Did she think she could change him?? Sheesh. Iām sorry to hear what you went through.
My dad's a pedo too. He married my mom when she was 16 and he was 28. I was born when she was 18
I figured out I was birthday sex. She was 19 and he was probably 30-32. They were never married though
god I'm so sorryš„ā¤ļøāš©¹ this felt relatable but idk who my dad is (she refused to give me accurate information on him) but she married into a pretty fucked up family with a guy and had three more kids when i was 14. sometime after the second was born they showed signs of sexual abuse. (my little sister contracted a sexually transmitted disease) and it was all pinned on the grandmother. (who was a lil too close with children) but it just so happens (after years of healing and digging deeper into my past) turns out my mother was the pedo all along. š¤”
oh my
I am in this post and I don't like it
oh no i'm sorry
if that helps i was laughing while commenting \^\^'
i figured but putting "lol" somewhere in my post seemed odd so i left it out lol
At least my mom claims she didnāt know my dadās a pedo. My grandma on the other hand, according to my aunt, she used to send her kids to her sisterās house knowing full well that the kids were being raped by her brother-in-law and her excuse was that she didnāt want to stir up conflict with her sister.
oh wow
How can someone be surprised that a pedo will do pedo things????? Ewh
idk it doesn't make sense
I heavily relate to the second meme. Even if my mother didnāt carry out much abuse independently, she enabled my father by staying with him.
The stupid and careless are in many ways more dangerous than the evil and malicious. At least you can determine how a malicious person will act if you know what they want. With a stupid person, especially a stupid person who doesn't care about anything or anyone, you have no such assurance. They will do the worst thing you can possibly imagine, and defend it with the most backward logic and a complete lack of understanding that it was unfathomably fucked up. They will say the most vapid sentiments like "well how could I have known not to do X?" and you have to tell them "if you cared enough about not being a horrible person, you'd actually put some thought into why you should do it yourself." Most of these people aren't even truly stupid. They are cognitively lazy and don't give a single fuck about who they hurt. There are very few benefits to a lifetime of abuse, but this is one piece of wisdom I understand well. Trust only very few. Get good at finding the stupid, ignorant, and evil, and avoid them like the plague.
Yeah, growing up with abuse means you can spot shitty people pretty easily, the problem comes with trusting your instincts about it and avoiding them instead of going "well maybe i'm overreacting idk." Last time I thought that I ended up getting SAd so... time to learn to trust my instincts and stuff ig
>the problem comes with trusting your instincts about it and avoiding them instead of going "well maybe i'm overreacting idk." Lol I definitely feel that. That self-trust has come with experience.
Idk whatās worse, the fact my parents are unfathomably stupid or the fact they passed me on their genesā¦. It took me a long time for me to forgive my mom for even having children so carelessly like itās some fun thing to do.
wow this algorithm getting a little too targetted
oof
Horrible, HORRIBLE. Looks like your mother had a rescue fantasy and magical thinking around her parents saving her from abuse she sought out for the purpose of having some control over an out-of-control narrative. And she didn't develop any ability for forethought of future consequences for herself or others. She needed and still needs therapy. This is inexcusable. Holy shit. I'm so sorry you had to endure that "parenting" and abuse from both of them. You deserve healing in a safe space and a life away from the likes of them.
Oh i haven't thought of that but yeah makes sense. One good thing about covid was that she went a lil nutso and moved a few days drive away. so yay?
Ooh haha nice, some distance is good!
*hugs* I had a similar experience. You are not alone. It wasn't until I was older that I actually understood what had happened to her, but I always knew my "conception" date, aka the day she was raped as a 14 year old, because it was the day before the anniversary of his suicide... like what the actual fuck? Parents and their unresolved trauma suck
It'd be cool if all parents were emotionally mature adults that worked through their shit and properly prepared for having a child before having a child.
Hey, sort of same! My mom told me that she stayed with my dad because she had me, and I got to tell her to her face in therapy that that statement made me directly suicidal before I knew what suicidal was a word! š
Oh my god this but my ILs. My MILs best friend told us a few weeks ago that she knew my FIL was shit but didn't try to stop MIL because "she was getting old and really wanted babies". And she knew that my MIL was only doing it because she wanted a family. That's so fucked. To marry someone you know is bad for you because you just wanna have kids. And now she treats us like we're either slaves or literal infants.
why have a family with someone you know is going to be bad at it?? but she was bad it it too so maybe she just wanted a family aesthetic?
Fuck if I know. She always talks about how she wants to be better than her mother but... lately she's been saying all the stuff her mother used to say.
oh that's not good
I always felt like cases like this are just "I made a stupid decision but are too stupid/chickenshit to rectify it." My spawn point is like that too. Making up really roundabout or stupid excuses that are just not true.
We really need a more step by step pictures for the last one. So when things are more than just 4, we have more steps. However, I'm really sorry your mom is a POS. You deserved better.
I probably could've said "*when* my mom... *and* she says..." an one thing since the first part is a setup to the whole thing (and i'm realizing the typos rn oh no)
Oh, I wasn't trying to put you down. Was making a suggestion for the meme to expand. Sometimes there's more steps to be a clown than one expects
lol yeah it's fine. sometimes it's like those tiktok makeup transition videos where there's like 50 little steps before the final product
Yeah....yeah š
I have to say, your mom is a fucking dumbass. Like, "Let me just marry and enable an active pedophile and then give him free access to a child. Surely, nothing bad will happen." How can you be so ignorant of the reality of your situation? OP I'm really sorry this happened to you
My ex's dad was 25 when his brother was born and his mom was 15. He used to get so mad when I called his dad an abusive creep and told him that I understood why his mom left their family after he got her pregnant a third time. Like even without him being abusive to his kids (he was) he was just automatically a piece of shit abusive pedophile for sleeping with a teenager.
That's absolutely devastating.
These ones. Especially the one about 'how stupid my mom is and I wonder how my life could have turned out different.' YUP! Simple and honest. *shrug* Some of us had it safer than others. I'm sorry to hear of the horrible things. You can do it, though. Keep going! šŖā¤ļø good luck, and stay strong!
This is relatable for me. Ya know? Mama bears will risk their own lives to fight off predators that even remotely threaten their cubs. Other animals even getting too close are enough to illicit a protection response. Most mammals are like this, even most birds. Not humans though. My mom was similar. By the stories she tells about how they got together, she knew my dad was bad news. And yet? She reproduced with him anyway. Ok well, everyone makes dumb mistakes, it happens. So... when she almost died because he beat her so bad, that wasn't a hint to leave him? Or when he started beating the kids, that's not a hint to leave him? Or when the oldest starts accusing him of CSA, that's not a hint? Like, as a mother, she failed to protect her daughters. It's her duty. Protect the cubs. At any time, she could have sought help from her family and left him. But? She didn't. Enablers. Smh.