i am in a relationship where both of us had to cut off contact with our parents.
My wife had to stop seeing her mother when she was physically abusive to our daughter. I was present when it happened and had always accepted that I would defend my kids against any attacker with full vigor if it ever happened, try wrapping your head around the fact that you hesitated when the time came. By the time I got within reach of them it was over and I was seeing my mother in law for the last time as she ran to her car. It is one of those things that just doesn't go away and even if my wife had not cut off contact, I would have, at least for the kids and for myself. If I had allowed her to come back and abuse again, wouldn't I have been an accomplice to the abuse?
My own parents were for all practical purposes a four-legged entity with my stepmother acting as the brains of the outfit. My father was basically an apologizer, apologizing to her for my lack of belief in her weird cult like version of christianity, ( she has it in her mind that she is above the teachings of her chosen church and is keeping the only true version of the religion alive all by herself) and apologizing to me for her weird actions and statements. When it was clear that she saw me as a threat to her stranglehold on him and that any contact between us was only going to cause him more pain and punishment from her and that I was never going to have anything like a healthy relationship with them, I started separating. When that separation only brought more grief and vengeful acts from her, I cut contact.
My wife and I both lost a maternal parent at 12, and we both were left with the weaker of the two parents we had. We both were victims of physical and mental abuse, and we both spent the rest of our lives trying to regain the love and acceptance we were robbed of. Only after we had children of our own and they were at the ages that we started suffering the kind of wrong family life these monsters put in front of us did we realise just how bad it had been. I knew it was bad for me, I left home at 14, but only when my own children were at that age did I realise the full extent of my own abuse. My wifes realisation was similar, she is still working on forgiving herself for being unable to earn her mothers love and respect but I can clearly see that she was incapable of giving it.
Thanks for the posts, anything helps with this kind of recovery. Our lives are so affected by our parents, even if they are little more than physical donors and mental tormentors, they are our parents like it or not.
I think of myself as being like those mismatched animal families you see on television from time to time. A baby duck that imprints on a cat and follows it around the yard, a horse that adopts a goat, a litter of pups that accept a pig as a parent, lots of examples of young things accepting the available parents as being the right ones and following them unerringly until the baby duck learns to fly, the goat becomes a ram and seeks other goats and knows that horses aint goats and the puppies grow to be dogs that although confused about their heritage know better than to mate with a pig.
We just did what we were supposed to do, we sought the love and support of our remaining parents for years and years after the death of our true supporters. It took some time but eventually we realised what a screwed up situation we were in and looked elsewhere for what was never going to be coming from them.
Hopefully we can all get past the pain of having abusive parents, but it is a tough one. We are wired to want to have the love of a parent, we are wired to think that it is abnormal when it doesn't happen and to think there is something wrong with all parties involved. No one wants to get voted off of the island, and it is against our basic nature to vote our own parents off the island, but eventually the baby duck just learns to fly and goes away. No fault of the duck.
