Friendships

[DharmaGirl]

I don't think you are being judgemental, I think you are listing the facts. You are parenting your children, she is not. You are instilling boundaries, she is not. If these things are important to you and you want them to be important to your children, I would not socialize with her. It doesn't have to be a big breakup, you can just be busy some of the time.

 

[rightkindofme]

I'm having to think about this judgmental thing more than I used to. I feel like so many things change as I get older and I am a parent for longer.

I think I'm terrified of being judgmental because people judged me very harshly when I was a child and they didn't give me chances to grow or do better. I was so traumatized and I acted so very inappropriately. People were quick to ban me from their houses because they wanted to protect their children from me. I don't want to feel like I am like that.

Also, I got into the bdsm community as a very young adult (18) and I didn't want to be the sort of person who looked down on people for being "weird". It was a militant belief that you should be accepting of other people's differences unless they were an active predator and that's a fuzzy thing in the community. What's being "a heavy player" vs being a predator? It's argued about every day still.

I have always wanted to be a safe person for people who are not accepted elsewhere just because they are different. I am not much like the "norm" no matter what norm you point at and I want to be accepted so that means I feel like I must accept other people pretty much no matter what.

But I have kids. I have gotten a lot better as my children have gotten older about recognizing lines and not letting people around my children if they will be a negative influence. I have ended friendships when people made it clear they were grooming my children for inappropriate future relationships. But this friend feels different? She's not a crystal clear inappropriate person she's just... not someone I'd pick if I met her today.

Only she hits her kids and blames her children for it. "Well that was the only thing I could do given how inappropriately she was acting." Dude. The kid is 7. She's supposed to push boundaries. That's literally her job. It is your job as her parent to teach her other ways to respond other than violence. You are the one who f*cking failed here, not your kid.

If I end the friendship with the mother it feels like I am abdicating my responsibility to try and make things better for the kids. But the mother has no interest in changing or in ever perceiving anything she does as wrong so I'm not sure what staying in the relationship would accomplish anyway. I'm deep in my white knight complex but I can't save any of them. But I can call protective services and I've done that. I haven't spoken to her since.

It is hard to feel like it is moral to abandon someone who is not currently behaving in ways that are good enough. It feels like I am walking away from my child self when I needed more chances to do better.

The thing is... with pretty much every single year of my life I have consistently done better and worked hard at improving my behavior and being more appropriate as my understanding of what that means has deepened. The people I want to walk away from... they are about as evolved as they were at 18. They aren't getting better.

My "friend" likes to talk about how as soon as her kids go off to college she is selling the family home and moving away to a tiny place without a guest room so her kids can never come back. I think she's serious. I don't understand why having kids was so important to her in the first place. She doesn't actually like her kids or any of the work of parenting.

I would not pick this person for my life now. I have grown to a point where I would not select someone like this to be an influence on my kids.

My youngest child is named after the three women who had the biggest influence on my life from 12-38. I've already messily broken up with one of them (she liked to tell me I had a personality disorder anytime I was angry with how poorly she treated me--she objectively treated me like garbage), I'm no longer convenient for one of them so I don't think I will ever see her again but it's not a messy situation, and then there is the friend in this country. I think we are going to do a big fade out any second here.

It's like naming my child after them solidified that I have gotten all the good I can get from the relationships and I'm moving on. That feels so complicated.

I do judge. Whether that makes me a shitty person or not needs to be beside the point. I am a mother and I must judge or I am failing my children. I have to judge what I want to expose them to.

I don't want to teach them that it is ok to hit smaller, weaker people out of frustration. Not even by proxy. That is a boundary. Just like that one dude hit a boundary when he talked about how he was grooming my kids to be his future sexual partners.

It is good that I am finding these boundaries. It's healthy.

I have to love me and my kids in a way my mother never loved me.

 

[Oneseedatatime]

I lived in one area more on than off for 30 years. In that time I was super outgoing about building friendships and I carried the load with many dozens of people. My Christmas card list was just shy of 100 people long and that's because I limited it to people I had seen in person in the last year + people who were really consistent about contacting me at least once a year from a distance. But my relationships usually involved a lot of me doing a lot for other people and feeling super stressed out about how much effort I had to put out to carry these friendships.

I have moved to another country, another continent and I only have one long-term friend here. I have known her since we were 12. My anxiety is lower than it has ever been in my life but I'm very concerned about making new friendships and following toxic patterns from my past. Well, and the one long-term friend I have here is... not so great. She has said things like "anyone who home schools their children is going to end up with retarded children" "it's good your children aren't too academically behind (they are several grades ahead in most subjects but their handwriting isn't that great) because that way they can focus on how socially retarded they are if you put them in school." My kids tried going to school and they were getting hit almost daily by other children so they asked to leave school and she told me that I should make them stay and figure it out because she wants me to have more free time to hang out with her. She is putting a lot of pressure on me to put my youngest in nursery (it is free from the age of 3 in this country) ASAP because "she wants me to have a break" but I will wait and see if my kid wants to go and only do it if she wants to and I'll stop if my kiddo doesn't like it.

She hits her kid when the kid is having anxiety attacks. In general she parents in ways I don't think are great and being around her and her kids is incredibly stressful. She alternates between bribing and threatening and I find it really upsetting. There are a lot of parenting differences and I can't tell which are nit-picky "Just shut up and accept that people parent differently" and which are seriously f*cked up. Oh, I called the local child protective services on her recently for hitting her child (it's illegal in this country) so maybe this relationship will end because she is angry with me.... I don't know yet.

She's my long-term friend and I feel like I owe her some kind of loyalty. This is very anxious making for me. I have a real hang up about long-term relationships. This is the girl I went to when my monstrous father and brother both committed suicide when we were in high school. There are big ways she was there for me 20 years ago. But what does that buy her now?

I feel crummy when I think about seeing her and worse when I think about backing out of the friendship. I don't really know what to do. And I'm afraid to make new friends because I have a serious pattern of picking people who will use me and I'm completely done with that dynamic. I have a completely fresh slate here. I feel like I'm afraid to start writing on it.

You are off to a GREAT start! Insight is on point! Don't lose sight of all that you have learned. You can only control your actions and responses not anyone else's. Be a true friend and set an example that she may benefit from. If she is truly your friend then she will give you room and support to do what is right for you and your family and love ya more for it!

 

[DharmaGirl]

Only she hits her kids and blames her children for it. "Well that was the only thing I could do given how inappropriately she was acting." Dude. The kid is 7. She's supposed to push boundaries. That's literally her job. It is your job as her parent to teach her other ways to respond other than violence. You are the one who f*cking failed here, not your kid.

I firmly agree!

It is hard to feel like it is moral to abandon someone who is not currently behaving in ways that are good enough. It feels like I am walking away from my child self when I needed more chances to do better.

To which I respond:

Dude. The kid is 7. She's supposed to push boundaries. That's literally her job.

You were a child. She is an adult. I'm glad you called CPS. Hopefully they will have her go through parenting classes and it will stick, but you've done what was needful. I also try to be inclusive, I sort people by should I be afraid or not. Everything else is after. I had no idea a coworker was half Korean since I don't sort like that. I wouldn't shun someone who was different because they are different, I would shun them if they are hurtful.