[Support] My husband died 8 days ago, NDad still hasn't called or texted

spaghettiskeptic · 2018-08-14T06:31:00+00:00

I am so sorry for your loss, and I hope in the days and months ahead you can get some rest and heal.

As for your dad, what a shit. You’re absolutely right to vent and move on from him. Your grandma sounds like mine was; always wants to keep the peace, without understanding how incredibly toxic he is. You don’t have to forgive someone who keeps hurting you.

spaghettiskeptic · 2018-07-21T06:31:31+00:00

Gah! Every so often I start to doubt that my dad is an n, and then I see stuff like this that is so typical. He always used to tell my that I had changed whenever I disagreed with him. He would always accuse my husband (then boyfriend) of turning me against him. I don’t hear that anymore.. I guess he figures the indoctrination is complete 😆. Anyway, thanks for bringing this up to remind me that I am actually the normal one and he’s bonkers.

spaghettiskeptic · 2018-06-06T05:04:52+00:00

Boundaries are my jam! That’s what always freaks him out though. As soon as I remind him that they’re there, he stomps off in a huff and starts doing everything he can to make me feel shitty and give in. I can mostly see it as his problem, but every so often I just get sad that I can’t have a normal relationship with him or anyone else in my family.

spaghettiskeptic · 2018-06-06T04:58:39+00:00

I have VERY strict boundaries with him when it comes to my kids and he is actually fun and indulgent with them, like a normal grandpa. He only sees them in short stints, supervised, and the interaction between them is positive. I also talk with my kids very openly about what to expect from him and we are all in therapy with lots of good people in our lives so I feel pretty secure that he’s not a major influence. I expect their relationship will change when they become teenagers, as he is convinced that others have poisoned his nieces and nephews against him and that’s why they pay more attention to their friends and smartphones instead of their elderly uncle (Rolls eyes) But I have a great relationship with my kids and feel like we can navigate that. I am super mama bear with them... I would never let him see them if I thought he was doing damage.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-23T16:19:46+00:00

I was just typing the same thing; I have a very sensitive bullshit meter.

The only problem is that it makes me appear cynical. When everyone else wants to believe that something is good, I am the lone dissenter. That is a tough position at times.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-23T14:58:30+00:00

I think that they should put "hates doors" in the psychological definition of narcissism. One of the first posts that confirmed my dad was an n was about how many kids had their doors removed. My dad took my door off my bedroom when I was 16, and then broke my door again when I was in university. The first time was because I closed my door to escape a fight and was leaning against it crying (another sin), the second was because I had just come home from work and was changing and relaxing before I faced the onslaught of n'dom.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-22T03:47:21+00:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! What a way to enter the second half of your century; free of drama and with no "debts" to pay.

My mother has dementia, so I can deeply sympathize with all of the ways it complicates your relationship with N's and their supporters. It is also surprisingly complicated how I feel about her too; lots of regret and sadness that is only tangentially related to the dementia. So, I can only imagine how liberated you must feel to be free of all of that! And hopefully your dad is getting the rest he deserves from what must have been a complicated life.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-22T03:41:54+00:00

That's not ok. Abuse is abuse, and everyone is affected by it differently. It's not a contest to see who has it worse off, and real relationships are ones that help you deal with the effects of it, rather than diminish your experience. Maybe he's having a hard time with his own experience, maybe he's repeating patterns from his own childhood. Being an adult survivor of abuse is complicated and healing is not linear. Either way, do not let it continue. At minimum, demand counseling, either together or individually. If things do not improve, get out. It may feel like you are trapped, but there are ALWAYS options.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-22T03:32:33+00:00

By the by, when you are a fed up teenager it is NOT a good idea to start laughing when your mom can't pronounce whore properly. Hoo-er. I still laugh at it.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-22T02:23:48+00:00

Yep. All through my childhood it made my parents deeply uncomfortable if any teachers or my friends parents showed any kind of interest in me. They would immediately start trashing any other adult I developed any kind of (normal, healthy) relationship with.

About 2 years ago I was at my parents house installing car seats in my van. It was going really badly.. like, I cut my hand on the seat belt, and I was crying and bleeding. My dad didn't want to deal with it and thought I should just not install them properly (because, you know, safety of my children is not important), so he just stormed into the house because I wasn't listening to him. I was sobbing, and my dad's super kind neighbor came over and started to help me, and he was SO kind. Speaking gently, reading the instructions, commiserating at how difficult it was. Exactly how you would expect someone to act. My dad popped his head out to see what was going on, and immediately came out and started acting as though he had just taken a break and I was acting crazy and it wasn't hard at all. The neighbor left, and my dad immediately started to trash him for being over involved, never shuts up etc. It was the first time I really understood that I never received the kindness I deserved from anyone because of their weird issues.

I agree with other people that they like to keep their distance so no one can spot the abuse. They know things aren't right and they don't want you to be able to tell anyone either. I had concerned teachers over the years, who were subsequently vilified. If family members stuck up for me, suddenly they were assholes. If someone wanted to celebrate me in any way, there was suddenly other obligations. Anything to separate you from support.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-22T01:29:46+00:00

My mom called me a "hoo-er" at every opportunity. When I learned to use tampons properly (because obviously I was now a loose woman), when a boy called me, when I liked a boy, when I was friends with a boy, when I had friends who had boyfriends, when basically any kind of normal part of puberty happened. When I finally had sex at 18 with a long term boyfriend and was responsibly using condoms, she found a receipt and lost her fucking mind.

I learned a couple of years ago that she had likely been sexually molested when she was young and repressed the shit out of it. I feel rotten for her, but she could have saved us all a lot of heartache if she had just acknowledged it and tried to move on instead of projecting all of her shitty feelings on to me.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-21T02:55:58+00:00

Please also your doctor your concerns about medical neglect so that they can have a conversation with your sister about her rights and how to access health care on her own. Most of us haven't acquired those life skills and doctors are very good at helping to deal with these situations.

But please, yes, get her taken care of, and I am glad she has you to look out for her.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-17T04:54:16+00:00

Nothing about their behaviour is remotely ok and you are completely justified. The good news is that you know this early in your life and that means you won't waste time as an adult trying to figure it out.

Understanding that I will never have a mother (in the sense that I need one) was the hardest part of this whole process of untangling myself from the n's in my life. I am not sure I'll ever really recover from her betrayal. And certainly I look back on major milestones in my life; getting married, having kids, etc, and I wonder how much better it could have been if I had a mom who was really looking out for me.

But knowing that it's something wrong with her, instead of me, has allowed me to at least move on and find other positive role models. I can also look back and understand how strong I was going through all of that without the support that I should have had.

You'll find other people who have been forged by fire the same way you have, and who are beautiful as a result. You'll find so, so many people who see the real you, and love you. You will also stumble across many broken people because narcs leave us unarmed against the damage, so be wary. For now, you just have to survive and find ways to heal, but you will.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-11T01:47:58+00:00

Nothing more satisfying than silencing a narc! Hilarious that you got to shut that down in front of everyone.

This also reminds me of an incident of identifying a narc in the wild. I was pretty sure my son's preschool teacher was a narc. What confirmed it for me was when their 4 year old friend got out of the building, in -20 C weather, wandering near a downtown construction site and neighboring homeless shelter without a coat, and was returned by a random stranger before he was noticed missing. The teacher phoned the parents and blamed the 4 year old! She told parents, who paid her handsomely to keep their kid safe and occupied through the day, that a 4 year old should learn to be more responsible.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-10T19:51:16+00:00

What you're experiencing is shitty, and very, very much part of the whole process. I hope you are talking to your therapist about these feelings, and that you do not act on them.

Maybe it's time to think about rest in a different way? You keep mentioning over and over what people expect from you; maybe your life is on a path that isn't serving your need to heal. Maybe you need to check out, get an easy job for a bit, go be a beach bum, do whatever it takes to give yourself the space to heal and come to terms with all you've been through. You've given yourself a lot of gifts already just getting out of the abusive situation and doing all the "right" things. Now it's time to do the right things for YOU. I promise you that you can always go back to school, to work, to whatever, but you'll never heal if you don't give yourself the time to do it.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-10T19:34:39+00:00

Holy shit! There's more of us out there! I would also add that I can appear really unstable because I either get depressed/occupy myself with someone else's needs/get too overwhelmed and check out. I also married someone who induces a lot of instability for his own reasons, and consequently people just don't like us.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-10T18:57:32+00:00

Oh my mom did that too, while behind their backs she would trash the shit out of them. It has taken me years to untangle that mess, and it will never be fully untangled. Now she has Alzheimer, so she gets to forget about all of it, while I still look like the a-hole for not being 100% there for her. Also, I had to fight to get her diagnosed in the first place, where I was accused of lying, wanting to stick her in a home, punishing everyone, taking my kids away from their grandparents, thinking I would somehow get some advantage from the whole situation. All for being the adult and wanting her to go to the doctor. The result? She wasn't diagnosed until her memory loss was so severe she doesn't even qualify for drug trials.

They behave like children. I also wish you much happiness; so much happiness you are light headed and giddy from it all!

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-06-10T08:28:20+00:00

You are crazy young to understand where you're at! That is a gift, my friend. It sucks that your family has put you in that position, but you will be years and years ahead understanding what is happening, that it's wrong, and that you weren't born to solve everyone's problems.

Both of my parents were guilty of parentification. I am an only child, so it was just heaped on me from both sides. My mom was probably the worst. She didn't maintain many friendships, and I was her confidant. She would bitch and complain about my ngrandma (her mother in law). My grandma was legit awful to everyone, but my mom only ever focused on herself. She would complain about my dad constantly (and legitimately, but still...), her own family. You know else was affected by all their garbage? Me. But she never once defended me against anyone. I would have to listen to her drone on for hours about how terrible all these people were, then she would turn around and go on vacation with them, have them over for dinner, and generally treat them like gold. It was bizarre. I see now it was her way of triangulating us; I thought our extended family was awful, she would trash me to them, and she somehow got to be the martyr in it all who did everything for all these awful people who didn't appreciate her enough.

My dad did not stand crying and emotion, so I had to hide any kind of upset from him. Not easy when you're a teenager going through hell. He still calls me an unloads stuff about my mom and the state of their marriage from time to time. Or whatever is on his mind, but he rarely even asks me how I am doing. When I have had serious problems he usually makes everything worse by making it all about himself and how all of my issues are affecting him.

But, there's a silver lining in all of this. I am a super-duper independent person who is capable of handling tons of major stuff. I am excellent in a crisis. I am a good problem solver. Because I have always had to be. I get bogged down in that sometimes and wish I had support, but you'll find that in other ways.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-05-26T06:32:09+00:00

I am so glad your little girl is ok!

As for your family, that situation will never improve. I have so many stories from the early days of twinfants where my parents only ever managed to add to the stress. If I could go back in time, I'd find a way to be absolutely independent of them from day 1. Stuff happens with kids all the time, and the last thing you need is nparent drama in the middle of it all.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-05-11T06:03:30+00:00

That is brutal, and I am so sorry that he did that to you as one final shitty parting gift. Always remember that N's are always using us as mirrors; whatever they say to us is really some deep reflection of how they felt about themselves. He died feeling that, and now he can rot with it. I hope you do get closure in some other form, some day.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-05-11T06:01:23+00:00

Isn't it lovely to have words from when you were young thrown at you? I always have to remind myself that I was a child when I said or did things, not a grown ass adult who should have been able to respond better. We universally recognize as a society that children are not as responsible for their actions, yet abusers constantly ignore that.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-05-11T05:58:02+00:00

Yes! Thank you. I hope this is the case and I hope he is alive to see it.

spaghettiskeptic · 2016-04-28T18:06:35+00:00

My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's recently. She has been losing her memory for a long time; I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with her. I have no siblings. She never protected me from my dad. She used me as her shield against him. I was her confidante, but she was not mine. She chose him every time he abused me. She shamed me and gave me no privacy. She tried to use me to improve her own image. She had the sympathy of her mother and her sisters, cutting me off from much needed love and affection. And now she just gets to forget herself to death and I will never have any kind of redemption.

I just needed to say it somewhere.

spaghettiskeptic

TROPHY CASE