[dothi]

Hi daydream

I think if you look up resources for people in abusive relationships, you'll find a lot of things apply to parent-child relationships from male-female relationships. Abusers tear down your worth and self-preservation so that you will continue to tolerate the abuse. They do this because it's in their best interest to continue having someone to abuse. It's not in their best interest if you get better. You should read some of the stories from the "Friends and Family of Alcoholics" forum next door. You often hear the general idea that it doesn't matter if the alcoholic is good to you 29/30 days of the month. If they're violent or abusive for even one day, that's too much. Lots of people go through stress. LOTS of people CHOOSE to deal with it in ways other than taking it out on their partner. The same applies to parents in how they deal with their kids.

To borrow from another thread... Let's say you and your parent are standing in the kitchen looking at your blue fridge. Your parent says, "The fridge is yellow." And you say, "No, it's blue." You could argue about it for the rest of the day, but after all is said and done, you know that you've got a blue fridge standing in front of you. You can't change the reality that another adult has decided works for them.

Similarly, if the main point of your argument is that beating children is wrong, and your mom or dad's main point is that beating children is perfectly acceptable, then unless one of you is willing to shift your definition of reality you will never be able to agree on whether your childhood was "good" or "bad". And personally, I'm not inclined to think that it's your reality that needs any shifting.

A lightbulb moment for me was when I realized that my dad (lifelong alcoholic, "not abusive") was never going to apologize for the things I felt he had done wrong by me because he doesn't believe those things were wrong to do. Maybe it was because he was raised that way? Maybe because it was what he saw growing up? Either way, it helped me make more sense of his reaction when I would confront him - because to him, he literally thought I was crazy for having a problem with what he thought was normal.

So end point there: an abusive person is always going to say they treated you "good" because usually really do believe that this is how people are supposed to be treated.

Realizing this helped me detach. The other thing that helped was creating a family of choice for myself out of good friends. These are people who do treat me well that I choose to keep in my life. These are people who are happy for me when I achieve and who support me when I hit a hard time. It's tough being dealt a crappy hand for a family, because even though you can walk away, you can't stop needing a family.

I met some good people through various volunteer work I used to do. Some of my closest friendships came from post-secondary school buddies. Do you do any community or volunteer work? Are there any friendships in your life that you can foster a feeling of family from?