PlasticInsanity

Who else had a co-dependent parent, and what was your experience back then? Has it changed?

My father was an any-excuse binge drinker (primarily on weekends), and my mother is still highly co-dependent. I'm grateful now that she tried to keep up a normal-looking household - we always had homecooked meals, the house was generally clean (unless you counted the mess from a drunk), she always scheduled our appointments for the dentist and doctor. From an outward appearance we were functioning. However, she relied on me as her bestfriend, and entrusted me with details which were too much for a child. I knew my dad was doing something illegal, and I always worried about the cops coming to the house - at the same time, I hated my dad for his drinking, because I felt like I worried about him so much and he didn't give a **** about me.

I'm a recovering addict (surprise, surprise, Ha!), and my sister is still in active addiction - the scary thing is watching her repeat the same behavior patterns with her boyfriend (also active addiction), and taking out her frustrations in ways of emotional abuse towards my niece. My dad's had to reduce his drinking due to diabetes, but now BOTH of my parents are being codependent towards my sister - the whole attitude of "let's not upset them or they'll use" that we used to have regarding my dad.

How about everyone else?

DoubleDragons

Hi, my mother has become an alcoholic later in life, but she always has had major personality disorders, that my father completely enabled. He totally enables her alcoholism now. Our only role (my father, my sister and I) was to please Mom, which was very self-defeating because it was Mission Impossible. My father would sometimes seem like "the soft spot" in our lives, but he would turn on us (two innocent little girls) on a dime, if it meant getting back in her good graces. Frankly, I feel equally disgusted and disappointed about both of them.

Kialua

Oh yeah, co dependent mother who was also the big enabler. She adored my awful father and encouraged him to beat us. She was terrible with my brother, used him as a confidante growing up. Always crying to him about how bad my Dad was but never doing anything about it. And then sicking him on my brother when my dad came home at night. No one ever knew that she was crying to my brother, she had different personalities with each one us.

It made me try to become very independent emotionally.

NWGRITS

I grew up with A mother and codie grandmother. Grandma is 90 and just now starting to "get it." I am working on releasing my resentments towards her because she was raised in the Don't Talk About It generations. Yes, my life prior to the past two years or so was pretty effed up and she contributed to it a lot, but she didn't know any better. I do, and I can stop the cycle with my children. Can't go back, so gotta do my best going forward.

makomago

My Mother was very divisive and had different personalities with each one of my sets of siblings i.e. four children, two treated one way, two another. There is a gap of some 14 years between me and my next eldest sister.

My mother was married twice, with my two eldest (step) sisters one was a favourite and one took most of the 'grief' from her. I'd describe it as varying degrees of subtle abuse.

She (My Mother) repeated the same pattern with Me and my youngest sister.

There is much I don't know about my elder sisters experience because "Don't Talk" was something we were and are all actively encourage to do. I've stopped now!

But I shared with my eldest sister how my mother would threaten to harm, or send to the orphanage my younger sister. This had the effect of me feeling like I had to protect my sister in case I lost her.

My Eldest sister said she was threatened with the orphanage often, so I guess that my Mother did to the elder two exactly what she did with the second two (including me).

I suppose not unsurprisingly, myself and my (middle) sister share/shared similar roles in the dysfunctional family to that of my youngest sister and my eldest sister.

Again, not unsurprisingly the two got out of the house much quicker than the other two even though time that had elapsed between the two sets of children was quite large.

... Of course the final divisiveness was that all of the blame fell on my Dad. And he had is faults too!!

M

ladyscribbler

My mom left my alcoholic dad when I was 6 or 7. She never got any help for her codependency because she "got rid of her problem" (my dad).
She also suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has gotten progressively worse over the past decade or so, but still not quite crazy enough that we can force her to get help. She used to self-medicate with marijuana, which some will argue is better than alcohol because it has a calming effect, but they never saw my mother in withdrawals from her doc.
She has since quit smoking, but her mental illness combined with the codependency means she has created her own reality where she is never to blame for anything that goes wrong in her life and has no personal responsibility for any decision she makes. If something goes wrong she blames "gameplaying" (that's what she calls the international conspiracy against her that has apparently been going on under all of our noses since literally the beginning of time). If she makes a mistake it's because her thoughts were hijacked. Her constant visual, auditory and olfactory hallucinations.
On the plus side, I heard my dad quit drinking, though we have not been in contact for many years. Not since he cleaned out my college savings account ($ that I had been putting away from Xmas, birthdays and allowance since I was old enough to have $) in order to fund his and my stepmom's drinking and flashy white trash lifestyle.
I'm in Alanon now, trying to break the cycle with myself and my kids. Sigh.

EveningRose

Wow, YES!!! on the different personalities!!!!!

I was SHOCKED when I moved back and saw my mother with my younger sisters. (Apart from the married twice part, I actually wondered if one of my siblings had stumbled on this board and posted!) As others said, my mother used us (at least the older two) as her confidante, her wailing wall. She told us things that were totally inappropriate, complained, told her sad stories, worked hard at turning us against our father and his entire side of the family, got on her soap box about how awful everyone else in the world is....on and on, bitter, angry, resentful.

I moved closer to home (big mistake), and there she is whooping it up with my younger sisters, drinking alcohol!!!! (NEVER saw her do that before!), drinking it straight out of the bottle, cracking jokes, laughing, happy!

I had no idea who this woman was. I'd never seen her like this before!

Like you, two of us got out of the house as fast as we could, and two who were treated differently hung around for a long while.

Like you, my father was blamed for everything. He certainly deserves plenty of blame. But my mother (aka the Greatest Most Long Suffering Martyr Who Ever Lived) has never once seen what hell she herself made our lives by staying with him, by complaining endlessly, by all of her own bitter hatefulness and choosing to get down in the mud and fight with him and his family.

I chose divorce in part because I wanted to be absolutely sure I never became as bitter and resentful as she has become from being married for 50 years to someone who has no respect for her.

EveningRose

OUCH. I'm so sorry. That's just awful. :-(