SadHeart

I'm sure she was damaged. Her parents were likely both adult children of alcoholics. And her maternal grandmother hated boys and favored her horribly over her brother because she had been considered inferior to her brothers.

So the damage goes on and on throughout generations UNTIL people acknowledge it and fix it. Which is what I'm doing. I will NOT be talked to like I am inferior; I will NOT tolerate being spoken to mockingly and insensitively; I will NOT acknowledge that she is all wise and possesses profound understanding while I'm just a defective fool. She insists it's her right to do so and utterly relies upon her absolute superiority. She knows what better for everyone including me.

Whyever she has to be like that is her business: hers and her therapist if she ever gets one. It's really not mine. MY business is to rid my life of toxic relationships--and I am profoundly sad to say, my mother is a toxic relationship.

I'm sure because I do not bow my knee to her vast superiority, she considers me a toxic relationship too.

Her codependent behaviors are failing everyone. They are going to leave her in a position to face old age and dying more or less on her own. They are hampering my son's ability to put his life together responsibly. They hurt both her son and her daughter and all three grandchildren. They hurt my failing stepfather, because her estrangement from his step grandchildren mean his estrangement. Nobody, NOBODY, is benefiting from her stubborn refusal to deal with her issues. Not her, not the rest of the family.

But she must protect her delusions against all evidence and fact. (example: I had drug residue left behind by my son analyzed at an FBI lab. I know exactly what kind of drugs he's doing; but she will not acknowledge he's doing drugs at all. She tells me I don't understand the 'gray areas', and we are all better off being estranged with only her passing information between us, the information SHE thinks we should know--and which she makes up if she doesn't actually have any).

The more she talks and defends herself the more I think her a fool and the more contempt I have for her. She actually believes she knows more than the FBI lab. And her stupid denial and game playing is causing huge, permanent damage. She's hurting me, and she's hurting her grandchildren, MY children. And I'm finding that absolutely unforgiveable, since it's all being done under the label of 'love' which she claims she has, and believes I don't understand.

She's aware now. She's been told. She can never ever, EVER, say she did not know. She did not choose to be codependent when she was 20, but she's choosing it now. Every single day. Choosing and re-choosing it.

Well, they are going to fail her completely. Eventually she's going to be living with my addicted son who has a drinking, spice/pot addiction, and an rx prescription drug problem, and he's going to turn his sudden rage on her. She thinks she's so special, he would never do to her what he's done to us--and if we would just follow her stellar example, all the problems would disappear.

Some day he will hurt her, spit on her, steal from her, trash her house. And I'm of two minds about it. The shadow part of me says: "Serves you right you self righteous old biddy who thinks you know everything and are so superior in wisdom and love that you have knocked people out of the way to sign up for the abuse that's coming your way." I'm ashamed of that thought, but the truth is, it's there.

The other part of me hurts for the inevitable stomping her arrogance will be leading her to. I don't want her trapped, hurt, exploited, confused, frightened. I don't want her on this train wreck.

And I know there's nothing I can do about it if she doesn't knock it off right now. And it appears she will not.

So I will handle it by cutting her off. She has no idea how thoroughly I will cut her out of my life. I am a LEO, so I can have my personal records taken off the public domain. Next year when i move, I will be untraceable. I will not know what happens between her and my addicted son. I will not know when my beloved step father dies, I will not know when she's sick and failing and dying herself. I will not know when her funeral is.

My two productive sons agree with me. Something she said last weekend in her codependent arrogance made one's face tighten in disgust and made the other pale and quiet. And that means she will not know where they go to college or when they graduate, who they marry. She will not have pictures of her great grandchildren, or even know their names.

I went no contact when I was 21 after my father did something unforgivable. After he died, I reestablished contact with her; she's convinced I 'crawled' back and 'need' her; and if I go no contact with her now, I'll regret it and come crawling back again because I need her.

She is wrong.

She was given an ultimatum this weekend: family counseling to deal with her codependence, my anger and resentment for it, and my kids' disgust with her behavior--or complete end of the relationship.

We all know it's highly likely she will choose to end the relationship--and it's not a bluff or a manipulative maneuver. I think in a way my two productive sons and I will be relieved if she chooses to end the relationship; struggling through joint counseling will be very difficult.

If she chooses the joint counseling option, it's not because she worries about losing me: I understand she does not like me. It will be because she doesn't want to lose them, and believes she can manage the counselor with her profound understanding the 'overall' situation so that no changes in her will be required. She's wrong about that too.

I think it's a pointless ultimatum, but one son really wants to try, so we try.

I was content laying low, living out of state and keeping her out of my life. But the last six months with my AS has made that impossible any more. In best substance abuser divide and conquer fashion, my AS has pretty much forced everyone to take sides in his drama. My mother has jumped on the bandwagon with fervor, and on AS's behalf has stirred up a lot of ugly behavior and feelings that have to be dealt with...meaning have to be stopped.

What do they say about addiction: It's not a spectator sport, everyone in the family gets to play.

Well, there's an alternative to playing a game you can't win, and that's not to play at all. And when the other team is determined to drag you on the game field, to hide yourself.

I wish it weren't this way. But reality is, it is. These aren't stories from childhood; these are events that happened less than seven days ago...tied to childhood because nothing has changed. It's the same game from my childhood, with many different players. But the master of ceremonies is the same. Only difference is, I HAD to play when I was 4 and 14. I don't have to play now.

And it's too bad because probably my mother doesn't have much more than maybe 15 years left and probably not more than 7-10 healthy years. And we all know how fast 10 years go by. And how much better to spend them in harmony.

But I will not spend yet another decade of my life dealing with active addiction, codependence and toxic family ties and all the drama and trauma that goes with it. Four plus decades is enough. And I'm not going to model dysfunctional compliance for my productive sons in the name of family.

We'll do better with her codependence in our lives; it's just very, very sad.

Learn2Live

I haven't read through all of the posts but in general, I hear what you are saying about your mother. I do know sometimes you have to work through the past and accept it for what it was, and it sounds to me like you've done that. And then you deal with the present. And what you've got in the present sounds like what you got in the past. And all I know is, I do not have the time, resources, or energy to keep someone in my life who is that toxic. I keep a safe distance from my dad and I expect nothing fatherly from him. Hell, I don't even expect anything human from him.

SadHeart

You said in 39 words what it took me 20,000 to say.

Thanks.

And what makes my mother's codependency worse than my father's alcoholism is the insidious nature of it, the gaslighting, the non-match between action and words, the doe-eyed support of her by everyone, the talk of 'love' and the absolute conviction she has that she knows best and anyone who does not agree with her is defective. A message I heard and internalized for 45plus years.

My father was blatant about his dislike and his ugliness. He never called it love, he never said it was for my own good, he never pretended. I knew by age 16 who he was and what he had to offer me. I had the dignity of arranging my relationship with him to suit me. In his awful way he was honest.

With my mother I never knew until this summer what was really going on between us. I could never move to protect myself from her--and that's what she wanted. She wants to bind me to her, to keep me off balance so she never loses control of me.

Neither had my best interest at heart, but I knew it with my father.

Learn2Live

Sometimes it takes 20,000 words.

It's like Edward Albee said in The Zoo Story: "Sometimes you have to go a long way out of your way in order to come back a short distance correctly." Story of my life.

SadHeart

This is the thing I don't understand, why NOT as a parent work things out with an adult child rather than throw the relationship away? How can it POSSIBLY work out well for the parent, benefit the parent, to choose the fantasy of "I was perfect and never did anything wrong as a parent" and to try to convince another adult that they are defective, than it is to simply say: "I messed up at times, I'm sorry. You're childhood was harder than it should have been."

I've done it to my kids. It doesn't hurt, really it doesn't.

And the thing is: it's an unsustainable fantasy. Chances are I'm going to outlive my mother. My kids believe me (they know her). My version is the one that's going to be her legacy to the family.

It's like my aunt who slept with my husband. She has no kids to say differently, has little to do with the family. She'll be known as the sluuu t who F'kced her niece's husband. After she's dead, it will be on ancestry dot com, and will live forever.

They are unimpeachable only in their own minds; and at least in my mother's case, she's going to be a very lonely old lady for it.

This ego and denial are such a waste and soooooooo stupid.

SadHeart

This is my mother, except her father wasn't a rager, her father was cold and judgmental and full of Germanic discipline a la 1920's and 30's. Her father would have rejected her for not being perfect--and interestingly, she provided me a father who rejected me from pre-birth, no matter what I did. To keep her father's approval (such as it was) she had to prevent her husband from rejecting her--and to prevent her husband/my father from rejecting her, she substituted me.

The thing is, here she has a choice: Give up the old game of using me to prevent people who have been dead for 30 years from rejecting her--or get rejected by me and 2 of her 3 grandchildren, and her future DIL and all the future great grandchildren that will be born to these 2 grandchild in the next 5-10 years. And being rejected by us means she gets to age, decline and die pretty much alone.

So what's she thinking? It's just incredible to me that she's making this choice.

And the thing is: when I started this quest to fix our relationship, I understood that she based our relationship my whole life on: mom's okay, Sadheart's not okay. But I have had a lot of therapy and have worked hard and I knew I was okay and she was wrong. I thought of us as I'm okay, mom's okay. A little therapy of us together and she'd see that too.

But she's fighting SO HARD to keep me in the not okay catagory. It's been shocking and eye opening. And actually, my opinion of her has changed. Now I think of her as I'm okay, mom's not okay. And that is just as toxic and when she and I both thought I wasn't okay.

Once I get over the stupidity of her decision and accept that actually mom is not just a little off base, but really profoundly f'ed up I don't think I'll have any problem emotionally separating from her. Already it's starting to make more and more sense as they depth of my mother's character flaws sink in--so much of my life is being explained.

Once I realized how profoundly crippled by father was by his own cowardice, bitterness and weakness in drinking, I had no trouble detaching. I think once it sink in that my mother is truly crippled by her ego, fear, stupidity and denial, I'll feel the same for her. I've lost so much respect for her in the last 6 months, I don't think it's resolvable.

It just sucks.

Take responsibility for your own imperfections, what's the big deal? Why lose family members over something that isn't even believable (mom is perfect and never makes a mistake). How stupid.

TakingCharge999

I was at a restaurant with my mom and the topic of dad came up - she reminded me that my dad once sent me a postcard saying "I do not expect for you to ever forgive me. I still cry during overnight stays" (he was an airline pilot)

I started crying in the middle of the place, luckily there was no one around. I thinks this is the only thing he has mentioned about his absence.

A therapist told me that I can work internally and get so far, but the other person has to meet you halfway. If they do not make any effort then its better to let them go (as in, accepting they as they are, instead of hoping they will change) and see there will be no healthy relationship without 50% of effort from the other part. And that I had to accept it.

Now you might think I am nuts, but this helps me. I believe in next lives. So, if I do not let go of this hatred/sadness/anger, if I do not forgive, I will still be linked to my dad in the next life. So if only to be more efficient and save time, I need to make an effort, and set apart my mind and my ego, to feel my heart, realize we human beings make mistakes, and know dad did all he could with the resources he had. He also had a distant relation with his own dad. He does not know what being a dad means. They did not talk for 30 years for reasons unknown to me, he only visited his dad on his deathbed.

Last weekend I met a very wise person/ he reminded me we are all the same, what we do to others, we do to ourselves. I feel by making steps to accept and let go (which does not mean what happened was OK) is not for him but for ME, closely related to forgive myself for feeling guilty, inadequate, undeserving, abandoned for so long, instead of realizing that who was not there was my dad, and he owns that, I did not ask nor deserved to feel so lonely. This understanding can open doors to conduct myself in a different way.

SadHeart

I wrote this on a thread on the Friends and Family of Substance Abusers forum. I thought it would be appropriate here too:

Everyone agrees physical abuse and sexual abuse is wrong and traumatic. Not much is ever said about how equally damaging emotional abuse is: rejection, being made into a scapegoat, or having to parent your parent (even if they parents appreciates it) is.

And I think as much physical and sexual abuse there is, there is even more emotional abuse.

And neglect is not just refusing to feed your kids or leaving a 3 year old home alone without a sitter while you go out to work or drinking. Neglect is also not speaking to your kid for days because you are hungover or mad about something. Neglect is just living in the same house but not interacting.

Especially, neglect is...
... spending so much time, effort, emotion, worrying about the addict and getting so involved in his drama and your own dance of anger with the addict, that you don't notice your kid's depression or anxiety.

Show me any family with a live-in substance abuser that doesn't have that.

Most alcoholic and drug abusing families don't have physical/sexual abuse, but most have yelling, uncertainty and emotional neglect. I wish this was addressed more. Maybe it would help codies understand that they are doing as much damage to their children as the addict.

Right now, codies say, I provide all the love, I make sure there's food on the table, I make sure the house is clean, I protect the children from abuse, I'm holding everything together against all odds and they think they've done an excellent job, they are heroes on white horses.

But the truth is, their kid is weeping under the covers during the scream-fests after bedtime, their kid is sitting on the couch depressed, their kid is afraid to bring friends home (even though the house is clean and the pantry stocked), their kid is anxious at school because maybe mom and dad are hurting each other at home, or one is going to disappear for days or weeks and the other's going to be on the phone crying to grandma, or the kid is anxious about holidays and school events both if the parents don't show up (will they or won't they) and if they do show up (will he mouth off to the teacher, will mom become strident or cry or somehow embarass me).

Or worse the kid hears, if you would only stop aggravating your mother...or, you are the man of the house now, I don't know what I'd do without you...or what do you want NOW?... or I'd love to buy your girl scout cookies but YOUR FATHER took all the money out of my purse and I don't even know if we have enough for dinner. Or the kid comes home and sees his parents in the living room and says, "Hi!' and no one answers or mutters a begrudging, 'hi', in return.

And in the meantime the addict is saying, "I'm not hurting anyone but myself", and the codie is saying, "My kids come first, they mean more to me than my own life, nobody does more for them but me."

Yeah, right.

This kind of abuse is soul murdering for kids and just not much addressed.

Loopydays

I am a Codie mum- I have damaged my children by my behaviour during their lifetime- it took me 25 years to tackle husband's alcoholism. My children have been damaged by my depression caused by living with alcoholism- by my anger, frustration and long silences.
I admit this, and am trying to change by going to AlAnon and also going to therapy.

What I have learnt is that most of my behaviour stemmed from deep seated behaviour patterns learnt as a child in order to survive my childhood- I was so prewired that I was unaware for years how crazy I was. This is not an excuse- it's a fact.

My parents divorced when I was 7 - and I grew up with my mother, who was both a Codie and alcoholic. It was my job from 7 to be responsible for her well being and that of my 6 year old brother. We were not allowed to express our feelings- she would turn it around to her and cry- if we succeeded in anything, she would actively say I would have done it better than you. In fact we learnt that it was easier to let her be the winner in everything!
She moulded me, destroyed part of me by her behaviour over 45 years- to be honest when she died, I was relieved- devastated as our lives were so enmeshed but relieved.

This is a long winded way of saying - yes she damaged me, but as an adult I could not blame her for all of my behaviour. One thing I have learnt is how important it is that I now address the damage my children have gone through due to living with alcoholism.
Breaking this cycle of this family disease will start today

mattmathews

We're all damaged by our parents. Every one of us--some more horribly than others.
But the only person who can fix that damage to us, is us. We have to do the work ourselves. Time only moves in one direction, and nothing we or anyone else can do can change the past.
We are responsible for our own happiness.
What's harming us right now is our attachment to the past. Our feelings that we got a raw deal in life. Our wishes that our parents had been this way or that way.
Right now, in the here and now, our past is just a series of stories that we cling to. Our past informs who we are, but it doesn't define who we are. We are capable of amazing growth and change. Each one of us is a treasure.
Worrying about which parent did the "most" damage is pointless to fixing what is wrong with us right now. We need to be present right now, and work toward healing ourselves. Waiting for our parents to suddenly come to their senses and apologize for the damage they've caused? That's just us, putting another roadblock in our own path.

SadHeart

In my case I will have a mother who's in the present and likely in the future to continue her nasty behavior towards me. Thus it MUST be dealt with because it is unacceptable for me to put myself in a relationship that is and will likely to continue to be toxic--although I had recent hopes that it could be worked out.

Until a month or so ago I believed I could say to her, hey that thing you said last week hurt my feelings, and she'd apologize and not say that sort of thing again--like normal people do. But it's come to dawn on me that she's not just making a thoughtless hurtful comment like we all do sometimes, she's got a systemic problem--and apparently a need to structure our relationship NOW and IN THE FUTURE in a toxic manner.

And I do think it's important for those of us who are now codie parents to understand that WE do damage too (and imho, we do more damage), because so many of us believe and make choices that we are blameless.

TakingCharge999

Letting go when the damage is still being done is very difficult to me.

In my case it is my dad, someone older (60) and he is not an addict.

In that sense I get how a codie can do more damage- I can't say "oh well, he was drunk/ he was drugged and not on his senses". (Not that it would hurt less, but that at least there would be some logic to his actions)

He was under no outside influences yet he still took a decision to not be there for his daughters.

I know this is in part why I have no desire to have kids - why have them and then leave (physically and/or emotionally)?

If you are going to think about yourself and your own needs, why not stay childless?

This is not said in a Holier Than Thou way, I honestly do not understand.

I have to remember people do what they can and what they learn... its not that they can do great and choose not to. They are doing their best...

SadHeart, I have learned that even with close family you have no obligations. . I started getting distance from my dad. In my case I have felt 'better' in the sense that at least I am respecting my own anger now, and not still acting as if everything was fine. I feel only a therapeutic process can help me move on.


Thanks for letting me vent.

SadHeart

I think in a lot of cases, they didn't CHOOSE to have a child, it happened. I know it did with my parents. Mom got knocked up and then forced dad into marriage. They should have put me up for adoption. He didn't want to be a father and was stuck in a marriage that didn't interest him, so he vented his resentment on me.

Funny, to me your situation seems better. I wish my father had just wandered off early in my life and disappeared. It would have saved me a lot of daily pain. Or maybe not. It didn't save you any pain that your father left.