Posted by Medusa on August 26, 2002, at 1:57:13
In reply to Re: men with too much inbreeding -- » Medusa, posted by Ted on August 25, 2002, at 16:07:49
> <I have a reply which I am sorry isn't very supportive, but I feel I have to say it.>
Ted, I find your response TOTALLY! supportive. Growing up with someone who insists that HE is normal, everyone else is Sinful, etc, I still have to learn to believe my own experiences. There's so much second-guessing-myself trained into my approach to the world! Thanks for stating your impressions. That helps.
> Where to guys like your dad come from?I don't know, and if I did, I would bomb it. It's not inbreeding in his case, so it might be outer space.
I think people who had unhappy or difficult childhoods, and then decide that THEY are going to make their very own HAPPY! Faaaaaaaaamily, are the worst to their own kids. Sure, their technical abuses might be less extreme than what they went through, but ... they invalidate every speck of humanity in everyone with whom they have contact, they suppress every indication that anything might not be perfect in their fantasy Faaaaaaamily. My MIL is like this. Living the high life in Di Nile. DH is pushing for kids, and I worry that he might replicate his parents' pattern. He only just realised that he didn't really have the charmed childhood his parents have insisted he had, that he can believe his own feelings of hurt. And he's almost 40. Neither of us has had good models of how to be decent parents.
> 1. He is in denial: "Oh THAT. Why can't we just forget about it?"
> 2. Her mom is angry and in denial: "That was SO long ago (actually only about 15 years ago). Why can't you just come and visit? Why can't your dad visit his grandchildren?" My secretary has a 9 year old daughter whom she will NOT let her father near for good reason.
>Smart lady. Sorry her parents are such jerks.
> He doesn't deny his actions, only that it is
>*his* fault his daughter has spent 10+ years in therapy, suffers PTSD and has panic attacks, won't visit or invite him to her home, etc.
>
> Geez... where do men like that come from?Okay, I do want to know! so then I can ransack it and purge every last gene of that line.
Thanks again for your support. It means a lot to me. These days I'm so bloody isolated. I'm living in a country where I've just gotten my bearings, learned the language etc, and now it's time to move on ... to another country where I don't know the language, the culture etc. (but DH feels at home there.) At least we'll be free of the ILs, and DH needs that. And presuming I can find good work finally, I'll have insurance, and the culture where we're going is more open, and I can finally be straight up with people about who I am. Not that being a foreigner is necessarily isolating, and not that being back in the states would be a panacea - I don't fit in there, either, and the work of supporting someone emotionally as s/he adapts to a country foreign to them, no thanks, I'd rather adapt myself than deal with DH's adjustment, although he's keen on living in the US eventually - anyway here we've been living in DH's hometown, and it's constraining as heck, and I feel under surveillance, and I've done really well bucking the system and bizarre expectations (e.g. I boycotted a series of events to attend when I first arrived, when ILs wanted to introduce me to their 'friends') and gotten some pretty cool affirmation from PILs so-called 'friends' who have started telling me how great I am for the ILs' faaaaaaaaaamily, and all they know about me is the PILs complaints but I'm ... feeling pretty much an island.
Okay, gotta ask for some resume help from work contacts, gotta do the footwork to take up the help that's been offered - that makes me feel so much more connected and hopeful ...
Thanks again for being there and commenting on my stuff, I know it's smaller than a lot of people's,
M
poster:Medusa
thread:29250
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020820/msgs/29286.html