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[quote=Anonymous]My childhood story:
I grew up in a different country. My father is financially irresponsible and has a family history of squandering generational wealth and being penniless, which started with his grandfather. My mother is from a well to do family, and she was brought up without learning or doing a single thing since they had manpower at home to do all the work. They were not super rich but lived in a time and place, actually a remote village, where cheap or free labor in exchange for food was abundant.
My mother's theory is that since she had an older brother who was disabled at birth, her father rejected all the rich eligible suitors she got and got her married off to my father, so she can be poor and take care of her brother in his old age. She openly complains daily about how she should have gotten married to another guy and criticizes my father and his family everyday, since their marriage in 1969.  Yes for almost 50 years.

Since I was 10, both of them had a series of business ventures, constantly running out of money and borrowing for day to day expenses, each leading to massive loans they could not repay and leave town. This has happened around 5 times, and affected my school and college and I was forced to quit my first job when I was 22 to go into hiding with them, terrified.

My father's role was clear to me and I used to hate him since I was a child, but since my mother used to lament her situation every day I genuinely felt she was suffering and a victim. I was very close to her as a only child. I spent 5 years of my life 22-27, venting together with her about my father. Now years later with a family of my own, I see how easily she could have changed her fate and she was the major enabler since she came from a stable family and should have known and done better rather than move around as a fugitive with my dad. My dad did not know better due to his family history, his brothers are in the same situation but their wives have tried to bring some sanity in. Moreover my father was physically abusive to my mother during their fights and she did her share of verbal abuse with her complaints. She was not economically independent, but could have easily gone back to her parents or brothers. Growing up I had no resemblance to a functional family life and she does not seem to care about it or anything about my future. It is like as long as she got to complain to her heart's fill she was ok, and did not have to do anything else.

I read about people with abusive parents but they seem to have turned around their life once they became adults at 18. But I seem to be haunted by my childhood and dragged down by it even in my 30s and now very recently aware of and bitter in my 40s against my mother who is still claiming she is the martyr and victim.

I got married to DH when I was 27, and moved to this country. I would have thought my life would be sane from then on, but I made a string of wrong ignorant decisions affecting my family and career and finances, maybe because I did not know what is normal. I am course correcting, but everything seems much more harder to me or I make it harder for myself, than people I see from stable families including my DH. And I am overly self critical of any mistakes I make which makes it even harder.

I am not sure if that is because I did not have a role model, I am stubbornly repeating the past or just poor genes? 
How do I stop regretting everything about my parents and my adult life and trust myself to move on?[/quote]

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