Reply to People married to jerks end up kind of jerks themselves

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[quote=Anonymous]I estranged myself from my parents at age 30, and was estranged from them still when my mother died 12 years later.

Our relationship was very very close - unhealthy, codependent, parentification kind of close. My mother made me her counselor, her smoking buddy (recruited me at age 12!) and spilled the beans on all her opinions of my father and everyone else in our family in detail that was really unconscionable for a parent to lay on a child.

My uncle (who was really my mother's cousin, my second cousin), told me once shortly after my estrangement from my parents that he wished I could have known my mother before she was married to my 'father', that she was a totally different person when they were growing up. I accept that it might be true, my mother suffered a lot of trauma in her marriage to my father and she also suffered a traumatic infidelity in her first marriage to her high school sweetheart who left her for another woman after just a few years of marriage - she married my POS father on the rebound and still heartbroken. He's a classic narcissist and love bombed her, but revealed his penchant for violence on the wedding day when he went after her stepfather after they'd all been drinking at the reception. My 'father' was a violent alcoholic, chronic womanizer, gambler, shopper (for himself only), very emotionally cruel bully who would find a way to tell or show you every day that you were just poo under his shoe. You were only useful when you provided appropriate narcissistic supply, and you were not to have any independent opinions, notions, dreams, etc. Even your body belonged to him. You get my drift.

My mother and I spent a year alone together when I was in my late teens. My 'father' had moved across country to where the whole family intended to relocate, and my mother and I were stuck in the old house until it sold, working our jobs to pay the second mortgage. That was such a great year and I'm very grateful the house took a long while to sell. I did see glimpses of a very different woman - one who treated me mostly nicely, one who was relaxed and laughed a lot more. She still had the core of hardness/coldness that she'd had all my life but I could see it could possibly be melted if she'd gotten away from my 'father'. I don't know if she would have been entirely kind or healthy - from my years of reading and therapy I think I've figured out at least that she was likely a covert narcisisst, the whole martyr persona and everyone's best friend to their face, but behind closed doors she felt she was better than everyone else, did things more 'right' than her friends and family members, and as I'd already said she badmouthed all my beloved family to me as a kid and it really messed up my perception of people hearing my mom trash everyone I loved and knowing she pretends to be sweet and loving to their faces.

So yeah, I think that your relationships with other people can greatly impact your essential character, especially if you live with a slow drip of verbal abuse over decades and develop a trauma in the brain. The neuroscience has taught us that our experiences both physical and emotional can damage our brains and change our functional capabilities.

i.e., living with a jerk can make you a jerk, too.[/quote]

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