Why you might be estranged... aka the same theme/attitude of EP/EGP's that EAC understand.

P.S. I'm glad you do things differently w/ your children, Yennifer.

Yennifer do not take it and internalize your thoughts as we are all aware of how much is lost when estrangement touches us.

Yes Starlady! The stress I was under as a little girl that I had to eat them or upset her and ruin her evening just made eating them impossible. There's not a lot I wouldn't do to make sure someone has a great day but no one asks someone else to eat unecessesary carrots or do things that make them ill and unhappy in that way unless they are abusing them. Sometimes you have to do hard things for others but carrots just aren't necessary x

Thank you 3nanny6 that means a lot. I hope you know I think the same way x

Great post, Chewbacca! Unfortunately, however, not everyone can put things behind them that easily.

That's a very valid point Yennifer, we are all giving little pieces of our own experiences and it's only over time that we learn more about one another's, and a more complete picture can be seen.

Some things can seem small and insignificant when taken in isolation, but when they're part of the bigger picture their importance and significance can be seen.

"The stress I was under as a little girl ......... just made eating them impossible"; it must have felt like an impossible task.

I think it can happen differently for different people. Some know they are in a toxic relationship for a long time before so when the end comes, at that point they have undone all the damages and it's just a relief. Sometimes it all suddenly comes to a head and the relationship ends leaving people having to deal with all the emotions afterwards. That is true of all relationships I think x

We had no idea our ES's wife was toxic. Even when she was having problems with her other relationships we believed what we were being told; that she was the one being victimised and bullied at work for example, when in fact she was the bully.

We only realised the extent of her toxicity, her controlling and manipulative behaviour when it was too late.

Another way things don't make sense until all the pieces get put together x

Yennifer -- That is the thing with child abuse and the intricacies of it. It is multi-layered and often abuse tactics overlap. Fully formed/healthy adults should have developed coping skills for adverse situations, but abusers do everything BUT teach their kids how to protect themselves from abusers or recognize dysfunctional thinking/mentality which is why these cycles REPEAT.

Coming "Out of the FOG" and learning about DARVO and the Scapegoat/Golden Child dynamic and what Narcissistic/abusive 'parents' look like etc. all arm victims and promote healing and prevent the repetition of the cycle of abuse.

I'm glad you passed on the DARVO search to someone who appreciated it. There is so much to sort through with dysfunction and it's taken me years to get where I am now... And I'm still learning...

To use the butterflies and caterpillars we talked about before, I found another quote along those lines the other day, "It's hard to 'talk caterpillar' when YOU 'speak butterfly'." The translation in psych terms is, "It's amazing how much more open to learning you become when you realize how much you don't know." In other words, the 'caterpillars' keep telling you, "You belong on the plant..." Once you are educated/supported you realize you can grow wings and once you do 'learn to fly'? It's impossible to go back to crawling on the plant/'talking caterpillar' or being one.

When fully formed healthy adults find themselves involved in an abusive relationship but do not appear to recognise this, this demonstrates the complex and at times subtle behaviour of an abuser.

There's a gradual erosion of family and long term friendships, so their victim will not be influenced in anyway. The abuser keeps those who may recognise worrying and unhealthy aspects at bay.

Eventually just as a child is dependant on their parent(s), the abused adult becomes dependant on their abusive partner as those who used to be there in their lives have been estranged.

But difference it 3nanny6 we GP didn't estrange ourselves [& wouldn't have] the AC did, so they did it to themselves!

Bye the way I love carrots

In the first week or two of my being cut out of my beloved D&GC's lives, my eldest AC [sister to EstD] asked her sister why? estD was quiet for a while, then left the room, brining back a pack of toilet rolls I had bought her, not her usual top of the range, but the same as I buy for myself. She presented these toilet rolls to her sister saying look at the toilet rolls mum got me! omitting to say that any shopping I got her, at her request, I never asked for the money I paid for them all. My eldest replied ^ you are never cutting mum out because she bought you the wrong toilet rolls, surely!^ 6 weeks later eldest D was cut out of their lives too. So in my case, not carrots but toilet rolls

Same here Smileless replacing she with he.

Last reply was for this post: Smileless2012 Fri 14-Feb-20 14:14:22

HolyHannah, the more we know and understand the more we can educate others. Some abusers are easy to spot, some would convince you they are the the most amazing person you've ever met until they choose you out as a victim x

Toilet rolls!!!!! You couldn't make it up could you Yogagirl.

You're right there Yennifer, our ES's wife once told me she'd wished I'd been her mum!! Not that that would have saved me as she's estranged her mother on several occasions.

Smileless2012 some people just don't understand that abusers come from ALL generations. The woman who abused me and alienated me from my grandparents and other family didn't magically become non abusive when she became a grandmother. Abusive people are abusive their whole lives. The fight in estrangement threads should always be against abusive people not each other because it doesn't matter who did the estranging it matters who was abusive x

Toilet rolls.... wow!

But, once again, I can only conclude that these little things are part of a bigger picture. The carrots issue was part of a pattern of abuse. The toilet rolls issue, I imagine, was one of a string of issues that there was tension over (but I know I may be wrong, Yoga, and I'm NOT defending ED for totally cutting you off b/c of any of it. I can't imagine cutting off a mum - or anyone really - just b/c they didn't do things exactly my way!).

Smileless, in a way, you're better off than EDIL's mum. She always has to worry about being CO again. It must feel like a roller coaster ride, sometimes and not in a fun way.

Well-said, Yennifer, about there being abusers in all generations.

Starlady, thank you. I sent a link of HolyHannah to a friend who has left an abusive marriage. She could come here and share any story at all and everyone would want her to leave that marriage. Everyone would be trusting her word when she said it was abusive. No one would be goading her or laughing at her expense. Imagine if a husband sat for hours a week forcing a wife to eat something she didn't like. No one would think that funny or anything less than abusive. This is one of the common themes ECs understand that some will never accept they were abused. Some will only hear what they want to hear and find any way to invalidate them. Some will forget that there is a person behind the screen who may have other difficulties going on or be doing difficult things to help a good friend leave an abusive past behind. I understand that and learn from others bad behaviour and can be kinder because of it x

I am still reading this thread and so interesting : oh dear I am now having a tinge of guilty mother syndrome brought on by
Yennifers carrot story about when she was a little girl. I will admit that I always tried to get my son and daughter to eat their carrots also greens and other healthy things so they had a balanced diet. Of course as children they hated all that stuff but give them pizza, fish fingers, burger and chips and plates were soon cleaned off. I never made a big thing though that they had to eat it if they did not eat it then that was that.

Yogagirl yes it is strange to seemingly be cut out of your daughters life and grand-childs life over "toilet rolls" although I would imagine that a lot of other things built up to that time.
In the case of my daughter although I know she was abusive to me I "chose " to accept her abuse as normality so my contact with the GC would continue. To bite ones lip so to speak and let your own AC verbally insult you on occasions is quite soul destroying and looking back on that now I cannot believe I let it happen for as long as it did. In regard of the eventual estrangement yes my daughter instigated it herself but I know there would have been an enormous blow up and perhaps I would have just walked away myself just to protect what I had left of my sanity.

Encouraging children to eat healthy things is good 3nanny6. Sitting for 2 hours or so 3 or 4 times a week forcing a crying, sometimes vomiting child to eat carrots and telling them your happiness depends on it and what a terrible person they are for ruining your evening is not good. Or the evenings where everyone had chips but your child couldn't have chips unless she ate the carrots. My younger siblings were never forced to eat anything they didn't like, they also got my chips in front of me while mother ate hers with lots of "mmm these are so lovely". I'd go on but I'd be here all day. The story was just meant to be an illustration of one of the ways my mother abused me but pretended she was the victim of my bad behaviour x

3nanny6 yes sometimes parents have to do the estranging don't they x

Yennifer I have read books on true life events where one child
for whatever reason is singled out and subjected to the most horrific of treatment possible. Some of the books I have read called My story also A Child called It. The one about a child called It is where the mother does not use the name for the child she just calls him "It" The author is Dave Pelzer he is the grown up man who was a child called It. Give it a read but expect some dark reading.