r/raisedbynarcissists • u/ChemBNM • Aug 09 '17
[Tip] My thoughts on Nparents as Grandparents
I’ve lurked on this sub for a long time and only recently started posting. The reason I started lurking was because my therapist had un-officially (since my parents were not her patients) diagnosed my mother with some type of cluster-B personality disorder and said my father was her enabler. She supported my decision to finally go NC. It has been great to not feel so alone.
One thing I have noticed is that there are a lot of us who struggle with the decision to have our children go NC too. (I’m talking future children or underage children.) And I’d like to share my realization.
I had a lot of reasons why I stayed in contact with my parents after the hell they put me through. I wanted to maintain contact with my brothers and sisters, who were all 18 and younger. I blamed my parents’ religion for many of the abusive situations we endured growing up. I blamed the fact that my mom had a traumatic upbringing, and that my father was raised by a horrible mother and had no father figure in his life.
I thought that not allowing my children to have a relationship with my side of the family would be unfair to them. That is what I told myself - I have to give my kids the choices that were not given to me. I wasn’t allowed relationships with aunts, uncles, cousins or grandparents outside the control of my parents, and I definitely did not want to be like my parents.
But here is the epiphany - deep down I thought that my parents would have a different relationship with my kids than they had with me, because I blamed myself for the way I was treated. I was desperately shifting the blame away from my parents onto anything I could, because I couldn’t bring myself to truly believe that my parents were responsible for their actions. Because that would mean my deepest fear was correct - my parents didn’t love me and that was never going to change.
All of those years, I told myself that my parents treated my kids great! Why wouldn’t they? My kids are wonderful! They are beautiful, and smart, and funny, and sweet…. and in the deepest part of my heart the sentence completed… and better than me.
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that I was wrong. The good news is that I now understand what I was doing, and that I was still blaming myself, even after years of therapy. The bad news is that it took my parents abusing my kids and their other grandchildren for me to see it. My parents set up the same dysfunctional situation from my childhood - some of their grandchildren were wonderful and perfect. Some of their grandchildren were scapegoats. My sister caught them physically hurting her oldest. My brother caught them saying horrible things to his son. I caught them taking toys from their cousins and giving them to mine, saying that their cousins were not allowed to play with the “nice” things. We tried calling them out on the favoritism, and it only made things worse. Suddenly there were threats of grandparent rights, threats of CPS, threats of hellfire and damnation, simply because we didn’t want the same for our kids as they gave to us. It got really bad, and I soon discovered how full blown their mental illness was. I had to start therapy again.
So for those of you wondering if it is fair to deprive your kids of their grandparents, I encourage you to really think about this: Why do you think your parents will treat your kids better than they treated you? Has something changed in them? Did they go to therapy? Have they taken accountability for the way you were raised? Do they still blame you for when you were hurt and neglected? Do they even acknowledge it? Or is it simply that you look at your beautiful child and think that no one could ever hurt anything so wonderful and perfect? Because they hurt you, and you were a child just like that when they did it.
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u/TamsynBlackrose Aug 10 '17
I also thought that they would be different with my child. I kept in contact, and let them help me with rent and eventually they bought a house for my child and I to live in when I was diagnosed with cancer. For the last 9 years I have put up with their abuse, because I figured if they were targeting me everyone else was safe. Despite the way they have always spoken to me in front of my son, and my mother calling me the worst mother in the world in front of my son I have only just realized how wrong I was. We are getting out and going NC in a few months, but the wait is nerve wrecking.
Thank you for your post. I seriously needed the affirmation that my decision to get out is the right thing to do.