My family vs His family
I come from an extremely dysfunctional family, and you can’t ever tell how dysfunctional until you are outside of it, looking in. In my family. My mother was a sexually deviant drug addict, and we are talking. Everything: cocaine, speed, pot… You know everything. My father was mostly addicted to physical abuse. And did cocaine for a long time and was an extreme abuser.
Growing up my dad did a lot of abusive torturous things he played “knives” with my fingers, tried to drown me when I was taking a bath, stuffed me head first into a snowbank and held me there, beat the ever-loving hell out of me on a regular basis with anything: fists, kicks, feet, golf clubs, belts, punches… it was intense. He burned my hand with the waffle iron and to this day still thinks it’s hysterical and laughs about it. He ripped my earrings right out of my ears injuring my ears. He would wake me up in the middle of the night dragging me by my hair pulling me down the stairs into the basement and screaming at me and beating the hell out of me because I had done something wrong, I was under 10, often I had done nothing wrong.
With all of that physical abuse, you’d think that was the big dysfunction but it really wasn’t I feel like the bigger dysfunctional family piece comes that my whole family watched him do it and knew that he did it and told me that I needed to love him and be a better person. “He just didn’t know how to love, this was this was his way of showing me love” my grandmother, his mother, would always tell me. “Your father loves you he just has hard times, he just doesn’t know how to do the right things” Then at other times she would be punching him and scream at him that he was going to kill me and he needed to walk away. He was going to kill me this time he was going to kill me. Child protective came several times because I would go to school and there would be welts all over my body and school would call child protective. Nothing would come from child protective because what child would tell on their parent. I was left alone tortured mentally emotionally battered and scarred and broken. There were times when he would beat me, whip me with a belt, and I would be crying in pain and he would tell me: he wasn’t going to stop until I stopped crying. I had to learn before I was 10 how to control, shut off, and destroy any feelings, and emotions that I had. I wasn’t allowed emotions at all! if I had them they needed to be and would be beaten out of me.
My third stepmother didn’t want me out of all of my stepmothers she didn’t want me either but hers was a different reason her she was very twisted because she wanted me there as she told me when I was an adult because he wouldn’t beat her children if I was there I was the target but she didn’t want me there because I wanted to be loved I needed love to quote her you just wanted love and I had no love to give you she even went as far as telling him that I wasn’t worth anything and I don’t know if that was always what he believed or didn’t believe or what but I do know that no child deserves a childhood like what I had and the emotional battery and mental warfare was the glaring dysfunction in my family.
This is all the types of dysfunction that I come from. and while I don’t believe that there is necessarily a better or a worse I do believe that physical abuse is easier to heal from physically mentally emotionally.
Now let’s go to adulthood:
I married two abusive men who were both just like my father. in one way shape or another they physically emotionally mentally abused myself the children we had all of my children. at the end of both relationships my father all these years later is still friends with them talks to them monthly has lunches with them gives them work, stays connected to them. me on the other hand I walked away from everything. my father said if I divorced my last husband that I would be disowned and I was completely disowned by all of my family. none of my siblings have a relationship with me my aunts my uncles don’t speak to me I have no biological family except for my children. at first that’s a hard pill to swallow because the world feels very lonely without a biological connection. but several years later with a lot of therapy and personal emotional growth most of the time I’m OK with it. then I met a guy Leo and he has what appears to be a normal family. his parents are divorced and they’ve been divorced since I think the 80s he is the oldest of three children which means he has two younger brothers and he has a son and what seems to be from the outside sort of normal life. when I met him he had been working at the same place for 21/22 years. he had moved into his mom’s house and had been living there but he owned his vehicle supposedly paid his bills seemed like he had a good relationship with his mom and had regular frequent visitation with his child. now do you want to know about all this dysfunction, hahaha.
Four years in this is the dysfunction that I joined:
The first year Leo spent chasing his baby Mama.
The second year he spent still emotionally attached to her although she had been with the same guy who was living with her for two years three years at that point and generally and continuously treated him like a piece of crap doormat.
(I would like to give you a few examples so that you can understand the depth at which she had him wrapped around her finger and she was twisted and screwy: 2018 she planned a whole trip to Hawaii she was taking her two sons an older son with someone else and the younger son who is leo’s child she didn’t ask Leo hey you want to go to Hawaii with the kids and I hey do you wanna join my family and I and my sons in Hawaii and then the week before she left she tells him why don’t you go to Hawaii. he goes to Hawaii and ends up having to pay for everything! I mean everything a place to stay rental car last minute plane tickets food for everything and everyone and all kinds of other things. for several years before the trip to Hawaii she had been saying things to him like I don’t wanna see you I need other dick! their son while she was pregnant was at the center of a paternity dispute. she had discussed with Leo them having a baby together but it turns out she was having sex with another guy. when I met Leo he was still sending her presents and dinners and giving her money for herself not the Child Support that he was paying. he was sending her texts about how beautiful she is and pictures of her and how he wanted to give her back rubs and it’s not really cheating dial of this ridiculous shit!) those are my examples of his dysfunctional disgusting relationship with his ex-Chrissy/Christina.
Now we’re at the beginning of the third year that we have been together and I’m starting to see his family’s really messed up. his parents who have been divorced since the 80s are in a sick way codependent and his mom uses his dad for money and his dad is some weird way twisted up in something with his mom. this relationship between his parents makes him feel like and believe that when couples split up they still practically date that’s what a normal divorce looks like is you still basically date you still buy each other lovely presents and buy each other mattresses and freezers and Cologne and all of these things that happen in marriages that don’t happen when you split up anymore. so we get to October of 2021 and his family really loves me and I feel like I love his family his middle brother is married with a daughter and they’re pregnant with twins his brother has a son and I love them all. so his brothers ex the mother of leo’s nephew is married now to quote UN quote local celebrity. we get invited to a rich neighborhood for Halloween. we all go as a big huge family and it’s a blast things are out of control big all in cool ways. rich that’s the guys house that we were at gives me a tour of his home and I see a really cool gym setup in the basement. me being raised how I was raised I send him and his wife a thank you for having us for Halloween and I ask his wife hey do you ever use that gym equipment in your basement what is that gym equipment question. now I don’t hear anything back I forget and whatever it’s not a big deal. I get a phone call from leo’s brother telling me that I am not allowed to talk to Brittany. Britney is his baby Mama and Rich’s wife. I argue the point with his brother because why am I being told I’m not allowed to talk to somebody? I’ve never done something to give the impression that I’m on trustworthy or disloyal so why am I getting a phone call ordering me that I’m not allowed to talk to Brittany? Fine, whatever and then I hear from her. she’s responding to my original message from a few days earlier. she messages me on Facebook and says Nope we don’t ever use it. I said wow but you look so good or something along those lines because she is really in shape and great looking. I think her and I say a few sentences to each other to me they’re just mom slash wife goofy talk nothing harmful just me being chatty. I don’t think anything of this whole conversation and I go about my day. then I start to get crazy texts from leo’s baby brother Matthew. he calls me. he is yelling at me. I am being told how just loyal I am how I have name called her insulted her tried to be friends with her um I’m a trader and I’m arguing no I didn’t I didn’t do anything I didn’t do anything like that I talked to her about the gym in her basement and that was it. he’s continuing to be angry at me and demands that I apologize to him for not listening. I told him I did nothing wrong I wasn’t apologizing. then he starts telling me that he has screenshots of my conversation with her and he’s going to send them to his brother I’ve done the wrong thing and I’m like go ahead and send them and send me a copy because I wanna see what you supposedly have. I had done nothing. then he refused to send the texts. I gave my phone to Leo and had him look over everything so that he knew exactly what the conversations were with Brittany there was one that was a thanking message for Halloween and one asking about the gym in the basement and like four or five sentences being goofy about her gym in the basement and her puppies and whatever.
From there everything got crazy because his mom stopped talking to me his dad tells him that I’m a liar and everybody insist that I’m a bad guy well girl. I had done absolutely positively nothing up to this point and I was getting completely buried under somebody else’s lies deceit and treachery. I never really experienced a family lying and conniving and making up data about me. both my ex-husband’s families loved me even after I divorced their sons most of the families still thought I was exactly who I am a great human being. It took months for Matthew and I to speak again and months for Leo and Matt’s parents to talk to me and to this day the whole family believes that I lied and that I was doing something devious.
then we get to 2022 and it’s July we go out for ice cream Leo, myself, our four kids, Leo’s parents, and Leo’s aunt. Leo’s son is 13 at this point and has behavioral and emotional problems related to being neglected and emotionally abused. Now Leo’s parents are both in their 70s and I don’t think that they really understand what neglect and emotional abuse and manipulation do to a child. We will call Leo’s son EJ in order to keep some anonymity for a 13-year-old. EJ is misbehaving in a childlike manner because he’s digging in the dirt at the ice cream place. leo’s dad John tells him to stop it and kind of gets a little nasty about it um raising his voice a bit at EJ. EJ does what a typical 13-year-old will do and gives them a snotty attitude back I intervene and I tell EJ Nope we’re not going to behave like that apologize to your grandfather and stop the behavior I’m going to count to three and when I get to three if you haven’t done it we’re going to go sit in the car and your night’s over. EJ does exactly what he needs to do he stops moves his body looks at his grandfather and says I’m sorry grandpa John I’m all done I’m sorry and then he proceeds to go and play with the other three kids for probably about 30 or so minutes. everything seems fine all the kids are having fun the adults are sitting there we’re talking about whateverness then EJ comes over and he wants to be part of the “adult conversations” going on. EJ sits down and John looks at him and starts in a very loud voice manner scolding EJ for his behavior with the dirt 35 minutes ago. this is glaringly going to cause an emotional/behavioral problem. I look over at John and I said Nope we’re done it’s over he’s changed his behavior we’re not going to do this. I set it in a polite firm respectful manner and he looked at me and then he looked at EJ and continued to raise his voice more and scold him and tell him how dare he and on and on. I looked at John again and I said no it’s done it’s over we’re not discussing it. EJ got up and went and played for another probably 20 minutes with the kids things seemed fine John hugged everybody goodbye hugged me goodbye said I’ll talk to you in a day or two darling have a good night. I was supposed to pay him $453 on the first week of August and realized around maybe the 20th of July that I wasn’t going to have enough money to pay him so I texted him and called him he didn’t answer the phone and he didn’t respond to my text. then I texted and called and called and called and texted more I heard nothing he never answered the phone either. then I talked to leo’s mom and she said I don’t know I haven’t heard anything I don’t know why you’re not hearing back from him and so I was kind of just like OK I don’t know what’s going on so Leo called him. when Leo called he told Leo who did I think I was the head of this family how dare I treat him like that and embarrass him and make him feel bad in front of Leon’s mom. Leo said you know her she would never treat you with disrespect she was trying to protect EJ. Leo tried to explain for over an hour and John agreed that he never thought I would treat him badly but that I had. the next day I sent an apology text it was probably the size of a paragraph explaining to him that I love him I’m sorry that that’s how he took my interjection and that when he was ready I would love to hear from him I miss him. I never heard from him. couple weeks later we all met as a family at sea breeze which is a local amusement park kind of a mini version of Six Flags. I thought this is a great opportunity to talk to him I still hadn’t been able to get in touch with him about the money now the money was late so I wanted to talk to him about that but I also thought he had to talk to me in person he had to say something. I was wrong! I said hello to him and in front of my kids and Leo he looked away and ignored me like I had said nothing. the whole day he ignored me. by the end of the evening at sea breeze he wasn’t speaking to Leo either he was ignoring Leo completely too. now everybody in the family is being told that I financially caused him extreme hardship because I didn’t give him the money and I’ve refused to talk to him about the money. it doesn’t matter that I had all of this proof and texts and phone records that I had been trying to get in touch with him none of that mattered nobody cared all that mattered is he was saying I was doing all of these bad things to him and everybody believes him. now there’s a birthday party in September for leo’s nephew, Matt’s son. Matt calls we have this long discussion and I agree to go because I love Matt and I love his son and my kids love them. little did I know that rich and Brittany were going and John was going and I would be there most of the night with a bunch of people who wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. I have not participated in anything with this family sense that was it that’s the final straw.
now they’re all talking about how I don’t want to be a part of their family and how I don’t want them and I’m disconnecting from them and I am a problem. I continue to explain it’s wrong for somebody to treat you like you don’t exist when they’re sitting in a room with you. my children all grew up watching men treat me like that and men abuse me and they will not see the healthy mom that I have become in relationships where I sit with a group of people who refuse to act like I exist. the whole family tells me things like puppet this is how you know that you’re loved and wanted is because he’s treating you like he treats everybody else at one point in time or another. I don’t want to participate or be treated like I don’t exist when I am in a room with people.
and there’s all of the dysfunction that I deal with right now!