Posted by cricket on April 14, 2006, at 10:06:06
In reply to Re: Boundaries with Mothers, posted by special_k on April 10, 2006, at 23:01:29
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Been thinking a bit more about this.
> is it maybe that you are supposed to love your mother and so if you were capable of love you would surely have loved your mother and so if you don't love your mother then maybe you aren't capable of loving anybody?
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> or is there more to it...I think that is part of it.
Here's the background for what it's worth...
My mother rejected me from birth, refused to look at me, name me. She was just a kid herself. She had the papers signed for my adoption but because she was underage my grandparents overruled her and she was forced to live with me and I must have been a constant reminder of her rejection by my father (whoever the h*ll he was) and her own shame. And on top of that my grandparents adored me and I don't think were too delighted with her at this stage.
I have a picture from when I was 2 or 3. I was in a wheelbarrow with my grandparents each on one handle wheeling me (bright smiling faces all around) but then off to the side you can see my mother (still a teenager) turned away, arms crossed high on her chest and looking like she was about to cry.
Then on top of that, a psychopath enters the picture. My mother falls for him and gets pregnant again. The problem is this guy prefers four year old girls (me) to 20 year old girls (my mother) so he will only marry my mother if he gets me too.
Being the true charmer and deceiver, the psychopath manages to convince my grandparents (naive immigrants) that his intentions are noble. And my mother is stuck with me again with another person who also prefers me (albeit in a very warped way) to her.
So looking at this all my life her hatred and rejection of me seems normal and expected. I may well have felt the same way she did if I was put in her situation.
And from a very young age, even probably before we were thrown together with the psychopath, I never expected anything but hatred from her. I never accepted her as my mother. She was just a bigger person that I had to avoid as best I could in order to survive.
> i wonder if you go numb sometimes because things would feel too painful otherwise
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Or is it just like my expectations are very low? It does seem like some strange attachment disorder.> (like with your relationship with your partner. things are amicable enough but then you can't afford to invest more emotionally or you would only feel hurt over his affairs and stuff so you just go numb and don't let it worry you. because otherwise... just more hurts in the long run).
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Yeah, I've been thinking about that too. Because I really do care about my partner. I want him to be happier, have a bit of an easier time of it and when I see him in pain, I feel it, I really do.But I can't seem to express it in the normal human way. It is more distant, less involved. For example, recently he had a problem with his collar bone and his mother oohed and poor babied over him and I didn't at all. But I did give him money to see the doctor.
To my partner, his mother's reaction feels like love and mine feels like "shut your trap and do something about it"
And it is that distance, that lack of involvement that I think more than anything makes it so easy for me to accept his affairs.
My t once said that I was unsentimental. I was afraid that he was calling me cold.
So still all mixed up. But it feels like there's something important underneath this.
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poster:cricket
thread:629668
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/relate/20060220/msgs/633018.html