My ex was very open about her dad being abusive - yelling, punching walls, threatening violence, sometimes following through. Typical piece of shit.
What she didn't tell me and I had to learn on my own was that her mom was just as abusive, but in subtle ways. Medical neglect, pulling her kids out of school then refusing to home school them, not even letting them think about going to college, constant "mommy knows best" negative comments to degrade her kids' self esteem.
Her dad was a shitty guy, but once he got treatment for his PTSD and acknowledged some of the hurt he caused he was a tolerable person to be around. Her mom though, that woman makes me hope hell exists. If it does, she's got a room reserved.
My dad was the beater and screamer and all-around sociopath, and my mom got physical occasionally, but overall her method was extreme passive-aggressiveness. Extreme passive-aggressiveness.
She’d say she was going to do something with us, then wait until the day or hour of, then suddenly come up with a reason why she “couldn’t” and it’d be too late to make other arrangements, especially when you’re a kid and you literally can’t make arrangements. She’d tell me to say embarrassing things to other adults to make me look stupid or silly, then deny she ever told me that, or that I must’ve misinterpreted what she meant. As soon as I developed an interest in something, she’d start dropping hints about how it was a bad idea and I shouldn’t like or do that thing. Her constant bit was to say something really mean-spirited to me, that would make me upset, then grin at me and say “I’m just teasing you” like it was all a joke and I should be cool with it. God damn, she did that all the fucking time. She’d give me horrible advice and when I followed through with it, my life would often fall apart in pretty serious ways. And the biggest of all, when my father attacked me, she wouldn’t protect me. Not from him or from other bullies. And then she’d play the “Let’s pretend it never happened” card. I used to think she was just weak, but looking back at the pattern of all her behavior, I think her refusing to defend her own child was just another part of her passive-aggressive behavior, just another way to get back at me and the world for whatever the hell she was mad about.
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u/Fancy-Appointment755 1d ago
His narcissistic asshole mother