I didn’t have abusive parents, but my sister married an abusive guy, and I was verbally abused in the workplace. Based on my experience and attitude toward abusive scum, I think abusers should get some care, but just enough to make sure their death is slow.
“Oh, you broke your hip. I hear that can be a bitch. Hurt like hell, don’t it?”
Heh. Reminds me of a quote I read (and loved) in the seventh Dark Tower book by King; Roland (the main character of the stories in case you’re not following) cursed someone by saying: “May you live a long life, in poor health”. Love it.
However, I’ll respectfully submit that having a BIL who’s abusive, or a co-worker who’s verbally abusive, having an abusive parent is a completely different thing, because it’s relatively easy to emotionally divorce yourself from in-laws and co-workers.
I’m fortunate enough to be in the trade so I know exactly which the crappy nursing homes are. My mother is also deathly afraid of fire and requests to be buried. Yeah, right. Burn baby, burn.
My father grew up in a terribly abusive home, but was a fantastic parent to my sister and I. When asked by one of his ne’er-do-well siblings why he wasn’t doing more to take care of his mother, he replied, “I’m too busy taking care of my children.”
I can fully understand why people can’t or won’t care for their abusive parents. But it’s too late to teach those parents lessons. They learned as children.
Guess I’m lucky. My father died when I was four. And my mother’s been gone almost ten years. Although she lived independently until the final, very bad, year, I was fairly helpful in her last 20.
(I’ve read about some truly dreadful abuse in this thread. And a few cases of “wah, wah, they didn’t understand how special I am!”)
If only you’d left out that last sentence. Why would you come into a thread that clearly contains a lot of pain and then mock some of the posters? Maybe what happened to them wouldn’t have harmed you or even most people. That doesn’t change the fact that it hurt them. You can’t help how you feel, and I think it’s rather cruel to tell someone that their feelings are not legitimate. It doesn’t help, and it often adds to the pain.
Maybe you’re right in your assessment, I don’t know, and neither do you, really. So why take aim at people who are hurting enough to post in such a thread without knowing for certain that your criticism is accurate? (And even then, I’d strongly recommend you use a different tone of ‘voice’. I can’t imagine sarcasm and derision are very effective methods of getting someone to non-defensively examine their feelings and motives.)
I have seen this.
“You are to do EVERYTHING to keep Mom/Dad alive, we don’t care what it is, we don’t care if it prolongs his/her life for no real reason, just KEEP HIM/HER ALIVE.”
I’ve often wondered if family members who insist on full, terrible, pointless treatment had been abused in some way and are taking a little revenge. Sure seems like it sometimes.
Bibby
Just giving My Humble Opinion. Not advice.
In the early 1990s, my estranged father, who lived in Miami, Florida, became too feeble to take care of himself. He asked whether my husband and I would take him in. We flew to Miami and brought him back to our home in Oklahoma, where he occupied the master bedroom (with a private bath). He got good home-cooked meals delivered on a bed-tray when he wasn’t feeling like coming to the table. I took him to his medical appointments and bought his prescriptions.
I had not seen my father in nearly twenty years, and I’d hoped that he might have mellowed with time, but unfortunately he had only fermented. Although the first few days were OK, he soon reverted to his old habits of verbal abuse and threats of violence. Eventually even the sexual abuse returned: he tried to spy on me when I was in the shower, he would grab at my breasts, and he masturbated in front of me while saying obscene things.
Life with my father was hell on earth. Trying to be kind to someone who behaved as he did was extremely stressful. My husband was horrified by the situation, but he yielded to my desire to treat my dad better than my dad treated me.
After eight months, my father died peacefully in bed. Am I sorry I took him in? No. I am sorry that we couldn’t get along better, but taking him in was just something I felt I had to do. I admit that I’m glad he didn’t live longer, but if I’d refused to help him when he needed help I would have felt guilty for the rest of my life.
Not that it really matters, but in my case my dad wasn’t physically abusive to me as a child. Lots of people have gone through terrible emotional and physical abuse, and I am certainly not going to claim that I went through the same hell they did.
I also am not unforgiving of his not recognizing my “specialness,” whatever that may be, although it would be nice if he acknowledged that I’m a good person and parent.
But simply put, he’s a dick. He was when I was young, and he’s gotten progressively worse through the years. He’s done some really unkind things to people who didn’t deserve it–I am certainly not the worst-treated among his family members and aquaintances. I don’t like him, and I feel no obligation to him, and I don’t feel guilty about the way I feel.
My mom’s a different story, now. Love me moms.
This is a mirror imagine of my childhood. Father is a cop and can’t leave his job on the road. Very controlling. Screaming all the time. A lot of man handling. I remember one night he told me to brush my teeth (I was 8 I think) and I hated the taste of mint so I only brushed with water. I remember looking towards the living room and he was charging at me yelling that I was “complete bullshit” and needed to grow up. He wrapped my hair around his hand and pulled it back. He shoved a toothbrush full of toothpaste in my mouth and scrubbed my teeth so hard they bled.
I have never told anyone that. Not even my BFF.
The last time he laid a hand on me, he back handed me leaving me with a black eye. My co-worker found out and went to the police station he worked for and reported him. (I was 22.) There was a investigation and of course I lied about it. Though it scared him enough where he never touched me again.
I’m 30 and there still is alot of emotional abuse. To this day when I try to stand up to him, he still makes me cry.
Though would I take care of him when he gets old? Yes. Because not only have I seen him at his worse, but I was with him and watched him cry when his father died. I sat in his truck for an hour with him while he cried. I was 11. I remember that to this day. Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath my Wings” was playing.
I saw that day he was breakable and not as “hard” as he portrayed himself to be.
My mother? She would always say, growing up, “You’re father isn’t in a good mood, be quiet tonight.” or “Just agree with him. I don’t want a fight.”
Yes she stood up for me, but she enabled him more. Though I get along with her okay.
My father and I have a love/hate relationship, but it’s all I have ever known with him. It’s all I’m comfortable with. He’s getting older so the, “I love you” are more often and every time he says that… I feel awkward around him. I am not comfortable with him telling me that.
Sorry about my novel and my mini hi jack. :smack:
My father-in-law was not abused, but he was not the favorite of his mother; that was his brother. His father worked a lot. His father died fairly young, and when his mother was elderly and dying of lung cancer, he took her in.
My father-in-law also is bipolar, knows it, and doesn’t take meds because he loves his manic highs too much. When on a high he acts like king of the world, and woe betide anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly and sincerely (at least, a very good acting job of seeming sincere) agree with his opinions during those times, or else he turns into a screaming asshole who might yell for hours. He physically, mentally, and emotionally abused his children and wife, and I’ve heard worse rumors about things he may have done to his wife decades ago. He didn’t stop hitting the kids until they were at least teens or older; my husband stopped being beaten when he was in his late teens and caught his dad’s punch. That brought fear into his dad’s eyes, but didn’t cut down the yelling.
He also values people based on what they can do for him. If they don’t come through in a fashion that he expects, then he can go on about perceived slights for years to come. For just one example, a friend that he’s known for a few decades has been on his shitlist since November just because he wasn’t quite as good of a host as my FIL thought he should have been - the house wasn’t spotless when they visited, he and his other friends at the party ate/drank too much of what my FIL brought along, etc. Even learning that the friend was in extreme pain at the time due to a then-undiagnosed digestive ailment and so was unable to clean around the house as much as he would have liked did nothing to cool his anger.
(On his lows he’s just a little maudlin, but not really repentant or anything sympathetic.)
He didn’t allow his wife to work, and used the money that he got from his work on things that made him happy. Cars, other property like vacation cabins, expensive clothes for him, or just saving it up. My MIL was given a tiny allowance to run the house on and clothe herself and the kids. His wife and kids each had one nice outfit to keep up appearances, and their other clothing was found at thrift shops. The girls got jobs at clothing stores as soon as they could legally work, so they wouldn’t look so poverty-stricken at school.
I’ve said half-seriously that at least one of my sisters-in-law has “Stockholm Syndrome” about him. She goes to therapy still (and she’s in her 40s) to deal with the effects of his abuse, but whenever there’s a disagreement between her parents she automatically takes her father’s side and runs down her (very passive, maybe once passive-aggressive, but now suffering from dementia) mother.
My husband helps out his dad when his dad is ill, but has said he’d consider cutting him more or less out of his life, if it wasn’t for his mother. As for taking him in - my husband says he won’t get a place with more than one bedroom. He’ll give his dad care, but not really loving care, and his dad can use that hoarded money to pay for a nice senior care residence or nursing home.
I just want to say, to all of you who have experienced abuse, how sorry I am for what you went through, and how much I admire the fact that you’ve survived intact. My mother suffered horrifying abuse at the hands of her father and grandfather, but she could not have been a better mother to my brother and I. With every person who stops the cycle of abuse, the world becomes a better place.
My parents scarred us all in their own, separate ways. My father has owned up to it and at least apologized. My mother has not and never will, because as far as my mother is concerned, she is never in the wrong. If she hits you, and you say “Ow! That hurts!” she’ll hit you harder to prove the first smack didn’t really hurt.
The thing is, I can’t ever be put in charge of taking care of my mother–and she keeps drinking like she does, she’ll probably need a caregiver one way or the other. But I truly believe, deep in my heart, that if I did have to take care of her, I would be charged with murder. 2nd degree murder, if I’m lucky. I’m pretty sure she suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and now that she’s basically becoming an alcoholic, it’s worse. My sisters will have to take care of her.
Don’t forget those of us who have suffered abuse and chose not the have children because we couldn’t take the risk of continuing the cycle.
Abusers were often those who were abused themselves as children. They let out the rage when they get older and take it out on their own children. They simply can’t help themselves.
If the adult can’t forgive what happened, I have no issues with leaving the abusers alone to fend for themselves. I would hope that the adult takes steps to break the cycle, to recognize that they have a problem (though not of their creation) and make 200% sure they don’t abuse their own kids.
Forgiveness isn’t for the other person; it’s for yourself.
I think that it is generally possible to help yourself. If you don’t think you can help yourself, don’t raise the kid.
I think we all react to the horrors of life in different ways. I was not abused, and I can understand those who care for ailing parents as well as those who walk away. My girlfriend is the caregiver for her mother, who was a horrible, evil woman to most of her children (including my friend). She still abuses her emotionally, but my friend continues to care for her. Some people have such a strong need for parental love that they will accept every scrap that is thrown their way. Others find alternate ways of being loved. Sometimes I think those who continue to care for an abusive parent do it as a way of proving to themselves that they did NOT turn out to be like that parent. And that’s fine. There are no right or wrong answers here. We do what we do to get by in this world.
Yes, they can. That’s the whole point of being human and having free will. Unless there is an organic disorder of the brain, each person out there has the ability to control their temper, the ability to unclench their fist, and the ability to walk away from a situation before resorting to violence.
I have all the sympathy in the world for a person who fears they could be abusive and asks for help or refuses to put themselves in a situation where they might become abusive. I have no sympathy for a person who fucking well knows better but still raises a hand to their child, and then passes it off as the child’s fault.
And let me take this opportunity to commend you, Annie-Xmas. It’s hard enough to decide to remain childless in a society that declares there must be something wrong with you if you don’t want children. To look at yourself and honestly assess your scars, your flaws, and your dangers, and to make that decision?
That is heroic.
I admire you. I wish you health and great happiness, because you certainly deserve it.