It goes without saying that Tennis’ advice, which you can read here, suggests that he needs to take mroe drugs. Or less drugs. Or different drugs. In any event, that he needs pharmocological intervention of a different sort than he’s currently using.
Here’s the upshot: the person requesting advice is a woman (presumably in her 30s or 40s) who was molested by her older brother during her childhood. Though she’s made peace with the older brother (in the sense of not currently plotting his death) she has no contact with him (presumably because he’s scum). Her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary is drawing nigh, and their mother wants the entire family to gather for the celebration; otherwise the mother avers to want no celebration at all. Thus the mother is tossing the decision of whether there will a party for this milestone on her daughter’s lap.
Thoughts?
I tend to think that mom is, at minimum, an enabling harpy, and that her making her daughter responsible for maintaining family harmony is probably an extension of the same attitude that allowed the abuse to happen in the first place. ("What’s that, precious? Your big brother is sneaking into the bathroom every time you try to take a shower and keeps remarking on how pretty your mouth is? Well, try showering affter he’s gone to sleep when you can. Bust keep quiet about it, okay? Because Mommy couldn’t stand any scandal; it would be so humiliating I might die. You don’t want to make Mommy die, do you?) And yet…Tennis has a point (in addition to the one on top of his head) that the woman has the opportunity to reclam some power from her abuser.
But, on further reflection, the woman should tell her mother, as tactfully as possible, to screw herself and the horse she road in on.
I agree with you…the mother sounds like she just doesn’t want to deal with it. I think making a victim of abuse deal with her abuser when she’s clearly not ready for it is just too painful, and that mom needs to back off.
I think that the whole encouraging victims to “reclaim their power” by having interactions with their abuser thing is pure, unadulterated donkey crap.
Some victims are helped by it, but a goodly many just aren’t. I think in a lot of cases, victims are lead to believe that they’re not fully recovered unless they can interact with their abusers in a way indistinguishable from the way they’d interact with someone with a similar relationship who hadn’t abused them.* That’s nonsense. Why in the thousand names of God would I want to interact with my abuser as though nothing happened? Something demonstrably *did * happen - and it was the sort of thing a healthy person seeks to distance themself from having to put up with. If one’s experience with a particular person has demonstrated that that person is, as in this case, a sexual predator, a desire to not hang around them should be lauded as a healthy call - regardless of their familial relationship. Not wanting to hang out with a sex offender isn’t an indication of continuing trauma. It’s a reasonable, sensible decision based on her sure and certain knowledge that her brother, in her experience, cannot be trusted to behave in an appropriate fashion.
The mother is a bitch for insisting in this fashion - and for making all of this the daughter’s sole responsibility and problem to resolve.
*This is what people generally seem to mean by “reclaiming your power” in a sexual abuse scenario. They always seem to mean “reclaim your power” as a synonym for “resume the relationship like nothing happened”. That’s crap.
When we Rhymers talk about reclaiming power in such circumstances, we mean “kicking the abuser repeatedly in the kidney, either literally or by recourse to the legal system, or perhaps dropping the abuser naked into a vat filled with horney half-starved rabid orangutans.” But we’re odd.
I’ve never heard of this guy, and I’m not sure if I understand this part of your post. Are you saying that Tennis, by virtue of his dubious advice, needs to take more, fewer or different drugs? Or are you saying that he was advising the abused woman to take more drugs?
I’m assuming that it’s the former.
At any rate, I agree about 92% with your take on it. I can understand where he’s coming from, (though again, I’ve never heard of this guy, so for all I know he typically comes up with this sort of advice no matter what), he may be under the impression that part of her resistance to seeing her brother is because of residual fear of his past power over her. If that IS in fact the problem, seeing him again and being able to stand up to him might be useful. But NOT at a family function, what that does is send the message that you are saying that what he did was okay.
I agree with forgiving the abuser, but ONLY for one’s own peace of mind, because there still seems to be a slight taint of forgiveness meaning you’re okaying or condoning the abuse.
IMHO, for her to attend, whether or not she is still somewhat in fear (or disgust more likely) of her brother, would be to say “what he did was okay” to the entire family. I think there is NOTHING wrong at all with her refusing to attend, and if her mom has a hissy fit and cancels, telling her exactly why and cutting ties with her as well if necessary is absolutely right.
If you know about it, and don’t prevent an abuser from abusing, you are as guilty as the abuser himself. Once their crime has been uncovered, any normal human should cut off all contact with them, even if they weren’t personally the victim. Some crimes revoke your right to being socialized with and welcomed in normal society, this is one of them.
I don’t go for advice columns, but if I did, I’d rather read Skald the Rhymer’s than anything by Cary Tennis. In the current column, the guy sounds like he’s trying to convince himself, not the woman, that going to the reunion is a good idea. Although he’s given worse advice. I think the mom is being horribly by passive-aggressively pushing her daughter to spend time with her brother.
Marley, the mom isn’t being passive-aggressive–by which I mean PA doesn’t cover the turpitude of her behavior. She is trying to deny that the victim’s abuse had any moral value, thus minimizing her own contribution’s to the daughter’s suffering. I’d call her a bitch, but why insult Lassie?
You know, I missed the sentence earlier where the writer said “She has never handled this issue sensitively and wonders why I can’t just get over it so we can all be one happy family again.” What an ass.
Either way, even if passive-aggressive is another in my series of dramatic understatements, I think the way you deal with people like this is by calling their bluff. ‘You say you don’t want an anniversary unless I consent to spending the night being social with someone who abused me? Okay, you’re not getting a party. Or throw one without me.’
There’s a few things that aren’t clear from this description. It doesn’t say whether there are more than just the two siblings. It also doesn’t say whether the mother actually knows about the abuse. Both of these might make a huge difference.
What if they are two of … oh I dunno, let’s say 5 kids. Maybe she wasn’t the only one abused. Maybe even HE was abused by the father or mother or an older sibling before he abused her. There’s nothing explcit to say she has communicated the abuse to anyone else in the family – including the abuser. Yes, she said she was able to “confront my brother”, but in some therapeutic session this might not mean he was there in person to be confronted.
As far as mom is concerned, it sounds to me she is clueless about the reason why her kids aren’t alking. Which, in my mind, brings up the only real question to adress. She wants to say no, she won’t be in the room, fine. She just has to decide whether or not to explain why to mom.
And that depends of whether she feels her mom was somehow complicit in the abuse. Did she ignore her daughter’s plea for help when it happened? Did the daughter never ask for help when it happened? Never complain?
I wouldn’t even suggest an answer to this issue without getting more info from the daughter. Which means I guess the advisor guy is a dick.
Boyo Jim, the letter refers to her “other brother” and says the mother “wonders why [the author] can’t just get over it so we can all be one happy family again.”
Did you see the advice column about the woman whose friend had unprotected sex with the marine? http://208.100.26.199/sdmb/showthread.php?t=466981 I made a thread on it a while back…I found his advice a bit off there as well.
You’d have to be insane to take advice from Cary Tennis.
Fresh in my mind is a column in which a woman wrote that she was pregnant and wasn’t sure whether the biological father was her husband or a man she had had a brief fling with but wanted nothing further to do with him. She said that if she knew that the baby was not her husband’s, she’d seriously consider having and abortion before anyone came to know of it. She wanted advice on whether she should have a DNA test done immediately so she could make her decision.
Tennis’s advice was something along the lines of to keep mum, have the baby, and maybe after the kid reached 18 or 21 to mention to her husband that the kid might not be his and give him the option to do what he wanted about it.
That’s my view too. Mommy probably allowed the abuse to happen because she was in denial and admitting that there was abuse going on would threaten this fantasy of The Perfect Family that’s still so important to her. It’s probably really not that hard to make it to your 50th anniversary if you just ignore all the problems in your family, actually, so I wouldn’t even say that there is much to celebrate here.
If I were giving advice to the abused woman, I’d say “You are not responsible for anyone else’s feelings or choices. If going to that party would be a source of trauma and pain for you, DON’T GO. If your mother chooses to cancel the party because of that, that’s on her shoulders, not yours.”
Expecting the daughter to go to a party and pretend to have fun with someone who molested her is so messed up.
If I were the daughter, the only reason I’d even maintain ties with the mom would be so that I would later have the opportunity to pick her nursing home.
