You can’t be your mother’s father.
Disrespect my ass. Mental abuse.
Your Mom is related to mine. Mine spent the first 23 years of my life so busy folding herself under Dad (without him even noticing, she didn’t fight him at all and always expressed agreement to anything he said) that I thought they were like an upside-down hydra: two bodies, one mind. After I told her that she wasn’t doing us any favors, that if I’d know I had other options I probably would have chosen a different (and much cheaper) major, that my brothers needed to know Dad’s opinion wasn’t the only acceptable one and that it was OK to disagree… she changed, but still that attitude had caused us so much pain it was unbelievable.
She did it with the best of intentions too (the road to Hell and all that): her parents are one of those couples who fight in order to make up, so she’d grown up watching several daily fights whenever he was home. Too cold is as bad as too hot, though
Which was the right thing to do. If you’d tried to get in the middle, things would have gotten worse.
Speak with the people of Al-Anon. Speak with us. Tell your mother that you love her; that you wish she was in a better place and you’re on her side whatever she chooses, whatever she does. There is a conversation you need to have once, both for your sake and hers; one time that you have to tell her “I realize I’m upsetting you, but I need to say this”. You need to tell her that she doesn’t need a man, and definitely not an abusive man, but since she chose to have one, you back her up, you love her and you’re by her side. Visit her frequently: this will make him less likely to “attack”, either physically or mentally; but, not so frequently that it brings you down. You have to take care of yourself first, you’ll be doing her no favor if you get sick (or put a hammer through your skull, definitely wouldn’t help, that!)
If I hadn’t had that conversation with my mother, Middlebro wouldn’t have been able to take his, let’s call it “Associate’s” in Engineering. For Dad it had to be the top or nothing, and Middlebro simply doesn’t have the interest, the inclinations or the brain for a Superior Engineer’s degree. So, nothing? Ugh!
But nowadays when she’s sad because Dad’s anniversary is this month and she gushes about how wonderful he was, I don’t tell her “'cept when not”. She needs me to listen, not to do anything.
The impulse to DO is very strong, even more in men. You’ve been taught you have to protect those weakest than you. You’ve been told you have to “be strong” (and nobody tells you, sometimes that means “being able to look pleasantly at someone you’d like to punch”), to solve problems.
What you Mom needs you to do is tell her you’re on her side… and from then on, just listen.
Well. So this is ‘catharsis,’ is it? Doesn’t taste too bad. Probably not something I should make a habit of, but still… I felt a little better afterward.
I hadn’t been expecting to get much sleep at all last night, but it turned out that my brain was able to occupy itself with a cheerfully irrelevant dream about an underwater astronomical observatory. People at work today unanimously said I looked ‘sick,’ and a co-worker helpfully offered to share some eucalyptus extract that I could smear all over my head to help with stress headaches. What the hell, koalas seem pretty stress-free most of the time. Now I smell like a throat lozenge.
It’s my habit to sack out after work for a bit. Was woken up by a call from Mom, triple-checking the time that I’m supposed to be there for the visit to the dog museum. She also asked me not to mention the ‘incident’ if Jimmy is there when I show up. I asked her why, she started to cry and said she didn’t want a fight. I agreed. However, it’s okay for me to respond if he brings the subject up. Mom apparently believes that Jimmy is best suited to decide how and when this matter is addressed; evidently that’s his right as the author of the situation.
This time I did take the opportunity to ask her why she told him in the first place. She couldn’t remember; it just ‘slipped out.’
So that’s where it stands now. I have promised my mother not to initiate conversation with the drunk. I figure there’s a good chance he’ll say something anyway, so we’ll see what happens.
Thank you all for your patience and your advice in this matter.
Honestly, I don’t know how it can be avoided; after all, he lives in my mom’s house. About the only way I can think of to avoid confronting him is to only ever visit when he’s at work. Even if I were sure thats the best course, remember also that this is Mr. “If your son is angry about me hitting you, he can talk to me.” The obvious flip side of that is, if I don’t say anything, then I must not be too angry about it, right? So what kind of a message am I sending if I avoid the issue? Except now I’ve promised to do it anyway. Wheee.
Well, that’s one of the things that has me confused about all this, because in fact she’s never really been manipulative in the way that requires a person to hide their true feelings. She may retreat from an unpleasant situation, but she has never had the knack of bottling up emotion. If she’s mad at you, you will know it. She may not tell you the reason, you may not have a clue why, but you know she’s mad. You don’t have to guess whether she’s unhappy or not; you can literally hear her head preparing to cry. Her sinuses make these tiny yet audible clicking sounds moments before the tears arrive.
So when she tells me calmly that things are fine right now, I believe that she genuinely feels things are fine. When she gets agitated and tells me to do something, I believe that’s what she really wants me to do. She may change her mind about it in twenty seconds, sure, but that’s another issue.
Obviously I need to find out more myself first; what you’re saying sounds more or less exactly opposite to what I was told at the psych clinic. I never realized that there’s all these distinct categories of abuse-- spousal abuse, domestic battery, criminal abuse-- which are handled differently by law. I assumed that the psych people would be informed enough to tell me if legal action were appropriate. Or maybe the informed psych people were all taking a long lunch that afternoon.
Good questions. As it happens, her brother is spending the winter in Ocala, just a couple hours’ drive from here. I don’t believe she’s told him about this yet.
I’m uncertain though. Right now she’s comfortable telling me about these things, for which I am extremely grateful. If I go behind her back and tell my uncle what’s happened, I’m worried that she won’t feel safe confiding in me. Parenthetically, this is also why I’ve been trying to softpedal my own agitation about all this; if she thinks hearing about this stuff makes me too upset, she may try to shield me from what’s really going on.
I don’t have any advice for you, just an observation: I didn’t see anything in the OP to indicate that you haven’t been a good son to your mom.
Best of luck to you both.
I would try to get mother out of there. I don’t think it would have helped in that story to escalate the situation. I don’t know how but try to get her to do something. Why. A few years ago a drunk fuck kicked my childhood babysitter to death because she didn’t like his drunken binges. Our families were on good terms all those years, and she was a god parent for a brother. He kicked her to death and got off because his confession in the hospital was taken when he was drugged up. He didn’t have to spend a fucking day in jail. after bail. Fucker Fucker Fucker Yes I have issues with the bastard. Luckly he killed himself later. Fucker I don’t know how the other evidence didn’t get him jailed, other than the dumb asses probally didn’t collect it, because he confessed.
Mom just called again: do I remember that Pittsburgh Steelers refrigerator magnet schedule I told her about a while back? How much would one of those cost?
?? No idea offhand, I’ll try to find out for you…
–Okay, thanks. By the way, do you want to talk to Jimmy right now?
Uhh… Bwuh? Erm… why now, all of a sudden?
–Well I don’t want things to get out of hand with you and him tomorrow.
Ah. Well… Sure, put him on, I guess.
–What are you going to say to him?
I don’t know! The same stuff I said to you earlier, I guess. I’m more interested in hearing what he has to say.
(she puts him on)
–Hey! What’s up?!
Hey Jimmy. Did mom tell you what I wanted to talk about?
–Yeah.
She said you both were arguing, and you hit her.
–Nah, that’s not what… it was just a little tap. She blew it out of proportion.
Uh huh. What happened?
–Oh. She was screaming and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, so I just gave her a tap to get her attention.
…Okay. You understand that a ‘tap’ to a larger person might not feel that way to a weaker person?
–Yeah.
You understand why I find this unacceptable?
–Yeah.
If somebody tapped your mom during an argument, you’d have a problem with it right?
–Yeah. It’ll never happen again.
Okay. That’s what I wanted to make sure of, that it doesn’t happen again.
–Okay. You want me to put your mother back on?
Please.
So that’s where we’re at right now.
This is a very typical conversation to have with an abuser. They always try to minimize what happened, and say they won’t do it again. They might even mean it, at the time they utter the words. Expecting things to change is foolish, unfortunately. You have to try to convince your mom that she’s better off without him, but she has to make that decision. If you yank her out of there, she might try to go back.
I have a cousin who is only just now filing for divorce against her abusive husband. For many years she’s left him, he’s apologized, and she’s gone back again and again. My dad even threatened to kick his ass once, but that didn’t stop anything. Ultimately it was up to her to leave, and I hope she’s doing it for real this time.
It wasn’t until I read about the Cycle of Abuse that I really got that the guy I was with was not different; that he was just like all the guys described in others’ stories.
You write too clearly and movingly to be any kind of social leper, Terrifel, and it seems to me you’ve handled all this very well so far.
Olivesmarch4th and **Quiddity Glomfuster **have said some wise things about abuse and the responsibility of other parties. To shift the focus slightly, one thing that struck me particularly about your OP was the repetition of this idea that your mom expects or needs something from you, and that if you only work at it hard enough, you’ll be able to see what it is.
She may well need something from you, and she may well be trying to goad you in to doing that thing, but I don’t think she has any idea what that thing is.
I find your introspection and insight impressive and touching – familiar – and I think a lot of us shy folk are under the impression that there is somewhere a script, that if we only practice and observe the social patterns of more gregarious people, we’ll be able to fit in and fill a comfortable social role. If only we could read other people better,
we’d be able to please them better.
But there is no script. Your mother, her boyfriend, we are all as lost as you feel. And a life subordinated to the needs of others, especially the confused, capricious needs of a woman who threw herself in the path of a pathetic, mean drunk, is not the life you should aspire to, and certainly not the life you should punish yourself for not attaining.
If you need to have another talk with him at another time, do it. Don’t get yourself arrested, don’t do lasting harm. But do it because you think its right, not because you think your mother wants you to. Offer her your support, a room, a lawyer. But don’t offer yourself as an alternate partner in a this sick dance she’s in. And don’t live under a veil of vague dread that she needs something from you she will not tell. Because it doesn’t sound like she has any idea what she wants.
I used to believe that. Then one day I decided to analyze this like I’d analyze any other process. And you know what? I reached the conclusion that “introverts” care about what other people think/feel/say a lot more than extroverts. It may be wrong, but thinking of it that way has helped me open my mouth more easily.
Not only that, but introverts seem to think others give a hoot about what they (introverts) do. I had a pal who refused to dance at a club, ever, because she didn’t want to be ‘watched’. I was never able to persuade her that people are too wrapped up in their own issues to give a sweet darn about her. It almost seems a sort of egotism in a backward way to assume people watch you, think about you, and care what you do or how you do it and then to worry about what they think about you. They don’t.
We are fleeting images in others’ lives; there and gone, mostly passing unnoticed. Only the opinions of people near and dear to us count.