The Parent Resource Depot

For me, I was being physically, emotionally, and mentally abused by my stay at home mother and I watched my supportive/loving father get ripped to shreds the same way I was. Traumatized by all of this, I spent the entire time from 10 to 18 waiting for that moment that I could be “saved” from this life. The abuse got worse and worse. Not to the point of homicide, but my self esteem was (and still is) destroyed. To ease the pain, I became addicted to sex and never learned what real “love” was. When I was a “legal adult” I went on a binge of promiscuity with several unknown legal-aged internet victims to try to heal my wounds; I was convinced I was helping myself and not further destroying myself. Then I met my wife and settled down because I finally found someone who made me feel “accepted”. My mother was a super controlling woman and needed to get her nose in everything I was doing. I was forced to expose my inner most private thoughts, then I was ridiculed and corrected for saying/thinking such a thing. When I did something that was unacceptable behavior, she would overreact and harshly discipline me, often resulting in being overly punished for something that could have easily been reasoned with rather than “dealt with”. My reasons for doing things were always “excuses” to her and when I realized my reasons for doing things weren’t “good enough” for her I stopped telling her my reasons but she would fight with me until I told her and she could further tell me that I wasn’t “good enough”.

I’m still not informed to the full extent of my wife’s abuse, but from the sounds of things, she was witness to domestic violence and alcoholism. My mother in law was the instigating, verbally abusive wife and my father in law was the defensive, physically abusive husband. Even today, they don’t talk to each other except business like. My in laws don’t entertain together, they don’t spend time together, they don’t even eat together! My wife’s brother ran away from home while my wife was an early teen; mostly as a result of my father in law having too high expectations for him and my mother in law not accepting him for who he was. My wife had to protect and raise her younger sister as a result of their mother’s mental instability and father’s neglect. My father in law even had an affair because he was so miserable in his marriage. After the affair they decided to stay together because they needed each other to survive but not because of love… For years, my wife lived in an unloving family, and she brought these expectations to my marriage with our kids…

So here you have these two unhealthy persons who meet each other over the internet. They both are trying to escape their pain and they are both seeking what they weren’t offered as children. I was looking for love and important, she was looking for respect and attention. We finally meet in person. There was indeed physical attraction, but our abusive needs were being met too. I felt extremely loved and important and she got the respect and attention she deserved… Convinced this was “love at first sight” we had sex the first day we met.

The relationship moved fast because our objective to escape our chaos was still priority one. Within two months of knowing each other, we were already moving in with each other; unknowingly that we didn’t love each other for our personalities (the right reasons) but because of what the other person had to offer… I could have been any other man in the world at that time, but as long as my wife was respected and given attention, she was ready to latch on to them; the same could be said about her with me and my need for love and feeling important.

We just had our 10 years together anniversary earlier this week but I can’t help but feel like these last 10 years I’ve been loving an idea and not her. I have got to know a lot about her and I really think that this marriage/family could work, but I just feel like this entire time I wasn’t loving her for being my wife, I was loving her for NOT being my mom…I think the same could be same in return (though she won’t admit it); I think she “loves me” because I’m NOT like her parents… But this isn’t the foundation of a good marriage. Pffft, we’re not even close to a good foundation!!!

Our children feel the effects of our abused childhoods. WE shower them with everything we didn’t have growing up in hopes that they will live better/healthier lives than we did. It seems c
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It seems clear to me that we both agree that our childhoods suck and we need to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes that our parents did. But what about the marriage that we have with each other? Is there hope? Where do we start? Do we start back at “Hello”? Or do we just pick up the pieces and try to sort it all out?