Why do my parents thinking that text messages (and specifically group chats) are an appropriate way to share news about family member dying or going into hospice care
It’s crazy because here’s this person who treated me so amazing when I first met him and after the parents who raised me and coming out of a breakup that ended in death threats it felt like a dream, but 10 years later I was begging for scraps of his time and an ounce of empathy?
I actually have no idea what reasonable expectations are for a relationship. I’ve been told I’m selfish for asking for even small considerations and I think I’ve just been so used to trying to avoid inconveniencing people my whole life (ex: my parents) that I just accepted that
I think I accepted that people must not love or take care of their partners the way I expected and that I should just be grateful for the love and care I was getting because it’s better than nothing or better than the abuse I was used to. But then I kept accepting less and less
@mamagenevieve Same, we joke that divorce runs in my family 😅 I only have one aunt who hasn’t been divorced but she lived far so I didn’t see them often. My grandparents were together for 75 years but I never saw them argue, they were very private people about a lot of things
I have no reference point for what a “normal” amount of hard is. I think a lot of people (particularly women) put up with a lot of shit that we shouldn’t because we think it’s just how relationships are - that the shit we’re putting up with is just part of “marriage being hard”
I didn’t have parents with healthy communication skills or who worked through hard times; I never had a model of that. I grew up with an abusive single mom and an absent father, whose marriage had consisted of screaming at each other and fights that led to police showing up
It’s hard to recognize abuse, especially emotional, when it’s been a pattern throughout some of your most formative relationships with the people who are supposed to love you most. It feels normal, so you don’t realize something isn’t right or you convince yourself it’s just you
Some people don’t understand how someone wouldn’t recognize they’re in an abusive relationship because they grew up in a healthy family — But some of us grew up with parents who taught us that people who say they love you can also abuse you and that love and abuse could coexist
As stupid as it sounds, I think one of the reasons I’ve been most hesitant to leave my husband (and still one of my biggest anxieties) is that I know I’ll have to leave at least some of the pets with him and it’ll break my heart to lose my babies 😭😭
Kind of embarrassing that I’ve been with this man for 10 years and it took a therapist to tell me he’s been emotionally manipulating me
Like, a part of me knew or questioned it but I’d just assume I was being dramatic or that it was my fault