agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Amy: I wish I could undo some of the terrible mistakes I've made.

My daughter hasn't spoken to me in years.

When she was very young, I divorced her dad and moved hundreds of miles away. I married a man with two sons and a parenting method that I didn't agree with, but I felt trapped with him -- the way I'd felt trapped with her dad. We were together for 10 years.

I waited until after my daughter graduated from high school, and then I separated from her stepfather. It was very difficult to live on my own and we ended up getting back together. It was more out of convenience than anything.

When I told my daughter that I was getting back together with him, she blew up and told me that her stepbrother had drugged and raped her several times. I was in complete shock! She has not spoken to me since then.

I think about her every day. I stalk her on Facebook (with an unrecognizable profile) just so I can see her life. I can't be a part of her life because she has blocked me. This estrangement breaks my 83-year-old mother's heart, and I would like to see us all together again.

-- Regretful

Dear Regretful: If you want your relationships to change, then you need to change. It's really that simple. Although you admit to having regrets, you don't seem to have taken responsibility for the role you played in your daughter's trauma. Your reaction to her disclosure that she was raped while in your household was to express shock, and then passively sigh -- and continue on to reunite with your ex.

Are you not aware that the best thing to do when someone reports a rape is to call the police? (And people wonder why assault victims hesitate to report!)

Yes, you've made mistakes. Admitting this is definitely a step in the right direction, but you don't get to claim victimhood, here. Until you take responsibility for your parental neglect, passivity, and terrible judgment, you cannot hope for a reconciliation. Even your Facebook-stalking seems to me more melodrama than the action of a mother desperate to make things right. You are not Stella Dallas standing in the rain, wistfully watching your daughter through a window. You are not the victim of her blocking you. There are many ways -- other than Facebook -- to contact someone, however, until you can commit to positive change, it is probably wisest for your daughter to keep her distance.

A compassionate and competent counselor could walk you through the events in your life that have culminated in this moment. With coaching and positive change, the reconciliation you desire might be possible. I hope you will try.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/askamy/s-2346301?fs

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Could you put the letter behind a cut too? Thanks.

SUre.

OP needs to move back out of her ex's/current's household and then get therapy. Feeling trapped for over a decade is not normal, and it's not healthy. Her life won't improve while she stays. Also, moving back in with her ex was the final straw with the daughter, not the starting point of their estrangement, which suggests that OP isn't telling the full story about what happened over the years.

It *screams* “missing reasons” to me.

Holy forking shirtballs, what a mess. And I'm glad Amy used the word "passive" as much as she does. In a very weird analogy, whenever I teach The Shining, I zero in on what is, to me, the biggest red flag in the father's character: that he sees everything that has happened in his life (his alcoholism, breaking his son's arm, beating up a student) as "Jack Torrance in the passive mode," done to rather than doing.

LW may use the active voice in places, but she seems to see herself as swept along by circumstance rather than making choices, and until she takes ownership of those choices and the damage they did, nothing is going to change.

(Note: She should start this process with the full knowledge and acceptance that it still may not lead to reconciliation. The little dig about how this is breaking her elderly mother's heart doesn't give me much hope, though.)

+1000

Re your second cut tag, the stepfather's son is the one who assaulted her.

"a parenting method that I didn't agree with" sure is a way to not take responsibility for moving your daughter from one abusive household to another.

I don't understand this letter or response.

It seems like there is information missing from the letter that Amy is basing her response on. I don't know if this is because the information was (badly) cut, or because the LW herself left it out and Amy is making assumptions.

Your reaction to her disclosure that she was raped while in your household was to express shock, and then passively sigh -- and continue on to reunite with your ex.

The LW said she was shocked, but there is nothing in the letter about what she said or did in response. Her entire response is missing. It's a really glaring lack of information!

Like, I don't want to defend this mother here. The letter strongly hints that she knew her husband was abusive and I'd be willing to be she left damning information out of the letter to start with. But why does Amy know so much that we don't know?

"I waited until after my daughter graduated from high school, and then I separated from her stepfather. It was very difficult to live on my own and we ended up getting back together. It was more out of convenience than anything.

When I told my daughter that I was getting back together with him, she blew up and told me that her stepbrother had drugged and raped her several times. I was in complete shock! She has not spoken to me since then."

Yes, I read this. I read it several times while trying to understand Amy's response. Where does it say she passively sighed and continued to reunite with her ex?

The section of the letter you quote is very ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so on the part of the letter writer.

Edited 2020-04-13 21:17 (UTC)

To me, this reads very much like one of the “missing reasons” you find in parental estrangement forums, and Amy (surprisingly) has noticed it: the LW left out her reaction and only put the result: her daughter has gone no-contact.

If the mother had said “oh jeez I had no idea what the hell OK I’m not going to get back together, I’ll make sure you never need to interact with stepbrother again”....her daughter probably would not have gone no-contact. Instead, the LW somehow wants them all to be together again. What? Her daughter, together with her rapist?? Huh, LW. Huh.

LW: You moved your daughter from one abusive household to another, didn't split from that situation until your daughter was grown and out of the house, then go *back* to that same situation? And your only response to your daughter's revelation of what happened to her in the process is to... what, exactly? You were shocked, but did you actually *do* anything? And now you're Facebook-stalking the daughter who wants nothing to do with you?

I can sympathise with feeling trapped in a toxic situation. But, m'dude, you need therapy. You need to own your part in this whole mess and work to become a better person, one that takes responsibility for their own bullshit, before you can ever *hope* to make amends with your daughter.

And yeah, I see that "it's breaking my/her grandma's heart" melodramatic ish. Well done. You deserve an Oscar for your performance. But how do you think your daughter feels, when you didn't support her when she told you the ugly truth?

(TL, DR: I believe Amy's right about this one.)