agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Carolyn: Recently, my two teen sons have talked to me about what they feel was a traumatic childhood because their father, who struggles with emotional dysregulation, was at times volatile and angry. They cite specific incidents and say they are not sure they will want to remain in contact once they are grown.

I recall these incidents, too, and I am not surprised they were distressing to my boys. I did my best at the time, and I frequently intervened. Still, I was a bit surprised at the intensely negative way they see their dad. I didn’t say that because I fear it sounds like gaslighting; maybe these experiences really were much more traumatic than I realized. Maybe their dad is a much more abusive person than I realized.

I feel disoriented by their disclosure — worried they will see me as having stood by and allowed it. Worried the man I am married to is an abuser. How do I process this?
— Worried

Worried: I hope you validated your sons’ perspectives and apologized for not protecting them better and not understanding how distressing their dad’s volatility was for them. If you haven’t done that, then get to it. Without delay.

Then I suggest you do further processing with a therapist, also without delay, though that is easier said than scheduled, unfortunately.

Make therapy available to your boys, too. If you don’t have many options where you are, then talk to their pediatrician and/or go through their school(s) to get some names if they have even halfway decent counseling resources there.

I think it’s a common misconception that a parent who is loved, is lovable and means well can’t also be abusive. It’s the behaviors that constitute abuse, though, and if your loved, lovable and well-meaning husband was unable to regulate his emotions and behaved in your home in an angry and volatile way, then what your boys experienced was emotional abuse.

If nothing else, you saw your husband through adult, informed eyes. They were too young to have that protective filter. To meet your boys’ needs in this moment, you have to start from their perspective, regardless of where it takes you. My concern is that it will take you to a perception, for them, that their dad was a risk to erupt at any time. Even if you saw how much he loved — still loves — the boys, it’s possible their fear of him left no room for love to grow.

They trusted you with this information. Their dad broke their trust. You have little or no margin for error here; I am so glad something held you back from the dismissiveness of defending yourself and their dad.

Readers’ thoughts:

· Oh gosh, yes, please apologize and then, to show them you are hearing them and listening, ask them if there is anything more they want to tell you. My first thought is that there is more.

· They, not just one or the other, but both, can provide concrete examples of times they were frightened and upset. I believe you have been put on notice that your children are considering being estranged from you. As someone who grew up in a volatile home, I was very angry that my mother failed to protect me and sibs from the anger in our home.

Get thee to a competent therapist quickly and learn how to relate to your children in a way that doesn’t focus on how you look as a parent, but how you can best deal with their anger and hurt, and no longer contribute to it.

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Well, let's give credit where it's due. LW has not done the worst thing, which many people do automatically - she hasn't turned around and immediately minimized what they were saying.

However, LW didn't do the good thing either, which would have been to say, years ago, "Dude, you suffer from emotional dysregulation and you need to get that treated with therapy, medication, and/or anger management classes. Your behavior is abusive and it can't continue".

LW needs to get individual therapy now, and so do the children. And hopefully, LW has the standing to say - without telling Dad that the kids think he's abusive - that he needs to get therapy himself and whatever help he needs.

I'm not sure he isn't being treated? "struggles with emotional dysregulation" doesn't really sound to me like the wording you'd use for someone who'd never been to therapy about it. (You may have been to just enough therapy to learn the wording to make excuses for it, but---)

But a lot of what's in this letter is confusing to me. The boys are still living at home; they come to the mother to say they felt their "childhoods" were traumatic and they may cut contact "once they are grown". Does that mean they all feel like the husband has been improvement with some kind of treatment and the abuse is no longer happening? Does that mean LW is eliding the fact that it's still a traumatic household? Does that mean the teens are now old enough to just spend all their time at friends' houses to avoid it, and that's why the subject came up?

LW isn't saying anything about what's happening in the household *now* other than this one conversation. LW, what is happening in the household *now*? That's what you can actually work on right now; you are kind of lucky in that your kids did feel safe enough to come to you now instead of *after* they were grown and cut contact and you lost this last chance to prioritize their safety at home.

It sounds to me exactly like the wording you’d use for somebody who isn’t being treated if you don’t want to blame them. I’d assume that if he was being treated LW would have told us.

I guess to me it feels like wording you wouldn't have accessible unless someone had been to therapy of *some* kind. Usually when you see letters about dads with anger and violence problems, they're describing it different way.

(It kind of feels like this might be a case where he went to some kind of therapy at some point - who knows, could have been court- or job- ordered anger management or something - and then decided he was "better" and used the diagnosis as an excuse to be "struggling" forever after that. Which might also explain why LW is acting like this is a situation that is over? But I don't think the letter really tells us. LW is definitely leaving a *lot* out.)

In the case of my household, eventually the teens got old enough to notice the patterns in the emotional dysregulation and therefore it came out of the blue less often, and also got the emotional skills to occasionally interrupt an emotional dysregulation cycle that was building toward some kind of outburst, such that the outburst didn't happen. As well as the ability to simply be elsewhere.

In my father's specific case, undiagnosed autistic sensory sensitivity was simply not compatible with toddlers and elementary school children who emit several types of sensory hell all day every day, and he should not have had children. He never went to therapy but I did.

Edited 2025-03-30 23:05 (UTC)

That is...exactly the dynamic of my childhood. My mom, who was incredibly loving in every way, will freely admit that her husband was not a good dad and that the way he treated me and my sister was wrong...but that's as far as it goes. She's resistant to us labeling it as abuse. At least this mom is entertaining the idea that her husband may be an abuser.

My question is: what if he isn't an abuser, what if he is a person who filled your children's lives with fear and trauma but somehow managed to stay on the correct side of that line so that you don't have to label him an abuser? what then? is that something you feel good about, LW? Try saying it out loud, "My husband made our children afraid in their own home for their childhoods, but since he was not over a technical line into abuse, I'm fine with it." See how that feels.

Yeah, I do feel like if the best you can say about someone is that their behavior isn't technically abuse, there's a big problem that isn't going to go away no matter what label you choose put on it.

“I was a bit surprised at the intensely negative way they see their dad … maybe these experiences really were much more traumatic than I realized.”

When you are 2-4 feet tall and a grown man is volatile and angry in your space? A grown man you are stuck with for food and shelter—you have no way of escaping? Gee, is that traumatic?