Why doesn't FOO understand??

[Blueberry]

is a rhetorical question of mine sometimes. As in: How can they be so blind??

I'd like to link to Out Of The Fog where a member postulates that FOO actually does get it  http://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=71904.0

Might help some of us with our FOO problems.

[ah]

Thanks so much for posting it, I read it and saved it for later re-reading. That bit about Original Sin...  exactly, that's what it feels like.

I keep having this question too. Like an itch I keep scratching, believing that if I get at an answer there can be mutual understanding for once. But there's where I keep getting it wrong, because FOO and I just don't speak the same language. I'm interested in communication and understanding, they're... not.

To my F, I think I'm the blind one. He probably thinks of me (if he ever does) as stupid, as fun, as good prey. There's no way I could really get anything across to him. But others too who aren't sadistic but "just" very narcissistic can be equally impossible to reach, the gap is too big. We're lost in translation. We don't want the same things.

It hurts like *, it's retraumatizing in ways so awful I have no words for it, but it's a hopeless cause in my case. Not that I'm ever going to accept it 

[Hope67]

Hi Blueberry,
Thanks for posting this, it is really descriptive and 'hits the nail on the head' regarding how I think things are with my FOO - really helpful.  I relate to all of it.  I really do. 

That's helpful - I must stop trying to make excuses for them, they don't care about me - they've used me - I really need to close the door on feeling so many mixed up feelings about them.  I will re-read this when I need to.  It's been very helpful.

Thanks Blueberry. 

Ah - I can see that you also relate and I just wanted to say  to us all.

Hope 

[Libby183]

Hi everyone.

This really is a great piece of writing and sums up how our FOO probably think.

Like ah, I relate especially to the bit about an original sin. My sin was that I didn't think my mother was good enough for me, and this was from the day I was born.  She told me this on our final meeting six years ago,  and it just summed up and explained my whole relationship with her.

To me, this shows that she knew exactly what she was doing to me throughout my life,  and in a lot of ways, she never denied it.  For her, I deserved everything I got because I was such a disappointment. She didn't need to pretend to love me, because I was at fault. In our final phone call, I asked her outright if she had ever said she loved me and she replied that actions speak louder than words.

Her unshakeable belief in my "sins" made NC so easy.  I never had a single hoover from her and I don't question why they don't understand.  They do.

My problem is that I hate fate, god, karma, the universe,  whatever,  for dumping me into a life with these damaged people. It sounds ridiculous and melodramatic, I know,  but this is what infects my thoughts. I just hope that EMDR therapy will ease this pain.

Hugs to everyone who grew up unloved.  We deserve them.

Libby.

[Blueberry]

I really need to re-read this today. Especially: "If you are anything like me, the biggest obstacle to your going NC and sticking with it is your fear that your PDs just don't understand, or that they just don't get it. You have likely turned yourself inside out for as long as you can remember trying to find new ways to explain it in hopes that your PD would finally, finally get it. Maybe then they would apologize and you could start rebuilding your relationship.

Your insecurity about whether or not they get it keeps you in a state of limbo. On the one hand you are running out of ways to explain it and your boundaries are never respected. You feel that you are being pushed into a tighter and tighter corner. On the other hand, your PD genuinely seems distraught and just unable to understand. They love you soooo much. They are just praying for you everyday. You believe their love for you is both dysfunctional but also real. And so you are stuck. If you end the relationship you end the dysfunction but you also lose the love. So you waffle. You instigate NC in hopes that they'll finally get it but they don't. Instead they up the love ante. They fill up your email, mailbox, and voicemail with their love and desperation but never the thing you really need which is their respect via an awknowledgement and maybe even an apology (although if you're like me you probably would've accepted just an awknowledgement) of how they hurt you. "

They sign emails or other correspondence with "Love + name"  Well, some of them do. They don't act quite the way it's written here, so that's one thing that kept me hoping all these years for some form of resolution and relationship re-building. They don't actually stalk and they don't fill up my voicemail.

But yeah, I'm beginning to admit to myself that I'm being played, being strung along. I felt in a bit of limbo the past couple of days. I went back on a decision I'd made (not that FOO or anybody else found out about it) and then today I decided to press on forwards with it again. Maybe take it a bit slower, but, yes keep going.

I'm also beginning to see enabling Father as a player in the Abusive Cycle, even GC younger brother. For info on Abusive Cycle, see here:   http://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/10/21/abusive-cycle. The intermittent behaviour. The pretending-to-be-there for me, but not being obviously.

Not that much remorse or repair gets done but I have pretty low expectations from FOO in that department. In the area where they gave a bit, they're now stalling. So that's why I have this lightbulb sensation.

Also my T pointed out shortly before Horrendous FOO Event that all FOO needs to do is show me some respect (mentioned in the text above). But that's not what FOO has in mind at all.

It's all a bit painful still which explains why it has been taking me so long to see this.