My mom always told me that she loved me. According to her, we had "a bond like no two other human beings had". She'd corner me, look in my eyes, and tell me how I'm the most important person to her.
Yet, we don't talk. As of today, it's been just over two months since I spoke to her. And I don't feel like her actions ever lined up with the things she said to me. From a young age, I'd get uneasy when she said these things to me. As my awareness of our family's dysfunction developed, the uneasy feelings grew. I'd get nauseous hearing my mom talk about how much she loves me.
With emotionally immature, abusive, dysfunctional, or personality disordered parents... the grasp of the concept of "love" is very shallow. It's best to mentally add "...as long as you're useful to me" at the end of every "I love you" from them. Relationships with people like this are a transaction, first and foremost. Any feelings they have towards or about you are only as deep as your willingness to obey them and play the role they've assigned you.
I spent the first five or so years of my adult life driving my mom to and from work, and anywhere else that she wanted to go, at the cost of friendships, education opportunities, and jobs that I wanted. I was her secretary, filling out hundreds of pages of immigration paperwork and making every phone call for her. During my childhood and teen years, I was her confidante, her best friend, her therapist, her "boyfriend" (I'm female), and so on. I was pressured to give her a constant stream of validation and compliments. I always provided her with something. And now, I don't. So our "bond like no two other human being have" has disintegrated.
The biggest part of our transaction was that I was supposed to pledge undying loyalty to the family. The ultimate reason why I was discarded is because it turned out that my boundaries were no joke. She couldn't get anything else out of me. At this point, I was impossible to control and get back in line. I had rejected her demands of helping her for weeks, and I had her take my name off of all of their utility bills. I didn't care about any "help" that her and my dad promised me anymore. One of her last attempts was offering to pay for my car insurance so that I'd feel bad telling them, my dad especially, to stay away from my daughter. In their world, you do things to get access to people, regardless of what's right or how anyone in the situation (besides themselves) actually feels about anything.
Even my parents' marriage was transactional and ingenuine. My dad went to work and provided a paycheck (er, most of the time), and my mom did the cooking and the cleaning. They said they loved each other, but both of them had numerous affairs and treated each other terribly - of course, they'd never actually say that their dynamic was bad. To them, this was a proper marriage, and they genuinely couldn't fathom that other couples lived differently. They called healthy marriages "Hollywood marriages", something that clearly only existed on TV, and insisted that every married couple lived like they did behind closed doors. You were met with eye rolling and sarcasm if you insisted otherwise.
When I met my husband, my mom couldn't understand "what I offered that boy". I hate to call it "status", because that's not what it is even if I can't find a better word for it, but he has a certain "status" in our religion, and apparently, I didn't have anything "equivalent" to it that would make me a good fit for him. All the way until I went No Contact and was then promptly discarded by her, she kept figuring out different things that he was "getting out of our relationship" - near the end, she decided that what he got out of me was the ability to "control" me. It never really crossed her mind that maybe, he just likes me, and that's why we're together.
In searching for a husband, she thought I was ridiculous for insisting on marrying a man with the same religious beliefs and morals as me - the only thing that mattered was his ability to provide a paycheck and "masculine" duties around the house. She really pushed for me to marry one particularly nasty, violent alcoholic who I had nothing in common with, because at the time, he appeared to fit her narrow idea of what qualities a husband should have. "Don't worry, one day he'll probably convert to your religion..." as if it was a costume I put on because I thought it was pretty, and not a genuine belief that I expected my potential husband to take every bit as seriously as I did. She only began to dislike him when it turned out he wasn't going to give her back money he borrowed from her, and that he dishonestly called out "sick" from work a lot - not when he treated me abusively.
Her reasoning for this was two-fold - deep down inside, she wanted me to suffer and eat my words about how "one day, I'll have a happy marriage with someone who loves me and enjoys spending time with me". And if I married someone with bad behavioral tendencies, I'd be less likely to realize that there's more to life and marriage than having enough money to buy new throw pillows every month while both of us cheat on each other. Somewhere in her heart, she must know that others start families with people they really love, and that potential material benefit in either direction doesn't even cross their minds, and she yearns for it. It's the real self vs. the false self.
Gift-giving was never done out of love. It was expected to be a reciprocal act. I called it the "traveling $100 bill" when my mom and my aunt would always gift each other a card with a $100 bill in it, with the expectation that they'd get one back the next time a birthday or holiday came around. My aunt once bought me a wooden kitchen table and chairs, still sitting in her garage nearly a decade later, to which my mom said "I hope you're happy - this means I have to buy her daughter something worth the same amount of money". There was immense pressure to rack up credit card debt to get my mom gifts for Christmas as soon as I turned 18. Every bit of "help" towards my bills or tuition and every "gift" came with strings attached - never, not once, was it a one-way transaction that just said "I love you, I want you to be happy, so take this". She didn't understand why the women at my church gave me a surprise baby shower or hand-me-down baby items, and she was baffled by the fact that I wasn't gifting them things worth the same amount back. I still feel lousy accepting gifts, even when I know the people giving them to me are doing it out of love.
Loyalty was to be given to people who performed a material transaction with you. My aunt, who is nearly as mentally ill as my mom, "helped" my mom with some illegal bureaucratic nonsense when they were still living here without papers - this was actually one of the only times I ever saw my mom get royally owned by a narcissist besides my own dad. My aunt had my mom on an emotional leash for years because of this act. It's never just help with these people (despite my moral objections to the "help" that was offered in that situation), it's "if I do x, you do y, or else".
Actions never matched words. The over-the-top barrage of verbal "affection" made me so uncomfortable because it just wasn't real. If I was so loved, so important to her, the center of her world... surely, she would have protected me from someone she knew was a violent, alcoholic child molester. She wouldn't have told me "hah - so he's not good enough for you, but his money is?" when I confronted her about this as a young adult. Because in her eyes, the fact that they put a roof over my head and occasionally bought me trinkets more than made up for any discomfort or pain they caused me. In fact, that was a part of my transaction with them - I sit there, shut up, and ignore any bad feelings they cause, because they're "doing things for me". It's a mindset totally devoid of empathy or normal emotions that one ought to feel for their child.
In just under two years, I married, bought a house, and had a baby with someone who both "wasn't man enough" (because he isn't wealthy) and "doesn't get anything from me" (because I don't hold a similar "status" as he does). I became active in the religious community that she always resented because it baffled her - she couldn't understand that sometimes, people hold genuine beliefs that they don't "get anything out of". I was surrounded by people who truly loved me and built up my confidence, and over time, I wriggled out of the firm grasp she had over my emotions and my life. I grew a spine. I realized what I'd been missing out on for nearly a quarter of a century.
Both of my parents grew up in homes with similar dynamics to ours. I don't play the "they had a hard childhood too" game, but it's probably all they've ever actually personally seen. I think that on some level, they suspect that real love exists between people who don't intentionally hurt each other and view each other as more than a means to an end, and they're both pretty bitter about the fact that they don't get to experience it. Misery loves company, and they wanted to shoot down every opportunity I had in life to have that for myself.
"I love you... as long as you're useful to me"
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