u/skyestar91

Good evening everyone,
I was in a relationship some years ago where I was very unhealed and thought the man I was with was the saviour of my life, I adored him and would do absolutely anything to get him to love me.
It didn’t work. Nothing I did was good enough. He pedestalised me in the beginning, but would pull away at all the crucial moments and leave me dizzy between whether he loved me or not.
Over time, nothing I did was enough despite the fact I adored him and did everything with so much heart and care for him. He discarded me. While I knew it was time, I was crushed by the fact he showed zero emotion and moved on immediately while I was saddled with the grief.

One time, we were at my cousin’s wedding and we had been getting on beautifully all day. He had gone to great effort to travel to be there and he was lovely company . While the speeches were taking place, my mum asked when it would be him and her daughter, and he said in full knowing earshot of me, “but we aren’t getting married”. - the last I’d heard, he’d been hypothetically imagining our wedding down to the finer details. He said he hoped we would be next to each other in rocking chairs in the same nursing home when we were old.

Now, some years later, he’s engaged to be married. That’s ok. We all grow up and continue with our lives. But the instagram post was all full of incredulity that this other worldly being had agreed to marry his lowly self , and how utterly grateful he is to her for agreeing to marry him.

But I admit. It stings that I adored him, loved him so so much, did everything for him, put up with all of his bizarre quirks , understood him, ‘got him’, and I was treated like a pile of rubbish by him in the end, while somehow this woman must have the magical je ne sais quoi!!! How’s she managed to bewitch him like this?! What’s her magic trick? How?

It’s in the past but it reignites the old wound that no matter what I do it’s never enough, while other women sail in and are worshipped.

Hello,

I am in need of airing off. I am not a perfect person, I am aware of my flaws and have always committed to improving myself. I am kind, empathetic, patient and curious about others. In fact, I realised a couple of years ago how much I was people pleasing and over-extending myself.

History- I grew up as the eldest daughter and the family scapegoat. Malignant narc father and enabling mother. Siblings who would turn against me and make out to me I was an awful person over everything. All my relationships with men have been emotionally abusive and they were all different flavours of narcissists (hence why I have now been single for 3 years and done a Massive amount of work on myself and delved into my past and realised I was a scapegoat and how bad my dad's abuse was).

Anyway, I go about life and aim not to hurt anyone. Yet, I find that going about my life seems to result in people being shitty towards me almost every day for absolutely nothing at all. I just left a temporary job where a colleague was covertly and subtly bullying me- nothing I could pin down but clearly snubbing/ignoring/overriding/dismissing/excluding. It made me worry for months what I had done and why she was doing this. I've cut out many toxic people in the last couple years such as my dad, left my ex, a toxic female friend, and more. I am quick to block using or toxic people. Today, a random man negged me, insulting my hair. People I believed were good friends show zero interest in my life. A family member who I was so so close to and considered a kindred spirit has shown himself to be a liar and a fraud.

I brace myself now every day for the next insult, verbal attack, or disappointment. Life feels like an assault course at times. I am a thoughtful, highly sensitive person who just tries to squeeze the most out of life and sees the beauty in the world and I try to be kind to all I meet but every day people just seem to feel compelled to be horrid towards me and I don't know why. I rack my brains every day wondering what it is and why. I am glad I haven't had children as I'd hate for them to experience what I do.

What is it? Can someone please shed some light on this? I don't know what I do to deserve it.

Thank you.

Good evening everyone,

Something that's been bothering me a lot lately and wondered if anyone else relates because I feel like an alien sometimes. I have to live with this as a lonely trauma and the effects on my nervous system to this day while the rest of the family sails on.

Context: I was the scapegoat in a narcissistic family system with a volatile yet fragile narcissistic father, enabling mother, and younger siblings. We were isolated (because my father isolated my mum who is a decade younger, months after they met, moving her across the country away from all her family and friends to his city).

I was parentified from such a young age, 5 if not younger. I am a highly sensitive person (HSP), gentle natured, creative, yet my emotional needs were never ever considered in my family. My father would not allow any of us to cry if we hurt ourselves. If we fell over, he would say shutup, rub the pavement, and say "ahh poor floor". We were also not allowed to laugh, and he would scream "shut" at us just for giggling together as siblings. We live on eggshells, always worrying about what mood he would be in when he returned home drunk. I took on the role of protecting my mum and younger siblings, and this made me the target of his wrath. This got rapidly worse as I went through adolescence, and I left home aged 19. He then turned his wrath on to my sister because he needed a new scapegoat.

Around this age (19-21), I started to experience fainting and severe migraines with aura. I know now it was because my nervous system was going into collapse with the CPTSD.

Anyway, this was a long time ago now as I am nearly 40. But the most hurtful thing is the erasure within the family. My mum always stood by and said nothing when my father was threatening me and screaming at me. She is still with him to this day. When I was 12, she cried to me and told me she wanted to leave him and asked if I'd be ok with that. I felt so relieved. She never left him and it was never mentioned again. She is a hard worker, he has never worked. She funds his entire life. She has such a hard job, and she comes home to a man who has sat watching TV all day. She funds several foreign holidays for both of them every year. He doesn't even buy her a birthday present.

My sister and I are both single, our exes were all narcissists and emotionally abusive because that is all we ever knew from a man growing up. We've both had a lot of therapy.

Our brother has a different situation: he is in a long term relationship and has children with her and we all love the kids to bits. However, since they arrived into our family, the falseness in our family is off the charts now.

We were always a distant family, there are photos of us from when I was around 18 where we are standing near each other robotically with zero interaction with one another. I used to listen to 'Family Portrait' by Pink at night on my CD Walkman. Now, there is a Whatsapp group and daily updates about the kids and staged family events where everyone acts like everything is blissful. My mum is the biggest upholder of this. My dad lurks in the background, making next to zero effort as usual. But he is 'Grandad' now and automatically shielded with this benevolent image. I have been NC with him since 2024 and that 'radical' act by me, really showed up the denial in the family. At first, my brother tried to argue with me what a good dad we had, and my sister told me that our dad is suffering because of me.

My mum vacillates between appeasing me and paying lip service to me, and appeasing her useless husband. She has the ability to say to me in one breath, 'You never deserved that abuse' to 'he considers himself a good father though and he loves you very much' whilst booking their next expensive holiday, the bill always fully footed by her.

So the façade continues.

In my childhood, there was a lot of laughter whenever we were away from him. In my teen years, this was replaced by a lot of anger in the house. I started to find escape at the weekends by going out with friends and experimenting with drinking, smoking, and kissing boys, a bit of rebellion like letting pressure out of a valve.

This then backfired as it incurred the wrath of my younger sister who couldn't cope with her loss of control over me and she began blackmailing me, screaming at me, telling me I was the worst person ever. I now understand that she was also traumatised but was taking it out on me as she was powerless against our frightening father. My dad raised a fist to my face on the morning of my most important school exam, my mum stood back and did nothing. My dad kicked a tray of food over me a year after that, my mum stood back and did nothing. It wasn't just the immediate family, at my grandmother's funeral, I was 16 and suddenly found myself on the receiving end of the extended family's rage, being screamed at and told I was a horrific person. Everyone was drunk and taking their tensions out on me. What breaks my heart was that I was working as a Saturday girl in a nearby cafe at the time and got 50% discount on cakes, so I went over to the cafe and bought a load of cakes with my paltry wage aged 16 for the family at the funeral wake as I thought it's be something nice. I returned to find everyone drunk and screaming at me all at once, it's a traumatic memory.

A decade later, when I was in my mid 20s, I moved home after a breakup. I was utterly heartbroken. Within two weeks, my dad was raising a fist to me and screaming at me to shutup. Again, this was off the back of a nice deed. I had gone to a chip shop to bring food home for everyone, and next minute my dad has his fist raised in my face. A few months later, my brother turned on me and fronted me, I thought he was going to punch me. My mum was not home. My dad came out of his room at hearing the noise and instantly sided with my brother, so I had two big men screaming at me and threatening to kick me out. I had to move out. Another emotionally abusive relationship ensued. I had no-one to turn to.

But of course nowadays, I have gone NC with my dad, but the rest of the family continues with this façade that we are a unified loving family. They insist on going on these family holidays to cosy cottages and they're soon about to jet off to a sunny destination which I have refused to go to for obvious reasons. The Whatsapp messages, photos, holidays, constant heart emojis and garden parties etc are all just a massive erasure of what happened and it can feel like a middle finger to me and all the trauma I have endured.

It gets worse- I was close to one person in the family, a male cousin. He was gay for 20 years. He recently ended the relationship with his now ex boyfriend and claimed he has never been gay. He then lovebombed a really vulnerable girl at work who is a decade younger than him and he fast tracked her to pregnancy after 10 weeks. I knew right away this was not right, and it was all because he decided he wanted a child so has love bombed a really vulnerable young woman with so much trauma into carrying his child. I am not ok with this, and I have now had to take a step back from him too. So I find myself further isolated in this fake family. Guess who is all for what this cousin is doing? Everyone.

I am single, as I left my abusive ex. I have no children. I cut off toxic family and friends once I realised what I'd been putting up with for almost 40 years. I have other friends and my life is rich with hobbies and travel and a social life. But it stings me every time I see this family charade and realise I will never be believed, I will never be chosen.

Thank you for reading. Tomorrow, I go on a solo travel, and next week my fake family go on a fake holiday together.