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In Reply to: Gosh - you sound like me posted by Acheick on November 02, 2002 at 17:40:38:
I really understand now why we all stick together like glue on this board. We just have so much in common, some of it even subconscious. When I met Ulrike, the first ex-family person I had met in 15 years, I felt like I finally found my sister and you girls are just like her.
Anyway, I always wondered what the hell was wrong with me. And I finally realized that the family screwed me up royally when it came to sex.
And what you said about children is the same as me, too - I do things for my kids but I am not nearly as affectionate and loving and emotional with them as Jerry is and I have often wondered "Why am I so cold and emotionless and unfeeling?" He's all over them with hugs and kisses and empathy and sympathy and I'm just not that way. I know it comes from not appreciating children in the early days, from experiencing them as a burden and being resentful about all the work that came with having them and raising them and never having a dime. I can never remember a time in my life when I just cherished my children when they were little. I had never had that luxury. Having so many so quickly really changes how you feel about them.
One thing I do notice about them is that when I sense that they are engaging in some behavior that is damaging to them, I am all over them. Last summer it finally dawned on me that the child we think is the sweetest and most loving actually had a tremendous problem with being much too afraid of displeasing people. I blasted her and let her have it and bought books and sent her to my sister to try and talk some sense into her. I mean, I was surprized how mad I got and how quickly I got into high gear that I was NOT GOING TO ALLOW her to go too far down that destructive path. And actually, I got very ugly and drove her to tears. I remember I had just walked in from the airport - had been gone for 4 days - and she was on the phone with a friend apologizing for something and I dropped my bags and started screaming at her to put the g-- d--- phone down and stop apologizing, etc. I just ripped into her and did not back down and I think everyone was very surprised that I was being so AWFUL. But hearing her being obsequious like that reminded me of how we used to be in the F. and I just said NO with all my being. Not HER. And actually, she "got" it and started digging to see why she was that way and now 5 months later she's pretty much overcome it, thank God. When you have the "disease to please," as they call it, once you acknowledge it, you start putting the skids on when you catch yourself doing it and you quit. It's seeing it that's hard.
Anyway, all this to say that we all suffer the same things because of what we've come from.
