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The adult child who left is back...sort of...
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<blockquote data-quote="susiestar" data-source="post: 615456" data-attributes="member: 1233"><p>(((((hugs))))) I know this is hard because all you really want is to love him as a person and as your son. The fault and the situation have NOTHING to do with you, really. He simply is not capable of having normal relationships. This includes with his children. </p><p></p><p>It is HARD to be in a family when you feel you didn't have one. You have to figure it out as you go and you mess up a lot. S wasn't just without a family, he was ripped from his entire WORLD at age five and plopped down in a completely different one with no skills or tools to cope with the changes. whether he remembers, admits the memories exist, or not, the trauma of all of that had to be enormous. It was NOT your fault by any means, but it was there. Being smart means you can think things through but often it means you focus on what you think and ignore/suppress what you FEEL. That bites you in the hiney because you don't ever really connect and you then place blame with no real reason for it. </p><p></p><p>Leave the fb there but do NOT comment often. Not like or dislike or message or comment except on very special things. He will see those likes as intrusive. If there are just in the background for a while (possibly several years), they will become 'normal' and maybe he will start to reach out as he realizes that his problems were not due to you or your ex's action but really due to the situation. </p><p></p><p>It seems to me that S has vilified you and clutched his culture of origin as a way to explain why he was not raised by his biological family. He feels incredibly rejected and abandoned by his birth parents and cannot accept or cope with it, so he has created the myth that you somehow 'stole' him from his birth family (who totally adored him and wanted and loved him and spent the rest of their lives searching for him frantically) and used all your influence to hide him from them and to make sure that this birth family was destroyed so they could not find him. Then you used him like your slave to make yoru life easier. That is what he has created to explain why he was ripped from the world he knew and dropped into your life the way he was. Of course it isn't true by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the reality that he desperately wants so he worked to create it.</p><p></p><p>The fb friend thing is more a way to brag about how great he is and his life and son are, and to punish you by showing you what you cannot have than any real attempt at friendship right now. I would keep the door open by not unfriending him, but I would NOT pay a lot of attention to his posts. It simply will only hurt you and it won't do any good at all. Be in the background, be neutral for the most part, only post positive things to him, etc... If there is a way to keep some of your posts from showing up to him, that might be a good thing as it won't give him the ability to use whatever is going on in your lie against you. I don't use fb for much as I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone would want all that info about me and what I do, or why I would be interested in much of what I see posted by others (mostly what I see from many people are their video games and their religious postings and political leanings, which are really none of my business, in my opinion). So I freely admit I don't totally understand what you can and cannot do with facebook as far as limiting the access friends have to your info. but if there is a way to keep him as a friend but at arm's length, I would do that. </p><p></p><p>If you are going to post anything that is not superficial and very bland about your life, I would unfriend him because sooner or later it WILL be used against you. But that is my very pessimistic opinion of FB and likely not reality.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="susiestar, post: 615456, member: 1233"] (((((hugs))))) I know this is hard because all you really want is to love him as a person and as your son. The fault and the situation have NOTHING to do with you, really. He simply is not capable of having normal relationships. This includes with his children. It is HARD to be in a family when you feel you didn't have one. You have to figure it out as you go and you mess up a lot. S wasn't just without a family, he was ripped from his entire WORLD at age five and plopped down in a completely different one with no skills or tools to cope with the changes. whether he remembers, admits the memories exist, or not, the trauma of all of that had to be enormous. It was NOT your fault by any means, but it was there. Being smart means you can think things through but often it means you focus on what you think and ignore/suppress what you FEEL. That bites you in the hiney because you don't ever really connect and you then place blame with no real reason for it. Leave the fb there but do NOT comment often. Not like or dislike or message or comment except on very special things. He will see those likes as intrusive. If there are just in the background for a while (possibly several years), they will become 'normal' and maybe he will start to reach out as he realizes that his problems were not due to you or your ex's action but really due to the situation. It seems to me that S has vilified you and clutched his culture of origin as a way to explain why he was not raised by his biological family. He feels incredibly rejected and abandoned by his birth parents and cannot accept or cope with it, so he has created the myth that you somehow 'stole' him from his birth family (who totally adored him and wanted and loved him and spent the rest of their lives searching for him frantically) and used all your influence to hide him from them and to make sure that this birth family was destroyed so they could not find him. Then you used him like your slave to make yoru life easier. That is what he has created to explain why he was ripped from the world he knew and dropped into your life the way he was. Of course it isn't true by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the reality that he desperately wants so he worked to create it. The fb friend thing is more a way to brag about how great he is and his life and son are, and to punish you by showing you what you cannot have than any real attempt at friendship right now. I would keep the door open by not unfriending him, but I would NOT pay a lot of attention to his posts. It simply will only hurt you and it won't do any good at all. Be in the background, be neutral for the most part, only post positive things to him, etc... If there is a way to keep some of your posts from showing up to him, that might be a good thing as it won't give him the ability to use whatever is going on in your lie against you. I don't use fb for much as I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone would want all that info about me and what I do, or why I would be interested in much of what I see posted by others (mostly what I see from many people are their video games and their religious postings and political leanings, which are really none of my business, in my opinion). So I freely admit I don't totally understand what you can and cannot do with facebook as far as limiting the access friends have to your info. but if there is a way to keep him as a friend but at arm's length, I would do that. If you are going to post anything that is not superficial and very bland about your life, I would unfriend him because sooner or later it WILL be used against you. But that is my very pessimistic opinion of FB and likely not reality. [/QUOTE]
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The adult child who left is back...sort of...
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