But I actually shared that particular story for a reason. This is the ongoing battle cry from my H and his parents and the rest of their enmeshed family...for my entire marriage. Everyone who doesn't do what they say, how they say, when they say, without any opinions of their own...is "lazy." My husband was told last summer that he wasn't pulling his weight at the family company or taking care of our property...while he was going through radiation treatment for cancer. That's "lazy" in his family.
My H's worldview is that it is his DUTY to change people into what he wants them to be. That is "helping"...that is "love." Listening, empathizing or actually helping them by doing what they ASK is just...unheard of. [snip]
This story I told is just illustrating the way he looks at EVERYTHING. That other people have the right and duty to nag, control, complain, and criticize to make the person in question be how they want them to be.
Reading your post today I was reminded of one of my favorite passages from "Banished Knowledge" by Alice Miller.
Quote:
It is only through the experience of being loved and cherished that the child can ever discern cruelty as such, be aware of it, and resist it. Without this experience he has no way of knowing that there is anything in the world except cruelty; the child will automatically submit to it and, years later, when as an adult he accedes to power, will exert it as being perfectly normal behavior.
