Everyone is asking really quite thought provoking questions on this subject.
Quote: I'm with GEL on this one...Why do you stay again?
That one’s fairly easy. There are many reasons. I tried the D route and it never felt right. I felt a moral obligation that I just couldn’t get past. Kids. Religious beliefs. And in spite of everything, she really is my best friend and I do love her.
Quote: And, cuz I haven't read as much as I should have, why is she dependent on these animal ppl and dogs and not being fulfilled enough by the two legged family and you? Have you been able to get to the real root of that?
To take the second one first – no. All I know for sure is that she had/has serious FOO issues. She alleges sexual abuse by her older brother when she was a teenager. I’m still not sure there was any real abuse. I just don’t consider trying to spy on her in the bathroom to be abuse. It may not be right, but I don’t know that I would call a single incident of trying to cop a feel when she went to sleep on the couch to actually rise to the level of abuse. But as long as she believes it, it really doesn’t matter if it really was or not. In any case, she thinks she was abused, her parents didn’t believe her, and nothing was ever said or done. Whether that has anything to do with it or not, I really couldn’t say.
While it wasn’t sexual in any way, I’m far more likely to say that she was abused by her older sister. The sister was always trying to change her appearance and was always telling her how ugly she was. The sister was always trying to change her hair, her clothes, and whatever she could. She used to complain that W was too dirty (running barefoot and playing on the farm) and would put her into the bathtub and scrub her with a scrub brush and bleach.
W was also constantly put down by her mother. Even though her mother went to work and W took over all of the household duties (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.) when she was ten, nothing was ever done well enough to suit her mother. There’s a lot of hostility there still today.
What I do know is that she admitted to the C that she hates men. I also know that she has told me that she likes dogs better than people. That’s a direct quote right from the horse’s mouth. Listening to her talk about her childhood, the stories are all about animals – mostly her dogs, but cats, rabbits, her guinea pig, her sheep, her pony, whatever. But rarely about human friends. It always seemed a little strange to me, but I just wrote it off to growing up on a farm where there weren’t many other kids around. Of course there were kids in school and there was a girl her age who lived about a mile down the road. They were even friends and went bicycle and horseback riding together.
My personal opinion is that while a lot of that may very well have been bad, it was a long time ago and she’s supposed to be an adult now. If that history is really what created the person she is today, then it’s high time she put it behind her and joined the real world. But I think all of us here know that that isn’t going to happen until she wants it to. Maybe I’m an enabler who is allowing her to continue to live in that world. I don’t know. I do know that I feel overwhelmed and unable to deal with her. I also know that I’m getting tired of feeling so powerless and I’m nearing the point where my give a damn will be busted.
Would I still be just avoiding if I was thinking that I should go back to the C rather than or prior to presenting my list?
