Quote: The bottom line is that they are incredibly well adjusted. They’ve learned to deal with W much better than I have.
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I just find the possibility of that slim to none.
Bube, sometimes there is a great deal of damage done to children just by learning to deal.
My father was an alcoholic who could turn violent and we never knew when it would happen. So, we learned to spend a lot of time "reading the signs" - doing our damndest to not do or say anything that would instigate an occurance.
Which means that we felt an incredible sense of responsibility for our father's actions. A burden, frankly, that no child should have to live under.
The unpredictability (and these things only occurred a few times a year) - meant that we were on guard all the time. Ever watching, ever stressing.
It also meant that we all had roles that we had to play. Some of us became the family clowns and distractors, in the hopes that we could diffuse the tension. Some of us became the "blamed" person.
Those roles never go away. All of my siblings freeze in extremely emotional situations - trying to distract it, diffuse it, eliminate it. We are all conflict avoiders - if you're already in constant conflict, who wants to actively volunteer for more?
We all feel a hyper-responsibilty for other people's feelings and actions. And since we aren't really capable of controlling other people's feelings and actions, we all deal with an ongoing sense of guilt and failure - one that permeates our very soul, when things aren't going well; and the inability to really enjoy things when they are going well - because we know how damn quickly that can disappear.
And even with all that sense of responsibility, I have discovered that we all deal with a strong sense of dis-empowerment with little ability to impact our own life in any meaningful way.
Because, with all our thought, efforts and actions - he would still get drunk and still get violent. We could only bow down, take the violence - both verbal and physical - and wait for it to blow over. We're all pretty stoic as a result.
So, yeah, children can deal, they can adjust, but the lessons they are learning are ones that will frankly, haunt them for the rest of their lives.
If you think you have had little power in your relationship, imagine how powerless your children must feel. Who will be their advocate?
Please don't take this as piling on. I'm 50 years old now and still dealing with the fallout of my parents' failings. I loved them then and I love them now. But they harmed us. Recognizing the issues is a big part of the process, but it doesn't make them go away.
