The First Born

Introduction

In my last post I mentioned that my oldest son lives with me. It wasn't a difficult decision for him to make, because when he went home one day and she'd packed his bags for him and demanded he return his key. He'd wanted to be able to freely come and go between the family home and my house, but this was at-odds with his mum's insistence on me pre-agreeing with her whenever he visited. The more she pushed, the more he pushed back, and it soon reached the stage that they just started lying to each other.

It's no great surprise that this just made things far worse, and so on January 4th he moved in with me.

Playing Favourites

I was my father's favoured son and I'd seen first hand what it did to my siblings. To this day there's a real animosity between my sister and my dad, so there was no way I'd want to pass that down to the next generation. Yet if you look at the way my ex-wife treated our first born, it shows all the signs of the abuse that unfavoured kids have to deal with.

She:-
  • was over-critical, especially with scholastic achievements.
  • showed little or no affection.
  • didn't seem to enjoy being with him.
  • was defensive about the way she treated him, always having a reason why.
But this doesn't really make sense when you consider that this was happening when he was an only child. And there were other things that didn't fit the favouritism abuse pattern:-
She would:-
  • would get angry that he was clingy, especially when they socialised with other mums.
  • get angry if I showed him too much affection.
  • only allow him to watch 10 minutes TV per day.
  • get so cranky that I'd take him out for walks, so he was out of her way.
  • would get angry that he couldn't play on his own.
  • get angry if I gave him something she deemed he wasn't allowed.
The last point being an interesting one because if I ever gave him something that "wasn't allowed" he'd always tell on me. It happened every time, even if I told him not to say anything.

I'd put her behaviour down to stress and her medical issues at the time, but I can see now that it was happening before she became sick. And it continued to happen when we had relatives helping out.


So it's not Favouritism

I'll be honest, I was stumped,... what was causing this behaviour? She wasn't a cruel person, just obsessed with getting her own way all the time, and it wasn't until I stumbled upon the following article that I found the answer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/family/i-grew-up-knowing-i-was-my-mothers-least-favourite-child

But, while I didnt think she was narcissistic, so many things raised in that article run true.

She:-
  • used to be a work-a-holic regularly working 12 hour days.
  • was starved of maternal love herself.
  • took-up household responsibilities to appease a toxic mother.
  • expected our son to look after his younger syblings and regularly cook tea.
  • would frequently chastise our oldest son in front of his younger syblings.
  • thinks her younger brother had it easier than her.
  • oversteps the boundaries, insisting on having access to emails and social media accounts.
  • has picked a favourite child as one with the least emotional demands.
  • considers our youngest child (who likes to be hugged) to be a troublemaker.
It got to the stage that our oldest son would arrange to go out at meal times so that he could avoid her picking at him all the time. Often it would have ended in tears, him storming away from the table, a vicious exchange of words, and in at least one case him telling her to fuck off and attempting to leave home.

I'd witnessed her parents do this to her bother when we'd first met. If I stayed over, mealtimes were just painful, eating in silence, hoping nobody would trigger an outburst until her mum had drunk enough gin and tonic. The legacy had been successfully passed down to the next generation, she'd even started drinking heavily.

I was torn between trying to keep a struggling marriage going and doing my best to ease things with the kids. I made a mistake, I should have done more to stop her, the marriage wasn't worth saving.

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