Relationship Thread V.2 - Canyonero! :x

[Earfolds]

Just adding to the cavalcade here.

I've chosen not to speak with my mother after I left home as she physically and emotionally abused me for 23 years, forcibly pulled me out of school because she thought I was too smart, and attempted to cover up times when I had been raped and beaten by a close friend of the family and my elder brother respectively. On the day I finally left home, she threatened to kill me with a knife and tried to bite my nose off.

Since I've moved out, I've been in a much better place, though. I have friends, a safe place to live, and for once, I'm feeling happy about myself.

I'm not planning on trading that in for another chat with mum any time soon.

Sorry, KingK, I'm sure you mean well, but on this occasion, family can go strawberry float themselves.

[Preezy]

If you act like family, you're family. If you don't act like family, you're not family.

I think that's a pretty good rule to live by.

[<]:^D]

?

[Buffalo]

Spoilers FFS

[Corazon de Leon]

Just adding to the cavalcade here.

I've chosen not to speak with my mother after I left home as she physically and emotionally abused me for 23 years, forcibly pulled me out of school because she thought I was too smart, and attempted to cover up times when I had been raped and beaten by a close friend of the family and my elder brother respectively. On the day I finally left home, she threatened to kill me with a knife and tried to bite my nose off.

Since I've moved out, I've been in a much better place, though. I have friends, a safe place to live, and for once, I'm feeling happy about myself.

I'm not planning on trading that in for another chat with mum any time soon.

Sorry, KingK, I'm sure you mean well, but on this occasion, family can go strawberry float themselves.

Jesus Christ, that sounds awful. It’s good that you’re doing alright even after that experience, mate.

[Earfolds]

Jesus Christ, that sounds awful. It’s good that you’re doing alright even after that experience, mate.

I think it's worth thanking my psychologists, my local council, and most of all my friends for providing care and helping me recover.

[DarkRula]

Just been doing a bit of casual browsing on POF and came across a profile that had this - If Edison had been afraid of the consequences, We’d still be sitting In the dark! So live more and take chances and one day it might pay off!

Pretty sound advice for anyone to follow.

[Somebody Else's Problem]

Just been doing a bit of casual browsing on POF and came across a profile that had this - If Edison had been afraid of the consequences, We’d still be sitting In the dark! So live more and take chances and one day it might pay off!

Pretty sound advice for anyone to follow.

So I should steal other people's inventions and claim them as my own?

[DarkRula]

Well, no, as stealing is wrong. Though now I think on it that also sounds like something a gang member might say to gee up his crew into preforming their first bank job.

[OrangeRKN]

Just been doing a bit of casual browsing on POF and came across a profile that had this - If Edison had been afraid of the consequences, We’d still be sitting In the dark! So live more and take chances and one day it might pay off!

Pretty sound advice for anyone to follow.

Capital letter following a comma, Instant no

[Victor Mildew]

Maeks u fink do

[Green Gecko]

I'm sorry but those of you who choose not to speak with members of your own family don't deserve happiness. Sort yourselves out. You don't know how lucky you are to have a family.

I grew up an only child due to my father dying from cancer a couple of months before, yes before, I was born. My mum has no siblings and my late father's brother lived in Australia. I grew up an only child in a single parent family through no fault of anyone. I yearned for a brother or sister for many years but my mum never met anyone else and it never happened.

I'm now married for over 10 yrs and a father of 2 Boys. My mum is still alive and I speak to her every day. Sure, she annoys me sometime but she's my mum and I'll love her and be there for her until her end. She's in her eighties now.

Embrace your family. No matter what.

I'm genuinely sorry about your dad - no child should have to grow up alone and God knows I'm lucky I had my brother as a kid. I'm glad you have a good relationship with your mum and your kids, and I agree family is an important thing. Contrary to what you seem to think it's not an easy decision to cut a parent out of your life.

I don't really like talking about personal gooseberry fool on here but I'll give you a sanitised run through of some greatest hits, to try and help you understand what kind of choice some of us have to make. Spoilered, so that no-one has to read it if they don't want.

My dad mentally abused my mum. He's lied to my face on several occasions, about a whole range of things from petty to extremely important. I asked him not to lie to me again, and asked him to get treatment for whatever problems he was going through - he told me he was going to see a psychiatrist, gave me weekly treatment reports etc. Turns out they never happened, he might not even have gone once. That was the last straw.

He had multiple affairs. On my brother's first day of high school, he was caught seeing another woman, the same woman he missed my sixteenth birthday to be with. On the day I received my MSc, he asked not to attend in order to see a different other woman(under the guise of a work event), and only did show up - late - when my mum essentially ordered him to be there. He was caught by that woman's husband on the morning of the graduation and nearly beaten up, as I recall we found out.

The poor guy came to my mum's house the next day to tell her what was happening pretty much in tears. I once watched one of the women he messed around turn up at a family dinner and punch him in the face because he'd lied to her as much as he did to us. There's a running joke between me and my brother that we'll probably get a knock on the door one day from a half sibling located anywhere between Glasgow and Blackburn.

He manipulated a lot of my mum's friends away from her, so me and my brother are really her only support network, and have been since I was 14 and he was 9. I've had to watch her depression eat her alive for 14 years - half of my life. My dad has offered no support, no encouragement. He has made little effort to contact me since I changed my name beyond a token text about Blackburn once or twice a year, and a Christmas card which he puts through my mum's door for no other reason than to remind her that he's still nearby, living in the house that she was brought up in, less than two miles away.

And do you know the worst part is that I would certainly have some form of relationship with him, if I ever received any kind of inkling that he cared about something besides himself for a second. But I never have.

I love my mum, and I love my brother. They're my family, and they're the two people I'm closest to in the world outside of my partner and Loki. That will never change. But I was absolutely right to cut my dad out of my life for my continuing mental health and it's not your right to tell me that I don't deserve happiness for prioritising my own health over somebody else's manipulations.

I rarely venture into this thread anymore as I'm happy in this respect but clicked that spoiler and has a lot to relate to. I'm constantly in a state of flux as to whether I care about my dad, who only really helps financially from to time, no big deal. He betrayed my mother in the same way multiple times when I was very young and unable to understand anything before leaving when I was 5 and my younger brother was only 2. I totally get the manipulating friends away thing, leaving my mother in total isolation and suffering from massive depression for decades raising 3 troubled kids. He manages to convince everyone that it was her fault. It's the saddest thing in my life and a huge source of resentment and really holds the family back, the psychological impact is massive. That's without even mentioning my mum is disabled with smashed up legs and osteoporosis and yet still she is alone through all that. And still hasn't moved out from the same house she never wanted to move in to accommodate my fathers working arrangements, because she is stuck where she is with broken leg, hips and knee. My younger brother only recently moved out aged 27.

I think it's important to see and relate to family on some level but there are certainly circumstances where those do not deserve it and are more damaging. Myself I've found it difficult to cut any family out because it does not seem part of me to process the idea of complete rejection and final judgement of anyone. But I have learnt that it is not up to me to provide others with opportunities to change, and you ultimately have to take control of your own life and not fix everyone else. What you cannot do, is interweave yourself inextricably from someone else's and make them dependent on you and then strawberry float off because it no longer pleases you. I have been taught some very strong values in life through hardship including mental illness and poverty and grief and guilt, so it is not all bad, but sadly it is true that not all relationships are good, even with blood involved.

[satriales]

For the first time I ever I decided to do the online dating thing. Wow! Why didn't I do this sooner?

In the past I've struggled to get out and meet new people, so most of my relationships have been through work or friends. I've only had Tinder and Bumble for a week now and already regularly chatting with about 10 girls. One I have just met for drinks this weekend, and setup a 2nd date for Friday, and another who wants to meet on Wednesday.

It's a real confidence booster

[Hexx]

Pics?

[<]:^D]

nice one satriales - glad to hear youre having success so far

[Rightey]

Pics?

Here's his side profile...

[satriales]

I'm average at best, so it wasn't a boast. It's just nice to actually be talking to lots of people and getting out and meeting some of them, rather than the boring work/eat/sleep routine I had been stuck in. Definitely worth giving it a go if anyone else here is in same situation. Most of the women seem really interested in the fact that I go running and completed an ultramarathon, so if I didn't have that on my profile maybe I'd not be getting as many responses.

[Hexx]

I go running and completed an ultramarathon

Pics!

[Gemini73]

So once again the wife and are discussing the possibility of separation.

Not for lack of trying, but it's now clear that there are a more reasons for us not to be together than there is to soldier on. Simply staying together for the sake of the children isn't healthy, and this is the point I believe we're at. We've zero in common and outside of the family unit have little to do with each other. There are moments of happiness between us, but their fleeting. Not exactly the stuff of a stable relationship. For me though, I'm stuffed either way. If I stay then I can only see the simmering unhappiness we both share in our marriage rising to the top, however due to my financial situation my choices are somewhat limited. Moving out and into rented accommodation here in Cheltenham will bankrupt me and so I'd have to move to somewhere more affordable, but close enough to work that I can use public transport that accommodates my shift patterns. My only other option is to stay where I am and endure what is becoming an increasingly unhappy personal relationship between us, by which point the wife may ask that I leave regardless.

I must be honest, as I draw ever closer to 50 the thought of being catapulted right back to square one is rather terrifying.

I'm in a real strawberry floating pickle here, guys.

[That's not a growth]

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