Being an only child

[OutlawSally]

Do we have any only children of PD parent(s) here?

For a long time DH put his uPDM's behavior partially down to the fact that he is an only child, and therefore he was alone under their microscope, and all of their expectations fell on him. He'd often talk about how he wished he had a sibling to take some of the heat off him.

But we've come to realize that having a sibling would not change MILs personality. The drama, manipulation, guilt trips, selfishness, lack of respect for autonomy and boundaries, all of that would still be there. Sure, she would no longer be able to use the excuse "but you're my only son! I miss you so much. Aren't I allowed to love you?" if he had a sibling, but there would be some other excuse for her behavior.

Anyway, we can only speculate, because all of us only have one lived experience of either having a sibling or not, and every family has different dynamics. But is anyone else an only child of a PD parent? And how did you find it? What helps you manage?

[Liketheducks]

Not an only child.   But there are 10 & 12 yrs between me and my siblings.   I'm the eldest.      I was the only for the first 10 yrs.    Having my brothers didn't change my parents issues - they amplified them.     If anything, now there were two other people to triangulate.   

When I was young, their behavior was what I saw as normal.   After my brothers were born, I was not only expected to continue my role, but also protect my brothers as if they were my own children.   And, I wanted to.   

As adults, my parents have cycled through all three of us.   One is GC, SG, and one is ignored.        I'm the only daughter, so my parents expectation is that I'll be the caregiver no matter what.   

It is rough all around.   

[Andeza]

Only child and adopted for a lovely double whammy. It was pretty bad. I was under a microscope for sure, punished excessively, and regularly shuffled back and forth from scapegoat to golden child and back again. I don't think having a diving would have made it any better, just changed the dynamic a bit. Like if my parents had a baby naturally, they couldn't, uBPDm would have most likely treated that child better than me while claiming she didn't. I only know this because when my parents were getting divorced she wailed and wailed wishing endad had divorced her years prior because then she could have had babies. Gee, thanks mom.  that was when I realized she had never seen me fully as her kid, or the kid she really wanted, despite all her claims to the contrary.

If I had been their natural child and had a sibling, now there would have been triangulation like crazy! So, there's no winning here. There's no improving the situation with pds. In other words your husband's childhood would sucked either way.

I'm NC, fully. It's the only thing that helps me be a better person and not hear her voice judging me and my choices. I don't spend my days wondering how shel react to stuff anymore. It's really nice. (pardon any errors, on mobile)

[11JB68]

I think everyone's experience is unique.
I'm an only but grew up in an extended family environment.
Also updm had weird stuff about how she only wanted me, just one, but constantly was 'Adopting' (figuratively) other children.... mostly (only??) Girls...
I went NC and they 'adopted' my younger female cousins

[OutlawSally]

It must be so difficult to go NC as an only child. Well, for anyone really, but I can only imagine the pressure you'd feel. Well done for protecting yourselves.

One thing that I really notice about DH is how he is made to feel almost responsible for being an only child. Like, we aren't supposed to move too far away, he's their only child. We are expected to share all details of our lives and all decisions are made with them, because he's the only child (we went our for a family celebratory meal after DH got his first colonoscopy for example). They demand all of our time, want daily phone calls, want to be involved in everything we do, want him to soothe MILs feelings and make her feel loved. And he feels like he has to do all this, because they chose to have just him. Which is unfair. He didn't choose to be an only. And it's not his job to make them feel fulfilled.

And of course you're all right, having siblings would make things different, but not necessarily easier. It almost certainly would lead to triangulation.

[OutlawSally]

I think everyone's experience is unique.
I'm an only but grew up in an extended family environment.
Also updm had weird stuff about how she only wanted me, just one, but constantly was 'Adopting' (figuratively) other children.... mostly (only??) Girls...
I went NC and they 'adopted' my younger female cousins

My ILs kind of adopted me. Which at first was nice. But then they started trying to almost parent me again; like influence my opinions, my religion, buying me clothes and telling me how to dress, as if I was a blank slate that didn't already have a personality. Then came comments like "we're the only family you have now", "you aren't close to your family", and "you're ours now". Expecting all holidays, birthdays, celebrations we would go to them, no room for us as a couple or my family. All very uncomfy.

I'm not an orphan, I HAVE a family, we are quite close but I also do my own thing like most adults.

[NarcKiddo]

My mother (herself uNPD)  was the only child of a uNPD mother. Her parents split when she was young and her mother mostly farmed her out to stay with relatives.

I am the elder of two daughters by some six years. My mother has always said she hated being an only child and was determined to have several herself. In the event she says her pregnancy with me was terrible and she was told it would be life-threatening to have another child. She had a second child so I would not be an only child like her (you can imagine all the pressures this brought to bear on me). Apparently that pregnancy was also terrible (and life-threatening) and she was ordered by the doctors not to have any more children. I am old enough to remember her being pregnant and I can't say I remember any particular air of danger or problem - but my mother had a nanny to help with my care so perhaps I was shielded from that aspect.

In my case I was a single child only while young and then when younger sister came along I had to help with care of her. But I left home the minute I could while younger sister stayed until her 30s, so she had a pretty full-on only child experience in some ways. I have never gone NC but have not been right there under the thumb as she has. The triangulation was monstrous from the word go and us sisters don't now have what could be described as a relationship. I think my sister also has uNPD judging by her romantic history. She has been a FM and may still be. I don't trust that she isn't. I am not a FM but I think she may think I am (although not in those terms since I am pretty sure she has not twigged that our mother is uNPD). In our case the fact that there are two of us might be taking some of the direct heat off us but it also adds a different kind of pressure as we have a tricky sibling relationship to navigate on top of the totally dysfunctional parent-child relationship. While the parents are both still alive and in decent health we tick along, but if either parent becomes infirm I am sure there will be issues and when one of them dies it will be hellish - especially if father dies first. I also foresee arguments when the second one dies but at that point I will just go NC if necessary. There is no relationship to speak of so nothing to try to salvage. It sounds callous and self-serving but it's something I considered when doing some therapy and I came to the conclusion I just don't have the mental stamina to deal with any crap from my sister after a lifetime of crap from mother. If she sees the light as regards mother and wants my help, then I will be there for her but if not, so be it.

[foobarred]

I was an only child, and a late-life baby (uPDMom and NDad were both in their 40's).  They used that as an excuse for a lot of their behavior.  People (including myself) thought I just had "strict" and "overprotective" parents.  It wasn't until decades later that I realized their "love" was actually controlling, enmeshing, and isolating. 

The middle-aged parent thing didn't help me, either.  They acted as though childhood was a foreign concept:  play was a waste of time, and any immature behavior or lapse in judgement on my part signified a character flaw and was punished.  Basically, expecting an old head on young shoulders.  My psych excuses this, saying that it's natural because they didn't have anybody to compare me to, but I call bullsh*t.  There were plenty of kids in the area, and even their own childhoods were much less restrictive and bizarre than mine.  They spent their youth running wild all over the countryside - hunting, fishing, biking 5 miles to the next town to visit family, going to the movie theater with friends - all no problem.  I was trapped inside a small suburban apartment complex, forbidden to cross the street or ride my bike anywhere other than the parking lot.  I was chauffeured everywhere, accompanied everywhere, scheduled to within an inch of my life, and told I should be grateful for all this because I was living The American Dream (they were immigrants).

I was flipped regularly between GC and SG, depending on circumstance.  I was expected to be a Nobel-prize-winning Olympic athlete, but anything that went wrong within a 50 mile radius was all my fault.  Which made for a very schizophrenic sense of self-esteem: inflated in some areas, in the toilet in others.

I had two stillborn older brothers.  My parents never spoke of them (I found out by accident).  I wonder sometimes what life would've been like if they had lived.  Worse, I suspect.  Dad was a misogynist, I had to become very boyish to retain his favor.  Actual boys might well have eclipsed me.  At the very least he would've triangulated the sh*t oo us, and I might have been discarded when I became disabled if they'd had two healthy and successful sons to focus on.

[Boat Babe]

Being the child of a PD(s) is beyond sucky and I think each family situation is both unique and horribly similar. My experience as the only child of two very dysfunctional people was one of isolation and loneliness. Also of crushing responsibility and parentification (but that could have happened with siblings in the mix). When I was six, uBPD mum left my very violent father and I was the sole source of her emotional comfort and the focus of all her anxieties (she probably has C-PTSD due to her awful childhood).   One of my super powers is patience. I was waiting to leave home for years and it was the light at the end of the tunnel. I can drop into a patient, zenlike waiting mode at the drop of a hat when necessary!

Hugs

[Unbroken1]

Hi, thanks for putting this question out there. As an only child of a suicidal UBPD/NPD mother and enabling Covert NPD father, I grew up under a microscope and was bred to be an obedient puppet, or golden child; but this role was easily switched to scapegoat any time I became triangulated depending on which parent needed an ally against the other. Double dose of crazy on top of all the other weirdness, neglect and toxicity.

I so yearned for a sibling growing up. I think partly to have someone to help me navigate life since my parents were Lost People and had little wisdom to provide about growing up or successfully adulting. My friends who had older brothers always were savvier and clued in since they learned from them, and mostly looked up to them. When I got older, the sibling ideal remained, but gradually, wanting a male mentor replaced this.

But I have learned a fascinating lesson from my UBPD mom's only sister, who is still alive, and the relationship between her two sons, my first cousins. They're both highly aggressive, overt narcissists who engage in toxic competitiveness with each other to this day. Their birth father was killed in a plane crash when they were 4-5 years old, and their mother remarried a few years later to a man who turned out to be a raging, abusive alcoholic whom I believe shamed my cousins and played them psychologically and emotionally against each other, with my aunt enabling him. I believe both of my cousins exhibit behaviors and beliefs that are sociopathic. Both are highly paranoid. One cousin has taught his son to "Other" those people who are racially or ethnically different, so he sleeps with a loaded AR-15 under his bed. His brother, who I always considered the "gentle" one growing up, is a snobbish, condescending bore who worships money and status and who was fired from a career position with a tech firm for sexual harassment of a woman he worked with.

Before this cousin employed the silent treatment against me 3 years ago for calling him out on something he said, I got invited to family holiday gatherings. Not any more. He's taken control of his elderly mother's life as a gatekeeper, and is acting as the center of power within his branch of the family, so I am afraid that if I contact his mother and he finds out, she'll bear the brunt of his volcanic, unbridled rage, which I once witnessed in a public setting.

And sadly, as I have gotten older, my experience with my UNPD ex/her twin siblings showed me a similar scenario where prolonged parental emotional abuse and manipulation has resulted in sibling dysfunction and disordered personalities. I've gone no contact with not only my ex, but with all my in laws and extended family on her side since the divorce since I witnessed the same toxic personality traits in them. Besides, not one of them reached out when we were divorced, so there's that.

I always resented the old stereotype that only children have it easy and are spoiled (translation: narcissist, I think 🤨). I'm sure other kids thought I had it easy! Truth is, my life as an only child was as far away from the stereotype as it's possible to get.

[beepositive]

But we've come to realize that having a sibling would not change MILs personality. The drama, manipulation, guilt trips, selfishness, lack of respect for autonomy and boundaries, all of that would still be there.

I am an only child, and I have often thought that a sibling or two would've helped. But it may not have been helpful at all. It could have been even worse! A narcissist is gonna narcissist, regardless of how many kids they have. But I DO think there are unique aspects to being the only child of a uPD mom. It has always felt like I had one job, and that is/was to make her look good. To be a shining reflection of her image as a good mom. And I've dreamed of having someone else to share that burden, or at least to be able to talk about it, to validate my experience. But there's no guarantee they would have anyway.

My mom actually tried to have another kid with my adoptive dad, but it didn't work out. Then they tried to adopt a baby, but the birth mom had a change of heart after delivery. I always think about the WHAT IFs. We had built an addition onto the house for the baby's room and everything.

She is a lot to manage, and I've often wished for a break, a little balance that families with more than one sibling seem to have. It's exhausting. I wish I could be like, "Call so and so."

[Unbroken1]

Hi, I realized that I really didn't address your primary question in my previous reply. How did I manage? How does a child cope, and then later as an adult?

In my youth, I managed at first by being a dutiful example of what my parents believed would reflect well on them - a studious, compliant, and approval-seeking trained child. Behind the scenes, though, mom tried to off herself a couple of times and would go stay for a visit in a local mental health facility. The hospital stays I knew about - but the suicide attempts and the electroshock therapy sessions she endured were only told to me years later, when I was an adult. This was the shameful secret of our family but which was never discussed.

So, when I was 13, I started to act out and got involved with alcohol, drugs and risk-taking behaviors, which continued throughout adolescence and into adulthood. The normal hormonal behavior of a teen was exacerbated by my inability to regulate emotionally, so it got pretty dramatic. At one point my father and I got into a physical struggle when I defied him over something which I can't recall now. With hindsight, I believe I unconsciously decided at some point that nothing I could do would ever be enough for either of them, so I became defiant and drifted in the opposite direction. On the other hand, the unconscious desire to find some way to be acceptable to my parents led me to becoming a hypervigilant perfectionist.

As an adult I moved as far away from my parents as I could. My dad checked out emotionally so there was no connection there except for his silent, disapproving resentment buried underneath the mask. Mom was so clingy and desperate, she drove me away as well.

I tried emotional detachment on the advice of my therapist at the time (early 90's) and that went about as well as you might imagine, so guilt, fear and obligation sucked me back into the vortex.

Emotionally, they both are still capable of torturing me, decades after their deaths. I was in CBT for years (along with my uNPD ex-spouse, huge mistake) trying to find the roots of my issues. I've since come to the understanding that CBT is of limited use where the effects of childhood trauma are concerned. In the past few years in the wake of my divorce, I started following techniques for recovery from CPTSD advocated by leading practitioners of this approach, and I'm finally starting to feel hopeful after years of spinning my wheels in therapy.

[easterncappy]

Do we have any only children of PD parent(s) here?

For a long time DH put his uPDM's behavior partially down to the fact that he is an only child, and therefore he was alone under their microscope, and all of their expectations fell on him. He'd often talk about how he wished he had a sibling to take some of the heat off him.

But we've come to realize that having a sibling would not change MILs personality. The drama, manipulation, guilt trips, selfishness, lack of respect for autonomy and boundaries, all of that would still be there. Sure, she would no longer be able to use the excuse "but you're my only son! I miss you so much. Aren't I allowed to love you?" if he had a sibling, but there would be some other excuse for her behavior.

Anyway, we can only speculate, because all of us only have one lived experience of either having a sibling or not, and every family has different dynamics. But is anyone else an only child of a PD parent? And how did you find it? What helps you manage?

I don't mean to revive an older thread, but yes, I'm also an only child. I've always found it difficult to relate to some people talking about golden children, scapegoats, and all of that. I can't even wrap my mind around how that would work... I think I'm all of those things to my parents at once, lol. Sometimes I debate if it'd be better or worse if they had more children, but ultimately, I'm glad that there weren't any more innocent little kids for them to abuse. A lot of the relationships I see between siblings from dysfunctional families are uniquely flawed... lots of trauma bonding and repeating their parents' bad behavior on each other. I may have been lonely as a child, but it's better that way than if I had a sibling who had to hurt as much as I do.

[Boat Babe]

Don't worry about bringing older conversations back into play easterncappy, we all do this as stuff comes up for us. As an only child it helps me to read about other people's experiences.
Hugs.

[easterncappy]

Mom was so clingy and desperate, she drove me away as well.

My mom does the same. I don't think she understands how off-putting it is. I feel like the whole emotional incest/enmeshment dynamic is a lot more common with only children... or at least that there's a unique dynamic between only children and PD parents, one that I don't think gets enough attention. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy... she smothers me, begs me to never leave her, and generally acts like a jealous girlfriend (this behavior would be incredibly off-putting in a romantic context too) and not a mother... when I figured out that I'm not the one with the problem for feeling terrible when she acts like this, I started separating myself from her. She couldn't take it. She still can't. She's still clingy and desperate, although apparently not desperate enough to confront her own issues and work on them like I ask her to.

A lot of PDs seem to genuinely think that affection can be forced. The vast majority of people would be horrified to find out that they're only being given affection out of obligation, by a person who feels anxious and miserable around them. For PDs, it doesn't occur to them that it's just... not genuine when you put someone in a situation where they feel like they have no choice but to do something horribly uncomfortable for them. Very disconnected from reality and how normal relationships work.

Don't worry about bringing older conversations back into play easterncappy, we all do this as stuff comes up for us. As an only child it helps me to read about other people's experiences.
Hugs.

Thank you. I might take you up on that offer. There was some excellent content on this forum just a week or two before I signed up and I know a lot of forums look down on people reviving older threads, so I resisted the urge to comment.

[Andeza]

Heck, I resurrected a thread I started that hadn't been touched in multiple months.

Yes the dynamic with an only child is complicated. I too got the clingy and demanding stuff. In fact it was a comment from uBPDm that she "needed to be needed" that twisted in my gut and told me something was wrong. I was four or five months pregnant at the time and it did not feel right in any way, and it heralded my journey Out of the FOG as I found this forum and started reading that very same day. Almost within the hour.

They like to dress up the idea of forced affection, or obligated love, with fun sayings like "But she's your mom." "But she's family." "But you turned out so well." Etc. Makes it sound less icky I suppose, but a bad thing is a bad thing no matter what you try to call it.

[easterncappy]

Heck, I resurrected a thread I started that hadn't been touched in multiple months.

Yes the dynamic with an only child is complicated. I too got the clingy and demanding stuff. In fact it was a comment from uBPDm that she "needed to be needed" that twisted in my gut and told me something was wrong. I was four or five months pregnant at the time and it did not feel right in any way, and it heralded my journey Out of the FOG as I found this forum and started reading that very same day. Almost within the hour.

They like to dress up the idea of forced affection, or obligated love, with fun sayings like "But she's your mom." "But she's family." "But you turned out so well." Etc. Makes it sound less icky I suppose, but a bad thing is a bad thing no matter what you try to call it.

We turn out well in spite of them, not because of them.

I also came here because I got pregnant and realized that I need to stop putting off dealing with my parents. I liked reading websites like this and different self-help materials, but that was about it... and then, all of the sudden, there was a tiny helpless baby in the picture that they'd obviously want access to, and I realized I wasn't being dramatic about my childhood at all, and quite frankly, the only way they'd be able to hurt my daughter the way they hurt me is over my dead body. My mom made the pregnancy about herself quite a few times too... demanding to be at the birth along with my creepy child molester dad (she knows but doesn't care), cornering me in an attempt to make me promise "weekend visits with grandma and grandpa" (heeeeellll no - especially after years of telling her that any children I have will not be meeting him), getting upset that I told someone before her, acting like she's closer to the child than the child's dad is... just a huge mess.

I don't think that she was like this because I was an only child... but being an only child still made it different. I was either an accident, a "fix the marriage" baby, or they only had me out of social pressure. Neither of them like children and they clearly thought normal parental responsibilities like playing and age-appropriate conversations were this huge terrible annoying burden... so why have more than one? They want access to my daughter for weird control reasons and because they think they're magically owed access to both of us, not because they actually even like her or want to deal with another annoying child.