Learning the family secrets

[PunkCroc]

Hi everyone, I'm a new member here, and I'm looking for some community.

When I was growing up, my mom and my sister never really got along. I was the youngest in the family, so I was always told it was "because your sister just doesn't behave." I was never really told much about what they argued about, but most of the arguing started when my sister was in junior high, and escalated in high school (I'm two years younger than her.) My dad never seemed to do much, but sometimes I would see my sister talking privately with my dad, or he would defend her and I never knew what had happened.

My relationship with my mom was a little different, not as much fighting, but she was very strict and she yelled at us frequently. Her reactions to any situation she didn't like was to yell. I recall as a teenager she started slapping me across the face and more than once pushed me against a wall. This was what I'd gotten used to at this point, so I didn't think this was anything other than normal. Come to find out, almost none of my friends experienced this kind of thing from their parents.

We are both adults now, and my sister and I did not speak for many years (the last time I had seen her in person was 2013, then she moved with her husband to another state.) During that time, before I moved out of my parent's house, my mom got more controlling and we started to argue as well, until I moved out and to another state too. While I was living on my own, it was suddenly like my mom became a different person and our relationship improved.

I reconnected with my sister when my brother in law helped me pay a debt for school. I was instructed by my dad not to let my mom know my BIL had paid it. I didn't understand why that would need to be kept a secret from her. This is when I found out everything that had gone on, and had been kept from me, since I was a kid.

My mother is a liar. She is a liar, and she is terribly irresponsible with money to an almost criminal degree. When I was 12, I recall we had to suddenly move out of a house we'd only been living in for a short time, and I never knew why. The truth was because my mother had not paid the bills or mortgage, and the house was about to be foreclosed. My dad did not know this was happening until a realtor showed up at the door. My mother has been taken to court more than once for non-payment of credit card bills, and has put the family in debt to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. My dad was forced out of retirement because of her spending, they couldn't pay the bills. When my grandfather died, she was given an inheritance of $30k, and my dad never saw a dime of it. We are certain it is gone.

The fighting between my mom and sister was not because of my sister "misbehaving," it was because of my mom's abuse of her, and my dad. My mom would not allow my sister to see friends, disregarded her achievements, and on more than one occasion, threw away birthday presents for her from my aunt. My sister was tested for dyscalculia (a math/numbers processing disability) and when it turned out she actually had ADHD, my mother screamed at the physician and refused to allow this information to be entered into my sister's medical history. She was unable to get any help or services for this her whole life, and it is also the explanation why my mom insisted I had dyscalculia, but never had me tested for anything. My mother often had fights with my dad and emotionally abused him so she could get her way. I won't keep going on, but this is the tip of the iceburg.

My mom told me my dad went back to work because he was bored. That's a lie. She told me my sister was a delinquent. That's a lie. My dad said he has been wanting to leave for years, but his credit is destroyed because of her (she has been subpoenaed by credit companies more than once, and some of those have my dad's name on it because it's tied to houses she's lost for non-payments.) My sister and dad have been talking about this, and my sister's family has agreed that if he leaves, he will go live with them.

I've only just learned all this within the last year. Yes, now that I know all of this, suddenly a LOT of things make sense. Why my mom promised certain birthday or Christmas gifts and never followed through and never explained why. What happened to our house when I was young, the fighting and screaming growing up. It's all because of her.

The only people I'm really able to talk about this to are my sister, dad, and boyfriend. On one hand, every time my mom lies to me, I know she is lying, and can get the truth from my dad and sister, but on the other hand, now I know how often my mom lies...and it is all the time. My mom is unaware I know the truth now, so the lies keep going...and going...

I don't know what to think of my mom anymore and why I was left out of all of this for so long.

[Liketheducks]

I had a similar situation with my mom.   My parents split some time ago.   She's terrible with money.   Both parents have filed for bankruptcy multiple times.   And then they expect me to fund them.   I stopped doing that long ago.   The sense of entitlement is staggering with them.

[NarcKiddo]

Maybe your dad and sister wanted to protect you from the information about your mother, since you are the youngest?

[Unbroken1]

My family has several secrets that I was trained not to either tell or be allowed to know as I was growing up. The one that emerged after my father died was my mother's spending addiction (uBPD, diagnosed as clinical depression from 1960s up until her death in 2003).

I always thought that mom would be the first to go. She spent a large part of each day, heavily medicated, lying in bed smoking cigarettes and drinking iced tea. While dad would finance her (nice, but tacky) wardrobe and bought her expensive jewelry, money rules were different for me. My graduation gift (along with college tuition and board, I do credit him for that), was a cheap vinyl suitcase. His money-based hypocrisy reached its peak when he invested in not only one, but two failing businesses and ended up almost a million dollars in debt. He settled with his creditors for pennies on the dollar, but I am certain it brought much shame to him, and my mother as well ("OMG what will our friends and neighbors think?"). But cancer ended his life soon after, and mom discovered a whole new restraint-free world of shopping when the estate settled and she was left with about $450k at the age of 62.

At the time I was living several thousand miles away but it soon became evident that she was incapable of managing the responsibility of her own life, especially when it came to money. This was in the 90s before online commerce was a thing. Mom isolated herself in the house and started binge shopping on QVC. One time I went home to visit and there was a 3-foot high pile of unopened QVC boxes in the front hallway. She would order cheap jewelry and crap to gift (one of her manipulative go-tos) and then feel guilty and return some of it. Who knows how many cycles of this she went through. She would leave signed, blank checks for landscaping services under the front door mat because she didn't want to deal with them face to face. Sketchy people became her friends when they realized how gullible she was. Of course mom would always manage to let it slip and I would find out about someone like the woman who "borrowed" $3k and somehow only managed to pay back a small fraction. To get her to leave my mother alone, I had to threaten to call the police. She sold all the expensive jewelry dad bought for her and I know it probably wasn't for much. She cashed in her whole life insurance policy (I was the only beneficiary) and who knows what other things she did. It was as if she was possessed and was making up for the years my dad had the control of the finances. She pretty much abdicated any responsibility for herself since she knew I would fix the situation or bail her out.

When she passed away, there were people at the assisted living facility who cleaned apartments there, who actually wanted to access her vacant apartment before I had a chance to secure it. There was a chef in the assisted living facility's kitchen who went out of his way to give mom the impression that he had a thing for her despite there being 30 years minimum age difference. I was told that he was later fired for trying and failing with the same act with another resident. When settling her estate, I would receive collection calls from the very same credit card companies that I had naively called and begged not to issue her credit. It gave me no small measure of satisfaction to refer them to my attorney when they did that.

I had to hire a family law attorney, and create a non-revocable trust mom willingly signed on to (but later wanted to back out of) so she wouldn't spend herself into destitution. She ended up with a $300 a month cash allowance. She had a car, a very nice apartment, and meals in a lively dining room in a facility that was more like a hotel, but it wasn't enough. By the time she passed away 10 years later, she had gone through two thirds of dad's estate which included his share of his remaining business, his life insurance policy proceeds, and the house he designed, and most of my hair was gone from the stress of dealing with her crazy oppositionality and lying.

That's just one of the family secrets. Mental illness, alcoholism, intergenerational trauma and all the effed-up behaviors that go along with it. I never knew my paternal grandfather as he abandoned his wife and 3 kids during the Depression. I suspect my maternal grandfather was a malignant sociopath, based on the conclusions I've come to many years later. Mom's mental illness was inescapable growing up, but it was not spoken of at the time. I came to realize that there were no family legends because the stories of my family were ones nobody wanted to tell.

[moglow]

Hey Punk - welcome to our corner of the asylum! Those family secrets are painful, I know, but don't for one minute think they're yours to carry. It could very well be that your dad and sister didn't share all that with you for the simple reason that possible comparisons of them to your mother are painful. There's sort of an honor among thieves mentality but at the same time they likely have protective instincts that your mother has no clue even exist. If your mother is known to lie and will lie about any and everything and every person, you've ALL been lied to and about [even about each other obvs]. It destroys trust and makes everyone question everything. They don't know if you trust or believe in them or if you're following the line your mother fed. Nobody knows. Mine was a master at divide and conquer until we put the pieces together, but some of those pieces have never quite fit since.

Yes, honesty is best, but it took you a while to get HERE and will likely take a while to unload all that where you're not carrying it anymore. The comparisons I suggested? They could well have been thinking: if we tell Punk this stuff they may see us just like mom, that this is more gossip and innuendo and we can't be trusted. That we're lying to Punk just like mom has to all of us. Making it a topic of painful conversation still makes it real and they may have not wanted to force you to choose sides.

You don't *have* to choose sides, none of you do. Every relationship in every family is different. You may cut mom out entirely while sis plays along with surface contact or vice versa. You each get to choose what [if any] relationship you have with her, and no one has to explain it. Talking it out may very well help all of you, putting those pieces together can help you heal and remove yourself from her stuff. You'll get to build trust that you've never had before.

Talk to them, but try and not make her the topic of all conversation. Look at and get to know each other. Make plans and do things together. Build that family you've wanted.

[olivegirl]

My family situation is very similar to that of the OP.

Like your older sister, I too am the older sister and likewise the scapegoat.  This is because I recognized my mother deliberately manufacturing chaos and emotional harm to the nuclear family and relatives.  My mother competed financially with other family members and was/is obsessed with keeping up appearances that she and my father are very wealthy.  Thus the overspending and the anxiety from having to fake it.

In order to prevent exposure bc I called out her badmouthing relatives and her toxic tactics (buying me an extravagant gift to open in front of relatives to impress them but then returning the gift bc it cost too much money, for example) my mother started a smear campaign in which she started gossiping about relatives and neighbors and blamed it on me.  I became knows as the difficult daughter. 

My younger sister was warned to comply and cover for my mother's tactics or face being her target too.  My younger sister became the Golden Child, much to my mother's delight.

Naturally as scapegoating increased and my sister was rewarded for her obedience and keeping her head down, my relationship with my sister began to fall apart bc she didn't trust me and didn't want to be associated with troublesome me.

My mother lied and lied and continues to lie and is obsessed with creating rifts via triangulation in order to control.

When my sister finally saw the light and started to reach out to me, my mother plays the victim that my sister and I are ganging up on her.

I tried alerting my younger sister of my mother's manipulative tactics, but my mother successfully convinced my sister that I was jealous of her, untrustworthy, an outcast and a liar.  Projection! 

Currently both my sister and I are NC with my mother.  Certainly, she plays the victim and denies all responsibility for creating the harm in our lives.  Mother gaslights constantly and gets to feel morally superior: "believe what you want to believe.  Blame everything on me if it makes you feel better."

Mother's prolific lying, triangulating, divisiveness and cruelty has resulted in her losing the majority of her relationships.  With the exception of my father who just serves her and enables her abuse by raging at his daughters for upsetting our mother. 

It's sad bc it doesn't have to be this way.  I spent YEARS trying to change her and fix the family but I'm no match for her love of chaos, her racism, her bitterness and anger, her constant blame-shifting. 

So now I have just come to the conclusion that my parents must suffer the consequences of their behaviors and not let them hurt me anymore.  They have no savings for retirement, no assets.  I'm just grateful that I am not like them.

[PunkCroc]

My younger sister was warned to comply and cover for my mother's tactics or face being her target too.  My younger sister became the Golden Child, much to my mother's delight.

Naturally as scapegoating increased and my sister was rewarded for her obedience and keeping her head down, my relationship with my sister began to fall apart bc she didn't trust me and didn't want to be associated with troublesome me.

This is EXACTLY what happened. To a TEE what happened. I got more privileges when I obeyed and complied, I remember my mom telling me things like "You're getting to do this and not your sister because I know you will behave." or "Don't tell your sister you're being allowed XYZ because I never let her do it because she can't behave."

That put so much tension between us. I was becoming the Golden Child and my sister was becoming more depressed. She gained a lot of weight in high school and never wanted to participate in social activities, she didn't go to prom, and only had one boyfriend. I went to three proms and was nominated for queen and king with my high school sweetheart. At the time I thought myself so much better than her, and now that I know what was really going on, I regret some of the arguments she and I had. There were times when I felt like my sister was just starting drama with me because she was jealous, which is true to a degree, she probably saw anything she tried to achieve get overlooked, she saw me getting favored and she being a scapegoat, and it probably made her feel resentful. Which, honestly, knowing the truth now, I don't blame her and I'm not mad. Plus, I just don't want to be my mom's "golden daughter" if it means my sister continues to be her scapegoat (apparently, this hasn't changed. My mom talks trash about my sister to other family members now.)  I've started doing things that I want to do and be the person I want to be and not think as much about what my mom will want.

I'm working on my third degree right now, my sister never finished her associates...of course I came to find out, this too, was also because of sabotage by my mother. But the difference now is my sister is happy for me, it's no longer a competition. I chose this current educational path because I actually wanted it and love what I've chosen, not because of pressure from my mother. My sister and my brother in law are actually living a really good life and he is very successful in tech. Me and my boyfriend recently visited them for a week and she paid for EVERYTHING. Plane tickets, food, even a trip to Disney. My sister, BIL, niece and nephew absolutely loved my boyfriend too. So the positive I'm getting from this is rebuilding a better relationship with my sister and letting go of the past animosity between us.