The Enmeshment Doctrine: when boundaries are forbidden

Once there was a little boy named Timmy. He played baseball. He was a good pitcher, and a good hitter, but he did not play baseball because he loved the sport. He played it because his father had wanted to be a professional baseball player and didn't quite make it.

Timmy’s dad really wanted baseball to be important to his son, and so the father came to every game, cheering him on loudly. Anytime the ref made a call he didn't like, that would hurt the team’s score or his son’s scoring potential, the father marched down to the field and yelled in the referee’s face. “My son made that base. That should have been a run. How dare you say my son didn't make it home!”

This behavior was all his son knew, but do you think he was doing it for Timmy, or do you think he was doing it for himself?

We've all heard the stories about stage moms and parents who live through their children. And we’re kidding ourselves if we believe this is for the kids. It’s not.

Do you think Timmy would feel strong enough to go to his dad and say, “Dad, I really don't like it when you yell at the referee at my games. Could you not do that anymore?”

If Timmy could get up the strength to say that, what do you think would happen?

I think it’s fair to say that if Timmy's dad were a good dad who listened to his son's feelings, he would probably hear him and change. But the fact that he has been yelling at the referee in the first place and making Timmy’s baseball games about himself is an indication that this conversation probably wouldn't go well.

Timmy's dad is over-invested in his son.

When we say a parent is over-invested in his child, that doesn't mean he's compassionate and empathizes with the child. It means a parent thinks they know better what the child wants and needs. He is invested in that child doing one thing well or believing one thing, like a religion for example. Or a parent hopes the child will do one specific job when he grows up. Over-invested parents may say, “We were all doctors, you're going to be a doctor. We all play chess. You're going to play chess.”

Over-investment is an easy trap for parents to fall into.

Lots of parents are over-invested, but it's not good for kids. It's also one thing that causes enmeshment. 

When we first look at enmeshment and lack of boundaries within a family, it appears to be about closeness. We may say, “That father is really close to his son... that mother is really close to her daughter… that whole family talks the same, they have the same mannerisms and are of one mind… that family thinks about everything the same way.” 

This may look and feel like it's about closeness, but it's not really about closeness at all. 

It's about control.

As a teacher, I often see this from the outside.

There have been times where a child in my class has done something that's completely unacceptable: the child has hurt another student or done something that is clearly and unequivocally wrong.

The offending student will then go home and tell an over-invested parent what happened, but the story will be twisted to make themselves look like the victim. And then, this parent will not come in and ask for the other side of the story. Instead they will storm into the school saying, “how dare you say this to my child, how dare you correct my child.” And they'll not listen to anything I say. They're not open to listening to the actual story.

This over-invested parent thinks they're being this great awesome mom or dad when actually they're not doing their child any favors. What they're teaching their child is that they can get what they want by getting their parents to take care of a problem for them. The child knows their mom or dad is going to do all the work and that he is off the hook.

It’s an easy trap to fall into and another way of being over-invested.

As a mom, I've done this myself.

There are situations where it's appropriate to march into a school and raise hell. Like when your child is actually legitimately being bullied. My son, at one point, had rocks thrown at him by other kids. I think in that case, a parent should be marching up to the school. There is no situation where it's okay for other children to be throwing rocks at the back of your son’s head.

But I’ve also been that Mom who marches into the school all angry because he didn't get an extension on a deadline. It would have been way better, in that situation, if I had told my son simply, “This is your responsibility. Get your work in on time, or if you want an extension, go to the teacher and ask.”

There’s a word for this. It’s called self-advocacy.

Self-advocacy is a sort of antidote to enmeshment. In my growing up years, I was encouraged to self-advocate in exactly two areas: (1) my learning, and (2) my religion.

I was taught to self-advocate in my learning, because I have a learning disability. The only way I could get the help I needed was to go up to a teachers myself and say, “Hey, I need a little extra time on this test.” Or, “I need a certain kind of paper…” I had to ask for the things I needed to succeed. So in this respect--in the area of learning--my parents did a good job. In the area of religion, the only self-advocacy I was allowed was in advocating for the religion I was raised in. 

My self-advocacy was all about telling non-Mormons, “Hey, you guys are spreading anti-mormon lies. You don't understand my religion, and you need to be tolerant.”

Looking back, since I wasn't allowed to read anything about church history that wasn't put out by the church itself, I’m not sure this is the best example of self-advocacy. I had a lot to learn; I was standing up for myself, though. I will put that out there.

Despite those two areas where I was permitted to self advocate and have a choice, my family stands out as a model for what the enmeshed family looks like. 

My mother very much controlled the mood in our home. You couldn't be happy if she was in a bad mood. You were not allowed. I would catch her feelings like a person catches the common cold, except faster. It takes a couple of days to catch a cold. If you looked at my mother, you’d know you're not allowed to be happy immediately. My dad is the same way.

His moods are controlled by her and how she feels.

If you are happy when she's not happy, she'll likely punish you for it. Probably, she'll start giving you the silent treatment. Let me tell you how I feel about the silent treatment.

My parents, my mother in particular, can yell. She has a great yelling voice, and it can be scary. She did that a lot when I was little. So much so that I don't even remember it anymore, mostly because I blocked it out.

But I will always remember her giving me the silent treatment, because that hurt.

It hurt like hell.

I wouldn't even know what I had done wrong. All I knew was she wasn't making eye contact, she wasn't talking to me. She was sulking in the corner, and I didn't know why.

I would approach her, and she'd make it obvious I was the last person she wanted around. She would sigh. Obviously, I had done something terrible! I was expected to read her mind. (We're not supposed to read people's minds in healthy relationships, by the way.) In the fundamentalist Mormon church where they practice polygamy, there's a word for this method of discipline. 

It's called: keeping sweet. 

What it means is that if you've done something the parent doesn't like, they will completely ignore you until you figure out what you've done. They don't tell you. And then, for me, once I figured out what I’d done wrong (and this is also part of keeping sweet) I had to grovel and I had to make it up to the person who was giving me the silent treatment.

This was very much expected in the Mormon home I grew up in.

Just to be clear, my parents were not polygamists. They weren't, but that's where this concept comes from. It was passed down from our ancestors who were polygamists. So even though we don’t practice polygamy, we still do some of the same things that they did. One of those things is keeping sweet. It’s very damaging to believe you have to read your parent’s mind, and then to grovel and be ashamed to get back in their good graces.

It’s parenting based on shame and it will deplete your child’s sense of self.

When I was a teenager, as is the case with lots of teenagers, I wanted to quit playing the viola. I was in Middle School; that's an age when many kids don't want to play the instrument they started a few years earlier. They’re like, “Oh no. I don’t want to play an instrument anymore; I have to practice to get better, and I hate practicing.” 

 I had gotten to that predictable stage. No big deal.

Except when I started playing, my parents told me I could quit at any time and I believed them.

So I went to my dad and said, “Hey, Dad. I'm not really feeling the viola anymore. You said I could quit anytime, so could I just stop? Is that okay?” 

He nodded stiffly and I thought that meant I could stop. 

Then, in the few days following, my mother stopped talking to me.

She was walking around the house while not making eye contact, in the same room while pretending I wasn’t there. She was sitting in her chair and opening her magazine, reading while I was right in front of her. And she would not acknowledge me.

It was obvious I had done something wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what. 

And then, finally, because I wasn't figuring it out, my parents called a meeting. We were all sitting in the living room, and I was like, “Okay, what's going on?”

My dad starts telling me I am ungrateful, because they are paying for lessons for me, and that's a big expense. It’s a big deal. They rented a viola for me, and that's expensive. It’s a sacrifice, and they don't feel like I play well enough yet to make the decision to quit lessons.

They were very shaming about it, and, to be clear, I don't blame them for wanting me to stick to a music instrument. There’s nothing wrong with that by itself. It was a good call. But why did they tell me I could quit at any time if that wasn’t true? 

Why would you tell your child that, and then when they asked to quit, give them the silent treatment and expect them to figure out why you’re mad, then call a meeting to tell your daughter she’s ungrateful, to shame her and make her feel like crap?

Punishing a child for voicing a request you don’t like makes absolutely zero sense… unless you grew up in an enmeshed family system where children are expected to serve as an extension of their parents. And that’s exactly the kind of home I had.

When you grow up in an enmeshed family system, the mind-reading, the carrying of others’ emotions, and the expectation to carry on the dreams, wishes, and belief system of your parents feels natural. But this does a real number on a person’s individuality.

There’s this thing called the looking-glass self where we determine who we are by what others reflect back to us. 

If others tell you you're beautiful, you're going to think you're beautiful. If people tell you you're intelligent, you're going to think you're intelligent. I didn’t know who I was growing up in this family. So I went through this very confusing stage in my life where I went through a disorienting identity crisis. It didn't last forever. 

Only about 35 years. 

A big part of why I didn't know who I was was because the people in my family told me one thing about my character while the people outside it told me something that was completely the opposite.

For instance, my mother made a big deal out of how I was loud. She would always tell the story of when I was a toddler, a two-year-old, that had the loudest voice ever. She said I used my voice as a weapon. First of all, what toddler doesn't do that? Secondly, she's always made a big deal out of this story. She talks about it to everyone and she loved to say, “This is just who you are, Angela. You like to use your voice as a weapon.”

Well, as mentioned earlier, I have a learning disability.

Because of this, I was tested every three years at the insistence of my parents. The school tested me. I got really good at taking tests. They would have teachers fill out these questionnaires about how hard I worked, how I was learning, and how my personality figured into all this. Do you know what every single one of my teachers said about me in their questionnaire? “Angela is a quiet and soft-spoken person.” A sentiment echoed across all my classes.

So here I have my parents, and my mother in particular, talking to me all the time about how loud I am, telling me I use my voice as a weapon. Meanwhile my teachers and peers call me quiet and soft-spoken. Which one was I to believe?

My mother also liked to say I was an extrovert. She told a story about how every time we went someplace like a beach or on vacation, I would go up to people and talk to them... this was proof I was an extrovert. But then, on the forms my teachers filled out every three years, all of them consistently wrote that I kept to myself or was very shy. So again, I received a completely opposite assessment of the person that I was.

Mom called me a “Jack of all trades and a master of none.” If it sounds like I'm tearing up a little, it’s because I am. That really hurt.

It's normal for teenagers and children to explore. It's normal for teenagers and children to try lots of different things--to want to try music and art and dance and storytelling and computers and all this stuff--but I was constantly told I was a “Jack of all trades and a master of none.” Mom said I should settle on one thing. And I was criticized for being a quitter, since I couldn't stick to one skill. But my teachers who were filling out forms every three years called me studious and hardworking. Which was I then? A quitter, or a studious, hard worker?

You can't be both.

Finally, my mother often told me how stubborn and self-willed I was. My teachers, on the other hand, called me cooperative and a good listener.

I went through this developmental stage not knowing who I was, because what I was hearing about my character at home was absolutely the complete opposite of what teachers reflected back to me at school. In short, my looking glass self was just all over the place!

It took me a long time, into my 30s, before I learned about splitting.

Splitting is when a person can’t conceptualize or take ownership of their bad traits and good traits existing together inside themselves. So a parent who’s splitting will take their bad traits and project them onto one child, then take their good traits and project them onto another child.

For those who aren’t familiar with projecting. This is when a person accuses someone else of having traits or characteristics that are actually their own. So let's say I am in my room reading the newspaper and my daughter comes in with a book in her hand. She wants my time, and I accuse her of reading too much. I tell her she’s too into her book and is shutting out other people. But in reality, I'm the one sitting in my room reading a newspaper while refusing to engage. So the person who has a problem with reading too much and shutting out other people is me.

It’s easier to project your negative traits onto others than to take responsibility for them.

Unfortunately, when people do this, they’re often unaware they’re doing it. Or they don’t really care. My mother and father do a lot of projecting and a lot of splitting.

They take their good character traits and put them onto the golden children in the family. Then they take their bad or unsavory character traits and project them onto the family scapegoats. Of course, now that I’m an adult, I can see that my mother could be loud when she became angry. She had a powerful voice and could scream at any moment when she lost control. 

She was essentially describing herself when she described me as “loud” and someone who would “use my voice as a weapon.”

It had nothing to do with me, whatsoever.

Also, while my mother calls herself an introvert, she craves closeness. She craves friendship. She wants these warm unbreakable bonds with people, so her calling me an extrovert and talking about how I was always talking to people was also a projection. She wasn’t describing me. She was describing herself.

Next is her “ Jack of all trades and a master of none,” assessment. Let's talk about my mother for a moment, ok? She went to college, which is great--great to go to college, but she changed her mind from one major to another. Then, after she went to get a master's degree, she couldn't decide what to focus on. In the end it didn’t matter, because she dropped out before she got her Master's and moved across the country to work for the FBI as a secretary. That's when she met my dad, got married, and quit her job. “Jack of all trades master of none” describes her quite accurately.

She loves hobbies and has a ton. She gardens, she writes, she reads, she sews on occasion, she cooks, and has a habit of starting projects she never finishes. “Jack of all trades and master of none” doesn’t describe me. Why then, did she say that about me all through my growing up years? Because it was true about her, and as the scapegoat, she needed to project that onto me. She was splitting and putting her more undesirable character traits onto me as her child.

“Self-willed,” oh my God! What parent refuses to talk to their child because they've asked to stop playing a musical instrument? That’s not normal. And she thinks I'm self-willed? It took me a long time to figure out that these traits I’d been painted as having didn't even belong to me.

Being enmeshed in my family system meant not being able to forge an authentic identity. I didn’t even know how I came across to others, because the feedback I received was so inconsistent and contradictory. At least now I have some kind of self concept. There are three necessary things a child/teen must have to to form an identity and to differentiate from their parents and family system.

First, the freedom to explore, which I did not have, unfortunately. If I had explored like a natural, normal developing teen, I would have been shamed for it.

Second, the ability to set boundaries with your parents. Regrettably, the boundaries in my family were very blurred. I wasn't allowed to have feelings that my mother didn't approve of. I wasn't allowed to have any thoughts about the church that were negative or even skeptical or critical because that would mean Satan had a hold on me.

In regards to fashion and the way I dressed, it’s relevant to explain that my mother grew up in the late 50s and early 60s during her teenage and young adult years. As such, she had very specific ideas about how I should wear my hair. If you do a Google Search and look up how people did their hair in the late 50s and early 60s, you’ll see that big hair was in. 

Sophia Loren and Connie Francis wore the bouffant. The pixie, which was short, was also in, but I was told I couldn’t pull that off. Then there was Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and Eartha Kitt--icons who wore their hair short and curly, fluffed up with extra body. 

I grew up in the early 90s mostly, so this was back when “Friends” was a popular TV show. If you look at the hairstyles in that time, big hair was not a thing. In the 90s, more women were ditching the perm. Smooth and natural was the look. So in short, the big perm hairstyles of the 80s made way for the flat smooth hairstyles of the 90s. 

My hair was naturally straight, smooth, ultra-fine and easily damaged. That made me a shoe-in for being in style. But my mother couldn't stand my hair because it was fine like hers. She hated that and wanted me to keep it permed. She wanted me to have big hair like 50s and 60s starlets and she was ashamed of my hair being so fine and lacking body.

My dad felt the same way and would refuse to go out, or to be seen with me if my hair looked too flat. My mother would bend my younger sister’s ear by saying, “You have the good hair. It has some thickness and body. Angela got the bad hair.” Mom essentially pushed her sense of style from the 50s onto me, her daughter, who was in high school during the 90s.

I wasn't allowed to buy my own clothes without some input from her. If I really liked something and she didn't, I could push back and maybe buy what I wanted. But there was no incentive to buy against her preferences, because she would make little disparaging comments if I wore an outfit she didn't like. Plus, it made her so happy when I would just buy the things she thought looked cute on me. 

She had a lot of influence on what I wore and the way I did my hair. I wasn't allowed to wear earrings like my peers, either. So I was very much set apart from them.

It did not help my social life.

The third essential ingredient to forming an identity in your teen years is a secure attachment. Simply put, I did not have that. I was terrified of my mother. 

My terror, strangely, was disguised as idolatry.

I protected myself from her unpredictable moods by drawing as close to her as I could. I became her confidant and her friend. I listened to her problems and helped her stay emotionally regulated when she couldn't get along with other women at church. 

It was the safest way to be close to her. It was the only way to be close to her.

I couldn't ask her for anything, or she’d get mad at me. I couldn't have perceptions or feelings of my own, that would be bad. So I idolized her; it was the only way she would be nice to me. It was simple as that. And when you're that close to someone, you can't be an individual.

I essentially became an extension of my mother.

In healthy families, children are encouraged to individuate and discover who they are, but in enmeshed ones, children play roles that benefit the parents. Anything that disrupts the child’s assigned role is rejected as bad even if it would be good for the child. 

It's like your mother is a planet. Your mom is Saturn, and you, as a child, are an asteroid going around that planet. Everyone in the family circles it. You don't have an identity. You're just circling Saturn all the time. The family system may look like it’s changing, but this is an illusion. In the end, you’ll never grow to be anything more than a rock circling other rocks.

By my description, I might give the impression scapegoats have it really bad and golden children have it made in enmeshed family systems, but that’s not accurate either.

My older brother was the golden child growing up. He was lauded by my parents because he was musical. He could play the cello beautifully and they were super proud of him. They took him to lots of activities to grow that gift. For me, those privileges were never on the table, but for him all kinds of exceptions were made. 

They took him to extracurricular orchestra activities and competitions. They showered him with support, but here's what happened after he graduated from a Music Conservatory.

He got married, and he went into teaching music.

Well, first he took a job with an orchestra, but he didn't like it and decided to change occupations after a year. He found a job teaching music, then eventually received two job offers he had to decide between. My brother was married and had children at this point, so his life was very much his own. One job offer would make him a music director for a high school and middle school orchestra program that was huge in a county on the east coast. It was with a well-respected school system, and if he had taken the job, it would have been the fulfillment of my parents’ dreams for him. The other job opportunity meant working as an administrator two hours away from my parents’ home.

He chose the job as an administrator, which was perfectly within his rights. 

After all, he was an adult, married with kids and all. He could do what he wanted, and if that's what he wanted to do, my parents should have congratulated him. Throw him a party. Be happy. That's what a normal, healthy family would do.

Not mine.

No.

The golden child fell from grace the moment he decided to take the job that was further away. Especially when the other one on the table, close to his parents, was the fulfillment of everything they dreamed for him. 

Mom and Dad were NOT having it.

My dad immediately went around spreading gossip behind my brother’s back, talking about how my brother and his wife were going to be financially strapped and were going to have all these problems because he'd accepted that job. My mom didn't talk to him for a while, and then when she finally did communicate, it was to send my brother a bunch of nasty emails. He went over to our parents house to talk to my mom.

They got into a big knock-down-drag-out fight that was the equivalent of a verbal boxing match. And their relationship, despite being intact, has never quite been the same since. My older brother is no longer the golden child. He never will occupy that space again, but that doesn’t keep him from continually trying to regain his place.

He fell from grace, because he wanted to be more than an extension of my parents. I’m proud of my brother for doing that. My situation wasn't all that different when push comes to shove. I was supposed to be a stay-at-home mom. It was my whole calling in life.

Nobody ever asked me if it’s what I wanted.

What I wanted didn’t matter.

They pushed it on me, doing everything they could to make sure that's how I would end up. And for a long time it worked… until it didn’t.

So what is The Enmeshment Doctrine, you ask. It's when boundaries are punished because they keep a parent from calling the shots. Enmeshment from the outside looks like closeness, but it's not. It's about control. It’s when parents feel they have the right to mold a child, to mold a child's feelings, to mold their attitudes, to mold their perceptions, to mold their occupation and their religious beliefs.

With The Enmeshment Doctrine, parents feel they have the right to completely control what their children become, and if you push back, there are going to be consequences. The unhealthy closeness is the enemy of boundaries. And if the family can have more of your time, if they can draw you in close by talking with you more on the phone, having you come over and spend time with them more, then they're better able to maintain their control over your life choices.

Shame is also normal in these enmeshed families. It’s a tool used to keep family members in line. So in short, if you grew up with an enmeshed relationship with a parent, or in a family that followed The Enmeshment Doctrine, you might not discover who you are for a long time. 

The work of discovering your personal identity is going to require setting boundaries that your family won't like. You will very likely be rejected. You will very likely have your name dragged through the mud. Chances are high those enmeshed relationships will suffer as you individuate, but I can tell you from personal experience it is 100% worth it to finally know who you are.

10 Things Keeping You In Unhealthy Relationships

In today's episode we're talking about 10 things that could be holding you back from breaking off or limiting unhealthy relationships, mostly with parents or other family members.

1.) A belief that parents always love their children

In our society there's this idea that when a child emerges from the womb and is placed into their mother's arms, that mother is going to have this rush of maternal love toward their child which is stronger than death.

Many people believe this.

I can tell you from personal experience that absolutely I feel warmth and affection towards my own children, more so than I do towards other people's children. So I don't think this is entirely wrong. There are many good loving parents who do feel this way about their kids and remain feeling this way about their kids even into adulthood.

That's how it should be.

However, just like not everyone in the world is a good person or a nice person or a decent human being, those that aren't necessarily wonderful people aren't going to change overnight into decent, wonderful people as soon as their children are born.

They're not going to have a personality transplant.

Just as there are lazy coworkers and assholes who walk into retail stores and demand to get their way, well, those people are still going to be lazy and they're still going to be assholes when they are parents. Except they'll be that way toward their children also.

Certainly if all parents loved their kids, that would be the ideal. This is the way everyone wants things to be, but on some level we know that's not the reality. Otherwise there would not be social workers. Teachers and healthcare workers wouldn’t be mandated reporters. We know child abuse happens. We know children are beaten. We know children are neglected. We know a lot of kids are treated poorly by parents that don't love them.

You don't treat someone like that if you love them. So let’s put that baby to bed first thing.

Everyone knows there’s a reason for social services, that there are parents who neglect and abuse children. Yet we somehow believe that when a child grows into an adult that these same parents who are abusive toward their offspring as children are going to stop being abusive toward them as adults.

It's not true.

By and large, if your parents treated you like an object as a child, they're going to treat you like an object as an adult. If they verbally abused you as a child, they're going to be verbally abusive to you as an adult. If they were controlling to you as a child and overprotective, they're going to be controlling and overprotective when you're an adult.

These things don't change.

I mean, yeah, sure there's a limit to the amount and the kinds of abusive things they can do, because if you’re big, they probably can't beat you anymore like when you were a kid; but there are all kinds of ways to mess with a person's head without physically harming them.

Let me give you an example.

I was listening to a radio show just the other day where the topic was cheating.

This man called in, and the radio guy asked him how he found out his wife was cheating on him. The caller said he was going to his mother's house to return some hedge clippers when he saw his wife's car in the driveway. She wasn't usually there during the day, so that was unusual.

Well, when he walked into the house, he saw his wife making out with a strange man on the couch. His wife, caught red handed, then confessed that his mother had set her up with this man. The caller's mom had literally pimped the affair because she believed her daughter-in-law could do better.

Now if I were a gambling person, I would bet the man who called into the radio show knew there was something wrong with his mom before this happened. When he told the story on air, he didn't seem especially surprised. Instead he sort of shrugged it off like, “Yeah that's my mom.”

Chances are high she was already behaving in ways to give him the impression that nothing he did was good enough, that his wife was too good for him, and to make him feel inferior.

That's abuse.

The fact that his mother was still in his life when this happened, I would bet, was because he was unwilling to let go of that relationship even though it was unhealthy. Even if he personally doesn't believe that she loves him, probably she was going to have everyone on her side. They would be reminding him how much she loves him.

Additionally, he's going to have his own friends saying, “Oh, your mother loves you.” Everyone's going to be telling him that regardless of anything she does, “You can forgive that behavior, because deep down she loves you.”

We need to redefine love the way we use it between parents and children in our culture. Love is an action.

You cannot love someone and then set their wife up with another man.

You cannot love someone and then go out of your way to sabotage them in their life.

That's not love.

2.) Feeling sorry for your parent(s) or other family members

This goes for any person who's treating you poorly, regardless of if they are a family member, friend, or significant other. Feeling sorry for a person that’s mistreating you can keep you stuck.

My son, who is 12, is a practicing Mormon against his will. He attends church with his father regularly, because he has a relationship with his dad. When my son is in my house he doesn't have to do anything in regards to belief. He's allowed to choose what he does or does not believe, but in his dad's house there's a lot of pressure for him to conform.

Our son doesn't particularly like that.

This past week, he had to write an essay about something he felt strongly about for one of his classes. So he wrote about how he doesn't think parents should force religion onto their children. It was less an indictment of religion or people who believe in religion and more an indictment of feeling like his father was forcing something onto him.

His feelings were valid.

But what happened with this teacher was that instead of validating his feelings, she wrote back that “I can certainly understand your Dad's point-of-view, because his faith is important to him and he wants to share that with the children he loves.”

So putting aside the fact that she's automatically inserted “love” as a given, which is problematic of itself, she's also urging him to stand in his father's shoes and feel sorry for him, to try and see things from his dad's point-of-view because his faith is important to him.

Well, it’s true that his dad’s faith is important to him. She's not wrong there.

But it isn’t a child's job to stand in his parent's shoes and completely get rid of his own point-of-view, denying his own feelings and natural reactions to fill an emotional need his parent has. That is just not a child's job, and it's not reasonable.

Unfortunately, we hear it all the time as an expectation for children. And taking that to heart is something that holds us back from leaving unhealthy situations.

3.) Thinking the abusive parent doesn't know any better, or blaming their behavior on a mental illness

We live in an age of technology.

You can find anything with a Google search and a click of a button these days. Granted, there's a lot of misinformation out there, but people who want to do better are not deprived of information to help them improve. I can speak from my own personal experience on this.

When I was a young mom, I was a crap mom.

I did not know better. I did things the way they had been done to me. I was not kind. I was not patient, and I worked to control my children above understanding them.

I was a crap mom, I admit it. But I wanted to do better.

So I started reading books and websites along with seeking help. And guess what happened? I became a better mom.

It was my responsibility as a parent to be a better mom. It was not my child's responsibility to understand me being a crap mom. It wasn't.

So when we excuse someone’s poor behavior by saying, “My parent doesn't know any better... my brother doesn't know any better… my husband or my wife don't know any better... my friend doesn't know any better.” Well, why is that?

Is it because they haven't done the work to do any better? Why are you the one who has to do the work to make them better?

You don't.

And while mental illness is very real and very debilitating--depression, for instance, can keep a person from getting out of bed, and I have every sympathy for people who struggle with that--I can have sympathy for that struggle without feeling like I have to be that person's therapist. It’s a heavy burden to believe you have to make that person better. And it's not okay if they're treating you poorly because they're suffering.

It's not okay.

Just like they have to take responsibility for doing the work for themselves, we also need to take responsibility for protecting our health and for not putting ourselves in a place where we are repeatedly treated with disrespect or with disregard.

So that's number three, and it's hard, because we want to have empathy for people. We want to have sympathy for people. Yet at the end of the day, you have to think about yourself too and about whether or not you're in a healthy place.

4.) Shoulding all over ourselves

“I should be a better daughter.. I should be a better friend... I should be a better mother.” While yes, yes, of course, ideally we would be the perfect daughter and the perfect friend and the perfect mother. Even though, ideally, we would never make mistakes and would always be warm towards people and kind and helpful, we make mistakes because we’re human.

The problem with using the word “should” all the time is that we feel bad to the point that we can't do better.

“Should” is a debilitating word. It makes us feel a crippling amount of shame, like there's something wrong with us. That's why we would be better off taking the word “should’ right out of our vocabulary.

The moment I started working on taking the word “should” out of my vocabulary was the moment I started doing better as a human being.

I started feeling better. I started becoming more productive, more thoughtful toward others, because I wasn't wallowing. We don't want to wallow. It's not healthy.

5.) Guilt

When you “should” yourself, when you use the word “should” all the time, you can make yourself feel guilty and shameful for making mistakes. But when I list guilt it's a little bit different: I'm talking about the guilt put onto us by others.

If you have a parent or sibling or anyone else that you have an unhealthy relationship with, chances are high that person is manipulative. One thing manipulative people do consistently is to use guilt to get their way. As an example, your dad might say, “Wow, I see you can't be bothered to take care of your parents. I see you can't be bothered to care how your parents feel.”

Or your mom might add, “I feel like you don't like us anymore,” when you don't come over a certain number of times per month, or when you don't call, or when you don't give them “this money that I need now.” It never matters what you can afford to give, or the amount of time can you truly afford to put aside to come over or to call. What would work for your schedule or your convenience is never considered. Your comfort is never considered.

It doesn't matter to them.

All that matters to them is their comfort and their convenience, which is why they're going to use guilt.

Healthy relationships are based on mutual respect and love. People talk or come over because they want to, not because they’re made to feel guilty.

If you want healthy relationships, you cannot buy into the guilt.

You just can't, because doing so means you'll never be able to have boundaries.

The fact that this person is your parent, or your brother or sister, or significant other doesn't mean you're not allowed to set boundaries. It doesn't make you a bad person to set boundaries. It just means you have needs like everybody else.

If you can't draw a fence around your needs without feeling guilty, you're going to have a really hard time limiting interactions with them or doing anything to put yourself in a better place.

Ditch the guilt. You just got to ditch it.

They're adults. It is not your job to soothe them. It is not your job to stroke their ego. It is not your job to make them feel less rejected or less sad. You are not the person who is responsible for making them feel good.

They're adults.

We're not talking about children. It's different if you're a parent and you are trying to help your child not feel a certain way, but we're talking about adults here. Adults are responsible for handling their own feelings. So ditch the guilt and take care of yourself.

6.) Enmeshment

This is something else that makes it hard for us to set boundaries.

I talked on an earlier podcast episode about how my father is enmeshed with my mother. I was also enmeshed with her for many years. Let me tell you what that's like: You don't know whether you're happy or sad until you determine how she feels.

In the morning, I would walk down the stairs and immediately look at her as she sat in her chair. I would examine her face and her body posture to try and decide whether I was allowed to be happy. If she was relaxed and calm, then I could be happy. But if she was fuming over there because she was angry at someone, I could not be happy.

When you're enmeshed, your feelings essentially belong to another person. There’s no boundary. You catch their feelings like you would catch a cold, and it does a real number on your ability to have a separate identity to them.

Think about it.

If you can't have a feeling unless it matches the feelings of this person you're with, how do you even have an identity of your own? It is profoundly damaging to your ability to develop as a person when you're enmeshed with a parent. When you’re enmeshed with your partner, you are unable to defend your children, which is what I see with my dad.

He knows that our mother is often unreasonable but he's unable to defend us or stand up to her, because he catches her feelings like he would catch a cold.

He doesn't know where she ends and where he begins.

7.) Taking responsibility for another person’s healing while neglecting your own

A few years ago, I was in therapy.

Side note: I know I talk about therapy a lot on here, but that’s because it's important. If you can find a good therapist, find one. It can really help.

So anyway, a few years ago, I was talking to my therapist about how hard it was to spend time with my parents.

I was still seeing them every few months at this point. It was like a low contact situation where I wouldn't see them in my home. Instead I would see them in a restaurant or a public park, and I was careful that it was neutral ground.

Anyway, I set strict parameters for my own well-being at the time, but even with all of this I found myself dissociating when I was with them. I would be sitting there in the restaurant, they would be talking to me, and I would feel nothing but completely numb from my head down to my toes. I was hearing the words they were saying. I was technically in the conversation, but my feelings had turned off like a light switch. I was dissociating right in the middle of these meetings with my parents.

So I came back to my therapist and said, “It's not normal. How can I continue to see my parents if I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience every time I do?”

And what he said was, “You don't have to see them if you don't want to.”

“But they're my parents. I can't just not see them. It will hurt their feelings and make them think I hate them.”

“We're not talking about their feelings,” he told me. “Their feelings aren't your responsibility. Your healing is your responsibility.”

“But they're going to be angry if I stop seeing them completely. They're going to be furious.”

“Yes, they will be, but you have to look out for your own healing. I want you to think about if it’s healthy for you to be around certain people when the experience is so triggering you dissociate.”

He called me out. My therapist called me out, because my go-to was to think about them and whether they were going to be angry or hurt, to ask “How is this going to make them feel.” I was willing to sit in the restaurant and feel absolutely nothing to keep them from being angry.

This kept me stuck.

It's important, so important, if we want to break away or limit these unhealthy relationships, to take responsibility for our own healing, even if our parents aren't going to be happy about it.

8.) Self-blame, trying to save face, and the forgiveness trap

It's easy to blame yourself when you don't have a good relationship with your parents, because everyone tells you it's important, that it defines you, as a person, to have this wonderful loving relationship with your mom and dad. So when you don't have that, it's not uncommon to ask, “What's wrong with me? There must be something wrong with me, right?”

What else can a child rationally believe if all parents love their children and somehow you're not loved by your parents?

It intuitively follows that you must be unlovable, or that there must be something wrong with you. It’s very hurtful.

It’s also wrong.

You need to ditch the self blame.

Not everyone's mom or dad is parent of the year. Not all parents are loving, they're not all nice. Recognizing that you didn't choose who your parents are and that you had no choice in how they’ve conducted their lives makes a big difference. It can be tempting to try and save face with friends and others by pretending everything with your family is great when it's not. Many people hold on longer to a painful relationship because they want to be respectable... then there’s the forgiveness trap.

Forgiveness is an especially hard burden for the religious. I was religious for over 35 years and was obsessive about forgiving people. I used to pray by the side of my bed for 20 minutes or more at a time, begging God to put forgiveness into my heart for the people who had hurt me. Meanwhile, the person I most needed to forgive was myself.

There are people who swear by forgiveness, but unfortunately, many abusive personalities also use it to inflict harm, which is why I call it the forgiveness trap.

I believe in acceptance at this point.

You need to accept how people are, and you need to accept reality. You're not going to change anybody, but you don't have to feel warm and fuzzy about what they did to you either.

Not feeling warm and fuzzy about a person who has been cruel to you doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you normal.

So in short, don't use forgiveness like a stick to beat yourself with. That's what I did, and it kept me stuck for a long time.

Don’t do what I did.

9.) Extreme optimism or naivety

I still suffer from this. I want to believe the best of people.

It's good to trust people initially.

You give them that trust and then they show you that it was a good decision. You get closer to them and you have a nice friendship, or... you give them that trust and they break it, then you take the trust away. This is how most people bestow and take away trust.

My problem is that I like to give people trust, and then when they don't live up to expectations or when they break that trust, I'll often give them another chance. And I'll do that over and over and over because I want to believe the best about people. I rationalize. I tell myself that maybe it was a misunderstanding; maybe they didn't mean that hurtful thing they said; maybe they didn't actually go behind my back and stab me; maybe that was just my imagination.

I'm always asking myself what a person's intentions are, and then assuming the best of people even when there’s overwhelming evidence of hostility or malice. On the surface this may seem like a really nice quality to have. I don’t want to see your bad traits, only your good ones. And so I tint the world to a nice rose-colored hue everywhere I go. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything.

Because what I’m really doing is setting myself up to be hurt repeatedly. Here's an example: When I first took my current job teaching music, I told the interviewer that I wanted to start a strings program for elementary school kids. My principal seemed happy about it at the time, but I waited a year to settle in before attempting it.

Just as I was about to launch this program, I got an email from a high school teacher in the same school district who I had never met. She said she wanted to start a strings program at my school with a local middle school teacher (also who I'd never met).

It was very strange.

The timing of it was very strange.

I'd been talking about starting my own program for almost a year at this point, and I was getting ready to take the leap. In fact, I was mid-jump. And I hadn't told these other teachers anything about my plans, so they acted like they didn't know. In fact, they dressed it up as their "big idea" and asked me if they could come into my school. “You don't even need to be there, we will do everything,” they said in the email. It was kind of insulting, actually, the way they raised it. Why would I want to sit back and do nothing?

But I tried not to think that it was anything nefarious. Maybe the timing was just a weird coincidence.

So wearing my rose-tinted glasses, I wrote these teacher back while giving them the benefit of the doubt. “I was already starting a program like this,” I said. “But maybe we can start it together.” And she came back with ideas that would undermine what I had planned. So I was like, “Okay, maybe I can teach these instruments and you can teach these other instruments.”

I was trying to set boundaries.

If we each had our own areas, then we wouldn’t step on each other's toes.

But she didn't like that either and came back with, “Would you be open to co-teaching?” meaning we would do everything together, ie do everything her way.

My stomach sank and my focus went out the window. Another email came in at that moment. It was an email from our shared supervisor. She mentioned she had talked to these two teachers about my idea a few days earlier and that they had concerns... but in those first emails from the high school teacher, she acted all shocked that I was on the verge of starting a strings program. Like she didn’t know about it.

Evidently she did.

I was supposed to believe they just had this great idea that was exactly like mine, at coincidentally the same time. There were other feeder elementary schools they could have used too, but I digress.

It was all a manipulation.

They were trying to come in and sweep the program out from under me, and their method was not above board. When I got the email from our supervisor, I put the kibosh on that. I was like, “No. I'll handle this,” and they mostly left me alone after that.

But if I hadn't been an extreme optimist who took their words at face value, I probably would have noticed more quickly how suspect their correspondence was.

I mean, wasn’t the timing of that email enough to raise red flags?

In hindsight, I should have wondered if they were trying to sabotage my efforts, but my brain doesn't work that way.

I don't want to assume the worst of people.

10.) We accept crumbs because we believe we deserve less

We don't deserve less!

Wolf In Sheep's Clothing: 7 signs a parent is manipulating you

Today I'm going to talk about what my perceptions were of my father growing up and how they have changed. In particular, how I used to respect him and revere him. I looked up to him until I started seeing more clearly the motivations behind his actions. 

I grew up in this Mormon congregation on the East Coast where there was a scandal. An assistant scout leader that was respected in the community ended up being a sexual predator. He was very much a wolf in sheep's clothing in a traditional sense. 

It was when this happened that I discovered my parents, and my father in particular, had little empathy for the boys who were victims in that situation and a lot of empathy for the assistant scout leader that had abused them. 

He wasn’t alone, the judge essentially let the perpetrator off with a slap on the wrist. After all, the scout leader had two small children and a wife who was pregnant.

I think the judge felt sorry for him.  

In fairness, I wouldn’t say my father is that kind of wolf in sheep's clothing, although the fact that he had so much empathy for this man who had committed sexual crimes on young boys and has continued to show empathy for predators generally is an indication of something troubling. My dad relates to these kinds of men because in some ways he’s cut from the same cloth. 

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

He isn’t the kind of wolf in sheep's clothing that would ever sexually abuse anyone, but he certainly is a skilled manipulator. Everything he does, even the good, nice, wonderful things that I used to think were just him being a great guy, well... those things always have an agenda. 

So I’ve compiled a list of 7 signs indicating you might be dealing with a wolf in sheep's clothing--a manipulator like my father.

1.) A wolf in sheep’s clothing has a persona 

When my dad retired a few years ago, the place where he worked threw this big retirement party for him. It was this beautiful, elaborate celebration where his co-workers put a lot of thought and effort into expressing the kind of person he was, and the way they described him was as a family man.  

There were men he worked with who had affairs and flings or had cheated on their wives; there were men who went out drinking every chance they got; and there were men who were not terribly reliable and definitely wouldn't win any awards for father of the year. My dad didn’t belong to that club. He put across a persona of a man who loved his family, who put his wife and his children first. He was devoted to them above everything else: devoted to them and devoted to his church. 

That was his persona. 

I would agree he is absolutely 100% devoted to his wife, but that's where it ends. What you don't see under the surface is that while family is what he claims is the central tenet of his life, more important than family is a sense of control. He has stalked his family in the past. He has shown up at my house, for instance, when he knew I didn't want to talk to him. He has actually broken into my aunt's house when she wasn't home so he could see how clean her house was to make sure she was doing a good job of taking care of his father. 

He rationalizes all kinds of things that are illegal, that are harassment, or that are just plain wrong under this guise of being a family man. Just because a person says they're a family man, doesn't mean they're the right kind of family man. 

2.) A wolf in sheep's clothing does acts of service

My father comes across as a compassionate, loving man. He will give you the shirt off his back. If you call him in the middle of the night because your car is broken down by the side of the road, he will roll out of bed and he will pick you up. He will make sure your car is taken to a repair place. He will do everything he can to help you. 

I have an uncle who was kicked out of his house at one point, and my dad gave him a room. He let Uncle Mathew stay for a while. My dad has a sister who was going through some real rough patches with having other family members not talk to her, and my dad was always willing to talk to her. He was always willing to listen to her no matter what anyone else said. 

Growing up, I believed that those things represented who my father was. I believed he was a sincerely empathetic loving person, but as I got older and I stepped back, examining things a little more, I realized there weren’t any times my dad had stepped up to help someone without then gossiping about the person behind their back. 

So my uncle, who he let stay in his house for a while, got his reputation put through a ringer by my father. He said so many unkind things about the way he goes about his life. He called this brother irresponsible. He said Uncle Mathew was poor of his own choosing. My dad has basically blamed his brother’s difficult, poverty stricken life on Uncle Mathew’s personality. It is clear cut victim blaming. But to his brother’s face, my dad is super nice. Uncle Mathew sees my dad as the brother that can be relied upon in an emergency, someone who cares.  

The sister that couldn't talk to anyone else in the family but could talk to my dad about her personal problems, benefited from his listening ear. But not from him keeping her trust. My dad did not keep her personal problems to himself. Instead he told my mother. He told us children. He spread it around, and he was very critical of the way she had handled things. He told us things he would never say to my aunt’s face, ever. But she doesn’t know any of this. All she knows is the version of my dad that is kind and loving.

I’m going to talk more about this particular aunt more later, so I need to give her a fake name. I’m going to call her S. 

S is totally enamored with my dad, especially now.   

3.) A wolf in sheep's clothing knows how to build rapport 

My father is a teacher. He knows how to connect with his students by asking them about their personal lives. He asks them about their parents and about their hobbies, about what they're excited to do on vacation. He's buddy-buddy with them, and has often told me that to be a good teacher, content matters less than connecting with the students themselves.

It’s good advice.

Growing up, I idolized him and his ability to reach anybody. I thought that he was amazing. He could teach anyone anything. 

In our home, we had these weekly meetings called counseling sessions. Each of us children would be called up to my parents bedroom one by one. And my dad would take a little time to ask us how our week was going, how school was going, and to try to connect with us. It sounds like a good practice, but it always felt a bit awkward. 

As a child and young adult, I never understood where the awkwardness came from. As an older person, I realized Dad’s connection with us wasn’t very deep or meaningful. The reason the counseling sessions always felt awkward was because he was never really probing for my deeper feelings. He didn’t want to see me or to know me. He wanted surface information and that's fine if you're just casually teaching someone how to play a musical instrument, but if it's your child, I would hope that the child feels like they're very intimately loved and cared for and protected. 

There was always an ulterior motive in my dad’s way of connecting. 

I'm going to tell you about my son. 

This is important. 

I have a son who used to be really close to my dad. They connected over mechanical things, over trains and airplanes, the stuff my son really loves. My dad had always been gentle with my son and kind to him. So my son believed my dad was a safe person. 

Well, one day a few summers ago, my parents were upset with me because they had invited me to attend something, and I was going to arrive later than they wanted. Instead of being mature about their feelings they set out to punish me in a passive-aggressive way, and not just me, but also the kids. 

I showed up to the event. My oldest son was there with me, and instead of his grandfather greeting him in his very warm, friendly, “I'm so happy to see you” way that was customary to their relationship since he was a baby, my father was cold and distant to him. And my son took it personally. He was hurt. He no longer felt like my dad was a safe person. My father did apologize later, but not in a sincere way. It was an apology with a denial of how he’d behaved and an explanation that my son had misunderstood. 

He didn't misunderstand anything. My father behaved badly and broke my son’s trust. My dad has yet to grapple with that honestly.

So what it comes down to is that my dad’s rapport building is a front. If he isn't getting what he wants, he will ruin that rapport in the snap of a finger. He will turn on you in an instant. I think growing up I always kind of knew that, but didn’t admit it to myself.  

When the rift first formed with my mother, I tried to keep in touch with my father. I tried to keep a relationship going, and over the course of that time, when we were talking on the phone and meeting, I always felt like I couldn't say no to my dad. At least, not too many times.

I could never pinpoint why. 

But deep down I knew he would get very irate, or he was going to punish me. He was going to punish my kids in an emotionally abusive way. Still, I didn't want to test it, so I just said yes. I said yes as much as I felt comfortable saying yes. 

It turned into a habit. 

When I grew enough personally to realize distance was healthier for my little family, it was difficult to say no. It was terrifying. On some level, I always knew he wasn't really a safe person. The rapport was shallow, it wasn’t sincere and based in love,  but I didn't want to believe it. 

I didn't want to set boundaries that would reveal his disrespect and disregard for me. So I just held on as long as I could to that relationship, not saying no when I should have. I dragged it on long past its expiration date.  

Don't do it listeners. Don't do what I did! Don’t be afraid to set healthy boundaries with your parents.

4.) A wolf in sheep's clothing is often established as reputable in respected institutions such as churches which preach respect for authority 

This worked well for my dad, because he's a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where he taught us we needed to listen to authority, that we need to listen to our parents.

Respect meant obedience.

He's been able to use his knowledge of Mormonism to present himself as a hero dad. He is the kind, loving dad who never gives up on his children. He is always there even when we don't want him to be there. 

He's not stalking us, we're just ungrateful. 

He uses the ideology to take license, and he uses guilt as a means to compel us into doing what he wants us to do. He's very good at guilt trips. 

5.) A wolf in sheep's clothing is an expert at love bombing

“What's love bombing?” you ask. Well, it’s intensely flooding someone with gifts or treats, or trips to Hawaii, or a lot of money, or “here, let me take you out to dessert. Let me buy you a meal. Let's go do something fun together.” This is all love bombing. 

Here's an example of love bombing. 

Back when the rift first opened with my mother, I badly wanted a relationship with my father. I trusted him and didn't want to keep my kids from seeing their grandparents, because I thought it would be cruel. 

My father knew this, so he invited me over to their house. He said, “Don't worry about Mom. You don't have to see her. You don't have to talk to her, but she really wants to see her grand kids. She wants to spend time with them, and I would love to take you out to eat.

So me, being the trusting daughter that wanted to be close to her daddy, I go over there. I leave the kids so Grandma can see them. And my father takes me out to this really nice restaurant. He's paying. And he's ordering these beautiful dishes and we're talking. It's casual. He's building rapport. Then he orders dessert, and over dessert the tone of the conversation suddenly shifts to, “God is displeased with you, Angela. You are hurting this family. You are tearing it apart. You are going to be condemned in the last day (or the afterlife) not just by me, but by God himself.” 

It was terrible, because he behaved like he had spiritual power over me, to damn me to hell if I didn't give him what he wanted and just kowtow to my mother and pretend everything was fine. 

I didn't cave. Instead I became angry. The nice meal and the nice conversation, the dessert and him paying for everything was all love bombing. It was the “love” part of the love bombing. And then we got to the dessert and he decided to confront me. Him being an asshole was the “bomb.” It’s when the chickens came home to roost, because it became clear fast that his whole motivation for inviting me out there wasn't so the grand kids could see their grandmother, it wasn't so he could talk to me and bond with me as his daughter, as he had said. It was a trap. The whole thing had an ulterior motive. The whole thing! 

I was angry, but I couldn't leave, because we came in his car. 

So listeners, this is apparently how it’s done. Say, “Come over to our house. Let the kids play with their Grandma. She would love that, then you and I will go out. We'll take my car.” All of this will put you at his mercy so you cannot leave. 

I was waiting on him. 

We climbed into his car and, of course, the drive back to his house was the most awkward, uncomfortable, torturous car ride ever.  

We get there. 

I jump out of the car and run into the house. I'm angry. So I open the door, “Kids get your stuff. We're leaving. Let's go. Now.” And my mother looks shocked that I have storming into her home. 

“What happened?” she says, feigning innocence. 

“This is not okay. That was a trap,” I said.

I took the kids home.

Well, years later (after my mom and I had supposedly made up) she wrote a public blog post under her real name, so there was no hiding that it was about me. In it she recounted the incident where her daughter wanted nothing to do with her, but then was fine bringing her kids over for grandma to babysit. That lazy, ungrateful, user of a daughter. She talks about Dad bringing me out to a nice meal and how when we came back, I flipped out, getting angry for no reason. 

She rewrote history.

My mom knew my dad had ulterior motives and that I became angry for a valid reason. She knew he was the one that invited me over so SHE could see her grand kids. Then she twisted the story later to paint me as an angry insane person and posted about it publicly on her blog, under her real name, with my picture. 

Love bombing is definitely a red flag. Just because someone is pampering you with meals or money or trips doesn't mean they're a safe person. In fact, they probably aren’t. Most likely they have an ulterior motive that won’t make you feel good at all. 

6.) A wolf in sheep's clothing will present himself as Mr. Perfect

My dad is Mr. Perfect. 

He never does anything wrong. His motives are as pure and white as the driven snow. He stands up for the little guy (coughs) meaning my mother. Always. 

He has never apologized to me for the manipulative things that he's done. He's never apologized for pretending to know God's will. He's never apologized for invading my privacy. He's never apologized sincerely for hurting my son's feelings. In short, he's yet to come clean about anything. Rather, he makes up stories to make himself look like Mr. Perfect. 

Let me give you an example. 

I am not the poster child for figuring things out quickly.

When the rift with my mother first opened, she and I didn't talk for a couple years, and then we gradually grew back together again. It was awkward. For 10 years running after we’d supposedly closed the rift she smear campaigned me to everyone she knew until I figured out what she was doing. My dad sat by and watched. 

He was fine with it. 

I got to the point where I couldn't deal with it anymore. That, however, is not the story you will hear from my dad if you ever talk to him. He will tell you that neither of his two daughters want to have a relationship with him or Mom, because we left Mormonism. And we are not okay with them still being Mormon. 

It's an alternative reality.

It has nothing to do with the truth, but this is what he has gone around and told all his brothers and his sisters, his friends and the people in his new congregation. In reality, I held onto a relationship with my parents for a very long time even when it wasn't working and had become excruciatingly painful.  The last straw for me was when my younger sister and my older brother decided to leave Mormonism a couple of years ago around the same time. 

When my parents found out, they went over to my older brother's house while he had company. It was a dinner party, but my dad still unleashed a tirade of shame onto my older brother in front of guests. My brother actually had to send the guests out to play basketball so that he could deal with his Dad and Mom shaming him like a little kid, because how dare he not believe in their church. 

I was able to forgive the smear campaigning. I was working on it, but when they did that to my brother... that was the first thing that indicated they had not changed. The second thing came less than a week later when my sister told them she no longer was going to attend church. Side note, she was also in the middle of divorcing her husband at that time and my parents already knew about it. 

So my sister confessed she would no longer be going to church, and my mother basically told my sister she didn't love her. Dad just sat there, as per the usual. Then they left. 

Not long after that, they took her soon-to-be-ex-husband out to get food and offered to testify against my sister in court. They had already informed my sister they were not going to support her and expressly told her she was not allowed to talk to them about the divorce, but with her soon-to-be ex-husband, they offered to testify on his behalf and told him point blank that they were on his side. 

It was such an ugly betrayal that I decided I couldn’t have a relationship with my parents. I mean, what kind of people are so toxic they would turn on their own children in this way? 

Then the story got worse. 

My parents, without provocation from any of the children who they had recently alienated, were so embarrassed about being in the same congregation as my apostate sister and were so determined not to offer her any support, they made the decision to sell their condo and move to Colorado where they could be close to their one child who was still a believer in Mormonism.

That’s what they did. 

They packed up their stuff. They told us they were moving, but they didn't tell us when or give us any details. And my sister and I didn’t find out about it until after the fact, because our parents didn’t share the details of their departure with us. 

But my father is Mr. Perfect. He couldn’t tell the truth about how he and Mom left. He refused to tell the actual true story to his family and his friends. Because it didn’t make him look good. So he twisted the narrative. I know this because, in December, less than a month after they had moved away, my younger sister, my brother and I, all received this letter from his sister, S, the one I mentioned earlier. I'm going to read it, give me a sec. 

Dear Angela.Yesterday and today I had the opportunity to serve supper and visit with your parents. They are stoic, but not so much so that their deep pain escaped my notice. I ask myself how can it be that after 40 plus years of East Coast residency raising their five children in that area that none of the four living there had courtesy to see them off.

Clearly whatever story my parents are telling doesn't include the fact that we didn't even know when they were leaving. The letter continues:

Please begin. It's not too late, while they are alive, to tease apart matters of faith and matters of everyday living. What you give comes back to you... Love them. They gave their best.

She goes on to talk about how just because we don't have the same faith anymore, that doesn't mean we can't begin again. The rest of the letter is about how we should be grateful. It is guilt, guilt, and more guilt. So evidently, the narrative my parents are telling is about them being perfect parents and their children rejecting them because we're no longer Mormon and can't tolerate our parent's choices to remain faithful to The Church.

This could not be further from the truth.

The wolf in sheep’s clothing has to appear perfect. It does not matter what the truth is. Narratives will be spun to keep the wolf looking perfect. 

7.) A wolf in sheep's clothing is generous with money

My dad is very generous with money, but here's what you don't see, what other people don't see about this wolf in sheep's clothing: He uses money as a carrot and stick in order to get his way. He uses it to reward or to punish based on whether you give him what he wants. 

My dad wrote my sister and I a letter 6 months after they moved to Colorado. We were not talking to them for very good reason. This letter was his response.

  

You can see how loving it actually is. 

I have no interest in his money, personally, but it's an ultimatum. It's an ultimatum of "give us what we want or we're going to cut you out of the will." Of course, neither of us reached out after getting a letter like that, because who reaches out after getting a letter like that?

Listeners, this concludes the podcast for today. The next episode will be about the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that keep us stuck in unhealthy relationships.