After that last toxic conversation yesterday with my mother, she called me again the next day. She gave me intermittent reinforcement. I’ve learned the terminology and understand it now. She said she supports whatever I need to do.

I told her I’ve been crying hysterically the whole time because of him, he triggers it. I said no one should ever have to live like that, and that I never had that happen to me in any other relationship (other than her). I said it really wasn’t even her that triggered me like that except for a handful of times once I was grown when she went off on me, got in my face, raged relentlessly until I was crying hysterically. She had reduced me to hysterica with verbal abuse yelling at me as a young child, but I didn’t bring that up to her this time, but those are my earliest memories of hysterical crying. I outright said this to her, said we always had a volatile relationship. She didn’t really acknowledge or comment, seemed somewhat pleased that I minimized her abusive role as not really the culprit to my emotional dysregulation as after all it was only a handful of times.

It sickens me that these relationships are completely intertwined, triangulated. It is a two headed monster my husband/mother. I am seeing this clearly now.

I got triggered yesterday from this thread and got upset, had a cry. But it wasn’t a hysterical, meltdown, emotionally dysregulated cry. It just felt like a needed cry to come to terms with my situation, with myself. I apologize for kind of going off.

I’m embarrassed for putting everything out there as I have here. I feel so lonely I have no where else to go. I appreciate having reached out to caring others and all the thoughtful comments have given me so much clarity. But maybe I am so easily influenced by the last thing I hear that I don’t even know myself. This has always been my problem. I don’t like who I have become in my adulthood. I am ashamed. I am obsessed with trying to understand and recover from my suffering mental health from being in bad family relationships. I haven’t done enough things in my life I can feel proud of, feel shallow, self absorbed. I wouldn’t like to present myself as someone who obsessively listens to videos on narcissism. I need to find something more to let myself grow, something I can say I am and do to feel proud of.

I’ll talk with him when we see each other again and see what he wants to do with the separation. He is out of my house and not upsetting me now. I am alright and moving forward, bittersweet as that is. I still wish he would give me breadcrumbs, enough to make me feel comfortable. I still want to beg him, plead with him to care and make that effort. If he had only cared and made effort, if he only would have improved 20%, I would have been satisfied, felt loved, seen, respected, honored enough. I wouldn’t have quit. But he just kept telling me to go first.