[MotownJohnny]

I have pondered this for decades, and I have asked a few MH professionals, but don't really have answers. I guess it is a fundamentally unanswerable question, because the two people involved at the core, my father and his mother, are both long dead, with no other family at all on that side of my family (probably a good thing).

My father had a lot of problems:

1) abusive towards us. Some physical, a ton of emotional/verbal, that was constant. Kept us very isolated, banned relatives and most outsiders from contact, except when it was on his terms. Pretty typical abuse pattern I believe.

2) Violent temper, liked weapons and would threaten us with them at times.

3) Cross-dresser/transvestite. But, not in the way I believe it is commonly practiced as a sexual fetish. His version was uber-creepy. Two fictional characters that frightened the crap out of me were Norman Bates of Psycho and Buffalo Bill of Silence of the Lambs. Because he was freaky weird like that, especially when he dressed in his paraphernalia, then went to God knows where in his mind, some really dark place and was almost catatonic. It would not have shocked me to have for home from school one day to find the cops digging up the yard looking for victims. He never did anything like that to my knowledge, but he was the type. He would dress up in lingerie, pantyhose, and would wear feminine napkins and believed he had a monthly period.

4) very inappropriate relationship with his mother, IMHO. She acted like a jealous wife or girlfriend towards him, would expose herself casually around him and us ( excuse was she was from Europe), and he was completely under her thumb, she said jump and he jumped.

He claimed and told people publicly that my mother and I had sex to spite and hurt him, I guess this started when I was about 15, but I didn't find out about it until I was about 23.

My theory is he was sexually abused by his mother, but would that cause someone to so totally lose it and become a monster like that? Or, could other stuff be in play, abuse plus some mental illness? Or multiple abuse by several abusers?

Any theories would be welcomed, it's all just speculation, but I kind of feel a need to understand the why all of this may have happened. My life certainly has been much harder than it should have been because of this, I am trying to unravel about a thousand strands of events and circumstances that were woven into a tough case of C-PTSD I am trying to beat.

TIA.

[growlithing]

I'm so sorry this happened to you. It sounds so tough

It sounds like he definitely had a bizarre and abusive relationship with his mother. That plus any mental illnesses he might have could make someone behave the way he did. I can't tell you for certain what is wrong with him, but I can tell you that whatever caused this behavior was certainly a result of his past/mental illness and was in no way caused by you.

[IndieVisible]

I think it was a combination of stuff that got your dad to the place he was at. He definitely sounds psycho to me. What was actually wrong with him we may never know. Could have been a sadistic psychopath or could have been schizoid, hard to say. You had mentioned your father in another thread about the guns and violence and I asked you if that effected you and did you become violent growing up. I expected either you dodge the question which I wouldn't mind if you did or say yes it effected you too and you became violent too. I was surprised by your reply. It made you just the opposite! Our parents can certainly mess us up. Like you I have deep scares too. They don't go away easy or quickly.

[MotownJohnny]

I'm surprised that I didn't end up an ax murderer myself at times. God knows both genes and environment were against me. All of my siblings are fine, upstanding citizens of high achievement in life who lord that over me as the ne'er do well worthless black sheep. And they are just as dysfunctional as I am in their own ways. They never got the full brunt of it, he got worse after they were out of the house, they are considerably older. They were mostly in denial about all of this. As the only boy, with his extreme psychosexual issues I was a great target to beat up on, a good stand in for the hundreds of imaginary lovers he accused my mom of having. Somehow I turned out to be a decent and honorable if very wounded guy. Mostly from observing how not to be in life.

[BLUEDOVE]

Hi Johnny,
This is not a theory;he was what is
called an "Adult Child".If a child is abused he can
go into a trance-state which makes the horror of
what is happening to him bearable.Problem is,
unless he is debriefed about this he STAYS a child
in an adults body.
Regards,
BLUEDOVE

[tinyrabbit]

Whatever did or didn't happen with his mother, it sounds like parentification (where the child is expected to fulfill the adult's needs) and what's sometimes called emotional incest.

I'm sorry you're grappling with these questions. I'm reading Children of the Self Absorbed by Nina Brown and it's really good, might be worth a try.

[happiedasiy]

Hi MotownJohnny,
May the rest of your life be filled with love and affection.
Not too surprised that you haven't married or children thus far.
The good thing is that you are in therapy.
You have risen above in your professional life and in the first thread i read it sounded like you were selling yourself while inside you felt like scum.
So you are in a combative mindset, you need to be the referee in your thinking process.
You should stop searching for answers because those people have died and there is a void in you from not knowing why. This is what you have to accept and work with what you have to move forward. Staying in the moment, let go of angry thoughts of how life should have been. Get in touch of who you really are and healing will unfold in time.
Hugs/Happiedasiy