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My uBPD mom abused me both physically and mentally.  The physical abuse was never one that injured me to the point of being sent to the hospital, but random and traumatic.  I feared her and did not realize when I was a child that there were kids who actually like their mothers rather than feeling in competition with them.

She continued to mentally abuse me through college, but now I no longer allow her to do that.  If she starts, I don't argue.  I just remove myself from the situation.  She hates that so bad (fear of abandonment) that it works.

But my poor Dad now takes the abuse that I used to take.  I have never seen her hit him, but I know that she used to hit me in anger.  Dad does confide in me things that she says to him.  He's never said that she hit him, but I don't know if he would.  I wonder if I should ask him.  But then if he told me, what could I do with the information?

My Dad is 78 years old and I doubt I could get him to leave her, even to move in with me.  He hasn't stood up to her in 53 years of marriage, he's not going to do it now.


I'm really not wanting advice about that.  Just wondering if any of you have knowledge of physical abuse that your Moms have inflicted on your Dads.

It's very frustrating to see the dynamic you described, today--my father is very enmeshed with my mother and won't stand up to her. To my knowledge, my mother hasn't hit my father. I'd imagine she may have thrown a thing or two at him. Abuse is abuse, though, and mental abuse is as damaging long-term as physical abuse.

How would knowing that your mother physically abuses your father change the situation? Would he be willing to reach out to someone for help?

I don't know what I would do if I found out that she was, it's not somewhere I want to go.  But that is sort of the reason that I am asking. If he ever comes to me and tells me that this has happened, I am not sure how I would handle it.

I suppose I was hoping that if anyone had experienced this, that I could prepare myself based on others' experiences.

I doubt he would reach out though.

It's possible he's not seen her violent side.  I don't recall her abusing me as much when he was around.  I always hated being home alone with her and looked forward to his return home.

And yes, he is very damaged by her mental abuse and it makes me very sad what she has done to him. He's a wonderful person who has had a miserable life because of who he chose to marry.  He didn't deserve this, but he won't do anything about it now, at 78 years old (he's  not an "old" 78 at all.  he's 78 going on 55)

Yes, todayistheday.  I witnessed my mother hitting my father on numerous occasions.  My mother was also violent with me when I was a child.  On at least one occasion she pulled a knife out of the kitchen draw and waved it in my direction screaming that she was going to kill me.  I was about 10 or 11 at the time.  Wow, a chill ran through my body when I realized how old I was.  I was in terror of the next attack.  And I dissociated finally so that I felt I wasn't there.  I finally had a heart attack at a relatively young age.  But my heart had been under attack throughout my childhood.  That was just the poetic culmination of it.

My mother would always say that when they were first married my father beat her and left her black and blue.  I never saw my father hit my mother, but saw on numerous occasions my mother in wild rage hitting my father, while he tried to fend her off.  I tried to do the same thing, and when I tried to defend myself she would say I had long hands.  She would scream the same thing at him when he tried to fend her off.

One of the things so painful and confusing and difficult was that my mother would blame me for the very behaviors that she exhibited. I was confused.  Was I really the horrible person my mother said I was?  My mother would call me a piece of s%#t.  And in my deepest secret place that was exactly what I felt about myself.  Beneath the straight A's in school and the friends, I felt that about myself in my deepest core. It was a horror show, really.

My father would threaten to call the police.  He would even pick up the phone to do so, but he never did. He should have. I wish he did once, and I wish someone took me out of that home. How I dreamed of someone rescuing me from it, until around the age of 8, and then I guess I realized that no help was coming, my father was not going to protect me or even protect himself from being emotionally and physically beaten, and I had to just make accommodation to my mother, make the best of it. When I was in the fourth grade, I used to cry all of the time in school.  A cry for help.  And I cried until the teacher told me to grow up and stop acting like a baby.  I never cried in school again.  I was all alone. No cry was going to be heard.  No one was going to protect me. No one cared.

After my mother's violent episodes things would get back to "normal."  The normal lack of love and warmth and support, the manipulative controlling, not being seen, being depersonalized, my mother narcissistically stealing my accomplishments and attributing them to her great mothering, but no wild violence, until the next time.  And there would always be a next time.  She never got help.

Yes, my mother hit my father.  

Calsun