childhood trauma

[Tired68]

I want to ask most of you about your ex's, did you know they had a bad childhood? did they tell you? did they act like a child when faced with confrontation and not look at you but just play with things while you were talking to them. Did they stay silent?

[mango_flower]

She says she has a bad childhood. But seeing as I have found out that she has lied a lot, who knows!

[clover528]

Over the years of conversations with him before we began our relationship, he mentioned his mother had bipolar. After we moved in together and he would be up all hours pacing and talking nonstop, he talked about his father being controlling and possibly abusive. There was one instance where he said he was abused by his mother, then said he lied it was actually his father that abused him. With all the lies and confusion, I do not know what to believe. i know he is very troubled and his relationship with his parents is a fragile subject. He was not in contact with his mother for 15 years and off and on with his dad. Three years ago, he and his father ended contact again, as he began interacting with his mother after all those years. Its obvious to me that there are some intense issues there. I have no idea what the depth of them are.

[bpdspell]

I want to ask most of you about your ex's, did you know they had a bad childhood? did they tell you? did they act like a child when faced with confrontation and not look at you but just play with things while you were talking to them. Did they stay silent?

yes. my ex's father was a highly abusive crack user and his mother was a six pack alcoholic black out drunk... . who never knew her own mother... . And I'm pretty sure his mother sexually molested him as a four year old boy.

The ex told me this "history" after a couple of months of being together. My first instinct was to bolt... . I knew things were bad in his house but not on this extreme level. I knew then that he was damaged goods but because of my own codependent, addiction approval, desire to feel worthy traits I became the fixer, protector... . and this is when our relationship took it's inevitable turn for the worst. Everything... . and I mean... . everything... . became about him and his bottomless pit of need.  

My ex not only behaved like a petulant entitled child; he expected me to fulfill the role of replacement mommy and daddy.

After the power of sex wore off I had nothing left to give. When I tried to get my needs met by having an adult conversation with him... . he'd just look at me like I had six heads. Not only were we not on the same page we were in alternate universe's.

Spell

[Grace58]

She said she had severe childhood trauma but then, it all turned out to be a huge lie.  Weirdly, she is so crazy that I believe that *something happened* just not what she said.  It is almost like the lie had to be really huge in order to stand in as a metaphor for the real trauma.

If that makes any sense.  I am quite grateful to not be trying to sort out her lies any more.

[pari]

My ex shared about his childhood trauma early on in the relationship. And that's when I took the role of fixer, healer, everything else and things fell apart afterwords.

His father passed away in a road accident when he was 5-6. I think that affected him a lot more than he still understands. His mom remarried after few years. He mentioned that  his baby sitter, not 1 but a few of them used to play with him and have him play with them when he was 9-10. His biggest regret till date is that he knew it's not right but he still enjoyed it and feels guilty for enjoying it. Trauma was really deep because he would talk in his sleep about these experiences, thinking I am the baby sitter and it goes on. I remember him talk about his initial exposure to sex in his sleep, which even he had forgotten in real life.

He says his first wife also used him for sex when he was asleep (sleep talk and sleep sex were common with him due to childhood trauma) and later make him feel guilty about it. I have heard him talk to his first wife in sleep and it sound really scary. I think she was mean to him. 

Over the years, all these things got mixed up and even he doesn't remember exact details. Listening to all his sleep talk was very difficult and emotional for me. I wanted to heal him from all the pain and take all the bad memories away. I wanted to take care of him and make him feel safe. To certain extent I succeeded because during his sleep talk trauma, if I would say it's me here, his expressions, his mood would change and he would calm down immediately. I made me feel so special, like he really connects with me.

Anyway, I should stop before I get too emotional. He was a rebellious child and teenager and would fight with his parents a lot but is very attached to his parents, especially mother now and have huge respect for them. He would tell them "you told me not to do this, but I still did and failed. You were right. " I thought that was super sweet of him. He had such ways to make me smile.

[Bananas]

From the stories I heard and what I know from learning, I suspect me exes Mom had BPD.  She took her own life.  So definitely childhood trauma. 

With me, my ex would shut down in a child like way when I confronted him, but with others he would rage and sometimes get physically violent.

[papawapa]

Yes she had a horribly traumatic childhood. Her father was a monster. He sexually abuse her and all of her siblings for years. Her mother knew it was going on and did nothing to stop it. She also talked about having a pet rabbit that her father killed and fed to the family. She was also traumatized by a house fire.

Yes there were many times when she was like a child. Pouting, tantrums, avoidance were all regular occurrences and on top of that she needed to be cared for like a child. I had to always cook for her, do all the laundry and clean up her messes she would leave all over the house.

[patientandclear]

Yes.  Severe parental emotional abuse.  Severe physical abuse at school, which his parents did nothing to stop for many years. Sexual abuse by a trusted adult.

What's amazing to me though is that he seems to have no sense that these experiences might have an impact on his inability to form and keep intimate adult relationships.

[schwing]

My ex confessed to me of her childhood trauma three years into our relationship.  Before that I didn't even know her mother was actually her step mother.  And she brought it up while she was having a difficult time processing the death of her best friend and roommate at the time, and probably someone she was starting to mirror in lieu of me, at least part of the time since we were a long distance (1 hour commute) relationship.

She confessed that when she was a child (4 years old), her mother died suddenly and she didn't feel anything.  She didn't feel badly that her mother died.  If anything, she felt like she was a fraud with all of her relatives treating her so nicely.

In my mind, that was it.  Abandonment trauma via death.

Never mentioned it again after that one night.  And I was still with her for another year and a half.

[delusionalxox]

My relationship was similar to BPDspell's. Beautiful and seductive younger man with massive massive unacknowledged issues.

I STILL wish I could have helped him. He had been abandoned at 5 by mother who moved away to another part of Italy; she is a pretty feckless impulsive person (NPD? BPD? Who knows, he worshipped her and would never admit anything wrong with her other than that she was 'irresponsible'.

He saw her only every 4 months from the age of 5 to 10. At 10 she finally got a home he could live with her in (and his stepfather too) and moved to be with her.

At that point, he began to barely see his father who had looked after him from the age of 5 alone. He says that his father only called him once a month and kept the calls to under 5 minutes 'to save money' 

This story just chilled me to the bone. Ex had a lot of NPD/BPD waif traits like his childlike mother, thought of himself as a happy positive creative person but deep down was a seething pit of desperate insecurity, desire for control, and 'respect'.

Sadly, his abandoning mother is the person I saw him do most for. With me, I was clearly expected to be what she could not have been: to provide money, housing, status, constant attention. He clung on and on but the more my own human needs emerged, the less use I was to him, leading to the final discard.

I could not have helped him. That was my delusion. I needed to fix that 'fix-obsessed' person who bonded to the abandonment trauma he carried and the way he abused me in order to feel in control.

[Vindi]

mine had alot of bad childhood memories:

being scared and left alone at the age of 5 y/o to take care of his newborn brother (his parents left him alone to go to work, both parents worked) and this scared the crap out of my bf, he felt abandoned.

thruout his life, his father drank, alcholic, and beat and punched his

thru his childhood, not daily, but enough on a regular basis to remember. And his mom, in turn, took pills, was a pill popper, in

order to deal with her alcholic husband, a vicicous circle.

My bf rememebrs so much pain from his childhood, and has so many abandonment issues from it now.