Narcissistic family dynamics

[eeks]

I've been participating on bpdfamily discussion boards for about 8 months now, and this is my first post on the Coping and Healing board.

I didn't think it applied to me.  After all, I don't have a parent with a diagnosis, although I would say they both have anxiety or depression patterns.  This is one piece of the puzzle, it's those patterns of thinking and feeling where you can't quite pin down "which disorder it is" (avoiding for now the subject of whether there is any validity to putting mental health issues into discrete boxes) but it's been there throughout their life and rather than an acknowledgement that other people have different feelings and experiences, and cope in different ways, for them it shows up as a rigid "that's the way the world is", "that's how people are", "that's how [family member in question] is"

And the reason it's a piece of the puzzle is because I can imagine a possible link between their childhoods with dysfunctional parents and their adult patterns of thinking and feeling.

A fellow staff member drew my attention to this link I hadn't seen before https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=108970.0

Every time I read it (or some related articles I found online) or think about it, I feel nausea (with no other physical explanation for it that I can think of).  I just had the idea here to write sort of a "family snapshot", the highlights of my grandparents' life histories, traumas and symptoms, my parents and their siblings, and my immediate family (my parents, me and my younger sister) and I felt sick.  The nausea suggests to me that I have hit on something important.

This idea of "narcissistic family dynamics" explains something for me.  There was no overt abuse or addiction in my family (although a psychiatrist I saw for an assessment several years ago wrote on it that my father was "emotionally abusive", I have trouble accepting that, and even more trouble accepting the statement of a friend of mine who I talk about these things with, that my mother was also emotionally abusive)  so the idea of covert narcissistic dynamics makes a lot of sense to me.  Everybody has to pretend to be "normal" and "doing just fine".

I suspect that both my grandfathers had narcissistic traits or NPD, so for me, the patterns may have been less severe than what many experience... .but since neither of my parents has had therapy, I have to assume that the vestiges are still there.

I have a therapist.  We've talked at length about the impact of my parents' histories and behaviour on me, but he has never used the word "emotionally abusive" or "narcissistic", and somehow it seems I needed those words to give legitimacy to my experience of life.  

I know (and have written in Personal Inventory a few times) about just how important manners and "kindness" (i.e. not getting angry, because angry feelings equal angry actions, and angry actions are bad) were in my FOO, and I knew that was a negative influence on me, but somehow there was just something I couldn't pin down.  Something that evaded me, continuing to feel this anxiety and shame about all my "failures" in life.

I'm just now beginning to explore in a head-on way the idea of family loyalty.  For some time now I have had the belief "I was given everything I needed to have a good life, all of my material needs and many of my wants were met, and I had opportunities that many people can only dream of, and I screwed it up, I threw it all down the toilet, I am a terrible 'investment' as a human being".  

What's interesting is that for a long time I have been able to state the facts of events, of interactions with my parents when I was growing up, and I can state the facts of their lives, and I can even identify the impact on me.  However, there has been some aspect of feeling the impact on me that has eluded me.

Now, I am starting to wonder just how much I had to put on a good face, the really stringent requirements for politeness as a teenager and adult (and I mean, couldn't even do things that had a remote risk of offending another adult when I was around my parents) were to protect my parents from having to face that something was wrong in our family.

[eeks]

I keep finding odd little things in my history that "narcissistic family dynamic" explains.

For example, one of the reviewers on Amazon of the book "Narcissistic Family Dynamics" by Donaldson-Pressman and Pressman, asks (paraphrased) how could a teenager who doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs and gets straight A's be labelled a "difficult child"?  Because in narcissistic families any show of independence is frowned upon and prevented.

That's me too!  :)idn't drink, smoke or do drugs, didn't run around with anybody let alone bad influences or bad boys (I had few friends and in high school for the most part I was ignored) all I did was tell my mother I want to be popular, and she said "Being popular isn't important.  You have friends don't you?"

So there's multiple messages here.  

It's not OK to want something you don't currently have.  

Mom decides what the priorities are, what's important in life, not eeks.

Eeks doesn't have the right to be heard, e.g. asked what she means by "popular", and creating a safe space in the relationship between mom and eeks to talk about these things.

Also, I asked her about this incident as an adult and she (at least one of the times I asked, she offers different explanations for her censorship of me, my desires and feelings every time I ask her, does that sound like a red flag to you guys?) and she said, "I wanted to be popular when I was in high school, so I let my grades drop.  I didn't want you to do that, I wanted to make sure you had all the opportunities open to you"

OK, so first of all I had NEVER EVER let my grades drop or stopped studying or doing homework in response to ANY life incident or stress, ever in my school history.  If anything my tendency was the opposite, to perfectionistically study harder to get a more predictable feeling of "reward" than social rewards proved to be.

The only time I didn't study (or dropped a subject) was if I didn't like the teacher (and if I didn't like the teacher, they probably weren't a very skilled teacher)

Second, at my high school, me getting lower grades would have done nothing to help make me popular, because being an athlete was the necessary and sufficient criteria to be popular at my high school, one which I did not meet anyhow.  (you could get straight A's and be popular, as long as you were an athlete in certain team sports. Basically basketball and volleyball.  For example some male hockey players and girls in track & field neither of which played basketball or volleyball were popular, but not all of them.  And some of the popular guys played football but there were some who played football who were not popular.  Soccer would not make someone popular.  But of course I'm thinking of exceptions too.  There was a gifted guy, kind of quiet, played volleyball and ended up getting a university scholarship for golf - not popular.  Another guy, wasn't gifted I don't think but he had an over 90% grade average, played many sports - not popular.  Can you believe the logic of this hierarchy?)

Of course, what "popular" really meant was "we set up an exclusive group for ourselves, who sit in a certain place in the cafeteria, and are really loud and social and walk around confidently"

I wanted to be them (confident to interact with one another, feeling acceptance and belonging, prominent self-expression), but I don't know if I wanted to be with them.

Anyways, I digressed from the point that my mother not only made this absurd logic leap not backed up by the facts of my life, she also did not tell me her reasoning at the time.  That one's consistent across many situations with her that I now find disappointing as an adult.  Her not telling me why she was trying to persuade me to think a certain way, or do or not do something.

So again, mom is making all the decisions behind the scenes for eeks.

Not to mention... .

What good is it for eeks to have all the "opportunities" available to her, if she isn't even allowed to find out who she is, so she can make an authentic decision not based on "shoulds", popular opinion, her parents' notions, etc.?

And... .this makes it sound like "having a good life" requires this bizarrely stringent control on oneself and circumstances!  Paranoid!  

[Lifewriter16]

Hi eeks,

I can relate to the things you are describing. I wonder whether the things you talk of in the last post are due to your mother's inability to distinguish YOU as a separate person to her. It sounds like she is trying to prevent you from making the mistakes she made without realising that you are a different person and thus will behave differently.

I have struggled terribly with my eldest daughter as she has grown up. I struggled to witness her pain and always wanted to solve her problems for her so I could remove the pain it triggered in me. Unfortunately, this meant that I didn't really give her chance to talk to me. I was always full of solutions. I was in such pain as a result of her pain. I don't think I really saw her as separate to me. When she described her experiences, it was like I was going through them too.

Love Lifewriter

[eeks]

Hi eeks,

I can relate to the things you are describing. I wonder whether the things you talk of in the last post are due to your mother's inability to distinguish YOU as a separate person to her. It sounds like she is trying to prevent you from making the mistakes she made without realising that you are a different person and thus will behave differently.

Hi Lifewriter, thanks for your reply.

I think you're right, when my mother got triggered I believe there was a sort of a "blurring" that happened, in a split second, "eeks is doing this, if I did that same thing I would have been punished, I feel fear as if it was me feeling or doing what eeks is doing, gotta get her to stop right now!"

Yes, different person, different life experiences, interacting with different people, in a different era, with different attitudes towards women, with people of different nationality and language than those she grew up surrounded by... .I bet I could find even more differences if I kept going!

My therapist says my mother forced her trauma on me.  My mom was sexually abused at age 4 by a family friend, had authoritarian controlling parents which I'm sure didn't help her heal from that, she didn't even tell them about the abuse because she thought, and unfortunately this was likely correct, that they would not believe her that Mr. So-and-so was doing that to her, and how dare you say that about him?

The bit about forcing makes sense to me... .if she demanded, as I believe she did, that I 'defend myself against life' the same way she did, as a result of her defenses to unresolved trauma, then maybe I didn't go through the traumas she did, but I might as well have, because my life becomes limited in the same way, and I'm taught to be fearful in the same ways.

What really starts to bother me as I think about this is the implicit message that I can't be trusted to make my own decisions.  I don't think she even thought about that (it was a pure reflexive FEAR reaction.  "Life is dangerous and scary", period.)  However, contrast it to the situation where my mother sees me, for example, in conflict with another person, and instead of insisting that I say the polite thing the person wants to hear and get out asap (which is what actually happened) she is able to tolerate the feelings in herself of what it is like to have unresolved conflict, and she can trust that I will find a solution.  Not in a dismissive way, e.g. "oh I'm sure you'll figure it out", but able to be present with me through it, including empathizing/attunement, discussing solutions when I'm ready, talking about pros and cons but letting me make the decision and then see what happens.  Give me the opportunity to test it out.

[eeks]

I have struggled terribly with my eldest daughter as she has grown up. I struggled to witness her pain and always wanted to solve her problems for her so I could remove the pain it triggered in me. Unfortunately, this meant that I didn't really give her chance to talk to me. I was always full of solutions. I was in such pain as a result of her pain. I don't think I really saw her as separate to me. When she described her experiences, it was like I was going through them too.

I'm glad to hear you have that degree of self-awareness, because that puts you in a better position to relate to your daughter differently now.  I don't think my mother has that kind of awareness.  She gets it, sometimes, but justifies a lot of how she acted towards me as "I had to teach you to protect yourself", or "being quiet worked for me".

The problem is that for her, "protect yourself" usually meant "whenever you find yourself in conflict with someone, especially someone older than you or an authority figure, immediately forfeit your own needs and interests.  Look, now there's no conflict anymore!"

But you see the flip side here, as I think is often if not always present in unhealthy/limited personal coping strategies... .that (regardless of what her justification for why she "had to" do it was) she felt free to boss me around as much as she liked!

Her imperative to teach me to "protect yourself" was based on assumption upon assumption upon assumption made by her, (including "you were sensitive" - oh really?  who was "sensitive", me or her?  was it that I felt pain after being told cruel things by angry people, or her unable to tolerate seeing me go through that?  and/or unable to advocate for me, because she could not advocate for herself?)

But again, this is something that makes sense from the "narcissistic family dynamic" perspective because... .what is important here is not so much "what she did" but "why does it fit in the family system/rules?"

I forget now which link I read this one, but there was something about how narcissistic families do not allow their children to have boundaries, because then the kids might use that skill to set boundaries with the parents!

What would have happened if I'd been allowed to continue to have needs (for negotiation, etc.) that I wanted to get met by adults outside the family?  What family secret/rule does it risk exposing?

My first guess is that it's something like, if I were allowed to ask for "more" and receive it, then my mother would have to realize that she could do the same.  And when she's spent her whole life living for others, she fears the havoc and upheaval in her life that living for herself would create.  The first thing to go would be her marriage.  

[hopeful12345]

My therapist says my mother forced her trauma on me.  

I think my mother did the same to me. Thank you for bringing this up. I will talk about it with my therapist. This is a good topic.

[Lifewriter16]

My mother was sexually abused at a similar age by her father. She passed on messages to me, unintentionally I'm sure, but I've suffered because of them.

My daughter actually raises the issues of these implicit messages with me. She'll say things like: ':)on't you trust me?" She is reacting to my behaviour in a similar way that you reacted to your mother's, though she's 14. I think it's a good sign that she can raise them but I still worry about the damage that I unwittingly visit on her.

I believe that I developed symptoms of sexual abuse as a result of my mother being abused. She was so frightened for me, that she created an unhealthy environment in which to develop sexually and as a woman.

Love Lifewriter

[eeks]

My daughter actually raises the issues of these implicit messages with me. She'll say things like: ':)on't you trust me?" She is reacting to my behaviour in a similar way that you reacted to your mother's, though she's 14. I think it's a good sign that she can raise them but I still worry about the damage that I unwittingly visit on her.

Worry about the damage you may unwittingly visit on her shows you have self-awareness, which I am truly pleased to hear, because this awareness is the BIG first step. 

I would say the only thing you can really do to help her is do your own healing work (which you are).  Conscious intentions are no match for the power of unconscious, unresolved trauma emotions, especially when the parent is under stress or triggered.

If your response to her is the classic parental "I trust you, it's them I don't trust,"  I want you to think carefully about what message you are sending to your daughter, about how much power she has in the world and in relation to others. 

Kids don't turn 18 or 21 and suddenly realize "oh hey, I'm old enough to make my own decisions now" when they've been overprotected as teenagers.  At least I didn't, because I did not learn through experience that my impulses were trustworthy.  Adolescence (in my view, which I admit risks idealism) is supposed to be about taking appropriate risks to make autonomous decisions, and seeing how it turns out, and it's clumsy at first, but this is the process by which we learn to trust our own judgment.

To me, a healthy parental message might be "I cannot control every decision you make, and nobody can memorize a set of rules for "what to do when... .", there's no such thing, because all of life's decisions are different.  The best I can do is teach you, preferably role model for you in my own life, the principles of good decision-making, and trust that when you go out into the world, you will remember those principles.  And you will make mistakes, and you will get hurt.  And I as a parent will have to fight my urge to protect you, or jump in and make it all better, and begin, in an age-appropriate way, to treat you as a peer to me, rather than my dependent."

I don't want to send the topic on a tangent towards parenting, I'd like to keep the focus on my digging for "forbidden" truths in my FOO, I just thought I would make this comment based on my own experiences and what would have been more helpful for me from my parents.

[Panda39]

I wanted to suggest a book I just read called "Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers" by Karyl Mcbride

Panda39

[Turkish]

My Ex's family tolerated violence for years. Part of it is cultural: you don't defy Father. Everyone supresses their feelings in order to maintain the family unit. Though the violence has passed, their father's serial infidelity and the fact that he has no emotional connection with his family remains.

This past spring, I had to call the authorities on D3's teenage uncle. I got a lot of anger and projection (which I anticipated), but what suprised me most were three things: that D3 was called a liar, that my Ex was painted black for a time by not siding with the family (as opposed to at the very least giving the benefit of the doubt to her daughter?), and something the eldest brother said,."I'm hate you (his sis) and Turkish for what you did to our family!" Lost in all of that was the fact that D3 is family.

Reading that article helped me understand what was going on, and helped quell some of my anger. A number of people have more inertia than any single person, and fighting to change all of them is a losing battle.

[eeks]

My therapist says my mother forced her trauma on me.  

I think my mother did the same to me. Thank you for bringing this up. I will talk about it with my therapist. This is a good topic.

You're welcome.  My experience with therapists has been that the majority I have seen did not explore or ask about parents' and grandparents trauma, inherited trauma. 

If a person did not suffer trauma, but their parents did and haven't had any therapy or healing work, it makes complete sense to me that the parents would model their own limited trauma-based life coping strategies to the child and in their interactions with the child. 

[eeks]

I wanted to suggest a book I just read called "Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers" by Karyl Mcbride

Panda39

Thank you for the recommendation.  I think my mother is more co-dependent than narcissistic (and the Survivor to Thriver guide mentions that co-dependent mothers tend to overcontrol their children) but it is worth checking out anyways, because her father in my opinion had narcissistic traits at minimum (maybe the disorder) and so even if she is not overtly narcissistic I think the vestiges are there.

For instance, if I was having a conflict with someone, rather than make space for me, my feelings and interests in the conversation, she would immediately give advice based on "what works for her".  (oh, and not even saying "what works for me is... .", just "do it this way".)

My interpretation of this is that she can't see (and sometimes, even now that I'm an adult, seems to adamantly refuse to see) outside of her own experience, and she cannot seem to imagine a better outcome for me in the situation than the ones she experienced.

This may be a result of trauma defenses and not narcissism, but the effect is the same in that I am denied my separate personhood to an extent.

[eeks]

My Ex's family tolerated violence for years. Part of it is cultural: you don't defy Father. Everyone supresses their feelings in order to maintain the family unit. Though the violence has passed, their father's serial infidelity and the fact that he has no emotional connection with his family remains.

This past spring, I had to call the authorities on D3's teenage uncle. I got a lot of anger and projection (which I anticipated), but what suprised me most were three things: that D3 was called a liar, that my Ex was painted black for a time by not siding with the family (as opposed to at the very least giving the benefit of the doubt to her daughter?), and something the eldest brother said,."I'm hate you (his sis) and Turkish for what you did to our family!" Lost in all of that was the fact that D3 is family.

It's amazing the extent people will go to to preserve the family dynamic.  

What really sticks out in your story is the lack of nuance, or inability to hold potentially conflicting points of view. For example, your ex painted black by "not siding with the family", and a reluctance to even "give the benefit of the doubt" to her daughter.  Preserving the system is so vital that anything that puts it at risk gets the "that doesn't exist" treatment, including the words of someone who is, in fact, part of the family (your daughter, in this case).

It reminds me of something.  One of the girls who bullied me in elementary school, we were "friends" when I was in my early 20s (more like party friends, while we both went to different universities, and would visit each other for nights out at a bar).  Her older sister was accused of a crime in another country.  My "friend" loudly and repeatedly said "Of course she didn't do it!"  On the other extreme, a relative of mine informed me of vicious local gossip going on about the older sister.  See how polarized this is?

I kept my thoughts to myself, but when I heard about it, I thought, you know what?  She might have done it (and I have secondhand info about her employment history that tends in that direction), but it doesn't really change my opinion of her, and it isn't really my business to comment because I wasn't there.  Contrast the degree of nuance there.

They were part of several local families who had been in this small town for several generations, and (me as an adult reflecting back) kind of acted like it was "their" town.  Many of them were related to one another even if only distantly.  As I grew older and heard bits and pieces about their family dynamic, I got the sense of significant and ongoing internal animosity and drama ("Aunt So-and-so 'not speaking to' Mom or I", etc.) and yet the response to any perceived or actual threat from "outsiders" was a unified front, fighting (metaphorically) to the death to lie on behalf of each other and maintain the lie.  

Unsurprisingly this is the dynamic they used against me at school.  I may need to post separately about that at some point.

I just had a funny memory.  I remember my mother telling me something like "we don't talk about private family business outside the home".  There is some validity to that, privacy and discretion, but there are some troubling implications as well.  I don't even remember what the "private" topic in question at that time was!

But if I were to imagine, just take a random guess, what pops up in my brain is the fact that my parents sleep in separate beds.  I don't remember how old, but at least by age 9 or 10, I figured out that that meant they don't have sex, and I was embarrassed about that, because that meant they are "not like other parents" and since I come from them, I am "not like other people".  Friends would come over and see my mom's room and ask "is that your parents' room?" I can't remember, I either didn't answer and let them assume, or I said yes.  They didn't know that my dad's bed was in his office.

So my situation was kind of different, it was just us and my mom's parents locally (all my other extended family was elsewhere) but I'm noticing these troubling, subtle but repeated ways in which I was prohibited from acknowledging even indirectly by expressing certain emotions, that "there is something not right here" i.e. in our family.

Reading that article helped me understand what was going on, and helped quell some of my anger. A number of people have more inertia than any single person, and fighting to change all of them is a losing battle.

Well, what I just wrote about the dynamics among some of the families where I grow up illustrates that.

That said, even two people (my parents) can have enough inertia to maintain a system and "recruit" their child to participate.  Speaking of, I haven't really talked about my sister yet, she seems more "functional" than me (career and relationship) but starting in her early 20s she became obsessively clean, to the point of... .maybe not verbal abuse but pretty close, to family members who do not abide by her standards.

My T says she controls "mess" the same way she controls "messy emotions", but that seems pretty abstract and "out there" right now.

The books I have read recently about attachment theory in relationships say that, although each person will have their own impressions of what constitutes "a threat to the relationship" based on their personal history, the amygdala responds to threats to relationship bonds the same way it does to physical danger.  So I think that's some of the reason for the "inertia", the profound investment in the system for that person's own survival.

[Panda39]

My mom has narcissistic traits not full blown "personality disorder", but enough to do a number on me and my self-esteem.

I can also see two patterns in the maternal line of my family going back several generations starting with my great-grandmother.  Keeping up appearances and the boys are more valued that their sisters.  I have only one child so hopefully I will break the boys are better than girls pattern.  Keeping up appearances... .still working on that one  

I as a teenager did the opposite of what you did in terms of being the "perfect" daughter.  I became the self-sabotaging daughter... .why try when I would never live up to my mother's plan for who she wanted me to be, instead I'd model the failure she told me I was.

Later when I was older I did my best to follow her "rules" hoping someday I'd be good enough and instead putting myself in lousy situations because I was doing what I thought she wanted me to do even when it didn't make sense.  

I married the first person to ask me in part because I was on the rebound (I'd prove to that last boyfriend that someone loved me!) and in part because at 26 I thought I was "supposed" to get married.

I married someone I hardly knew and through him learned what alcoholism is.  I internalized other rules and messages that belonged to my mother... .you made a commitment you keep it, marriage is good/divorce is bad, you always fail, you always pick the wrong guy, you are not smart etc... .

I in part stayed married to an alcoholic for 20 years because I couldn't ask my mother for help... .It was my marriage and my problem... .I had grown into a hyper-responsible person to the point of taking the blame for things that belonged to others  

In 2009 I finally asked for a divorce and then began the journey I am still on to find my authentic self and understand where, why and how I lost her.

I had what I would describe as a breakdown that became break throughs in 2009.  I finally found and reclaimed my self-esteem and have gradually been able to grow a thicker skin regarding my mom.  As recently as a vacation this summer when she interupted and cut me off when I was talking about something she didn't like the behaviors still continue today.  I notice the behaviors but now instead of being hurt or getting upset I just think... .that was a lousy thing to do but that's her problem it isn't about me.  I live by my own rules now  

Panda39

[eeks]

I can also see two patterns in the maternal line of my family going back several generations starting with my great-grandmother.  Keeping up appearances and the boys are more valued that their sisters.  I have only one child so hopefully I will break the boys are better than girls pattern.  Keeping up appearances... .still working on that one  

Interesting.  What are you afraid will happen if you don't "keep up appearances"?  

I married the first person to ask me in part because I was on the rebound (I'd prove to that last boyfriend that someone loved me!) and in part because at 26 I thought I was "supposed" to get married.

I married someone I hardly knew and through him learned what alcoholism is.  I internalized other rules and messages that belonged to my mother... .you made a commitment you keep it, marriage is good/divorce is bad, you always fail, you always pick the wrong guy, you are not smart etc... .

I in part stayed married to an alcoholic for 20 years because I couldn't ask my mother for help... .It was my marriage and my problem... .I had grown into a hyper-responsible person to the point of taking the blame for things that belonged to others  

Yep.  When my mother had been married for 2 years, and she called my grandmother crying, my grandmother apparently responded "I cried for years and it didn't do any good!"  My mother kept on following the rule and stayed married to someone she wasn't happy with.

I haven't followed the rules, I've never been married and I haven't stayed in unfulfilling relationships for too long.  So on the contrary, I'm single for long stretches.  But I also haven't achieved enough separateness from my FOO to confidently not follow the rules, so I feel sort of stuck in limbo, if that makes sense.

In 2009 I finally asked for a divorce and then began the journey I am still on to find my authentic self and understand where, why and how I lost her.

I had what I would describe as a breakdown that became break throughs in 2009.  I finally found and reclaimed my self-esteem and have gradually been able to grow a thicker skin regarding my mom.  As recently as a vacation this summer when she interupted and cut me off when I was talking about something she didn't like the behaviors still continue today.  I notice the behaviors but now instead of being hurt or getting upset I just think... .that was a lousy thing to do but that's her problem it isn't about me.  I live by my own rules now  

That's great to hear.  I notice that in my conversations with my mother, she tries to "control the narrative", that is, how we interpret past events.  I know it's because she doesn't want to face the pain of having hurt me, but even more so it's that she does not want to face how she has lived her life for others, and make the authentic and necessary changes (like that divorce I was talking about, and probably next a change in how often she spends taking care of her mother)

I think an emotion that dominates my mother's experience is FEAR and I have not yet untangled myself from her fear.  That is, the things she taught me to fear vs. whether there is actually any reason to be afraid/ am I actually afraid of it.

[Turkish]

 In my Ex's family, boys are put on a pedestal, and girls are marginalized (even shamed) and not protected. A lot of that is cultural.

[eeks]

In my Ex's family, boys are put on a pedestal, and girls are marginalized (even shamed) and not protected. A lot of that is cultural.

It still sounds to me like the dynamic of secrets and lies to maintain a system, like I described, but with the added element of gender.  After all, if you have to pretend women can't tell the truth, and that men can do no wrong, neither of those are true so it requires some vigorous propping-up.

I am letting it sink in, though, because my maternal grandfather used to insist that his wife and daughters cover their heads in church, when nobody else really was doing that.  He would go around saying that they had sinned and needed to go to confession.  And of course the notion that they existed to serve him, and not disprove his notion that he was perfect, and always right.

I don't know a lot about my father's family (he's been LC with them as long as I can remember, and hardly talks about his childhood) but there is probably lots in there about women serving men.  I do know that when my parents got engaged, my (future) mom was at my (future) dad's parents' house, they were all eating dinner together, my dad's teenage brother asked for a glass of milk and their mom got up from the table to get it for him.

My mom had a feeling that we here would call,   !

(but she ignored it)

I would say that my father expected my mother to serve him (she often said no, but there was some intimidation involved when it came to things like "them staying married", and there are indications that he expected me both not to get in the way of my mom serving him, and for me myself to serve him.  

When I was born, my mother (as you would expect) was spending a lot of time taking care of me, and my father would yell and slam doors because he wasn't getting as much attention from her anymore.  My mom got tired of it, she says when I was a year old, he yelled, she was holding me and I was crying, and she told him to "get out".  He did, for a few days, and came back and said he "would change".  I don't know how much he did change the behaviours, but I doubt much happened to his underlying emotions. 

(So maybe some gender expectations but also poor emotional self-regulation and communication skills)

I guess one time when I was about 4 years old he was sitting on the sofa and asked me to bring him his food from the kitchen.  My mom would not have it, she did not want me to grow up thinking my job was to serve men.  (I would say it's good to teach kids to be helpful, but that one was about his laziness plain and simple, and I wonder if he would have asked me if I was a boy).

My mother did not want to give me "submissive woman training", but she ended up doing so anyway, to an extent, through her apparent fear of me being punished, ostracized, subject to retaliation, etc. if I expressed certain feelings or told certain truths in public.