I Know Thee Not, Old Man
Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons; if there happens to be any long-term tension within the family unit, more often than not the tension arises from strained relations between two males or two females. It becomes especially prevalent during adolescence, when paranoid parents can view their same-sex offspring as competition, whether consciously or no. The mother feels insecure as she ages and sees her teenage daughter as the reincarnation of her younger, prettier self, the self she can never be again; the father feels insecure, suddenly concerned that his previously unchallenged ‘head of the house’ role is under threat from the son who is beginning to mature into a man – a perceived rival with the potential to stand up to and usurp him. Whether or not there are genuine Oedipal or Elektra issues present, such factors are more likely to figure in the imagination of the parent than the child.
Craig Wilson was a father whose feelings towards his son maybe had some bearing on his violent behaviour, but from all accounts he had been a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character throughout the boy’s life, with alcohol the key to unlocking the chest Mr Hyde resided in. The boy, 22-year-old Ben, had been exposed to his father’s brutal eruptions long before he reached his twenties. When Ben was seventeen, his father served two years behind bars for strangling Ben’s mother with such force that she passed out and blood seeped from her eyes; this assault was followed by an attempted suicide on the part of the assailant, one intercepted by police before it reached its intended aim. This was the one occasion in which Ben’s father’s persistent campaign of terrorising his family was acknowledged by the law, but who knows how many more horrible incidents went unreported and unpunished in the years leading up to it?
Last year, Mr Hyde made another appearance during a family party at the Wilson home in Stockton, Teesside; Ben’s father had apparently threatened to ‘chop everybody up’ earlier in the evening before Ben heard shouting, screaming and smashing in his parents’ bedroom when his parents had retreated up there. After years and untold hours of exposure to his father’s violent temper, something in Ben snapped; his father had already once tried to kill his mother. Would Ben not think it feasible his father might have another crack at it? Ben grabbed a hammer, charged into the bedroom and battered his father around the head with the impromptu weapon, leaving Craig Wilson with serious head injuries and brain damage. Shaken by what his father had reduced him to, Ben immediately left the house and handed himself in at the local police station. Last week, he was jailed for six years. Ben Wilson may or may not have interrupted one more violent assault on his mother by his father at the time of the incident that landed him a prison sentence, but there is only so much someone so young can take.
Growing up in a household dominated by a domineering and physically intimidating male presence can do lifelong psychological damage; it can affect the way one interacts with other people; it can cause one to revert back to a terrified infantile state when confronted with an outburst of anger in others; it can make one timid, shy and self-conscious; and it can leave one with pitifully low self-esteem that the unscrupulous can capitalise on forevermore. Formative years spent walking on eggshells might be good training for a ballet dancer, but few hard working-class towns are renowned for producing the next Nureyev. If, as the defence claimed during his trial, Ben Wilson had never known a time without his ogre of a father ruling the Wilson household with the persistent promise of inflicting the kind of barbaric attack he’d inflicted on his wife in 2007, it’s to be expected that Ben would eventually reach breaking point.
During my own formative years, my father ruled our household in a similarly unsettling manner; he never used physical violence with the exception of the kind of chastisement of his children that would now lead to the involvement of social services, but was perfectly acceptable in the 1970s. His explosive temper would tend to be directed at inanimate objects, though that can be scary enough itself for a toddler witnessing a man built like a cross between a Rugby League player and the Incredible Hulk smashing up his son’s favourite toy in an orgy of unprovoked fury – my earliest memory. He shouted a lot and could go off at random, akin to one of those old plastic frogs on a spring that you’d stick down and then sit back to wait for it to suddenly leap up. Being in his company for any prolonged period would increase the prospect of being exposed to this temper, so it was handy that he was at work all day and in the pub most evenings. It’s one reason why I cannot recall family holidays with any nostalgic affection; he ruined them all and there was no escaping him. His way of coping with a stressful situation was to erupt, covering his family in lava; at times his behaviour could be as absurd as it was frightening. I’ve often compared him to a disturbing hybrid of Basil Fawlty and Yosser Hughes.
Of course, now he is a wizened shrunken old man plagued with pensioners’ ailments and is no threat to me at all; but I cannot forgive, and neither can I forget. He was a bully, pure and simple, one who would torment in private and would derive perverse pleasure from causing humiliation when in company. Whenever I somehow summoned the confidence to stand up to him once I reached my late teens, my mother and brother never backed me up; they never supported me, even though they felt exactly the same about him as I did; they’d only express these feelings when he was absent. Once he was back, lips were sealed and tongues were bitten and my woeful rebellion was crushed as effectively as the Duke of Monmouth taking on James II. This is an accurate measure of just how successfully he had managed to suppress their courage and impose his will on them absolutely.
I never physically assaulted my father, but I have dreamt of murdering him on several occasions. In my dreams, I have drowned him, pushed him down the stairs and – just a couple of weeks ago – I have reduced his skull to fragments with a baseball bat; and this is my unconscious response to someone who specialised in mere mental abuse. Had I been in Ben Wilson’s position, the chances are I would have reached the same breaking point as he did, so whilst I cannot necessarily condone what he did, I utterly understand why he did it.
I appreciate his case and the campaign to quash his six-year sentence is the kind of cause that comes as a gift for the tabloid press and the Twitterati, but I felt compelled to comment on it because nobody with any basic humanity is provoked into that kind of uncharacteristic violence unless they have been raised in an environment that has normalised it. Therefore, if you’d like to sign the petition demanding an end to Ben Wilson’s time behind bars, here it is…
Petunia Winegum
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January 20, 2015 at 10:14 am -
I was your Dad and an alcoholic, criminal IED sufferer as well. Social services didn’t come round to protect my Kids when I ‘exploded’, they sent armed police- no I’m not joking (although I never actually struck my kids in anger). So I’ll be signing that petition for my kids’ sake and for the sake of every child who has to grow up with a Dad like me.
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January 20, 2015 at 10:44 am -
I don’t quite know what to say to that admission, Dwarf; but kudos to you for making it.
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January 20, 2015 at 5:53 pm -
Indeed. Blocked Dwarf, you have suffered. Life is not easy, and it can batter people. It’s really rough out her. You are one of the kindest commentators. Maybe someone should be kind to you?
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January 20, 2015 at 6:25 pm -
“Blocked Dwarf, you have suffered”
Right after posting that comment I realized that I had expressed myself poorly, even more poorly than usual. What I meant to say was “alcoholic, criminal and sufferer from IED” ie ‘suffer’ in the sense of having a medical complaint, not that I have suffered in life in general. To be a sufferer is to be a victim, and I long ago decided that I was not going to give those who’d caused me anguish the satisfaction of being their victim any longer…. That was around the time I hospitalized two of my school Bullies. Most of what I have ‘suffered’ in life since was infact penance/consequence for the misery I inflict(ed) upon others.
Kindest commentator? Funnily enough I have always felt that most of the commentators here, yourself , Pet and AR herself are some of the kindest people I have ever met online, as well as being some of the most erudite. Unkind commentators here don’t seem to hang around for very long…probably the icy RACCOON STARE (like a Paddington BEAR STARE but more so) from across the bar…
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January 20, 2015 at 10:22 am -
Jeez Uncle Petunia I know exactly why you have penned the essay you have though my late father was the very antithesis of yours. What is important for you and everyone else is that your father’s behaviour…..and Craig Wilson’s…… is properly identified individualised and contextualised and seen exactly for what it was otherwise it is somehow excused and justified and passed over and so will be repeated endlessly with the same poor outcomes for others.
I venture opinion that your father’s and Craig Wilson’s behaviour illustrates a totally subjective view of the nature of life……an inability to see anything beyond the importance of self…..the world in their image and if it is not then physical or mental violence must be applied to those they come into contact with to make it so….. an endlessly deep narcissism for which all others are expected to pay any price and yet no price will ever be adequate for them
What you write about is what I see as at the very core of why ‘Society’ has taken the downturn it has……the rottenness you describe which has never really been addressed set in long ago (and I sense for political reasons has been either glossed or used for other ends) and we are living with reaction to its mind set. Life in immediate Post War Britain was I suspect far more brutish than the anodyne picture so often painted.
I can’t sign the petition coz I have no personal knowledge of the case so can’t join in demanding anything though if there is evidence of injustice in sentence I would join in a petition (rather different than a demand) for review-
January 20, 2015 at 10:42 am -
I know my father had a hard upbringing characteristic of many children in the first few years after the war and I’ve often tried to view the causes of his evident psychological problems with detachment; but not everyone who went through what he went through turned out like he did, so it’s no real excuse. As for Ben Wilson’s father, he can’t even blame the war, so who knows? It’s perhaps too obvious to quote Larkin, but he really nailed it in ‘This Be The Verse’.
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January 20, 2015 at 10:54 am -
“so it’s no real excuse.”
As I know from personal experience, there are NO excuses. Not for an adult. Adults make choices, that is the whole point of growing up, you have to reach a point where whatever shitty childhood you had doesn’t matter, isn’t an excuse nor dictates your future actions otherwise you end up, in the case of child sexual abuse for example, handing down the Family Silver Of Evil (as a therapist once described it to me) to the next generation. Which is basically what you said here ” so whilst I cannot necessarily condone what he did, I utterly understand why he did it.”.
Seeing as the last perfect human got himself nailed to cross some 2000 years ago, there are therefore no perfect parents and no perfect childhoods. We all took some damage from our childhoods, some more, some less. “Getting over it” is the mark of an adult.
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January 20, 2015 at 10:58 am -
Too true. For many years, my own personal family silver surfaced when I lost my rag – though, mercifully, I had no children to expose it to; whenever it happened, I saw my father in me coming through and I eventually curbed it. I can’t remember the last time I lost my temper now, so I’m hoping I’ve conquered it for good. And if I can’t at 47, I never bloody will.
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January 20, 2015 at 12:18 pm -
“I saw my father in me coming through”
Strangely enough, in my own case the inherited “Silver” came from my Mother via her father. My own Dad was about as near to a ‘perfect’ father as is humanely possible-despite a wartime Eastend childhood among the bomb sites. Dad was ‘slow to chide and swift to bless’ as it says in that hymn we had to sing in church as a kid.
Just incase anyone thinks we’re having a ‘knock at dads’ day. Trust me, mothers can be worse.
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January 21, 2015 at 5:47 am -
I don’t doubt it. Physical scars heal, but the wounds women inflict on each other sometimes never do.
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January 20, 2015 at 11:15 am -
To my mind there can be no excuses or justification for inflicting ones adoration of self on others……to take from others what belongs to them for oneself…..explanation perhaps but I suggest its wrong to look for excuse or justification ……it leads to elision of thought and a messy ‘demolition’ of the behaviour rather than a deconstruction of it.
But there is a wholly separate and deeply interesting issue as to why your family didn’t support you.
And sorry Uncle Petunia F**k Off with notions of detachment, whilst one might need reason to check ones emotion, having checked ones emotions ones initial emotional response is correct. Reason may be needed to gauge ones actions in response but not ones justified revulsion to such behaviour ….so F**k off with notions of detachment-
January 20, 2015 at 1:49 pm -
Perhaps it’s indicative of how I am not my father’s son that I even attempted detachment.
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January 20, 2015 at 2:49 pm -
Balls Uncle Petunia …..your conscious identification and rejection of narcissism…..your individual ability to perceive the objective …..emotionally perhaps more than rationally….. is what distinguishes you from him.
One can be detached and rationally reject but it does not necessarily follow that one genuinely rejects emotionally. Sentimentality rather than genuine emotion is the echo of such violence and the application of reason alone to it.
Forgiveness which is an issue that invariably needs addressing is I suggest a later destination on a longer journey if one chooses to embark on it but not a destination that one should seek a shortcut to
It is probably when there is rational rejection but not emotional rejection of behaviour that the abused goes on to be an abuser as adumbrated by the family silver analogy.-
January 20, 2015 at 3:05 pm -
I do say in the article that I cannot forgive and neither can I forget; and that is true. In admitting I’ve employed detachment on rare occasions when wondering why he was the way he was, I’m merely trying to demonstrate that I have the capacity to do so, which he doesn’t. Having said that, this capacity has its limits, as I think the post highlights.
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January 20, 2015 at 3:21 pm -
From what you write Uncle Petunia I personally have concluded you have gone beyond detached rational rejection to the rather more secure position of emotional rejection as well but these dark thickets of a man’s mind are best ventured into only in the company of ones God or Gods for no others than oneself and one’s God or Gods can genuinely know of such things
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January 20, 2015 at 3:28 pm -
Indeed. We’ve only scratched the surfaced with this one, trust me!
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January 20, 2015 at 3:41 pm -
Dare I say Uncle Petunia I know of such journeys though not of course of yours personally
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January 20, 2015 at 1:38 pm -
I suspect the War may have had different effects on different fathers. My own late father, an Eighth Army ‘Desert Rat’ then all the way through to Berlin in ’45, was the most calm, kind, considerate, modest, peaceful, hard-working, everyday bloke you could imagine, at no time exercising any violence or even a raised voice to his kids.
I didn’t know him before the War so can’t comment on any changes which that may have wrought, but my view of his post-war demeanour was that he’d seen, experienced and participated in so much genuine horror over those 6 years that it made him consider all his future actions with those around him, both family and at work, and always to act proportionately.
I can’t imagine growing up with a father like Ben Wilson’s, or those of some others commenting here, all have my sympathy for what they’ve endured and what they have missed – it makes me appreciate all the more the father I had the privilege to enjoy for almost 50 years.-
January 20, 2015 at 4:35 pm -
Mudplugger, it isn’t merely the effect it had on fathers, but there is the effect on mothers and offspring that also can be traumatic. My own father (like yours) came through the thick of it, and returned taciturn and withdrawn, but gentle, and never laid a hand on me, not ever, even though he’d come through a slum childhood – boots lent for the winter by a church school otherwise barefoot, five brothers and two sisters brought up in a 2 up 2 down, and all that jazz. He and my mother married just before the war, and my elder sister came along in the ‘phoney war’. Then the old man was off for years, and my sister was brought up by my mother and grandmother (who’d been bombed out of her house). Whatever privations they went through, who knows? But, I’m quite sure, my sister was aghast when my father returned from a leisurely tramp through northern France and Germany with the stench of death still in his nostrils. Who was this creature? I’ll bet that she was scared shitless, and her nose was seriously put out of joint when I arrived and she was demoted in the pecking order by another bump.
Perhaps my mother was lucky that she didn’t hanker much after the party atmosphere that the war engendered, nor the opportunities to work and have money to burn that plenty of childless wives as well as single women enjoyed. At least my mother could not reproach my father that he’d had it easy, but my father-in-law returned from an airbase in North Africa where he’d never experienced danger nor privation, had been in the concert party with John Le Mesurier (allegedly), and simply lacked an answer to any criticism. He was quite keen to describe his ‘war experiences’ if you asked.
In contrast, my own father was reluctant to do so, and only once – in the course of a road trip through Normandy to see the beaches did he open up a bit. In a way, he seemed almost disappointed that the quiet fields no longer had the burnt out tanks, the rotting corpses and the lines of German captives. They stank, he said (I’ll bet everyone did), but I discovered that their poorly tanned leather field equipment began to rot after a few days in the rain, whereas battledress webbing merely wept its ‘blanco’. The 1000 bomber daylight raids on Caen (It’s the part of Caen where the University was later built) seen from a distance looked like rain, he said, but being in the field where the flak came down was a pretty hellish experience.
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January 20, 2015 at 8:33 pm -
Many similarities. My father rarely spoke of the horrors, usually only of the moments of humour and military incompetence.
I discovered far more about his army service by chatting to one of his fellow ‘rats’ 40 years later than my dad had ever told me – he even has a passing mention in Montgomery’s autobiography of the period, which he had never told me himself. He was a reluctant conscript, simply seeing it as a duty which, once completed and survived, was to be archived away so he could get back to normal life.Whether our family life would have been different without that enforced service is impossible to judge, all I can say is that the family life experienced was positively rose-tinted when compared to some sad reports here.
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January 20, 2015 at 5:49 pm -
I would like to add to that. My father was a Royal Marines Commando in WWII. Only 18 when he went to the depot in Lympstone, a lad from a working class family in a working class town. 3 months later off to to the formidable Commando Training Centre at Achnacarry. He did D- Day at 19 and joined up with the Paras at Pegasus bridge. He was promoted to acting captain on the battlefield in Holland. He killed, and his friends were killed. He was blown up in Germany. He’s 90 plus now, still a bull of a man. A bit deaf because of the explosions. Kind, considerate – emotionally hopeless, but that’s another matter. Never seen him drunk (except once in Ireland, where poteen was in play).
He did not enjoy killing, by the way. It has affected him all his life, I believe. He suffered great regret and grief. He still has the Rosary beads of the young man he killed face to face, because he was quicker. The man he killed was a Catholic, like him. He felt he had killed himself. But then, my my father was Commando trained: to the peak of physical prowess. That was sort of the point of his training.
I carry that guilt now, and despair at our modern world.
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January 20, 2015 at 6:49 pm -
” He felt he had killed himself”
That your dad could go through a war and still feel that, says more about him than any medal for bravery ever could and is perhaps the most succinct way of expressing the difference between the souls of ‘real’ soldiers, murderers and terrorists . The CH Killers, had they lived, may have come to feel true remorse for their actions but it is unlikely they would ever have felt that they had ‘killed themselves’.
Strangely enough I believe the Quran has a Surah that says something very similar.
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January 20, 2015 at 11:28 am -
I too suffered at the hands of my father – though it was both erratic and oddly, after a while, predictable. It used to be squarely blamed on his own childhood – the eldest of 6, with 4 little sisters to look after, with a wanton selfish mother and a hapless well-meaning father he became a combination of two. In hindsight the regular bursts of impotent rage directed at us, his family, were not just the fallout of his upbringing but also an undiagnosed Aspergers-type condition – which meant of course his woeful childhood trauma’s were probably exaggerated anyway, and his role as a policeman, as a father and as an adult in general were hard work for him in a way he couldn’t explain (probably even to himself) and to compensate it manifested itself with an unreasonable, somewhat narcissistic, control over us, his family. From me, the firstborn, being a baby we were seen as ‘rivals’, and affection came on his terms. He was fine when things went the way he wanted them too, a nightmare when they didn’t – I remember him threatening to throw my 4 year old sister in the River Ouse on a day out in York when she was throwing a tantrum! His ‘condition’ would mean christmas’s and birthdays ruined by as little as someone knocking a record playing – with subsequent nervous hysteria from us children. It seemed to get worse after Christmas 1982 when he beaten up in the line of duty – the flare-ups worsened. Once I became an adolescent, the ‘rivalry’ got worse – incidents aplenty throughout, some simply unexplainable. One Sunday in 1987, having just turned 14 and fresh in from my paper-round he ordered me “turn your music off, I’ve decided you’ll have a day without it on Sundays from now on” – when (understandbly) I questioned this unexpected lunacy I was pinned against my bedroom wall with such force my top with ripped, punched and told that ‘definance’ won’t be tolerated and he’d ‘been soft enough’. This kind of behaviour happened regularly and against all of us, including my mother. I ended up a fairly nervous & withdrawn young man – I was told going to nightclubs would result in me ‘getting beaten up’. My brother, ten years my junior, was never afraid – he always saw his father as an unreasonable bullying halfwit and challenged him accordingly, and once he was into his 40’s he was – physically as well as mentally – too out of shape. Still, as recently as 10 years ago, there were incidents – on coming home in his best suit (he drives wedding cars sometimes) to find my 21-year brother ‘lowering’ his car in the drive with his mates against his instructions, he went lowered the car jack. When my brother responded with “fuck off you stupid fat ***t” (or words to the that effect) he grabbed the jack handle to hit him, chased him down the street waving it, only to slip and fall onto a muddy grass verge! He then turned to my brothers mates, waving said jack handle, and told him “you’d better fuck off!”. All in quiet suburban street full of detached properties.
Still, once I worked out why he is like he is and that resentment does me more harm than good I feel sorry for him more than anything – part of the journey I made that took me from being a young man so short on confidence I never asked a girl out until I was about 25 (I assumed I had nothing to offer) to being…… confident enough to stand up to the nonsense surrounding us all in the 21st Century.
Funnily re: dreams, when I was little (3,4,5,6) I used to have recurring dreams about ‘monsters behind the bed’ and one was always in the guise of an ogre identical to my dad. I can’t remember ever confusing the two though – but I’m sure a ‘dreams analyst’ wouldn’t have to work hard to fathom that one out.-
January 20, 2015 at 1:54 pm -
I forgot all about Christmases! Sounds like we had similar festive nightmares. I too am the first-born and I do think first-born sons are viewed differently by fathers than second-borns; my brother had it a hell of a lot easier than I did.
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January 20, 2015 at 2:14 pm -
In our case as my brother came around ‘Ten Years After’, a lot of things were significantly different, and certainly by the time he was was approaching adolescence my old man was certainly a lot dozier and more sluggish – and my brother was so ‘not give a shit’ that any tyranny, 1) didn’t have the desired effect & 2) was a lot more hard work to ‘implement’.
Talking of my brother, when my mum was 6 months pregnant with him we were journeying from Yorkshire to Surrey for a weeks holiday and my sister spilt some dilute orange squash on the back seat of his one month old Ford Capri. We were all kicked out of the car and left at the side of the M1 for about half an hour, “holiday cancelled”, before he came back to collect us all sweetness & light – we were so relieved he ‘come around’.-
January 20, 2015 at 2:32 pm -
That M1 story sounds familiar too. In our house, the first sign the storm had blown over was the sound of my dad whistling. That was like the all-clear siren after an air-raid.
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January 20, 2015 at 3:41 pm -
I’d have to check with The Bestes Frau In The World or The Kids but I’m pretty sure that my ‘All Clear’ signs were me whistling tunelessly ,singing tunelessly (I have the opposite of ‘perfect pitch’)or *asking* (as opposed to demanding) for The Bestes Frau to make me a cup of coffee.
As to Xmas and birthdays, I hated them sooo much as a child myself that we simply didn’t have them for my own kids so there was one ‘danger’ time that they were spared.
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January 20, 2015 at 1:57 pm -
I remember this case being reported, and there was a lot of sympathy for Ben. The trouble was the degree of premeditation in the actual act made a longish sentence inevitable. I’ve signed the petition however because there seems no doubt that Ben and his brothers tried again and again to get the law to protect them to no avail at all and I wonder what else he could have done.
On PW’s own history, it’s a sorry thing when you can neither love nor respect your own parents and feel the rest of the family let you down, but it’s so common that you shouldn’t let it blight your own life, which can be much better. For what it is worth my own mother was an absolute bitch to me when young: she was one of those women who can’t stand other females. It certainly made me very unhappy, and I despised my father for not standing up to her. I chose not to have kids myself, but on the whole life has rolled on ok and I’m better off now than they were in many, many ways.
Strangely, as my mother aged her personality changed for the better. She’s very nice to me now. I do wonder how much of this parent/child rivalry is programmed into us by genes and hormones, and so, to some extent, is unavoidable. Bit of a depressing thought, that.
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January 20, 2015 at 3:49 pm -
With the foul behaviour you’ve had to suffer over the years you’re all making me feel guilty. For me it was the other way round; I was such a shit while two hard-working level-headed parents tried to do their best for us all.
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January 20, 2015 at 4:07 pm -
” I was such a shit.” uhm I thought that was part of the job description for being a teenager?
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January 20, 2015 at 4:52 pm -
I long ago decided that there was no point in brooding over things that happened when I was young since they can’t be changed there is just no point. I admit it took me quite a long time to get there but now every hurt or regret is put in a ‘lock box’ and largely forgotten. I know people who are still resentful about things that happened 50 years ago.
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January 20, 2015 at 5:09 pm -
Ha, I know people who are still resentful over things that didn’t happen 50 years ago!
Ms Jones, headmistress of Duncroft, must have been one of the earliest exponents of the ‘you don’t have any control over what other people do, but you have control over how you chose to react to it or to let it affect you’ school of thought. It was good advice then and I have remembered it ever since. Like a lot of people, I had lousy parents – but I was 14 by the time I came into her orbit, able to make my way as an adult in the world – and sometimes, not letting other people affect you is the finest revenge there can be – and true justice.
I will always be grateful to her for that – but I never imagined that 50 years later I would find myself speaking to her again and able to tell her so!
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January 20, 2015 at 6:26 pm -
Great comment Anna, I forgot about those resentful about non events but then they have a financial interest! The advice was sound and I could have done with it a bit earlier but I had to work it out for myself. I find I have little patience with the eternally resentful harping on about how their parents ruined their lives, maybe some did but for most it’s up to you to make your own choices and, much as I hate the expression, move on.
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January 20, 2015 at 6:51 pm -
@Carol 42
Some need to travel back before they can journey on ……but eventually to journey on might be said the only way to go for otherwise one stays lost in the past.
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January 20, 2015 at 5:39 pm -
@Anna Raccoon not letting other people affect you is the finest revenge there can be – and true justice.
Absenting oneself from the life of a narcissist is said by some to be the only remedy since it is said narcissists have an inability to ever perceive the world differently than subjectively.
As to revenge ? Well interestingly absenting ones self from the life of a narcissist is probably the greatest revenge because in so doing the narcissist perceives negation of himself …..it is said a narcissist sees his existence as based on the presence of narcissistic feed ……crudely attention from others….. any attention whether good or bad it doesn’t matter. It gives form to such public identity the narcissist may have and without narcissistic feed that identity ceases to exist and the narcissist is left to contend with his own personality which he sought to abandon by seeking narcissistic feed.
One might speculate such is a hell of their own making….. spending time alone with the one person they hate and want to escape most….their own personality -
January 20, 2015 at 11:27 pm -
Sometimes I think that we all have an opportunity in life. To make the conscious decision not to pass the shit on to our descendants. To break cycles of abuse by not repeating parental mistakes.
I’m not a man much given to praying, but if there is a God, that is my prayer; please don’t let me pass on my father’s mistakes.
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January 21, 2015 at 4:43 am -
The Queen’s Counsel advising the Home Office inquiry into child abuse wants the immediate removal of a member of the panel described as a ‘survivor’ of sex abuse.
http://www.tribunemagazine.org/2015/01/qc-wants-sex-victim-backed-by-blair-family-dropped-from-historic-abuse-panel/
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