Two narcissistic parents and a manipulative sister: how to get out of it?

Dearest dearest, welcome back to a new episode of Segreti.

Are you having a good time with these days of parties scattered here and there? We too took a nice weekend break, but we couldn't wait to get back online because the room of secrets is packed full of you, with your most intimate stories waiting to be read by unknown eyes. Someone might ask themselves “what's the point of entrusting your affairs to a column?”. Or: “Why write to you and not confide in a friend?” Yes, why? The answer is quite simple. Because, to put it in Nirvana, inside Secrets being able to arrive as you are, without knocking, without asking permission, and above all without a name, and let yourself go to the most boundless confidences of yesterday, of today. Without restraints and without judgments here it is worth venting freely out loud.

This week we return to talking about family and difficult relationships, of very dirty clothes that could hardly ever be washed in the little squares of our real lives, but which here we can rinse together without fear of the consequences. Cheating sisters and narcissistic parents are the ingredients of the two stories we have chosen this week. Is it possible to betray one's blood so badly? How far is it right to resist before saying enough? What really defines a family bond? Where is the insurmountable limit of one's well-being? These are some of the questions that came to mind while reading these stories.

Happy reading and I await your confidences, always anonymous, always at the same address that you can leave me herein the room of Secrets.

Dear, Elena

Hi, my name is Elisa, it's not my real name, but I wanted to vent by revealing one of the greatest pains of my life: not being able to have my financial independence and staying at home in the family unit with two narcissistic parents who gang up on me . They always used me like ploy because of their sick relationship, in addition to controlling me, they take away my energy. They are dependent on each other. My mother also had an affair with an ex of mine, disclosing it later. She is repentant, but not completely, and manages to manipulate the world around her. It's a nightmare…

Dear Elisa, fictional name, first of all I want to tell you that your story touched me a lot. Not so much for the content, which is alarming and decidedly hard to digest, but for the way you write. Maybe you haven't realized it but from this handful of lines the real reason why you still haven't managed to detach yourself from them and put a solid boundary between you and your parents shines through. You love him, as is normal for a daughter or son. It seems trivial but recognizing parental toxicity and abandoning the person who brought it into the world is the most difficult thing ever. Parents are, in most cases, the primary source of love that structures children's sense of self. They love me = I am lovable. They respect me = I am respectable and I learn to set healthy boundaries. When this source of love is dry, the child does not learn a sense of himself, of his value and is constantly in debt of emotional nourishment, trying to do everything he can so that his parents fill this void. But a narcissist is not able to recognize the needs of the other and will hardly be able to heal this gap. Not even if the chasm they open is in the hearts of their own children. It so happens that with narcissistic parents, even if we recognize the perversion of the dynamics in which we are immersed, our system of emotional stability refuses to realize the truth: that our loved ones are emotionally unavailable and do not have the same feelings for their children. of love that their children feel towards them. It's not the children's fault and there is nothing a child can do to turn off that bulimia of sick attention that pushes a narcissist to commit terrible acts such as inserting himself into a child's relationship or using others for his own use and consumption. not caring about their feelings. Dear Elisa, I know that just the idea of ​​leaving them adrift with their follies is hard, but it's the healthiest thing you can do to save yourself. Don't believe the little voice inside you that tells you that you won't make it alone. As you wrote, it takes a lot of energy to endure what you have endured, and that's what you need to finally achieve your financial independence. You have come this far despite your parents weighing on their necks, imagine how many things you could do if from today you started to cultivate a bit of that healthy selfishness of thinking, as it should be, first of all about yourself. It's time to put yourself first, give yourself the best you can, and use your resources to live on your own and not survive with them. I'm sure that as soon as you reverse the plan of priorities, placing yourself unquestionably at the center of your world, everything will seem more achievable than how you see it now. Good luck!

I hate my sister, she betrayed me, hurt me a lot and I can't love her anymore. Now I see her for what she is: a serial manipulator who uses people. A selfish, lying spoiled person who doesn't care about anyone. Only herself and the image that others have of her.

Amen I would say. How liberating is it to be able to say without mincing words that you no longer feel affection for someone? I loved you, now I don't love you anymore. It seems that stopping loving is not included in the vast range of options in terms of relationships. Love does not pass away, they say, it transforms, they say, even into hatred at times, into resentment, but let it never pass away! As if it were unnatural to stop loving. Everything can end but love doesn't! If then the stop to affection is towards a family member then we are in the stratosphere of the most total impossible because family members, even the most evil ones, deep down we love them by definition because they are “blood of your blood”. I'm definitely part of a smaller group, but I don't think so. It's not blood that defines a bond. And between us readers of this page, Elisa's letter just a few spaces above clearly demonstrates this. The bond is given by the relationship that is created, nourished and cultivated over time. It is given by affection, mutual respect, trust. Saying I love you and betraying trust is like adding a plus to a minus. And in mathematics less always wins. If you take away, you have taken away. If you add and remove, you remain at the same point. Not because we are members of the same family do we necessarily have to love each other, especially when we find ourselves faced with those who don't want us well, but worse, they demand that we swallow the bitter pill as a demonstration of affection. However, I understand how much it hurts to discover that we are no longer in the heart of someone we loved very much and when it happens between brothers and sisters it is very painful. It is right to separate but I also think that this off switch is necessary so that the love of the past does not transform into something bad that corrodes the beautiful memories of a large piece of life spent together: the Christmases at the table with the grandparents, the mum and dad's birthdays, beach holidays on the same mattress. What happened was, and it was beautiful, it would be a shame to ruin its memory because today's adults have taken different paths. To preserve beautiful memories, sometimes you have to turn off the switch on today's feelings to let that photograph of “how we were” remain intact over time. Years pass and people change, it's a fact. And even our brothers and sisters, despite the affection of children, can become people with whom we wouldn't even have a coffee today. And stopping loving without going to war is a final form of love that not everyone has the privilege of being able to give. And you, my dear, are giving it.