manipulation by his mother????

[Nikki23]

Hi guys!! in a very confusing dilemma and wondering if anyone will be so kind as to help me??

 

My boyfriend was emotionally and physically abused by his mother when he was younger. He is now living with her and i stay there when I'm up seeing him. He has told me that she is not well, that she believes her own lies, that she is twisted. I think I have been very naive and disloyal. I had been spending a lot of time with her and he knew this, we got on so well and she helped me with a lot of aspects of my life, always being supportive, she told me about all her past and how she grew up, how his dad treated her, how she's made mistakes but is trying to make up for them......loads of stuff. I became very close with her and felt sorry for her and her stories. She said that he had somehow blew up his childhood into something it wasn't, that he was spoiled etc. I started to mistrust my boyfriend and started thinking the way he was perceiving things was scewed. I think i have made a terrible mistake, he started shouting that i was disloyal and weak and naive. we have broken up now and i am still really confused about the whole situation. He started being quite horrible to me and not putting in the effort and this made me distrust him even more.......i think he was just resentful and angry cause he could see what was happening!!!

 

I don't know if anyone can help, probably not......think this is something i have to figure out on my own but any words of advice would be greatly appreciated!! xxx

[leo_s84]

I'm not sure what kind of advice you're looking for.

 

He said his mother isn't well and anyway you believed her mother when she said negative things about her son (no sane mother would do i believe). He got mad at you and broke up with you.

 

If you don't trust each other there's no point in having a relationship

[HappyAsALark]

Now did she tell you bad things about her son or did she just tell you he didn't have it as bad as he makes it out to be?? If that is the case he could just be exaggerating about his upbringing..or she could be covering it up. Anyways, what does it matter now?

[Nikki23]

hey.....thanks for those responses.......i know exactly what you mean.....the thing is i just got confused and i can be very naive. I totally trust him 100% now and i feel so bad that i did this to him.......is there any way i can salvage this??? xxx

[BeStrongBeHappy]

Keep in mind that dysfunctional families are like whirlpools that can suck in and drown everyone who comes in contact with them!

 

I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle of what they both told you, and the problems are not always obvious.

 

There are child molesters and alcoholics and sociopaths who are the most charming and pleasant (and manipulative) of individuals, so just because his mother is 'sweet' doesn't mean she can't be a terrible liar or manipulator. Or the same could be said of the boyfriend.

 

The important point is that you should NOT be getting in the middle of these kind of family issues nor take sides too readily, especially when there is a strong indication of big problems there. The mother may have a vested interest in re-writing history to cast herself as angelic and the son as a villain (or vice versa).

 

it is very common in cases of abuse for the majority of the family to go into denial and pretend the abuse never happened, when it did. and it is also common of people with serious mental illnesses to try to gain sympathy for being 'done wrong' when nothing occurred.

 

but the bottom line is that this was obviously a very problematic situation that you were better off out of. and for you to learn something, that you got sucked into the gameplaying and spit back out again, and that you should not be trying to cast people so firmly in the 'good' or 'bad' category without taking it all with a grain of salt.

 

i suspect that mother and son will play the same game with the next girlfriend too... and his future wife etc.

 

so you might have been naive to believe the son, OR to believe the mother, but the trick is to recognize that casting anyone as a villain or saint usually isn't an accurate picture of reality.

 

if the abuse did happen, he is going to feel doubly betrayed and like he can't trust you either. i think you can apologize to him, but also think it is probably too late to salvage your relationship with him. if his mother betrayed him he probably will have trouble trusting women to begin with...

[Nikki23]

thankyou so much for that response such a wise view.....my mother said something very similar......i just feel it was too much to cope with....i was getting pulled from different sides and i should've had my sensible hat on and just not got involved but i was there all the time and i am very trusting and naive as a person! my sympathetic side always gets the better of me. he has not lived at home since he was 16 so this was just the last few months that i have been involved in this! do you think i have been a terrible person with all this? i should've been loyal to my boyfriend and never entertained her, he told me she was twisted and that she would turn on me at some point! i feel in a way he could see what was going on and kind of left me in the lions den.......so screwed up.... iam a normal girl i am not a psychologist and i have no previous experience of dealing with someone like her!! i have phoned him and he said he's phone me back but this was 3 hours ago now! he has trouble trusting anyone and i feel i have completely stabbed him in the back........also is it possible to have a relationship with someone who has had the experiences he has????? sorry i know no1 has the answers to these questions i just feel really lost at the moment and it's hard for my friends to understand this, they just think i shouldn't have been in a situation like that in the 1st place! xxx