This post is meant to get a message across to all those who come from families with controlling parents. The message is "be honest, open and respect your spouse. Don't transfer the hostility you feel to innocent bystanders, like your wife and son. It takes insight, judgement and reasoning to be a balanced person. It is my way of healing myself after our son and I became the victims of a controlling mother-in-law. Society puts a heavy burden on young men, it expects the young males to be tough and just swallow the parental abuses they experience. My husband once told me "he was not going to air the family's dirty linen. The closest he ever came to tell the world of his abusive mother was this comedic line: "In my family my mother wore the pants, when she said jump you did not ask why you did ask how high."
A while back I read a book about Adult Children of Controlling Parents. The authors stated that most of these adults can never live normal lives. Many adult children move away and prefer to cut all contact with the abusive parent. I must admit I too came from an abusive home. In my home my old man was the batterer. He used to beat us up and then bring us gifts. After a while the gifts became meaningless and I started to hate my old man for using us as punching bags. I felt this behavior was wrong but was to young to do something about it. Finally at age 18 I had enough and hit back, he did calm down for a while but when ever he came into this rage he had to attack me. My brother had to peel the old man off me. I had enough.
When my future husband proposed to me I was elated and I promised him that I will work hard not to become a batterer like my old man. I wish I could say the same for my husband; he was not able to overcome his mother's abuses, instead he hurt us (our son and me) by abandoning us.
After my husband abandoned us I was also faced with an empty checking account and 20 bounced checks. As a new emigrant I was forced to work for minimum wage. My husband found a job that paid him
three times as much as I earned, yet he could not pay his share of child support. In other words I was forced to raise a child I could not afford on my minimum wage income. It was obvious that I had to get a college education if I was to make it in my new country of choice without my husband. After night courses in algebra I chose to enter a two year college. I am glad I did get all the education I could absorb. Times got tougher, the economy took a dive in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I ended up on welfare and most of that money went for rent. I graduated from a two year college but lack of funds forced me to forego a four year college. Thank God Congress ordered the military to accept women with dependents. Our son was eight at that time when I told him I will join the Army so we will have housing and medical care should anything happen to us.
My husband fled the US in September 1971, only his relatives knew of his where-about. It never occurred to them that our son might want to communicate with his father. In the feeling department the in-laws are lacking. I often wonder just how severely my husband was abused by his mother. A man who comes from a home with loving parents does not abandon his young family.
Once my mother-in-law (Blanca R. Villarino) told me that she was responsible for Mark B. Villarino abandoning us our son and I realized that the only reason our son is a Villarino is because Blanca saw an opportunity to control her own son with her grandson. She used our unborn child to control her son. As long as my husband was the good boy she could control our son was her grandson. Once she stopped paying for her son's education and my husband walked out on us our son was no longer of any value. There was no more birthday and no more Christmas gift for our son.
Our son is devastated that a woman who went to church every Sunday could be so cruel and use him purely to control Mark B. Any one with insight is able to understand, should our son have to look at his grandmother he only sees the woman who condemned him to a life without a father. What possessed this woman to condemn an unborn child ? My husband made it quite clear to her that he did not want to be tied down by a child. Obviously she did not care about our child's future nor its welfare, else she would have helped us find an established, financially sound childless couple to adopt our child. My husband and I were indigent at the time; giving up a child for a better life is a noble sacrifice and our child as all children deserved a better life than what we could offer at the time.
Blanca is 94 years old, she has yet to apologize to me and our son for the cruelty she caused due to her controlling behavior. Maybe she never learned to dispense kindness. In one of my earlier blogs I posed the question: "What has she accomplished with her controlling behavior?"
I invite all readers to please give me some answers to my questions. Tell me about the human condition. Thank youfor any response.
