My Nearest, Dearest... Saboteur?

I was eighteen the first time it happened. Or, perhaps, it just took me that long to recognize it.

I was in college. There were exams. There was a young man... who claimed to love me... yet strangely, was most interested in me, most insistent that I spend time with him, just when I insisted on studying for those exams.

There were explanations that fell on deaf ears. There was the claim that 'if I loved him I'd make time for him'. There was the counterclaim that 'if he loved me he could wait two days to see me until my test was over.' There was, incredibly, the ultimatum... see him when he insisted, or not at all.

The choice was sadly easy.

The next time it happened it was a gaggle of girlfriends playing the part. Come out tonight and party with us. Can't, I have an exam tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep. Oh, come on, you're such an old stick in the mud. Sorry you see it that way, but I have an exam tomorrow, gotta get some sleep.

It wasn't always exams. Sometimes, it was food [oh, forget that silly diet! One little piece of double chocolate buttercream frosted devils food cake won't do you any harm]. Sometimes it was other things [what do you mean I can't smoke dope in your car and make obscene gestures at police cars on the road?]. Sometimes it was very serious other things indeed [I can't believe you'd insist on using contraception when we really love each other] [and I can't believe you'd want to put me at such risk when you claim to really love me!]

And it didn't stop after college.

And it didn't stop after graduate school.

And three decades into the working world, it still hasn't stopped.

What did stop, what stopped by the time I was twenty, was my believing that anyone who claimed to love me, but actively encouraged me to do things that would potentially harm me, actually gave a damn about me, ever.

I was lucky.

Blood Ties That Blind

Nearly all of us have something in our lives that doesn't work, large or small, irritating or overwhelming. Most of us have been carefully taught to avoid ever seeing that 'something' clearly. [This is a theme I tend to bring up a lot: the way we are trained from birth by abusers, to serve as their prey, if we have them in our families of origin.]

One of the most destructive forces I have seen in human interactions is the way people are pressured to mindlessly worship 'blood ties'. The idolatry of 'family', when the family in question is nothing but a toxic trap... and the way that anyone who is in that situation, and wises up, may be ganged up on by people who are completely ignorant of their situation, totally ignorant of psychology and group psychodynamics.

Healthy, good families don't demand worship. They don't 'demand' anything. They just love each other, and wonder what on earth all the fuss and bluster and oracular pronouncements are about.

Merely having similar DNA doesn't mean that you will be similar people in terms of character or tastes. Merely being related to someone doesn't guarantee affinity.

Heck, it doesn't even guarantee that they won't kill you - or try to.

According to a Department of Justice report -- in 2002, ~22% of murders were family murders; ~9% were murder of a spouse, ~6% were murders of a child by a parent, ~7% were murders by other family members.

But get this: From the same report: Females were 58% of family murder victims, and of ALL murders of females in 2002, family members were responsible for 43%.

Think about that. Nearly half of all the girls and women murdered that year were killed by FAMILY.

From reading the report, it looks as though the DOJ doesn't treat murders of girlfriends or boyfriends as family murders. So the stats above apparently just apply to marriages and blood relatives.

Here's a link to the report. Important info, especially for anyone in a DV situation. And anyone who has an abuser telling them that "family" is all that matters.

DOJ Report