I've been reading a lot of stories on Reddit about people who are caretakers for elderly relatives and there are an alarming number of people who are the victims of abusive relationships with their parents - often being groomed from childhood to care for their parents and grandparents at the expense of their own lives. It does make me wonder how many examples of elder abuse are the result of people who have been victimised hitting back.
Coercive control is generally talked about in terms of romantic relationships but it is a major theme in the way a lot of these people have been treated by their parents/families. There was one woman who was put into a caretaking role for her grandmother when she was 12 and raised with the expectation that caring was her only role in life - to the extent that she was pushed to become a nurse so that she would be able to provide full time nursing care for her grandmother in the future.
The worst part is that a lot have had all their options taken away - they have given up their working lives so have no money and no employment history, they have not had a chance to establish relationships and families of their own, and staying in an abusive caretaking relationship is the only reason they are not homeless. There are so many parallels to the experience of "battered wives" who eventually retaliate against their abuser.
I'm not sure there is any real solution to the mess that is human relationships, but hopefully the increased awareness of coercive control will help people recognise it in all sorts of relationships and increase the support available to people to get out of them.
My father raised my sister and I to be completely dependant on him, so much so that he actively kept us from learning about the world.
I didn't make a friend until I was 14 years old. I wasn't allowed to have friends. We were locked in the house. Only allowed to go to school and shopping which we were escorted to and from. We were prisoners.
Plus the violence and emotional abuse.
The damage he did to me in particular, led me down an incredibly bad path because I literally didn't know better.
He died alone.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. 🫂
Families can be awful to each other, but we seem to have a bizarre cultural blind spot to abuse that occurs beyond childhood (as well as to the real ongoing impacts of that abuse). Once you are an adult people tend to act as if everything is a misunderstanding that can be resolved through some stereotyped Hallmark movie moment and all old people are assumed to be sweet and innocent. No, some people are just awful and they don't magically change once they hit a certain age. People dying alone is often blamed on a cold and uncaring society but in reality it can also be people lying in the bed they made for themselves.
If we want to make meaningful changes in our society we need to accept that multiple different stories can be true and relationships are complicated - people can be both victims and perpetrators, they can have good relationships with some people and bad relationships with others and single cookie cutter responses based on unrealistic stereotypes often do as much (or more) harm as they do good.
This is absolutely so true and very rarely acknowledged or talked about. Both men and women can be abusive and commit coercive control in family relationships. The key attribute is an abuser will choose a victim they find vulnerable and work to keep them that way. For men it might be a female partner, for women they will often do it to a child or an elder. Male to female romantic relationships is visible but talking about other kinds of family coercive control is often laughed at or disbelieved, or worst of all, accepted as cultural norm. It is very very real and creates life long trauma for the victims. I think people who had normal childhoods can never really understand how toxic and devoid of love some parents can be.
The cultural norms part is definitely an issue here too - a lot of the people trapped in these caregiver roles either have other family members calling them selfish for wanting something different (I think we probably need to recognise that coercive control can be commited by groups of peoples as well as individuals) or have internalised that idea and think they are being selfish themselves. Seeing someone worrying about being selfish when they have given up everything else in their lives to care 24/7 for parents who are constantly abusive and require more physical care than one person can reasonably handle is heartbreaking.
@RustyRaven @briongloid i've seen versions of this on my family and my mother wanted me to fit into this role when my dad died.
My cousin was adopted for this reason inmind basically an indentured servant to her adopted family. She had 4 older siblings with a ton of money that could easily afforded to put mom in a nursing home. Instead she had to do elder care until my auntie passed away from Alzheimer's. No family of her own, worked in retail for a day job to support herself.It looks to be a fairly common situation - hopefully the reddit sub is a self-selected group with a higher than normal number of people in that position, but so many people posting there are miserable and feeling trapped. I went on there looking to get a bit more of an idea of what caring will be realistically like (I'm intending to care for my mother in future) and was not really prepared for the sheer volume of people who are being abused and don't realise it. I mean I love my Mum, but I would not care for her if it would leave me broke and homeless, and if she develops dementia and starts to scream 24/7 or smear her own shit all over the walls she's going into a home. No one should be in a position where they feel they have no choice but to live like that.
There are so many parallels to the experience of “battered wives” who eventually retaliate against their abuser.
What happens is there is a tipping point when women become physically stronger than men. It's because women continue to do physical work around the house and men lose their testosterone and do no exercise. It's around age 65-70.
and increase the support available to people to get out of them.
family support is the best way but what happens is abusers tend to isolate their victims
Some abusers do worse than isolate their victims, they manage to get others on side supporting their abuse. In romantic relationships it might take the form of acting charming and winning over the family with public displays of affection so that when the partner expresses concern about problems their own family dismiss them. In parent/child relationships it can take the form of treating one child as a scapegoat so the whole family learn to treat them differently - a lot of the stories in the caretaking forum have people with extended families all presuring them to stay in abusive caretaking relationships while they offer nothing but criticism and blame the caretaker for being "selfish" if they ask for any support. Escaping abuse from one person is hard enough, when your entire family joins in it would be near impossible ☹️
I suppose to a very mild degree I'm going through this.
When I go to the p's (in their late 70's) down the bellarine i'm expected to shop, cook, clean, garden, maintain the house (ladders, heavy stuff).
We all get along well (usually).
The benefit I get is free use of the place no questions asked. The reward is proximity to beach, can grow stuff, it's an escape and the solitude is bliss etc.
So far it hasn't strained relationships. It is control, but the reward is something I'm glad I never threw away. Mental health wise that place has been amazing. Sure you have to do stuff. Some risky, some cumbersome and you can't say no.
My brother on the hand has refused to care and the resentment from p's is real.
I'm not sure where my mind stands on the matter.
I think most people with a healthy relationship will do some things for their parents as they get older. But there is a line where it becomes unreasonable - imagine that your parent's live in a place you don't like being in or get benefit from going to (which may be how your brother feels) and you are expected to give up all of your free time to do those things. I'd be pretty resentful of being expected to give up all of my own free time and happiness to be a worker bee for my parents. It sounds like you are currently in a position where you consider the balance between what you are giving and receiving to be fair, which is a positive thing for both you and your parents. But where you have mismatched expectations and priorities (which could be the situation with your brother) it can really tear relationships apart. (I'm not saying this is the actual situation in your family, just projecting a bit and using it as an example!)
For my situation I think caring for my mother will work out well for both of us and should actually be financially beneficial as well. My sister on the other hand is in a completely different situation - she and her husband have been working towards being able to partially (or even fully) retire early and are looking forward to being able to enjoy their free time. Expecting her to give up what she and her husband have been working towards would be way too much, whereas for me giving up a job I'm not enjoying that much these days is a bonus! I'm anticipating my sister being the "fun daughter" that pops in to take mum out to lunch occasionally while I'm the one doing all the hard work and cleaning 🤣 . But that's a role I am choosing of my own free will, not one that is being forced onto me. If it did not suit me we would work out other solutions.
This has been a brilliant discussion and thankyou for posting about this issue. I've just read it now and it all resonates with me very strongly. It seems I share a lot of the experiences posted here, as someone who was groomed by abusive parents to be their carer and worse. With both parents passed a long time now, it surprises me sometimes how fresh the anger, hurt and indignation feels. I guess I was raised with it and it never really goes away, just hides for a while.
I've accidentally trained someone that when she bonks me with her head she gets a treat. Good times lol
@Gibsonisafluffybutt @briongloid Nawww, how cute 😻
I've inadvertently trained two of our babies to chatter when I pick up a ball, and the third to run down the corridor in preparation.
Also, we inadvertently trained one of our babies to SPRINT to the kitchen as soon as the fridge door opens.
(Yes, wifey and I have three cats.)
I can see how that could backfire….. drink in hand, kitty BONK…
Mine shakes hands for a treat. Sits on my desk and holds out a paw…
Bonk incoming
that when she bonks me with her head she gets a treat
well you're doing better than I am.
First it was a little nibble on my arm. So this is much better
Update on my wallet
Found it when I got home!
Thank goodness that’s a relief!
Maybe it’s good karma if you believe in it as I returned a set of car keys to someone who dropped them before I left work.
That's great! I hope you hadn't cancelled all your cards yet
Nah. Didn’t cancel my cards. Wanted to check at home first before I did anything.
@Duenan @briongloid Yaaay! 🍾 💰
So where was it?
It was on the floor next to where I normally put my bag hidden under a cleaning cloth.
Phew!
I wish I was a crow. I'm only 2km away from somewhere I need to go via crow, but 4km by car or 6km by PT
jayyysus stuck my nose in a google search for the first time in a long time and the fucking thing is unusable now
More and more species of human made services are falling victim to this mysterious illness many call enshittification. There's no known cure, but is spreading rapidly among impacted populations.
I'm pretty sure AI speeds up the enshittification process. I used to think all the sci-fi AI taking over the world stories were unrealistic dystopias, but it seems like the people in charge thought they were something to aim for. Things like robo-debt should have made us take a step back and think a bit about how we want to use AI but we still seem to be going full steam ahead with a plan of deliberately putting AI algorithms in charge of everything.
yup, I use duck and that uses google , so 🤷♀️ Is Bing usable ? How can bing be worse is the question.
raw googs is worse than duck duck
I would keep wondering whether I'd stumbled on some scam/phishing site given how assaulted I felt by the disgusting presentation. One of my work laptops is locked down tight so nothing I can do there, but I'm going to be looking for addons to deshittify goog when I have time. Absolute trash
Just don't use them. They gain you nothing
I accidentally left my teaspoon in the office kitchen when I washed my dishes the other night. I didn't realise until I went to eat my lunch just now. Went to the kitchen, and it was still there! Three days later!
I don't know what the odds of a teaspoon vanishing in an office kitchen are on any single day, but they must be over 50% across three days. I was lucky!
You're lucky, at my work teaspoons and spoons are a commodity here.
They get replaced on a regular basis and within weeks they all go missing.
I've had random utensils join my cutlery drawer. Nope. Get out.
I've seen things be in office kitchen sinks for months. I consider work sink cleanliness a measure of how much I want to work at a place. Or maybe it reminds me of gross share housing and gets on my nerves.
Eric Bana could have been a huge Hollywood top shelf A lister and had a huge cinematic career but chose a work/life balance and be happy.
Damn him.
I think I'm going to do it. I'm going to betray my barber and find another one.
I can't do these places that only accept walk-ins. I want to book a time and get it over and done with.
I don't want to sit in a barber's for an hour watching a Ministry of Sound playlist waiting to get my hair cut
I can’t do these places that only accept walk-ins. I want to book a time and get it over and done with.
RIGHT?! 5-10 years ago this was amazing! These days having to wait friggin sucks!
I think no bookings and cash only is meant to evade the taxman but it's not convenient enough for me to want to help the barber out
wooooo. Today we had
- plumber to put in pressure reducer and new lever ceramic swishy tapware
- Cerycat to vet for checkup
- shitload of servers to complete and ship to nz
last now done, hubs at vet with cat, tapware completed, I'm having a bloody cuppa
No work for me today - colon went boom about an hour before I was due to start and my clients were a 97 yo and another household where both the client and the carer have autoimmune issues, so I phoned in and said 'it could be moving stress or it could be something, what do?' I was told very firmly regardless to Stay Home.
Back to the packing!I did not have brain worms on my politics bingo card. 🧠🪱🪱🪱
I'm out of the loop on this, huh?
Miss Meow is snoring away loudly in her tunnel tonight, so Mr Woof has taken over her bed in the corner. I think he's decided it's a good spot to look through the window and keep an eye out for marauding possums in the backyard.
Strange question: How do you ask for a nice big warm hug from your partner without ASKING. I feel like a need some spontaneous affection, like I come home and just get a bear hug or something. But asking totally ruins the feeling of the surprise. Coffee is like a lukewarm limp handshake for the soul, but I will take it!
Maybe say to her "sometimes I really want a hug without asking so when I put my arms out would you be ok with that". If you do that often enough it becomes habit.
I feel sad you have to ask for a hug but if you don't communicate with your partner then they don't know what you want.
Also important to recognise you might have different "love languages".... Yours might be physical touch and theirs might be words of affirmation for example... Which is the case for us. I actually need to remind myself that my partner needs me to hug her.....
Yeah its deffo come up before, gets addressed for a few weeks then sort of falls apart, which is fine cause the need is addressed but in a few months I'll need it again and we just kind of spiral.
Is this a thing specifically about what happens when you come home? If so you might want to think about role shifting and how that is working for both of you - you have had time on the trip home from work to mentally make the shift from your working role to your home role, but she is going instantly from her role of mother to partner and might need more time to mentally make that shift. Talk to her about what she thinks about it, but it might work better for you both if you start a routine along the lines of you taking tiniest for a while to give her some time alone to just regather her thoughts and prepare to be "partner" and not just "mother" - maybe take a shower, go for a walk, whatever works for her.
Good point, but this predates the kid. I think its just a fundamental difference in love languages I guess.
RAAAR bear noises, approach with arms outstretched
casual touching is something you foster, but if they ain't picking up the messages a spoken reminder of your needs is a must.
haha thank you!
hugs
I suggest when you get home you give the hugs. Do it all the time. Hopefully hugs will become more of a thing and you receive hugs too.
thank you! Yeah, be the change you want to see hey.
Thank you Brion.
I guess I'll hang my feet off the side of the bed thenWell, you see, that's her bed lol. You just, like, rent it occasionally.
They really do requisition all of our furniture. I will never get over how beautiful she is 😍
she's the best buddy 🥰
They have changed the shape of Strepsils. I don’t recall having given permission for this.
Ooooo let me guess the shape.
Dodecagonal.
@CEOofmyhouse56 @Catfish Oooh, can I guess the shape?
I guess it's...
Shrinkflated.
The shape is shrinkflated, isn't it?
Was awake at 4am and grabbed to cat for a cuddle in bed. Cat fell asleep cuddled up. Cat suddenly wakes up some time later, and leaps into the air off the bed. Lucky I only got a small scratch.
My spicy cat came in for snuggles at 4am too. Very unusual behaviour from her. She ended up with her front paw on my mouth, but I couldn't move because snuggles!
Miss Meow has been coming in for cuddles a lot more now that the weather is cooling down. I sleep on my side so she usually curls up on top of me. She's pretty good at moving off if I roll over and then climbing back on again, but if I move too much she either curls up at the end of the bed or leaves the room entirely. If she is still there in the morning she is generally displaced by Mr Woof's enthusiastic jumping when he decides it is time to get up.
This gentle pitter pat rain is perfect for the garden. Was looking a bit dry.
Excellent for my (very reluctantly and resentfully) newly relocated pot plants and the generally dusty environs. And so good for bedtime. Loving it.
yay, a little rain 😊
I've been getting to sleep super early (around 8/9pm) for over a week, and it's been going well, it's nice to be awake for sunrise. But tonight it just wasn't working. Tossed and turned from 8 until 10, finally got to sleep sometime around 10:30 or maybe 11, then had a bad dream and scared myself awake by 4. Can't get back to sleep, so I guess my day starts now
I had a haunted dream, dreamt of a big building with haunted medieval face carvings that moved, then a big relief carving of an elf came to life and tried to kill us.
I don't even remember what was in my dreams last night, but I do remember it wasn't fun
Up early after Zooks woke me up by sitting on my shoulder, so I decided I'd tackle some more clearing and sorting.
Last day of work before the move. Kinda wish I'd taken this week off as well, but I suspect I would have faffed around more if I had. Plus I wouldn't have scored free cat food from one of my clients after her cat sadly died.Really great week so far at work. Falling quite behind on personal/life admin because I usually have no brain for it when I get home and I'm just fully switched on at work. This weekend I better not fall sick or have some other shit suddenly happen... I do need to smash through a lot of stuff.
I am glad that I feel engaged enough at work that I neither feel like I'm drowning, nor bored enough to be on my phone - it's been really great having hours away from my phone and actually concentrating on something else (and getting paid for it), even though it's behind a screen.
Cool. Time away from phone is good.
I get that you might like both but that's not the question. Team Coffee or Team Tea? Which side are you on?
Team Tea
I like both, but if I had to give one up and stick to the other I'd pick tea.
@CEOofmyhouse56 @briongloid Team coffee here. I need a flat white to start my mornings.
Unless, by tea, you're including bubble tea.
That's a much tougher question.
Does an apple green tea with rainbow jelly count as tea?
Tea all day long.
It's so much easier to make coffee than tea so I make myself coffee.
iow, i prefer green jasmine tea but it's too much effort
I'm Rockso the Rock'n'Roll Clown!
I do c-c-c-coffeee
Team decaf.
Jesus. Um I'll put you in Team Coffee.
Team Coffee!
Duenan you are the only person who read the post and answered correctly.
Movie review. Dream Scenario. Netflix.
Nick Cage plays a narcissistic arsehole who thinks the world revolves around him. More specifically, he is incredibility selfish in thought and action, never thinks of others or their point of view or suffering and he never does a single thing to help another. The internets chews him up alive and we cheer.
3 hobbits
sigh Misplaced my wallet earlier this week and I really needed it today.
Hopefully when I get home I'll be able to find it, highly unusual that it wasn't in my bag today as I thought I put it back in there earlier in the week.
Stressing about it.
doesn't help you right now but for when you find it again: sticking an airtag in mine has been one of the better decisions of my life!
I'll keep that in mind for next time!
It's in your pants that are waiting to go into the washing machine dw
I can almost say for certainty that it isn't the case.
Many years ago when I was living with my ex and his parents (I think I was 20), I came home from work in a foul mood and flung my wallet. Couldn't find it, had to cancel and get cards reissued, whole big kerfuffle.
A year or so later, I found it in the back of the closet 😑
What a pain that must have been for you to have all your cards reissued. Well hopefully I've just left it on the recliner or my desk at home and all will be good.
I remember having to go to the bank on Monday so that's why my wallet was taken out of my bag and I drove home with it in my pocket but blanks all round about what I did with it after I got home.
I realise this isn't exactly helpful, but I'm curious: What is in your wallet?
Mine has a credit card, public/private health cards (these cover the whole family), a drivers license and a Public Transport card. Literally nothing else. I never have cash.The Credit card never actually gets used because my phone handles payments. I don't use the health cards all that often. I rarely need my drivers license. That leaves the smartrider. It's honestly the only thing I ever really need in my wallet. Once the phone can do public transport trips in Perth, I could honestly go weeks without my wallet.
My license, bank cards, racv membership,and cash that I urgently needed to return to a friend of mine at work this week.
I don't have enough money for my friend if I can't find my wallet.
My neighbour has some sort of car alarm thing that goes off genuinely dozens of times a day. Day or night, it doesn't matter. I don't understand what the appeal is or what's causing it. Is the actual car alarm, complete with flashing lights, etc. it's been going on since before I moved in (so easily a year), mostly happens between 7-9pm, but less frequently at various times overnight
Just why
spent a whole hour trying to remember this song, started with the riff and the melody , words slowly came back, then the band, then all of a sudden I just knew it . This is my totes fave Foo Fighters song
Generator - foo fighters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhERrxABD5o
Awesome song and the intro is wicked!
Update: they agreed to my request (I think), but it's a 2 week waiting period until they actually change over the number. I lodged my requests yesterday, which is why I heard back so soon. It seems to be a mostly automated process, as far as I can tell. Everything's done down to the minute. The email telling me all of this came 24 hours after I submitted the request yesterday at 4:57pm, and they will call me at exactly 4:57pm on the 22nd to tell me it's been changed over (apparently).
I'm just happy they have procedures in place I guess. I have bad memories of losing accounts to lost phone numbers. I've learnt my lesson though, and will switch over to a proper TOTP app once I get back in. I'll probably buy a yubikey one day too
I expected the concreters over the road to lay a fairly standard driveway for the new townhouses, but they have instead set up some quite complicated formwork to create a series of irregular charcoal coloured blocks which I assume will have a lighter coloured infil for the gaps. Should look pretty good. They needed to use a huge amount of timber to set up the formwork though, including a bunch they were happily scavenging from a neighbour's hard rubbish pile. I guess that makes it a community endeavour.
Fresh chili cheese bread is delicious
So I found an iCloud account I setup half a decade ago with a phone number I no longer have. But I had SMS 2FA setup 😬
I still have access to the email bound to it, and know the password, and through old emails I was able to figure out which phone number was associated with it. I also still have the MacBook I registered the account with, although I think I just setup a new account rather than going through all the motions, and it has been reset a few times, so it's not recorded as a trusted device anymore.
Bet time: what do we reckon the likelihood of apple removing the 2FA is? My guess is probably a 35% chance they do, assuming nobody has my old number yet (if they do and they called apple and were like "yo what do? I didn't make no iCloud request dawg" then that probably goes down to like a 15% chance, unless the apple people asked for more info and confirmed that at the very least they aren't me, and can use that in their investigations, in which case it probably goes up to 75%)
spoiler
Tbh I don't really care that much, I only used it so that they'd stop hassling me about linking an iCloud account, so there's nothing on there I care about. But it is registered with my main email address, and I'd rather use that than trying to remember what other email I used for the new one
decent if you can prove ownership over devices that have been associated with it.
I initiated the request from my MacBook so hopefully. But if they ask for actual proof of ownership I'd be screwed. I don't generally keep receipts for 6 years, but I wasn't the one who bought it anyways
If someone claiming to be Apple called me and started asking me to confirm any of my personal details, I'd tell them politely to go away.
Presumably it'd be more of a "if you didn't request this, contact apple at apple.com/contact" or something like that, but yeah.
@briongloid Here's a question for everyone: What's your favourite colour(s)?
I'll start: Mine are teal and purple.
That part of an eggplant where it's turning from the 'aubergine' skin to the eggshell interior colour, especially if it's moist
purest blue aquamarine ( no green )
pale rose pink ( with no yellow )
I don't have a favourite. I like them all except for mustard/baby poo brown.
Red.
omg, the jalapenos i chopped for chilli bread are spicy 😵
Chili bread is now rising.
chili bread out of oven. Not risen very high but should yummy anyway
Ughh... I was just thinking how nice it was that there was an unscented soap I like at Coles, so I could just pop it in with the rest of my basics. Go to buy another box ...and it's gone 😭 Guess I'm doing this weeks shop at Woolies and getting a few boxes from there in case it's discontinued.
https://tilleysoaps.com.au/collections/tilley-specialty-soaps
stores that stock tilleys soap https://tilleysoaps.com.au/collections/tilley-specialty-soaps
Cheers!
It's a pain in the arse to have to order it separately and I'm not sure about lashing out on 5 bars of something I haven't tried, but I'll keep this in my back pocket. It seems unscented stuff is really getting phased out or rebranded as a premium product :/
'Tis the night for it!