I would like you all to welcome our first guest blogger. She is a very good friend of mine, and I have had to lean on her many times. She is one of the few people who knows the real me and accepts me for who I am. We met through work but very quickly became friends for life. If you met her, you would see a mighty rock of women. A dynamic professional and epic mum, she is also one of the most compassionate and understanding individuals I know. She has saved the lives of children and supported many others to save lives. Her understanding of exploitation is one of the best I have seen, and her knowledge of what life is like for some of our young people is not something you can teach. She is one of my heroes. My biggest shock from this blog is that she is 51!

But….we all have a story to tell. And this is hers….

Feeling responsible for men’s feelings started early for me.

My stepdad, who was nursing his own childhood trauma, adored me but was a moody, brooding man who could switch from a loving prankster to a rageful or silent presence in the blink of an eye. Some perceived slight, that left us all bewildered and baffled could change the atmosphere in our small house from fun to oppressive with no warning and no clue as to why. These dark, silent moods could last from a few days to weeks, during which time, we all made ourselves smaller and scarcer to avoid worsening it or prolonging it- star bursting to our respective rooms as we heard the thud of his work boots being dropped inside the front door at 5.30 sharp each evening.

When he was ” up”, my step dad was a joker, artistic, full of stories and love for me in particular. I was only 7, affectionate and adoring towards him. I have always said, I needed a dad and he needed a daughter and so this mutual love and adoration developed that brought and still brings, us both a lot of joy. As his undeniable favourite person, I was often charged with ” bringing him round” which meant being despatched, under my mum’s instruction to wheedle myself back in to his affections, using cuddles, funny stories and sometimes pleading to cheer up, to restore his good humour and therefore, harmony to our house. Before he officially moved into our home, his dark moods were often characterised by his self imposed exile, back to his own house, where he would shut himself away for days and often longer until, mine and my mum’s joint efforts of pleading and love bombing, could tempt him back to our home. My mum deployed me like a little peace envoy, an ambassador for our family, with the serious mission of negotiating the return of our missing family member… 

I remember one time, I was instructed to write my step dad a letter, telling him how much I missed him, how much I loved him and how I wanted him to come back. My mum drove me to his house and whilst she waited in the car, I posted it though his letterbox and then ran back to the car before returning home to see if I had hit the right mix of coaxing and guilt tripping to summon him back into the fold. I had, he returned the next day and we all squished down our feelings of unease with cuddles and my mum’s home cooking. I did that, I broke the evil spell and won the heart back of my step dad. My mum was happy, the house wasn’t heavy with confusion and sadness and we could all pretend that this was normal for us until the next fracture. I silently internalised this strategy for staying psychologically safe- if you love someone hard enough, silently accept you must right a wrong even when you don’t know what it is, squeeze down your own needs, worries and anxieties, you can make sure that the world maintains an equilibrium, everyone feels loved and in turn, loves you back…Easy…

Leaving home for uni was freeing- my own space and only my own emotions to take responsibility for, if you discounted the daily phone calls from my mum and the pressure to go home every weekend. Maybe her and my step dad didn’t function without my own special brand of glue, fixing cracks and breaks in the family dynamics and throwing enough love around from me so they didn’t have to face the fact that they no longer loved each other? 

Embarking on my independent adult life could have been a time of healing and reflection but back then, in the early 90s, we didn’t have the ready access to the social media wellbeing gurus and online content that have furnished millennials and Gen Zers with the emotionally articulate language they have adopted into every day parlance. With concepts of ” self care” ” generational trauma” and boundaries still 30 years away, I was destined to replay this dynamic time and time again before giving voice to it’s nature, roots and impact. As is the way when you are barely out of your teens, whatever your family set up and quirks, that is your normal and it is only through different perspectives and experiences that you begin to question what aspects of your upbringing were well, a little bit fucked up… It is a natural process of becoming an adult that you move form your idealised version of your care giver, to accepting that they too were flawed, less than perfect and that maybe, the way they parented you had left you with tendencies and behaviours that not only no longer serve you, but continue to bring pain in your adult relationships.

I remember going to stay at the family home my best friend from uni, Tina. Tina was well adjusted, calm and had only had loving positive relationships with men, that had all ended amicably. Spending time with her mum and dad, I began to put the pieces together of why she often balked at my chaotic, dramatic escapades and my seriously lacking boundaries…. Her dad was so obviously adoring of her and her mum, Brian was a loving presence, prioritising the happiness and safety of his wife and two daughters. I remember he dropped us to the cinema and said to let him know when we needed picking up, even if we went on somewhere and it was the early hours. WHAAAAT??? standard dad stuff these days I know, but I still remember that my mind was a tiny bit blown that this man saw his place as putting his needs behind that of his family. I now work in a male dominated area and see this behaviour daily but I still feel a little bit in awe ( and a tiny bit sad) that this has never been something I have experienced. 

Fast forward to now, I am 51 and whilst I now have the vocabulary, the behaviour is proving harder to crack, I was married to a man for 20 years who displayed the same traits and deployed the same tactics to have his needs met. They say you marry your dad, I married my step dad. It was familiar territory, the weeks of long, dark moods, the disinterest in family life and the oppressive atmosphere that settled over the house as he returned from work. Like me and my brother, our two young daughters slipped away to their rooms as they heard his key turn in the lock. In these moments, where we are presented with familiar patterns of behaviour, our nervous system responds in the way it always has to keep us safe. On auto pilot, I repeated those childhood patterns- I loved harder, I minimised my feelings and pleaded, cajoled and coaxed my husband into a better mood. I was so desperate to fix the family dynamics and make my home feel like the calm, balanced sanctuary I had missed out on, I didn’t pay attention to how my behaviour was keeping us all locked into this toxic dynamic.

I read a lot on relationships now- my algorithm makes sure there is a steady stream of content alerting me to my attachment style, the impact of trauma, ADHD- a lot of it resonates with me and whilst I now have the words and possibly an explanation, the tools to be different allude me. I am a people pleaser, maintaining calm, over reaching to make others feels loved and doing things that make me unhappy are still prevalent in friendships, work and intimate relationships. Yes, I am more aware and I feel like I am slowly edging towards practising the behaviours that feel counter intuitive to me and can make my nervous system protest loudly, but I am not there yet and the thought that I might never be can be terrifying. To never have a healthy relationship with someone who can understand and prioritise my needs, whilst being able to recognise and express their own???  How do you achieve it if you ‘ve never had it and you’re not programmed to recognise it?

I’m writing this now for two reasons; writing helps me process and articulate my thoughts and feelings and to hold myself accountable as I try to do things differently but more importantly, I have written this for my daughters. I haven’t plucked up the courage to share it with them just yet but one day I will and I hope it will go some way to helping them understand some of my decisions that I know have been hard for them to understand at times. Most of all, I hope it makes them vow to never make themselves smaller for other people’s comfort…