Hacker News Reader

Comment by mise_en_place | Hacker News Reader

The scariest thing about having abusive parents is that you end up becoming like them. It took me many years to understand why my relationships would all fail. In hindsight, I was emotionally abusive to a lot of my partners. I will not offer an apology for it, as that just feels hollow and empty. All I can say is that I am trying to be better.

View on HN

For some people, hearing an apology means something even if you feel like your words are hollow and empty. I had a difficult upbringing too, but I have never repeated the mistakes of my parents in my own relationships. I wonder if that difference is related to how early someone realizes that their parents shouldn't be treating them this way. It's harder to recognize certain behaviors when you don't know what to look for.

Could it be that you won't apologise because a part of you fears that the apology might be used against you?

The recovery process will necessarily pass by trusting people again, and making yourself vulnerable to them. That is the only way you can experience that they behave like normal human beings who won't exploit your weaknesses.

This reminds me of a line in Bojack Horseman (a show that you might enjoy if you haven't watched it, it deals with these issues):

“You do this thing where you don’t think you can ever be forgiven, so you don’t apologize, but I can’t forgive you if you don’t say you’re sorry”.

An apology is only hollow if it's not followed up by any action.

I was just about to write the same thing. No matter how much I understand my parents, or how much I progressed through years of therapy, I hate myself when I'm doing the same things I hate in them. My therapist says the progress I made so far is tremendous and I can't expect myself to progress much faster and I should be proud of myself. However no matter all the progress if I keep causing suffering on people I love. It's really hard to forgive myself sometimes and I keep wanting to run away.

‘All I can say is that I am trying to be better’ There is a lot more in your reply but I hope that you find the way to locate the ability to remove those shackles.

Can you say more about how you leanred about that one? Feeling at square one.

At some point you become self aware, for me it came after a girlfriend of 6 years just left one day.

I went through lot of anxiety after that. But i realized where it was alll coming from, it's as if I always knew how to act better in hindsight but when I was facing the situation I almost always couldn't do anything good.

Not that she wouldn't have left if I was good, people leave all time for whatever reasons. But I could still have been nicer to her I feel, she was also similar to me so it's not like she was always nice to me but I could have shown her better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com