Curious, Josh. While I also believe it likely that your mother was full-blown BPD by the time she conceived you, do you think your biological father had experienced that crazy? I mean, there's manipulating to trap a guy, and then there's the full-on crazy making experience of a borderline. Did you ever get any sense of the total of what he experienced from her? And just to make sure - no, I'm not looking to excuse him. In fact, it would be worse if he walked out on you after having experienced full meltdown BPD episodes.
I ask because I am trying to understand how I came to be so completely taken in by a "friend" and her "story". I don't consider myself gullible or naive but damn, did I ever miss the boat. So many things I see now, and so many things I wonder. How different would several lives be if only other people had made different choices - me included.
I can only guess, but I think it's likely he experienced her BPD, yes. How much and to what degree, I cannot say. We didn't get to deep levels of conversation about that; it was decades before I realized what my mother was. I was a different person with a very different outlook and ability to take in information almost 30 years ago.
Thank you for sharing these stories from your childhood and early 20’s. The humiliation and dance of two abusers you mention reminded me of the book “Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty” by Dr. Roy Baumeister (https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=18SJXXCWKQRY5&keywords=evil+roy+baumeister&qid=1700954349&sprefix=evil++roy%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-1). He speaks of the critical danger that humiliation brings when dealing with a person of high (but unstable) self-esteem. The impressive volumes was recommended by fellow substacker Rob Henderson, a man who spent many years in foster care and has excellent insight into the human condition just as you do. I think you might get much out of the work, particularly as you explore the Cluster B society we find ourselves in.
Thanks for the alert about the audio podcasts. I was unaware, but I'm getting them loaded up now. Apologies.
As for whether my mother knows about Disaffected, before I answer your question, I have one for you. Are you asking me a question, or are you making a statement, an implication?
Glad to clarify. Just asking a question, one I’ve had for a good while but never felt okay about asking. I guess the only implication would be that I would worry about its impact on you if she did.
Thank you for clarifying. I assume she knows about it; it would be highly unlikely for her not to know about it.
It's no concern of mine whether she does, or what she thinks of it. I made a decision to tell the truth, and I was not willing to wait like Christina Crawford did, for my mother to die. If she didn't want her business splayed out in public, she should not have tried to destroy her children.
I do not do this for "revenge" (that's a common assumption, I'm not attributing it to you, Leslie, but saying it out loud for onlookers). I do not wish any harm on my mother; but I am indifferent to her.
This is about me and my project; she doesn't factor into it.
I was thinking more in terms of a movie scene, like her showing up on your doorstep begging to share in your project, especially as it’s becoming better known. I don’t mean to confuse your actual experience with my personal musings about your mother (who’s become a character in my mind). And I’ve never thought of you as a revenge seeker, but as just a guy honestly trying to free himself—and perhaps help others do so—from a destructive family relationship.
Hehe, it makes sense to think of her as a movie character; I get that for sure.
Yeah, I've pondered the possibility of her showing up, or of her finding some publication that will let her "tell the truth about my abusive son." Those are possibilities, but if they happen, I can handle them with dispatch. I'm not afraid of her, and she's always been a liar who denied what she did anyway.
She won't get any traction in my life. I believe (may be wrong) that I've sufficiently scared her that she won't try to tangle with me. She was not expecting how hard I got through the eviction. She had never seen me like that before. As hard and blunt as I can be, believe it or not, I had never told my mother no in my adult life, and I hadn't "disobeyed" or told her "no" since I was 13.
I do not mean this to detract from your own story, but it's incredible to see the parallels between your early experiences and those of my husband. It occurred to me not long ago, because you wrote something about reacting badly to bleak situations. He is the same. His mother got pregnant with him at 16, the father was a couple of years older. She dropped out of school. The father abandoned them. The mother and the stepfather she married when he was 4 or 5 were horribly abusive. They were poor, my husband calls himself white trash. He left home at 16 or 17, fell into alcoholism and drug abuse for 15 or 20 years, spent many of those in an abusive relationship with a cluster B. Some of your triggers and responses to things sound very similar, from what you share with your audience. Early sustained abuse does damage that is unmistakable when you know what to look for. Thank you for being so open.
Please know that I don't take comparisons as an attempt to dilute my own experience. It's not a zero-sum game. My story is not unique; the sharing of common experience is a good thing.
I have my sore spots where I lash out, but this is not one of them.
You may be many things Josh, but one thing you aren't is a coward. What you are doing and have been doing requires bravery of the kind isn't even found on the battlefields of a kinetic war.
You've probably been asked this before, but what was your mother's childhood like?
My mother's childhood was broken. Alcoholism in both parents, including during pregnancy, and a very late pregnancy in those days (grandmother was 40 in 55 when she had my mother). Grandmother, I suspect, also had Borderline Personality Disorder. Grandfather died when mother was 11.
Grandmother's next daughter was profoundly retarded, and my mother felt neglected in her own care because of it. Grandmother left the kids home alone to go out on the town for a time, too.
Very unhappy and poor. My mother came by it honestly.
I suspected as much. To be clear, nothing *excuses* parents for royally screwing up their children, but this is an *explanation*, albeit an unsatisfying one.
There's an episode in this on how women CAN BE PREDATORY. I have a few stories of predatory pregnancies in my anecdotal evidence belt.
I too am a "bastard." In my case, my mother didn't have the guts to tell my biological father that she was pregnant. Someone else wanted to marry her, so she went that route. When I was sixteen, she told me -- as I was passing by on my way out the door. In my thirties, I met him. He was kind. The experience was uncanny -- like what Josh describes when watching the film. Certain quirks in my own personality were in full play in this man. I wish my mother had married him instead, though. I belong to the statistics of kids abused by a 'step' parent. The exception is that I still see my 'dad' as my dad and that my real father is somewhat an abstraction.
My 'dad' died when I was 20. It's so odd that both of my parents are still living. My father is in his mid-90s. We corresponded for a while, but stopped at some point.
One thing the feminists forget is that men have been obligated to pay for the children of other men since the beginning of time.
As someone who is childless, and would have liked to have the ideal marriage with kids, it always blows my mind that such people were given the gift of a child and just tossed it away so callously. I'll also add somewhat controversially that I wonder if abortion on demand enabled this sort of behavior, giving the selfish guy an "out" (or so he thinks).
Unfortunately this tangled web of mental disorders, single parents, step fathers, violence and emotional abuse is quite common. I am sad that it affected your life so much. Every child deserves a loving and safe childhood.
I can't understand your pain at a deep level, but I know enough to recognize it. My immediate reaction was to return a comment with some stock answer. I have figured out enough about life to know that at some level--because the world is not as it should be--every one of us experiences some pain derived from parents and growing-up dysfunction, and our reaction to it. The challenge seems to lie along the lines of recognizing the pain and dysfunction, and integrating our response into becoming through and despite them. Still, the world, including the portion we help make, will not be perfect before the ultimate restoration. (I'm not sure how to express that last free of trite, but I know it to be true, and worthy of extensive thought and development.)
Since I've made a show, and a writing spot, heavily based on my upbringing (but extrapolated to the problems we see in society now), it seemed reasonable to answer a reasonable question I've gotten lately about where my father was in all this.
The problem of fatherlessness is huge one; I think we can all see what this has done to so many Western children.
Dysfunctional people have a knack for attracting equally dysfunctional people and hence an outcome like this. I had 2 dysfunctional parents and they fed off each other while being codependent on the other’s dysfunctional state. Luckily I had to be independent as a child and that enabled me to not inherit their emotional shortcomings.
Of course. As I acknowledged.
Curious, Josh. While I also believe it likely that your mother was full-blown BPD by the time she conceived you, do you think your biological father had experienced that crazy? I mean, there's manipulating to trap a guy, and then there's the full-on crazy making experience of a borderline. Did you ever get any sense of the total of what he experienced from her? And just to make sure - no, I'm not looking to excuse him. In fact, it would be worse if he walked out on you after having experienced full meltdown BPD episodes.
I ask because I am trying to understand how I came to be so completely taken in by a "friend" and her "story". I don't consider myself gullible or naive but damn, did I ever miss the boat. So many things I see now, and so many things I wonder. How different would several lives be if only other people had made different choices - me included.
I can only guess, but I think it's likely he experienced her BPD, yes. How much and to what degree, I cannot say. We didn't get to deep levels of conversation about that; it was decades before I realized what my mother was. I was a different person with a very different outlook and ability to take in information almost 30 years ago.
Thank you for sharing these stories from your childhood and early 20’s. The humiliation and dance of two abusers you mention reminded me of the book “Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty” by Dr. Roy Baumeister (https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=18SJXXCWKQRY5&keywords=evil+roy+baumeister&qid=1700954349&sprefix=evil++roy%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-1). He speaks of the critical danger that humiliation brings when dealing with a person of high (but unstable) self-esteem. The impressive volumes was recommended by fellow substacker Rob Henderson, a man who spent many years in foster care and has excellent insight into the human condition just as you do. I think you might get much out of the work, particularly as you explore the Cluster B society we find ourselves in.
Josh, if you don’t mind me asking: Does your mother know about Disaffected? Does that probability ever give you pause?
(Also, is the podcast not on Apple anymore? The last two episodes aren’t yet up.)
Thanks for the alert about the audio podcasts. I was unaware, but I'm getting them loaded up now. Apologies.
As for whether my mother knows about Disaffected, before I answer your question, I have one for you. Are you asking me a question, or are you making a statement, an implication?
Glad to clarify. Just asking a question, one I’ve had for a good while but never felt okay about asking. I guess the only implication would be that I would worry about its impact on you if she did.
Thank you for clarifying. I assume she knows about it; it would be highly unlikely for her not to know about it.
It's no concern of mine whether she does, or what she thinks of it. I made a decision to tell the truth, and I was not willing to wait like Christina Crawford did, for my mother to die. If she didn't want her business splayed out in public, she should not have tried to destroy her children.
I do not do this for "revenge" (that's a common assumption, I'm not attributing it to you, Leslie, but saying it out loud for onlookers). I do not wish any harm on my mother; but I am indifferent to her.
This is about me and my project; she doesn't factor into it.
I was thinking more in terms of a movie scene, like her showing up on your doorstep begging to share in your project, especially as it’s becoming better known. I don’t mean to confuse your actual experience with my personal musings about your mother (who’s become a character in my mind). And I’ve never thought of you as a revenge seeker, but as just a guy honestly trying to free himself—and perhaps help others do so—from a destructive family relationship.
Hehe, it makes sense to think of her as a movie character; I get that for sure.
Yeah, I've pondered the possibility of her showing up, or of her finding some publication that will let her "tell the truth about my abusive son." Those are possibilities, but if they happen, I can handle them with dispatch. I'm not afraid of her, and she's always been a liar who denied what she did anyway.
She won't get any traction in my life. I believe (may be wrong) that I've sufficiently scared her that she won't try to tangle with me. She was not expecting how hard I got through the eviction. She had never seen me like that before. As hard and blunt as I can be, believe it or not, I had never told my mother no in my adult life, and I hadn't "disobeyed" or told her "no" since I was 13.
Back episodes are up now!
Thanks so much!
Thank *you* for listening, and for bringing it to my attention. It's been a madcap couple of weeks for both Kevin and me with life stuff going on.
I do not mean this to detract from your own story, but it's incredible to see the parallels between your early experiences and those of my husband. It occurred to me not long ago, because you wrote something about reacting badly to bleak situations. He is the same. His mother got pregnant with him at 16, the father was a couple of years older. She dropped out of school. The father abandoned them. The mother and the stepfather she married when he was 4 or 5 were horribly abusive. They were poor, my husband calls himself white trash. He left home at 16 or 17, fell into alcoholism and drug abuse for 15 or 20 years, spent many of those in an abusive relationship with a cluster B. Some of your triggers and responses to things sound very similar, from what you share with your audience. Early sustained abuse does damage that is unmistakable when you know what to look for. Thank you for being so open.
Please know that I don't take comparisons as an attempt to dilute my own experience. It's not a zero-sum game. My story is not unique; the sharing of common experience is a good thing.
I have my sore spots where I lash out, but this is not one of them.
You may be many things Josh, but one thing you aren't is a coward. What you are doing and have been doing requires bravery of the kind isn't even found on the battlefields of a kinetic war.
You've probably been asked this before, but what was your mother's childhood like?
Well, that's very kind to say.
My mother's childhood was broken. Alcoholism in both parents, including during pregnancy, and a very late pregnancy in those days (grandmother was 40 in 55 when she had my mother). Grandmother, I suspect, also had Borderline Personality Disorder. Grandfather died when mother was 11.
Grandmother's next daughter was profoundly retarded, and my mother felt neglected in her own care because of it. Grandmother left the kids home alone to go out on the town for a time, too.
Very unhappy and poor. My mother came by it honestly.
I suspected as much. To be clear, nothing *excuses* parents for royally screwing up their children, but this is an *explanation*, albeit an unsatisfying one.
There's an episode in this on how women CAN BE PREDATORY. I have a few stories of predatory pregnancies in my anecdotal evidence belt.
I too am a "bastard." In my case, my mother didn't have the guts to tell my biological father that she was pregnant. Someone else wanted to marry her, so she went that route. When I was sixteen, she told me -- as I was passing by on my way out the door. In my thirties, I met him. He was kind. The experience was uncanny -- like what Josh describes when watching the film. Certain quirks in my own personality were in full play in this man. I wish my mother had married him instead, though. I belong to the statistics of kids abused by a 'step' parent. The exception is that I still see my 'dad' as my dad and that my real father is somewhat an abstraction.
My 'dad' died when I was 20. It's so odd that both of my parents are still living. My father is in his mid-90s. We corresponded for a while, but stopped at some point.
One thing the feminists forget is that men have been obligated to pay for the children of other men since the beginning of time.
You're an excellent writer. Thank you for sharing this story.
As someone who is childless, and would have liked to have the ideal marriage with kids, it always blows my mind that such people were given the gift of a child and just tossed it away so callously. I'll also add somewhat controversially that I wonder if abortion on demand enabled this sort of behavior, giving the selfish guy an "out" (or so he thinks).
Unfortunately this tangled web of mental disorders, single parents, step fathers, violence and emotional abuse is quite common. I am sad that it affected your life so much. Every child deserves a loving and safe childhood.
I can't understand your pain at a deep level, but I know enough to recognize it. My immediate reaction was to return a comment with some stock answer. I have figured out enough about life to know that at some level--because the world is not as it should be--every one of us experiences some pain derived from parents and growing-up dysfunction, and our reaction to it. The challenge seems to lie along the lines of recognizing the pain and dysfunction, and integrating our response into becoming through and despite them. Still, the world, including the portion we help make, will not be perfect before the ultimate restoration. (I'm not sure how to express that last free of trite, but I know it to be true, and worthy of extensive thought and development.)
Thank you for reading.
Since I've made a show, and a writing spot, heavily based on my upbringing (but extrapolated to the problems we see in society now), it seemed reasonable to answer a reasonable question I've gotten lately about where my father was in all this.
The problem of fatherlessness is huge one; I think we can all see what this has done to so many Western children.
Dysfunctional people have a knack for attracting equally dysfunctional people and hence an outcome like this. I had 2 dysfunctional parents and they fed off each other while being codependent on the other’s dysfunctional state. Luckily I had to be independent as a child and that enabled me to not inherit their emotional shortcomings.