Significant others of our kids, difficult and not

[Copabanana]

I wanted to be interesting.

Goneboy and my son whose lives have been like movies, cannot find it within themselves (yet) to meet themselves.

 

[BusynMember]

Copa, I agree. Very good analysis. Thank you.

My other racially different kids do not seem to have that issue. I am grateful.

Thanks again. Nice insight.

 

[BusynMember]

Copa, I agree. Very good analysis. Thank you.

My other racially different kids do not seem to have that issue. I am grateful.

Thanks again. Nice insight.

In his case. He is 38 and not interested in exploring anything. His religion is an issue too. He thinks he is a true Christian and nobody belonging to a denominational church is really Christian and only ex is Christian at all in the family. Wife's family is a bunch of ministers.

I know what he thinks of those who do not go to one of his approved churches. It is unlikely he will ever see differently. At least not in my lifetime. He is very rigid in his thoughts. And he is married to an equally rigid woman.

 

[Copabanana]

He is very rigid in his thoughts. And he is married to an equally rigid woman.

This is a very scary thread, SWOT. To me, it is.

That our kids, after all is said and done, can choose to ditch everything about their story, even us.

While one can see why goneboy did it and does it, at what price, to himself and to others.

 

[Ironbutterfly]

SWOT, I didn't know his wife came from a family of Ministers. Wow, I am a Christian and these people give Christians a bad rep.

I think some folks hit it right- he can't face to meet himself.

 

[BusynMember]

Copa it was a big fear of mine too which is why I wanted a lot of kids. I was afraid one would leave somehow, bit certainly not like this. I never imagined a kid would just decide f you. Ever. I was thinking what if the kid is in a car accident and dies. I had no idea that this child, who had always been so good and brilliant and is successful, would walk away. I get the creeps remembering how I felt at the time.

But your son never did this. He came to yoy MUCH younger too. He is not anything like Gone boy. Your son loves and needs you. Gone boy needs nobody. He is financially set for life, and believes he paid our family bills for us. Really????? He had no money until he left home and he left at 19.

Please don't get scared. All of my other kids are here aND your son WANTS to live with you. Do not personalize what @Gone boy did. Please dont. It won't happen to you. It's different.

Offering big hugs.

 

[BusynMember]

Iron butterfly, he was always looking for an identity. He found what works for him....Chinese and his strange untrue ideas of a great religion Christianity. He even speaks fluent Mandarin and has been to CHina five times.

We have no place in his Chinese Christian world. Plus we are not wealthy so he looks down at us.

We are better apart. I'm glad I knew Gone boy when he was young, before all this.

Gone boys wife and family came from China and most of the men are ministers. She is not that Americanized. But she is very smart...a surgical nurse.

 

[Copabanana]

Gone boy needs nobody. He is financially set for life, and believes he paid our family bills for us.

Goneboy has constructed a life, as if out of big paper cut outs, that pretend to be the real thing. And it seems he uses other people in the same way, manipulating them for what he wants.

Like my sister's and Cedar's photos of our families, and Cedar's mother's genealogy. They are just props to these people, who think that this is real life. It is very, very sad.

I heard about people that cruise the internet and steal other people's family pictures to use them to create new stories. How does what goneboy is doing differ? Props.

Very sad. I think you may be right. Goneboy has no deeper understanding of what life is, his life his, can be--because he has shut off his real core. Maybe he did this before he came to the US. Maybe it was a means to survive. Very sad.

 

[BusynMember]

Thanh you, copa. I think you are right. I love your great insight. It helps!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Iron butterfly, he was always looking for an identity. He found what works for him....Chinese and his strange untrue ideas of a great religion Christianity. He even speaks fluent Mandarin and has been to CHina five times.

When he would go to China, he would be received as a wealthy, powerful male who prefers their culture. With that kind of welcome, it would be as though his parents' deaths had never happened, SWOT. Through the wife, Gone Boy can reclaim the status of cherished son, in that male dominated culture where family connection means everything. Would the situation be different if Gone Boy had been female, I wonder. I believe that it would. A woman would have been received differently. For an orphan child to be valued for the very things his early life will have taught him would never be possible for him in that Chinese culture where family defines us...maybe that explains why he does what he does, SWOT?

That, and the fact that the daughter of Christian missionaries (!) sits on Gone Boy's lap when his mother is in the room. You were right in your initial perception that Gone Boy's wife held an intention from the beginning to separate Gone Boy from his family. What kinds of conflicts were being set up between you and your son because of the immediacy of that warm female bottom on his lap?

I think you are right SWOT in loving Gone Boy for the child he was, and in keeping that child in your heart. I know you suffer for his absence.

Sometimes, there isn't anything more we can do.

That we can find and remember and cherish that we love someone, whatever they are doing to us and whoever they turned themselves into once they were gone from us...I don't see any harm to any of us in our choice to see in this way. When someone rejects us, the hardest part of that experience is understanding who we are, now that the rejection happened. That the person first contemplating and then, carrying out the rejection (or, in my case, the abusive incident) meant it, and means it.

They might have chosen a thousand other decencies. Instead, they chose to do what they did.

Right up close and personal.

How do we incorporate that without condemning either the victimizer or ourselves? A beginning understanding would be: Do not fear rejection.

Do not fear it.

To remember our children when they were children, or, for me, to remember my people when I did not know what I know now ~ to remember a time when thinking about them brought joy ~ I think that is the right thing to do, for us. For ourselves, I mean.

This thread has called so many emotions I did not realize were there inside me so strongly.

But I really like that choice to love from another time. If we are not seeing our person(s) we love, as you are not seeing Gone Boy and I am not seeing anyone...loving them, and loving ourselves in our time with them, can help us.

I see that, now.

Thank you for this thread, SWOT.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

For anyone who maybe interested in specific of my church meeting with Gone boy and wife, read my long post under "if you love something let it go." It is one of the posts in that thread. I can't write it twice...lol. have a headache writing it once!!!

 

[BusynMember]

Oh, and nobody in China knew Gone boy was an orphan. He didn't tell anyone, I'm sure. He went to see her family and for business only. No extended trips. He actually is from Hong Kong. He has been there too.