Hi friends. Me again with more realizations of abuse, neglect and trauma from earlier years. It's amazing how I never saw them before (or made excuses for the perpetrators). Just yesterday, it occurred to me how everything with my dark tetrad parents (all four) was transactional and how they never kept their end of the bargain.
So let me begin by explaining transactional relationships (if this is an unfamiliar term). This simply means that one hand washes the other. Or that you get what you put into it. It's considered a bad thing for interpersonal relationships as it implies a business-like approach. Between parents and children, this is so. But I don't see it as a bad thing in adult relationships, even personal and romantic.
There has to be mutual giving. All relationships need a transactional element. There must be give as well as take of good. Years ago, my husband had a friend who always borrowed money. But he neither paid it back nor did he lend. He was always on the receiving, never giving end, of treats. Not surprisingly, he wore out his welcome. I don't think anyone would fault his friends for expecting reciprocity. Because without it, there is no friendship, only exploitation.
And that is what I have lived with all my life from my family of origin. Expectation and demands on me, without me ever getting good in return. Which is bad enough in a friendship but in a parent-child relationship it is abuse. Parent-child relationships are not supposed to be transactional. The parent doesn't give to the child because the child has earned it. They give good because they are parents and responsible for their child. The child owes her parents nothing because she did not ask to be born. She will most likely give back naturally if she is loved and cared for. But it's not quid pro quo. And their giving comes first and always, not after she's done "her part."
My parents (all four) did it just the opposite. They did not take care of me, even in the most rudimentary forms. A few needs were occasionally met, but most went ignored. I always say I grew up by accident, not through any systematic good parenting. BUT they also heaped endless expectations and demands on me. As if they were the children and I, the parent. Scratch that. Not parent. Fairy godmother, slave, drudge. It was an equal and opposite equation: the less they did for me the more I was expected to do for them. I was held to transactions I never agreed to, nor benefitted from. I continually paid for a car I could never drive away. I paid into an account I could never withdraw from. And I never realized till almost 61 how they did this. It was by giving words double meaning. And lots of double standards.
My parents and their spouses got years of free babysitting out of me because family and "it's your duty, obligation, responsibility" etc. I even co-slept with their babies like a parent so they didn't have to be bothered to. Because they had "jobs." It never occurred to me that I had three jobs, not counting the childcare: school, homework and hours of housework. Oh plus scapegoat and fixer whenever one was disgruntled with the other. And sex therapist (thanks, mom).
I was forced to clean their houses (I was not allowed to think of any as mine). I dusted their furniture, made their beds, mopped their floors, ironed and folded their clothing, prepared and cleaned up after, their meals.
My money was taken to fund their new families and I got nothing out of it, because "family does for family." But I wasn't family. I did for their family. My college saving bonds from grama were cashed in so my mom's unemployed boyfriend could have a motorcycle. Thank God my other grandparents didn't put her name on the savings account set up for me or she'd have drained that too. Things came up missing when they were around. I caught her in my wallet once. I wondered how many other times I didn't catch her. All this, according to them, was just payments on the enormous debt I supposedly owed them. They got really pissed if I asked about it.
BUT when I had my own family, it was a different story. Now it was pay as you go when I needed any help. Between all four parents, whom I'd babysat for non-gratis for decades, they couldn't even manage to care for our kids one lousy morning a week while I worked. And never at night for my night classes. If I had one of their kids babysit I had to pay dearly.
Dark tetrads are so good at flipping the narrative to suit their purpose. And then flipping it back again. Whenever I am expected to do for them, we're family again. So it's mates rates (free) when I give to them and a business transaction when they give to me. I used to chauffeur mother everywhere free and the one time I got a ride from the airport from them, I was charged $40.
Once she actually managed to double-deal in one transaction. She bought a car for her other daughter that daughter did not want (too big, not sexy enough). It was a lemon but mom didn't mention that. We were looking to sell our large car. She conned us into buying the lemon because "family helps family" but overcharged us like a common crook. And then offered to buy our car, but expected a special family rate.
It would have been bad enough if we'd traded cars because ours was worth about 10x what hers was. But she lied again, to both my husband and then to me, and said the other said she could have our car for $100 and that we'd buy the lemon for the full price she paid for it, $900. And she lied and said she'd transferred the title when she'd jumped it and we got stung for that extra fee too. Never do business with family.
It a gift when you give to them and a loan when they give to you. And they tell you loans are gifts so they can blindside you with unexpected, extortionist rates of repayment. Everything they do for or give you has hidden strings attached. And you're supposed to empty your wallet for them.
And don't even get me started on gift-giving fiascos in entitled family. They give you a used mop head and you give them a new vacuum (really). You give her a new phone for her birthday and she sends you a text, three days later. I was literally told that I was expected at all my dad's sons' birthdays and not to come empty-handed. As you do. And yet I can recall no birthday celebrations for me. It was my husband who pointed that out. That kind of double standard was so common I just got used to it.
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