Dude you buried the lede here
Comment on How abnormal is it for a mother to be her son a fleshlight for his 18th birthday?
FATALRPG@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks agoHe’s slightly intellectually disabled (if she had permitted him to have an education, he’d probably be normal) and she was obsessed with him. His sexuality was something that was very “open” to the family, like we all knew about his Megan Fox poster with a hole in it (which she bought for him) and the used tissues in his room were… excessive. Never cleaned up, could smell it in my room.
At one point he chased me and my younger sister around the house waving his penis at us.
I experienced something complicated from her, which toes the line around sexual abuse but isn’t as direct as “she diddled me.”
I’m of course the black sheep and have zero contact with anyone other than my sister now for having pointed out how weird/abusive the family dynamics were…
Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Landless2029@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Agreed.
Both sides of my family are sex positive and a sex toy could work as a gag gift no problem.
We’re talking Christmas white elephant (that’s a present swap/steal thing) with adults only and sex toys/kits coming out.
In context this sounds like an abuse victim sadly.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He has been sexually abused by her, perhaps covertly. There is enough in what you described that if I was a mandated reporter, I’d be making a call. From what I know of CSA, he has multiple flags and signs of being sexually abused.
Highly recommend, when you feel okay to do so, to look up emotional incest first, and parentification/adultification. That will explain how your mother has been grooming your brother to be her stand-in husband. The reason she didn’t want him to go to school is because a husband her age wouldn’t go to school.
It sounds like your mom also had an emotionally incestuous relationship with you as well, so reading that material can be extremely “triggering” for you. My sincere condolences, it is very traumatizing. Reading about it can bring up old memories as your brain tries to organize old memories with this new information. Often people get tired, agitated, or even regress in age. Give yourself plenty of time to mentally adjust and read and lots of breaks outside walking around, ideally in nature, w eyeballs moving around. OR you can try to play a game like Tetris afterwards (Tetris is specifically studied as being helpful for PTSD/trauma).
I will also rec the book The Borderline Mother, I’m not sure this applies to her at all, but my guess is that it does
waitaminute@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Oh, almost everything in that reddit post resonates with me over my experience with my mom.
That’s a lot to take in. Thanks for sharing. Oof
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
To be honest, opening this knowledge up can be overwhelming and can take years. Take your time with it. I still get new memories of abuse that my brain had sort of locked away, it gets easier to assimilate over time though once you have a good foundation/framework for the trauma. The 2 best things for you to remember, is that 1) your mom’s traits are hers, not automatically yours or every mom’s or every woman’s, because she has her own mental illness that is just a “her” thing and 2) good rolemodels you had as a kid besides her, even teachers or therapists.
waitaminute@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Actually your first point is currently what I am worrying over. I went back and read through the whole thing but with me as a parent as the perspective and was trying to see if I am doing any of it as well.
I can’t stop reading and it’s midnight and I should stop reading. Lol. Feels like I opened a can of worms.
BertramDitore@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
That does help explain the strangeness of the whole thing, thanks for sharing. Sounds like things were pretty tough for you, so I’m sorry for that.
It sounds like he is a bit oversexualized (not sure if that’s the right term), but it doesn’t seem like it’s anything too out of the ordinary for someone figuring themselves out. Many of us probably pushed things a bit too far when we were little, I certainly didn’t understand how uncomfortable it made people for me to run around the house naked when I was young. But we all test boundaries like that when we’re growing up, and usually the adults around us help us find the right boundaries, not stretch them.
So yeah, with that new context, giving a fleshlight to her 18 year old son is very odd, and does raise some red flags. Sounds like you made the right call cutting things off.
nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
In that situation id say a fleshlight without a serious theraputic intervention on how to express sexuality in a healthy way is nothing but enabling very dangerous behaviors.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Dude, no. That is all super problematic.