Growing Up Like Rapunzel

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]A few weeks ago, I was reading this book Rapunzel to my daughters when I had a very uncomfortable realization.

[00:00:07]This was not just a fairy tale. This was basically my childhood.

[00:00:12]And I don't mean the tower or the part where the witch takes the baby. I'm talking about the part where one person raises a child to believe that nobody else loves them.

[00:00:22]The part where everybody outside the tower is dangerous. And how the mother in Rapunzel isolates the daughter from the whole world. How the mother views love from anyone else as a source of as a threat to her.

[00:00:37]And as I sat there reading this book to my two little girls, memories started coming to the surface and I actually could not finish the book.

[00:00:47]Like when I talked to my godmother last year, she told me how my mom forbade her from watch from watching me and taking care of me because she thought that my godmother and I were becoming too close to each other.

[00:01:04]Or my mom's intense jealousy and competitive nature with my dad as a young girl. How she made me believe terrible lies, false allegations that caused me to fear him and hate him and eventually reject him for 20 years.

[00:01:19]The way that every single relationship in my entire life seemed to threaten her. My dad, my siblings, my friends, my extended family members, my boyfriends and yes, eventually even my husband and my own children.

[00:01:36]Which leads me to a question that I have been wrestling with ever since I came across this children's book, which is what if the tower was never a place at all?

[00:01:48]What if the tower was actually a relationship?

[00:01:51]One of the most sacred relationships.

[00:01:54]Today, I want to walk you through moments in my life that made me ask that question.

[00:02:01]We're going to talk about patterns I didn't recognize as a child and why my relationships often became sources of conflict with my mom.

[00:02:11]How parental alienation entered the picture and why things intensified when I reached puberty.

[00:02:17]And last but not least, what happened when my mom finally encountered the one relationship she could not control.

[00:02:27]My marriage.

[00:02:29]Including the story of how she tried to get my husband to divorce me.

[00:02:34]And I want to talk about why for most of my life I thought all of this was completely normal.

[00:02:41]Hi, I'm Maddie and welcome or welcome back to the Anti-Alienation Project. Uh quick disclaimer before we start, this live stream is not about bashing my mom.

[00:02:51]It's actually just about under understanding my experience and the experiences of a lot of children who actually have a mother like this.

[00:03:01]I don't speak for all alienated children. I'm not a therapist or researcher.

[00:03:06]Everything I comes Everything I talk about comes from my own life and the lessons I've learned along the way. So take what resonates, leave what doesn't and please feel free to share your perspectives in the chat. So let's get started and I have a quick question for you guys to top it all off.

[00:03:22]Let me know what you think, chat. I want to know I'm here just to hear from you.

[00:03:26]Do you believe that a parent can genuinely love their child and still feel threatened by the child's other relationships?

[00:03:35]Is that authentic unconditional love?

[00:03:40]And if you have had a mother like this or a father like this, when did you start to realize that your childhood was not normal? I'm just curious to know.

[00:03:49]Now, before I get into the chronological order, which I've I have a little um like uh little checklist. I want to make sure I cover stuff, but I want to mention that I was told a lot of things my whole life uh from my mom that did not make a lot of sense.

[00:04:10]And now they do.

[00:04:11]And if you have heard any of these things uh it's actually quite common for parents like this, which I've heard described as a devouring mother. I'm not sure if that's true, but some things that I was always told were nobody else loves you like I love you.

[00:04:29]I'm the only person who truly loves you.

[00:04:32]Making me believe that nobody else actually loves me. And I believed all of this for a long time, you guys. I did.

[00:04:38]Which is crazy to think about now, but I did. I really believed she was true she was telling the truth.

[00:04:43]Or I'm the only person who truly cares about you. Everybody else doesn't really care about you.

[00:04:49]I'm the only person who has been by your side through it all.

[00:04:53]You know.

[00:04:54]Your friends don't really care about you. You know, your boyfriend doesn't really care about you.

[00:04:59]One day you'll look back on your life and realize that I was the only person who actually loved you.

[00:05:06]And then there were other things that would inspire guilt in me.

[00:05:10]Just to name a few, like I've sacrificed my whole life for you. I've done everything for you.

[00:05:16]You only get one mother.

[00:05:18]One day when I'm dead, you're going to regret X, Y, or Z.

[00:05:24]Now, I wanted to start with those things off the top of the off the top um that I was told, but let's just get through and I'm going to go through starting from when I was a baby.

[00:05:35]So, obviously I don't remember being a baby. I'm not one of those people who like remembers exiting the womb and oh my gosh, they can remember the first taste of food like I'm not one of those folks, but I have talked to family members a lot about my life because I've been trying to put the pieces of it together.

[00:05:56]Which no child should have to do, by the way.

[00:05:58]All children deserve to live in reality.

[00:06:01]But, I have restarted my relationship with my godmother. So, around the time that I went no contact with my mom and realized all these lies that she had told me and delusions I had been living in, forced to be living in because of her, um I connected with a lot of different family members, my dad, my stepmom, and one of these family members is my godmother, who I love so much. So, I've always been close to my godmother until I was not allowed to be.

[00:06:28]Um and I talked to her and she told me that when I was a young baby and a young toddler, she would sometimes watch me. Like she was babysitting me or watching me while my mom would work and she told me that as soon as my mom noticed that I was forming a close bond with my godmother as a child, baby really, uh my mom forbid her from taking care of me any longer. She wasn't Suddenly, my godmother was not allowed to babysit me, wasn't allowed to watch me.

[00:07:02]And this pattern continued.

[00:07:06]It just kept on going. Anybody who got too close to me, you could say that in a way my mom loved me so much that she could not let anyone else love me.

[00:07:18]And I will say it almost felt as the daughter being in the situation, almost felt like a sort of romantic possessive love.

[00:07:31]It felt like possession.

[00:07:34]Um so, this pattern continued with any family members, any friends, anyone.

[00:07:39]Even if If babysitter became too attached to me, "ink, you're cut out of my life." So, nobody was allowed to love me in my mom's eyes more than she did.

[00:07:50]Or even half as much as she thought she did.

[00:07:54]Okay?

[00:07:55]And now, as I got older into childhood, like 5 6 7 8, and I were when I look back on my own childhood and as I have throughout the years, I would never say I have any um sort of affection that I felt toward my mom.

[00:08:16]I feel guilty saying that because I've always wanted to feel natural affection towards her.

[00:08:23]But, I think one result of this devouring possessive love that she had for me is that it did not inspire me, her daughter, to have natural affection towards her. It just did not.

[00:08:41]Instead, what I remember feeling as young as the age of 4 and 5, and my first memories were fear and anger towards her.

[00:08:55]I wish that were not that was not the case. I wish that was not the case.

[00:09:00]But, that that that that is the honest-to-god truth and I'm curious if anybody else has had a mother like this.

[00:09:07]What were your earliest feelings that you had towards your mom? Did you have the the feeling of affection and natural love um and closeness toward her or wanting to be like her or was it more anger, fear, resentment?

[00:09:26]What was your experience like? Cuz mine was definitely >> [snorts] >> not uh wanting to be like her or feeling naturally close to her. It wasn't. But, my dad on the other hand, I I did have those feelings with my dad.

[00:09:43]And I loved my dad probably more than anyone else as a little girl.

[00:09:49]Um you know the term daddy's little girl? I don't really like those terms, mommy's little girl, daddy's little girl, but that's the the term that people would use with me and my dad. I was really close to my dad.

[00:10:02]Um and this, as you might imagine, did not fly with my mom. She did not like this. This was actually probably her one of her worst nightmares.

[00:10:12]Uh so, what we had >> [sighs] >> going on in the home was I had a really close relationship with my dad. I always wanted to play with my dad, always wanted to be with my dad. I wanted to be like my dad and I had that natural feeling of love and affection toward my dad.

[00:10:28]For those of you don't know, I'm oldest of five children. I have four younger brothers and so it was kind of special.

[00:10:33]I was the only girl.

[00:10:35]And clearly this was not approved by my mom.

[00:10:40]So, what she started to display, and even as a child I picked up on this, was jealousy uh of my relationship with my dad and a competitive nature.

[00:10:55]What this meant for me as a child is that for every action there was an opposite reaction.

[00:11:03]Uh if I went and got ice cream with my dad, the next night I would need to spend time with my mom.

[00:11:09]If I did I did My dad started this daddy-daughter adventure club. Uh he was head of it in our in our area and we would meet with other dads and daughters, go camping, do fun things outside, do arts, uh arts and crafts, and a bunch of fun things.

[00:11:25]And it was called um Indian Guides YMCA Indian Guides. It has since be been, I think, re- uh uh rebranded, but I did this uh daddy-daughter adventure club with my dad, and so guess we we loved it. We It was the time of my life. But, my mom, because she saw us doing that, she had to enroll me in Girl Scouts. And you might be thinking, "Oh, this girl on the internet is is complaining about being enrolled in Girl Scouts." It is so much deeper than that, you guys. Not only was Girl Scouts boring and like a tour to me, I didn't like it.

[00:12:01]I was forced to hang out with her just because she was trying to get even with my dad. This is the psychological manipulation and, honest to God, warfare that was occurring in my home. I couldn't spend a minute with my dad without having to spend an equal minute with my mom.

[00:12:17]And for everybody in the chat, thank you for the super super chat. I appreciate that.

[00:12:22]Um I'm going to get to all of your ques- questions and comments at the end of the video, so stick stick around for that.

[00:12:29]So, everything had to be equal with my mom and my dad, and I think despite this pers- perceived equality, my mom still knew that I preferred my dad.

[00:12:45]She had to have known that.

[00:12:47]Anyway, I get older.

[00:12:49]I'm about eight, maybe even seven, eight, when their marriage really implodes. It was never good, but at this point it was an environment that no child should have been living in.

[00:13:01]They should have gotten divorced a lot earlier than they did. Um and during their marriage, during the end of the marriage, that is when the manipulation truly began.

[00:13:12]My mom The part of my mom to get me to reject my dad by inspiring me to be afraid of him, to be resentful of him, angry at him.

[00:13:22]And you can watch all my other videos to go into that go into detail on how she accomplished this exactly.

[00:13:31]But she made me believe that he didn't love me, that he was abusive, that he was a narcissist lacking empathy, >> [clears throat] >> projection.

[00:13:43]What was that? Just kidding.

[00:13:45]But essentially, she she needed me all to herself. And there was There's a lot of psychology that goes into this interesting psychological construct that uh explain why this occurred.

[00:14:01]You can go check out my playlist on YouTube about Foundations by Dr. Childress. It's a book he wrote.

[00:14:07]And you can actually get that too on my Amazon storefront. It's an amazing book.

[00:14:12]It'll explain everything to you.

[00:14:14]If you lived through this, I would say it's a must-read.

[00:14:17]Um it explains how people with personality disorders have an inner core fear, like their worst fear ever. And it's a wound that is their own childhood trauma.

[00:14:29]And with narcissistic people, it's uh fear of rejection. With borderline personality individuals, it's um it's fear of abandonment. And I think my mom has both, honestly. But uh so the divorce is going to be a huge trigger for both of those internal wounds, both of those core fears, rejection and abandonment. It's like a two-for-one. It's going to hit that fear. And so what they do, these people with these core fears, personality disorders, they build their entire personality construct to prevent themselves from actually confronting that core fear.

[00:15:07]And uh borderline personality disorder people, uh for instance, they they cannot regulate their own emotions.

[00:15:16]Neither can narcissistic people either, really. But uh the borderline personality disorder cannot do it at all. And so, what they do is they use another person to regulate their own emotions. It's called a regulatory object. And in the marriage, this is usually the other partner. But then when the divorce or a threat of divorce comes into play, suddenly they cannot use their their spouse as their regulatory object. It's not going to work because they need regulation from the the the turmoil in the marriage. And so, she she naturally switched it to me as the oldest child. I had the the most the biggest capacity to uh offer her regulation.

[00:16:02]So, um yes, that is the main way that she managed to um get me to reject my dad was simply to become her regulatory object. And so, I was absorbing all her emotions, all of her her fear and sadness and anger. I was also having to regulate her her emotional state. So, anytime that my dad hurt her, whether or not it was true hurt, um you know, it was my job to to regulate her. And so, anytime that anyone hurt her, I'd become resentful at them because now you made a mess for me to clean up even though I was only like 7 and 8 and then 9. At 9 years old, um I fully mourned my dad like he was dead.

[00:16:48]Uh she involved the police. She involved false allegations, a protective order that completely separated us. And under the the years and years of intense pressure and manipulation, um I finally I finally did what I had to do to survive because it wasn't safe to love my dad, um and still have a relationship with my mom. So, I mourned him like he was dead.

[00:17:15]So, obviously, this Rapunzel syndrome really took a toll on my relationship with my dad. Now, if you are new here, I don't want you to think that's the end of the story cuz 4 years ago, I realized the truth about all of this, and I have had a beautiful relationship with my dad since then. Um he's he's just one of the big biggest uh supporters of my life, and my daughters are obsessed with him. We have a great relationship now. I'm so grateful for that. So, there is a silver lining to my story.

[00:17:45]But now, let's talk about my siblings.

[00:17:47]So, as I mentioned at the top, it was like literally anyone in my life was not allowed to love me, and I was not allowed to love them unless it was my mom.

[00:17:55]Um again, not bashing my mom. This is just It naturally puts her in a negative view.

[00:18:00]Uh I love her. I forgive her. I get comments like that all the time. Just forgive your mom. Love your mom. I'm like, I do. I do. Like I do. It causes me pain that we can't have a relationship, but again, this is just the facts. These are the facts what she did. So, my siblings, once I reach puberty, I noticed a definitive shift in my treatment of my mom.

[00:18:23]Once I reached puberty, and I uh you know, I didn't have the braces and the glasses anymore. I was starting to bloom into a young woman, all of a sudden, it seems like she turned on me. Um which is so interesting because in this actual Rapunzel book, the It says, at least in this version by Paul Zelinsky, which has beautiful illustrations, and I love it because of that. But it actually says that she was allowing Rapunzel to like walk around in the garden and everything. And then she's It says here, "When she reached the age of 12, the sorceress let her into the forest to live in a high tower." So interesting to me when I read that because I was that same age, 12, when when she really started I would say to hate me. Um it went from tolerating me, I'd say, uh like using me, uh just being maybe more neutral towards me while still exploiting me and using me um to actually showing signs that she hated me. Um I being outwardly mean.

[00:19:33]More so.

[00:19:35]And outwardly controlling. I it was less uh It was um Sorry, it was the word I'm thinking of.

[00:19:44]It's like It was more overt. That's the word I was thinking of.

[00:19:51]So, I reached puberty.

[00:19:54]Treatment became worse. Suddenly, I was like bad guy number two after my dad.

[00:19:59]And I have my own theories about why this is, but that's for another video.

[00:20:03]So, with my siblings, she always talked bad about me to my siblings. She always talked bad about me to everyone.

[00:20:15]And I tried so many times over the years to explain to her how harmful this was and how hurtful this was for me.

[00:20:26]How this was just destroying every relationship I wanted to have in my life. How Mom, when you when you say these things about me to my family members, it makes them mad at me and it makes them not want to have a relationship with me.

[00:20:43]So, she would not just talk bad about me, but she would be more covert about it, too, and I'm sure she still does this.

[00:20:50]Crying, making people pity her, including my siblings, which made people uh feel bad for her and like I was a terrible daughter. She'd make them believe that. And make um them feel bad for her and simultaneously mad at me and resentful of me for hurting her.

[00:21:11]Hurting her.

[00:21:13]Um, and I understand how this works because this is exactly what she did to get me to turn on my dad. So, she did she did this to me, too.

[00:21:23]I understand the mechanism so well.

[00:21:26]But, it if you if you're not aware of it, it really can be effective. And this has always been effective for my siblings.

[00:21:34]So, you know, growing up even as a preteen teenager, my siblings and I I would say we wanted to be close, but we could not be close.

[00:21:44]Sometimes they would lash out at me and do the disciplining for my mom toward me because they believed I had hurt her so much.

[00:21:53]And was I a perfect daughter?

[00:21:55]Heck, no.

[00:21:57]I was mad at her a lot of the time. So, sometimes I would yell back. That is true.

[00:22:02]But, was I the source of the issue with our relationship? I would say no, because she is the parent and she abused me.

[00:22:10]Um, so case in point is that it was impossible for me to be close with my siblings even though we always did love each other and wanted to be close to each other. She made that impossible. To this day, it is difficult for me to have a relationship with some of my siblings because of her.

[00:22:33]Very painful.

[00:22:36]Um, and then the extended family.

[00:22:42]The extended family uh is a kind of the same thing. She made me believe that my aunts and my uncles did not like me.

[00:22:51]So, just like she made me believe that my dad didn't love me, which made me angry at him and so hurt that he didn't love me, so that I rejected him.

[00:23:02]Uh, she also made me believe that my aunts and my uncles they didn't care about me. They didn't like me.

[00:23:08]And so I was cold and distant with them growing up.

[00:23:12]And she managed to manipulate me enough to to do the rejecting myself, to do the distancing myself.

[00:23:20]This is what happens when you have um a a very emotionally immature parent who is also highly intelligent in other ways, you get this um really covert type of manipulation.

[00:23:38]But if we move on to the friends aspect, as I got older and older friends became more important to me, especially because I was so isolated at home for a period of time.

[00:23:50]I also was homeschooled. Now, nothing against homeschooling. I actually homeschool my own kids. I think it's great if you do it with for the right reasons and if you do it well. I was not homeschooled for the right reasons. I was homeschooled to be a further isolated in that tower and further controlled in that tower. I wasn't homeschooled for the right reasons. In fact, while she did teach my younger brothers, I received no instruction from her. I was told to read a book, do the quiz, grade my own quiz. Now, you can only imagine how that would have affected me not just academically, but my self-esteem.

[00:24:29]I wasn't getting any actual feedback from other people on whether I was achieving achieving good grades or not.

[00:24:38]That's another video, but the homeschooling thing came along with the friends, cuz that was during middle school and I wanted to have more friends. I wanted to spend time with the friends I did have.

[00:24:48]Most of the time friends could only visit our house, which I understand to a degree because it's hard to trust other people if you don't know the families well.

[00:24:59]Um but my mom, you know, it probably would not have served her well to talk badly about me to my friends. So, she just talked badly about my friends to me.

[00:25:13]She tried to get me to not like any of my friends. And I was already very limited on who I could socialize with.

[00:25:22]In middle school, I was only allowed to socialize with three different girls who were also homeschooled, whose moms she was best friends with. So, I really had no social life and um then you have boyfriends, which it became the same deal, the same type of thing. Now, with boyfriends and friends, I think she had a more difficult time isolating me from from them or getting in between the relationship because by the time I was a teenager, I cared less about her opinion and more about what was actually bringing me joy and what I actually wanted.

[00:26:05]But she would use other means, like extreme surveillance. She had access, I didn't know at the time, but she had access to all of my text messages, to to all of my uh like phone calls. It was crazy. And again, some of this is a fine line because parents can get concerned at times about what their kids are doing and and I think it's appropriate at certain times, if you're very concerned, to maybe look through their phone, but that's not the case that was going on here. I had no reason to give her any concern.

[00:26:44]I was a I like I was like a a goody two-shoes at this point in my life. Like I was not getting into any trouble.

[00:26:51]And um she did everything she could, I'll put it that way, with friends and boyfriends throughout high school, throughout my young adulthood.

[00:27:01]Um she would follow me on dates. She would go so far as to drive and follow me in the car.

[00:27:10]Um you know, the list goes on.

[00:27:14]Now, this is where it gets to a head. It reaches a head here.

[00:27:22]Fast forward to 2018.

[00:27:25]My husband comes into the picture.

[00:27:28]And like I mentioned at the top of the video, um that's when my mom finally encountered the one relationship that she could not control, the relationship that I had with my husband.

[00:27:46]Um and [snorts] I think this triggered her into oblivion. Um I think this really upset her knowing that I was closer to my husband than I was to her.

[00:28:07]And that I was okay with that.

[00:28:08]Or rather, I liked that. That's how it should be, actually.

[00:28:13]And I think you see this with a lot of narcissistic families, a um dysfunctional family systems where a an a an adult child grows up and they find their partner and they get married and they have to contend with this new dilemma.

[00:28:30]>> [sighs and gasps] >> And it's only a dilemma because the immature parent makes it a dilemma, but that's that you have the family you come from and you have the family you create.

[00:28:42]And suddenly um you have to decide which one is going to be more important because your emotionally immature parent, personality disordered parent, whatever it might be, is forcing that decision on you. You can't just love both.

[00:28:58]And this is my opinion. Now, people might disagree with me, but it is my opinion that once you find uh the person and you want to settle down and start your own family, if you want that new family to work out, you must put the family you create above the family you come from.

[00:29:21]And it is also my belief that any normal range, healthy parent who wants the best for their children will be understanding of that fact.

[00:29:34]Indeed, my own dad has told me more than one time that this this exact this exact uh thought process. You know, that you you got to put your husband first, you got to put your wife first. They're your they're the family you're creating. So, I think that healthy parents will honor that and understand that. My mom, she would not accept that, could not accept that.

[00:30:02]In fact, with her own marriage way back when, she put her family of origin, the family she came from, before the family she created, which was a source of the law a lot of contention in my parents' relationship. And who knows, if she had actually put the family she created above the family that she came from, perhaps my parents' marriage would have been a very different story.

[00:30:25]Who knows?

[00:30:26]But with my husband, she honestly could just she could not have me believing that my husband loved me more than she did.

[00:30:35]The fact that we were so close and united on everything drove her bonkers. She tried everything that she could to get me to turn against my husband.

[00:30:49]Um she would talk bad about him, of course. She would point out his flaws and make me afraid. She would inspire fear in me like that he wouldn't be able to financially support us, that he wasn't going to be like he she would make up these scenarios that were not even real to try to get me afraid and get me to leave him.

[00:31:09]It never worked. None of it worked because my husband, he loves me. He loves me with the type of love that I deserve, authentic unconditional love.

[00:31:18]And I felt the difference when I experienced that uh from the other love that I'd been given from her. And I would choose his love over her love any day of the week and that's what I In a way, that's what I was doing. So, she realized uh not going to be able to do any of this shenanigans with Madison cuz Madison is going to choose her husband.

[00:31:48]So, I bet you can guess what she did next.

[00:31:51]Um she went to my husband and she tried to become closer to my husband.

[00:32:00]So, this is kind of gross. Um I mean it goes back to the romantic jealous possessive type of love I think she always had toward me that I don't understand at all. You guys as a mother myself.

[00:32:20]But I think what she was trying to do at this point um and we had children at this point.

[00:32:28]But she was trying to become closer to my husband than I was to my husband. It was almost like a competitive nature type of thing.

[00:32:39]Um not not sexual or romantic um Oh God, it's so gross. It's just she realized she would not get between my husband and I through me. So, she decided that she would try to become closer to him than I was.

[00:33:00]She was acting like an emotional attach emotionally attached to my husband.

[00:33:09]It got so bad that my help my mom stopped talking to me.

[00:33:16]Uh really for the most part. And she started talking to my husband more than anyone else.

[00:33:24]She would call him over 10 times every single day and I'm not exaggerating.

[00:33:30]To the point where my husband and I anytime his phone went off at that point in our lives, we would laugh and we'd say, "Oh, it's it's I bet it's I bet it's my mom." And nine out of 10 times it was my mom calling for no reason other than just to talk.

[00:33:45]And she she would build him up, too. She would compliment him often. She would just make him in her head he was an amazing guy. He could do no wrong and I could probably just keep talking about this, but I'll cut it I'll cut it there.

[00:34:02]The point is she tried to become closer to my husband than I was.

[00:34:08]I don't know why. It's gross. Like no respect of boundaries whatsoever.

[00:34:14]Um and also that did not work >> [laughter] >> because my husband loves me and my husband realized how weird it was. He's like, "This is really awkward. I wish this was not happening."

[00:34:29]So, that did not work either, okay?

[00:34:32]So, when that didn't work either, she had basically one one thing left to try.

[00:34:41]And that was to try to manipulate him to reject me.

[00:34:48]Now, this is like the very end of when things ended with my relationship with my mom. This was one of my um final straws.

[00:34:58]And so what happened was >> [sighs and gasps] >> my husband and I were having a difficult time in our marriage for a various reasons.

[00:35:11]And we had gotten into a fight one day.

[00:35:14]And because I was so isolated from my dad, from my friends, from my siblings, from my extended family, from everyone but my mom and my husband, um I really had no one else to call.

[00:35:27]And so I made a poor decision, you guys.

[00:35:29]I had know it was bad decision.

[00:35:31]You do you know, I've learned since then.

[00:35:35]And I even knew at the time I I was wary. Like I probably should not call my mom. Like I can't really trust my mom um with what I tell her.

[00:35:47]Any emotion I express, probably she will exploit it.

[00:35:52]Any information I give her, she will use it to her advantage somehow. I probably shouldn't call my mom.

[00:35:59]But I was so distraught and I needed some advice. I needed someone to talk to and I so I made the crucial mistake of calling my mom.

[00:36:11]And I know way better now to not talk about marital issues with anyone uh maybe except a therapist. But yeah, I call I call my mom and I told her what was going on.

[00:36:25]And she acted on the phone supportive.

[00:36:30]She said things that you know, I might expect a mom to say. I don't really remember. I was very emotional, but I told her what was going on with my marriage and it was a mistake.

[00:36:45]Needless to say, about an hour later uh an hour later, I um talked to my husband. My husband calls me.

[00:36:58]And he tells me that he was just on the phone with my mom.

[00:37:04]And that she had >> [sighs] >> What happened is that she, immediately after getting off the phone with me where I was calling her, you know, to try to get some emotional support, maybe advice just to know that it was going to be okay. Like you could you should usually be able to call your mom and trust that whatever you talk about, she's not going to go tell you know, hundreds of people. She's not going to use it to hurt you. She's not going to But anyway.

[00:37:37]So, right after we got off the phone my mom called my husband.

[00:37:42]Um told him he everything I had just told her.

[00:37:50]Told him that I had just been talking to her about our marriage and everything that I said.

[00:37:59]And that was not all, either. She She And then she goes in on the call. My husband told me all this right away.

[00:38:07]He If he were a different guy, he could have gone that other direction. He could have been manipulated by her, perhaps.

[00:38:16]He could have decided, "Oh my gosh, my wife was talking to her mom about our marriage. Okay." Like But no, he's a good guy. So, he called me right away after she called him and she and he told me that my mom said "Why are you still married to Madison?

[00:38:34]Why are you still with her?

[00:38:36]I would have left her a long time ago."

[00:38:38]My mom said that.

[00:38:40]And she proceeded to try to get my husband to divorce me.

[00:38:51]Sorry, I'm just I'm I I still have to process that sometimes when I when I really think about it.

[00:38:57]Because if as a parent myself, I have three girls. I have three little girls.

[00:39:02]And I can't imagine having children and knowing that they feel safe and they feel a sense of profound meaning and joy and security with a partner, a romantic partner, spouse and then trying to get that spouse to leave your child.

[00:39:23]It's it goes beyond like a lack of Um it goes like beyond a lack of concern for your child and it goes into to the territory of wanting to hurt your child. Anyway, thanks for watching. Thanks for supporting. Please like and share the video if you found it helpful or insightful. I might repost it with with the um proper audio beginning of the video.

[00:39:51]Um but I'll see you next time. Bye.

[00:39:54]>> [music]