People, I have a question.

[enemyofperfect]

It is a hypothetical question about a family that's supportive except when it isn't.

Suppose that person X has parents Y and Z who say, "We love you, but you're leading a life of sin and bound to spend eternity in hell if you don't repent. But we'll still support you in every way we can, and of course we want you to come home for the holidays -- we care about you, we want to see you!"

Go on to suppose that parents Y and Z are sincere about their love and support, that person X is confident that they're wrong about the whole sin and damnation thing, and that if X did come home for the holidays, Y and Z wouldn't raise the subject even once.

My two-part question is: how easy or difficult is it for you to imagine that person X might be deeply hurt despite the assurances and caveats, and how rare or common would you guess it is for someone in X's place to feel that way?

The specifics of the question are genuinely hypothetical, but I am sufficiently boggled by the answers I've gotten from someone else that I figured I'd do a reality check.

Comments

[staranise]

In my experience knowing very un-hypothetical people, it is very easy for me to imagine that X would be deeply hurt, and I think that response is very common. It is harder for me to imagine them not being hurt.

The assurances and caveats don't mean squat to the essential question, which is, Do my parents love/value/approve of me? Parents are quite usually the people whose love for us ensured our survival during times when we were terrifyingly vulnerable; it's quite hard to get rid of that bone-deep feeling that parental approval means all's right with the world.

Also, being "loved" and "supported" and "expected to come home for the holidays" in many families can simply mean, "unable to express dissent, inebted, and not able to set boundaries" which is not actually a tally in the "pro" column.

[enemyofperfect]

Thank you. The good news is that I was always pretty sure that what I was imagining/remembering from similar experiences was an entirely valid reaction, but in the face of such total bafflement, I wondered if maybe I was more of an outlier than I thought. I mean, I'm willing to believe that some people could be pretty unscathed, but this is just... not a context in which I would have thought most people would find it easy to agree to disagree!

[violsva]

...I'm finding it really hard to imagine X not being deeply hurt and upset here. Although that is heavily influenced by my own experiences.

[enemyofperfect]

Yes, it... did occur to me to wonder if a lack of relevant personal experience was a factor in the incomprehension I was meeting with here. Or maybe not -- I could believe that some people are so hardily self-sufficient that they can just shrug and think "hey, that's your problem" when loved ones start spouting outrageous beliefs. Or that some people compartmentalize early enough that the necessary walls are already in place when later conflicts arise.

But yes, thank you for your response -- I appreciate both the data point and the validation.

[azurelunatic]

It is hard for me to imagine X *not* being deeply hurt.

[azurelunatic]

(And I was very careful to load the reply link so I wouldn't see the other comments before leaving mine, which makes it all the more interesting.)

[enemyofperfect]

Doesn't it just, though? Thank you for answering so carefully! It would have been useful to know if I was in the minority on this, but I really was pretty taken aback.

[catharsis_logs]

(short answer)Deeply DEEPLY hurt. I honestly think that's the sort of statement that is emotionally/psychologically abusive. Even if they say they are supportive it is still a statement of emotional manipulation and that is emotional abuse. I have had an experience almost exactly like this except (thank the universe) not by any of my relatives.

(long answer because I ramble) Also this can be colored by my experiences with my dad and with being trans. Sort of like how deeply religious parents love their children but 'fear that they'll go to hell' he expressed fear for me because of his perceptions of how trans people are treated. This was harmful for me because I need my parent to be a bastion of safety I might not otherwise have. I know I'm making a hard choice, and that there are people out there who will hate me for who I am and I don't need to be reminded of that by my dad when I just need unconditional support. I can use advice, but I don't need to be 'appraised of the danger' or to be told that I'm being worried about.

To be more specific about the actual topic though, when a friend who I was very close to for several years expressed concern and told me that I would go to Hell if I did not change my ways over the phone, it broke my freaking heart. I knew that she honestly cared about me, and was worried about me and my safety/health in the afterlife but to me it felt more like a betrayal. I don't know the specifics but what I understand about people who think other people are going to Hell is that they think they have a duty to 'let people know' when they're doing something they think that person deserves to go to Hell for.

Now me, if I were to believe that there is a Hell (which I don't), I would imagine it as a TEMPORARY place of rehabilitation (writer here) for (trigger warning)murderers and rapists AKA: those who take the free will of others. That's the only 'sin' I personally think is something worthy of 'Hell'. But certainly not a place of eternal punishment. No one fucking deserves an eternity being punished.

And then to have someone I trust and like look into the specifics of my life, and pronounce that I am going to Hell if I don't change certain things, yeah, that breaks my heart and effectively ends any communication I would have had with that person. It's a wonder I trust anyone.

(mention of cissexism)

[enemyofperfect]

I think the thing that always got me back in the days when I argued theology with my mother -- a hobby I'm not at all sorry to have given up -- is that if you think there's a god who's dealing out eternal consequences for stuff people did when they were alive, and especially if you're worried that someone you love might be one of the people receiving literally infinite punishment for their real or supposed sins, doesn't that... kind of suggest to you, at all, that maybe that god isn't the nicest person?

I'd actually forgotten how painful those conversations were until thinking about this brought it back up -- nowadays, I mostly ignore the issue, and anyway I've got new questions, like whether there's any hope she'd ever use the right pronouns if I transitioned, to occupy my mind. But yeah, it hurts a lot, doesn't it? As with your friend, I absolutely believe that my mother's concern was (and presumably still is) sincere and based in real caring... but there's a limit to how much consolation that provides when apparently that caring can't compete with the belief that the fate they're so concerned about would be, though upsetting, deserved.

And at least in my case, I knew what I was getting into by openly questioning the beliefs I'd been raised with, but to have that hit you totally out of the blue -- it's no wonder if you were heartbroken.

*

I am totally, totally talking about religion to avoid talking about gender, when gender is... definitely the reason I had as many emotions about this conversation as I did. But actually it works out, because if you just replace vengeful deities with cissupremacy, that whole thing about the desperate hurt of not mattering enough to a loved one for them to rethink some other things enough to come to a conclusion that leaves room for you: yeah, that. That would be the thing.

That I have a hard time talking about.

(possibly needless advisory: I don't think I'd feel better for any anger on my behalf on this point, at least not right now. thank you for reading. ♥)

*hugs gently*

[catharsis_logs]

Gender is so, so hard. Especially when you're dealing with things that a lot of people think (wrongly) are 'out of the norm'.

(Please take what I say below with exactly the same response you gave to me on my 'traumatic-mom' post. I like to frame my own experiences with others and give advice/suggestions/reassurances in a kind of comparative way, which means that I talk about myself and that isn't helpful sometimes.)
My advice (completely ignorable and dismissable but has worked for me so far and as we all know, effects vary between different people. ;) ) is to try your best to be who you want to be in the safest way possible for you. (safest means slow, means not doing anything at all, means doing tiny things that other people won't notice, etc.) For me safe is not 'coming out' to my classmates, or even some of the people in the QRC though I'm pretty open there so it's probably obvious anyway. (it's also growing and stretching my comfort zone very, very slowly.)

omg that's like the best thing you could have said

[enemyofperfect]

Like, seriously. Sometimes I get so dismissive of myself, like what I'm feeling isn't real if I'm not doing anything/enough about it, which I can identify as obviously ridiculous and untrue when I'm being reasonable, but it still helps so much to hear what you said. *flops dramatically with relief* My therapist, who is very nice and also very cis, is always encouraging me to try things, and sometimes that's helpful, but... safety is really a very, very relevant concept here.

I am probably going to save this comment and read it, like, a bunch of times, thank you.

♥ ♥ ♥

I'm unfortunately even worse at coming up with general guidelines for other people to use than I am at asking for them, but in case it needs spelling out, you're doing pretty okay.