Why Do We Love The People Who Hurt Us the Most?

Group therapy was eye-opening.

In my late 30s/early 40s, I attended a three-month daily intensive group therapy program at a local hospital.

The program was filled with people like myself who needed help processing trauma, and it focused heavily on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

My group was probably 98% female. What surprised me — and comforted me at the same time — was realizing how many of us carried similar stories.

Rape. Sexual assault. Parental abandonment. Parental abuse. Neglect.

Different details. Same damage.

All of us had been diagnosed with C-PTSD.

Some of us had been hospitalized in psychiatric wards before. I was one of them. More than once.

This is difficult shit to talk about, but I believe bringing darkness into the light makes it a little less dark. And if someone reads this and feels less alone, then maybe there’s some purpose in saying it out loud.

I was born in Nova Scotia. For decades, I considered it absolute heaven. My family was there. The ocean was there. And the ocean still holds a part of my soul.

My mother left when I was two.

At age three, my dad got custody and moved us to Alberta for better work opportunities.

Three years old.

I don’t remember any of it, but being a parent myself now — and having

experienced separation with my husband that deeply affected our own children — I can’t imagine that I didn’t ask questions.

What happened to Mommy?

Why are Grammy and Poppy so far away?

Why did my whole life disappear?

I once asked my father if I cried for her or asked about her.

He said I never asked.

I doubt that.

More likely, I was too young to understand why everything familiar had suddenly vanished. But children feel loss even when they cannot explain it.

And I think I suffered immensely.

No mother. No grandparents. No aunts and uncles I adored.

Just gone.

I understand now why my mother left. I was a young teenager when I finally realized why, becasue I was living it.

My father was a rageful tyrant.

He controlled what she could do, where she could go, how she lived. She spent seven years living in fear of him before finally leaving.

And the hardest part?

She left me there with him. More fear on her part I would imagine.

Oddly enough, when I became an older teen and young adult — during a period where my mother and I actually had a good relationship — we would compare notes about the things we did to avoid getting caught or setting him off.

The stories matched almost perfectly.

Mind games. Gaslighting. Rage.

The only difference was that she experienced it as his wife, and I experienced it as his daughter.

When you spend nineteen years being raised inside that kind of environment, on top of everything else, it’s no wonder your nervous system comes out scrambled.

Dad was — and still is — an angry person.

By age five, I could swear like a sailor and string together eighteen-word curse sentences.

I watched him smash the mirrors off his truck with a baseball bat because he couldn’t install them properly.

He taught me firearm safety when I was five years old. How to properly care for a gun. How to shoot one if I ever needed to defend myself.

Five.

He also made me sleep with a heavy hickory stick under my bed for protection. He called it a “puppy pounder.”

If I misbehaved, I would get the silent treatment for weeks.

It was just me and him. No siblings. No buffer. No other parent stepping in.

One time, I bought candy when I wasn’t supposed to because supper was soon.

So he bought a massive amount of candy and forced me to eat all of it.

If I vomited, I had to eat that too.

That memory alone sounds too horrific to even be real when I say it out loud.

I learned hypervigilance young.

I learned how to read facial expressions, footsteps, body language, tone of voice.

I could tell what kind of mood he was in before he even spoke.

And I tried my absolute hardest to keep him happy.

But I was a child.

Children mess up.

And after all of that — and much more I still haven’t decided whether I’m ready to share — we moved him into our home last year because he had nowhere else to go.

And somehow, despite everything, I love him.

That’s one of the questions I struggle with the most.

Why do we still love the people who hurt us?

Why can I open my home to the man who caused so much damage, yet walk away from my mother?

Because eventually things with her stopped making sense too.

The lies started adding up.

For years she told me my father “kidnapped” me and took me to Alberta.

She failed to protect me from a known sexual predator in the family.

And when I was assaulted by that family member, she told me not to tell anyone.

She tore my father apart online, calling him a narcissist where everyone — including me — could see it.

She never took accountability for the ways she hurt me.

My children barely seemed to exist compared to my siblings’ children.

So many lies. So much denial.

Eventually, after decades of chasing after something I desperately needed from her and couldn't get, I gave up.

I didn’t need perfection.

I needed accountability.

I needed honesty.

I needed equal love.

But in her eyes, she had done nothing wrong.

So why was I able to let her go, but not him? Dad has helped out my family IMMENSELY during financial times of hardship. I honestly don't know where we would be without him in that sense. It wasn't all bad growing up with him either. But our brain (and our bodies) tend to remember the bad times significantly more.

I’ve struggled with relationships my entire life.

Trust issues and fear of rejection, which is a daily thing for me.

Sometimes I think I smother people. That I’m “too much.”

I just want connection. Someone to talk to.

I mask a lot.

Social interactions feel like performances where I’m trying to act “normal,” and I honestly think masking just makes it worse.

The last few weeks have been low for me.

And there really isn't anyone to talk to about it.

So I write.

So many questions.

Very few answers.