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1101 East Pike St. Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98122
1101 East Pike St. Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98122
She thinks she helped her kid, when what she really did was emotionally abuse him. This is probably my outrage speaking, and it might be better just to let this go, but I really feel like she ought to know what she did and what the consequences were for her son.
"My adolescent sexual fantasies were none of your business, and your inability to respect my privacy and sexual autonomy caused me great personal distress at the time. Your actions did not help me. They damaged our relationship. It was highly inappropriate of you then; it is highly inappropriate of you to bring it up now; and as a result I regard you as a potential source of emotional abuse to the next generation of our family. I am not going to stand idly by while you perpetrate against your grandchildren what you did to me. If you want to be fully involved in the life of your grandchild, you will never bring this subject up again -- not to me, not to any member of my family, not in front of any member of my family. The consequence will be forfeiture of your grandparent privileges. This is your only notice. Do not test this."
Yeah, LW1 has that right!
Ricardo @10: She started it. Twice.
Also: porn is not infidelity.
I would respond a bit differently.
Mom: I was truly over the moon to have made you and Dad so happy with the news of your first grandchild. That is until your email. Since we're clearing the air: your unrelenting five-year campaign of shame, harassment and cruelty to a fourteen-year-old kid did nothing but ruin our relationship and my self-esteem. There were a lot of times over the years when I was figuring things out, and needed to confide in someone I could trust, but I knew it sure as hell wasn't going to be you. So I just bore your abuse and got away as soon as I could.
Let me dissuade you of the notion that your strategy of shame and espionage had any impact on my "impulses" other than to hide them better. And since you have already marred what should have been simply a happy occasion, let me make this point well in advance: I don't want you to ever, EVER talk to any child of mine about sex or anything close to it. This is the last I have to say on this subject, and I ask that you also drop it for good, if you'd like to be fully involved in the life of your grandchild. Let's put this business behind us and focus on the baby. I'm sorry if you find this letter as upsetting as I found yours.
Does he have some Furry and/or Pokemon* porn on his computer? Yeah. It happens, but it doesn't mean he can only ever get off to Pokemon and can never have sex with another human being. In all of my years in this stuff, I don't think I've ever met anyone who was so far into it that they couldn't connect to another human being on an emotional/romantic/physical level. (The existence of the Furry Fandom itself, and the fact that people within it find relationships as 'normal' as anyone else's, back me up on this.) The kid's going to be fine. He likes different porn than his dad. His dad can deal with that or not.
And Bering's response is way off on one important point -- being a plushophile and being a Furry (or a Pokemon fan) are not necessarily the same.
*-- We should also consider the possibility that what DOPE saw was garden-variety Furry porn. Because let's be honest, unless you actually keep up with the games, they're not going to look fundamentally different.
(Not a plushophile, unless he's having sex with stuffed toys rather than just looking at furry porn.)
There are plenty of them out there; they have no problems forming relationships or having sex, either with each other or with non-furries. Unless there's some evidence not presented that there is a more serious problem, he's fine.
And yes, trying to mould him out of it would be damaging, if only to your relationship - I'd guess at 17 he's happy enough with his porn tastes that you're not going to put him off.
Good response but MOTHER's wife specifically said she did not want to be outed to her MIL. Dan's response is better — yours drops a ten-ton hint.
If he's too aggressive, he might as well be saying "Fuck you, bitch, you're not getting anywhere near that child because I don't want you to fuck him up like you did to me." That doesn't appear to be what he wants. Hence my suggestion.
You let her know? Not you talked with her, discussing her feelings about it and what you would both find a reasonable future accommodation to these? (This is later referred to as his 'proclamation' so I'm pretty sure this is accurate.)
So were you marrying a virgin, whom you had never spanked or cheated on, figuring her agreement in the abstract would be binding? Or marrying someone who disliked spanking and told you she'd leave if you cheated, and you were trying to call each other's bluffs? In all seriousness, maybe what you saw as being clear and giving a proclamation of your intended future activities she saw as a weird out-of-the-blue joke.
Also, he never says his wife views porn as cheating. That's his own question, to which I am almost certain he knows Dan's answer.
"Mother, I feel obliged to correct a misconception that you seem to have. Your attempts to 'nip my kinks in the bud' made it harder for me to find a healthy relationship, not easier." Then go with the rest. And she should be told flat-out, regardless of whether she has brought it up.
Also, my comment @ 24 was meant for 12, not 10.
If DOPE's son ends up gravitating into a local geek community in his area or college as he gets older, he's bound to meet a lot of Pokemon players, and within any Pokemon group there are generally a couple of people in the aforementioned groups, or at least people who would be accepting and understanding of pokephilia.
My boyfriend has a slight interest in pokemon porn, generally only the humanoid, feminine ones like the aforementioned Gardevoir and Lopunny, whereas I'm into big dopey looking monsters and bug types, like Tangrowth and Scolipede, but we're respectful of each other's preferences and it generally stays out of the bedroom - we explore our other shared kinks there - with the exception of my toys being colored and themed after Pokemon I like. That's fairly unobtrusive, it makes it hotter for me, and it becomes a pretty good thing to joke about when we're not using them.
The point is, it's not a big deal and it's not the parent's business. Just like the last letter.
Also, making it perfectly clear that she does not get to violate this -- not even once. Testing it will violate it, and that will be that. Kind of important to be clear on that.
Beyond that, specific wording is malleable.
It's not clear that she is as bad as all that, to the point that he should just cut her out of his life entirely -- except for this one thing, over which he has every reason to be a complete hard-ass. If there were a raft of other things where she walked all over his boundaries, I would agree with you that he should just cut her off, because it's too hard to draw five hundred lines in the sand and police all of them. But that is not in evidence in the letter.
If it's just the one item, that's doable, but he should be a brick wall about it. Save the conciliatory tone for the rest of their relationship.
Personally, I'm under the impression that, while MOTHER is furious, he wrote in so that he'd get advice on how not to show how furious he is so as not to do irremediable damage to their relationship (and on how not to out his wife).
Considering how the mother has behaved so far, I also expect that the more aggressive the tone, the more she's likely to go ballistic, make all sorts of deductions about her son's present-day life (which is what your letter was meant to avoid, no?), then maybe do something like go tell the whole story to everyone in the family just to spite him - because she's already proven that she doesn't respect other people's boundaries, which means that she won't take him seriously anyway, threat or not.
So what I'm suggesting is just a little bit more damage control than what you suggested. I am not saying that his anger isn't justified - Hey, I would have cut off all contact with her much earlier.
DOPE's son's interest is so common there's internet lingo for it, Rule 34 (if it exists, porn of it exists).
Agreed, he sounds like a young Furry to me, and his dad is more ashamed by the fact that his son is a massive nerd than worried about his future relationships.
DOPE, he'll find love and his dorky odds are good: people of all genders and orientations love Pokémon. Pikachu-themed panties and Pokeball bras are a thing now, and it's unlikely he and his partner are going to dress up like Squirtle and Tentacruel around you. Remember: it's none of your business. You should tell him to use Incognito Mode while browsing.
That said, I think Dan and the wife are correct: ignore the letter...for now. If, and only if, it comes up again, lay down the law...with a 2x4. And then stick to it. You might be surprised at how much of a magnet that grandchild is. She may never forgive or respect her son, but she may discover she can keep her mouth shut and they can salvage a relationship.
My daughter came to me at age 16 to announce that she was a lesbian and wanted her parents to join PFLAG.
I told her that both Mom and I bothloved her and that In my opinion she was experimenting. I assured her that experimentation was normal, but that she might well be more interested in males once they were no longer the goofy, awkward, smack-one-another-in-the-balls age they were currently stuck in.
I was right, and we are now adult friends. Leave the kid alone and show him love and acceptance and good role model. They learn from what they hear but mostly from what they observe!
It's good that they have an amicable family relationship, but this woman should not be allowed license to bully any more vulnerable children.
Am I a furry? Not even a little. I did it because I loved and appreciated him and wanted to indulge his kinks, even though I don't share them and even though they're pretty out there. Point being, assuming your son is, in fact, sexually aroused by Pokemon, he doesn't even have to find a girl who's as into it as he is to have his kink with his partner.
His response? "Jerking off, mostly." His dad had to leave the room to laugh, and Mom never brought it up again.
This may be a rationalization but Dan once brought up that just because someone has a certain type of porn that doesn't mean they like everything about it.
Like someone might have spanking porn because they find the actors/actresses hot. Or they get off on the power aspect but don't care about the spanking.
This could apply to your son. He may not be attracted to Pokemon he just may like some aspect of the porn. Maybe the exaggerated features, or the slave/master powerplay, or may be he gets off on seeing something innocent from his childhood perverted.
Whatever the Mom's response to an ultimatum, letting her continue to beat him over the head with this issue is unacceptable. If she keeps going, a very stern ultimatum is the only option with any chance of working, and if it doesn't, he's better off ripping the band-aid off quickly.
Also, I don't agree that she as any ammunition to harm them if the ultimatum pisses her off. She has no legal right to see his family and she doesn't even know anything specific about his sex life. The worst thing she could do is spread nasty rumors. You give this toxic asshole way too much power.
While I believe that people can change, from the little I know of this lady, I believe this one can't. She's a bully, and while it might be possible to turn her into one that's not publicly self-congratulatory, I don't see any evidence that she won't remain a bully anyway.
And the funny thing about bullies is that they don't stop being bullies when their targets change the thing they're being bullied for. (In my experience, if the targeted pre-teen is getting taunted for having the wrong haircut, and if that pre-teen gets the "right" fashionable haircut, the bullies just move on to something else, the style of blue jeans or an interest in Victorian literature or whatever.) In other words, I'd guess that if MOTHER had been the most ordinary vanilla straight 14 year old, his mother would have thrown fits over his ordinary burgeoning sexuality anyway. Bullies are like that. The problem was sex, not the particular brand of it.
I believe that no matter what MOTHER says, all he's going to do is send her underground. She'll find ways to belittle and shame that grandchild anyway. Maybe MOTHER has had 10 years to see the good in her. I haven't. I've never met her, and I hate her from here. With that in mind, I suggest limited time for her to spend with her grandchildren especially as they reach their preteen years. I wouldn't give much in the way of excuse, maybe just something along the lines of remembering how difficult those adolescent years were for you. Dan is being much more forgiving than I.
If that's true, just cut her off now.
If the bullying was of a wider scope than the letter lets on, then the hard boundary needs to be of that wider scope too.
But failing to put her on notice isn't going to accomplish anything. One way or the other, he has a kid to protect.
Either he has to lay down the law while establishing ground rules for the limited visitation she just dearly bought herself; or else she gets flushed like the turd she is, in which case it's optional to let her know exactly what she did to get herself disowned.
Call it anecdote or projection or something of that sort, but I'm willing to entertain the notion that this might be an isolated crazy-maker topic in an otherwise sane person. My mom found the Playboy magazines under my bed and gave me hell for that. (Not five years of constant shaming, but gods' sake, Mom! It is perfectly normal to like to look at naked women.) But she was otherwise a decent human being.
(intentionally bringing up a bad subject). There was a national episode involving lightning (stuff from clouds), control of clouds, people with tails tied to lightning and forced belief. He gets a "goosh" mindwave from either her trying to hide it or the central AI (Cen for short, get it?). Moving out of the area might lower his enjoyment, but it might also be healthier.
Nobody should have to go through shit like that!
Cross your fingers: other than being woozy after coming out of post-op
(apparently I cannot escape the side effects of anesthetics, such as dizziness and vomiting), I am calling this procedure a success so far---especially if I am blessed from April 2014 onward with menstrual periods that no longer play out like the grossest horror flick made in Hollywood
(trust me, guys--even those of you who have a houseful of sisters, are doctors, med students, lab techs, et al. who claim that "nothing could surprise you"---you DON'T want to know the graphically explicit, gory details of what I have faced monthly over the last 37 years).
Heaven bless my OB-GYN, my AMAZING naturopath who recommended her to me, all the lovely people in the outpatient clinic (that's a story within itself), and to my incredibly awesome and mercifully patient friend who picked me up afterward and took me home to recover!
I guess I will know by next month about the status of my monthly cycles.
Hopefully there is no more REDRUM.
LW#1 just ignore it. Your son's sexual fantasies is HIS business. However, it could just as well be nothing more than teenaged boys needing to see fucked up things just to say they did.
Now the mother in #3 just pisses me off! I have gone out of my way and pushed my moral comfort zone to the breaking point to ensure that my boys were not damaged sexually. Since they lost their natural mother at a young age and their fathers were worse then useless, they did not need anymore challenges to deal with. Personally if I were to respond to that email my response would be this:
Mom,
After reading your email, I need to clear the air. While you sincerly believe that your actions were justifed as you were attempting to correct what you saw as deviant behavior. However, instead of helping me work through the natural exploration of human sexuality in all it's forms, your actions made me feel dirty, different and broken. It took many years and a lot of work on my part to even trust any woman on a basic level, let alone sexually. I thank god everyday for sending me a woman strong enough to help me get past the shame you instilled in me and accept that nothing that happens between two people who love and respect each other is wrong.
Please do not think you did me a favor. I have all these gifts inspite of your actions not because of them. I hope that in the future we can move past this and forge a new relationship based on respect and eventually trust. However, know that with respect to sexual exploration I will not be following your example with my own child.
I'll be missing most of the day, but hope there will be a thread concerning Mr Weir's impending divorce on my return. It's just like him to give the most OSMist reason for it; I half expect him to become a Foxite sometime this year; he'd become the right wing's favourite same-sexer in a twinkling.
@75 - C|N>K thanks!
But threatening her at what might be just rudeness and ignorance with cutting off her contact with her grandchild is mean.
But your version of letter you would have MOTHER write makes some strong statements which may or may not be accurate. In his letter he says only: I hated my mother so much during this time. I didn't feel like I could trust her, and I never confided in her about anything. It took me a decade to get over it. I interpret "It took me a decade to get over it" to mean it took him a decade to stop hating his mother, though it could mean that he initially internalized the shame she tried to instill and it took him until age 24 to come to terms with his sexuality and be comfortable with who he is. But there's nothing in his letter to indicate that his mother's harassment and belittling affected his sexuality or ability to pursue relationships.
You would have him write: instead of helping me work through the natural exploration of human sexuality in all it's forms, your actions made me feel dirty, different and broken. It took many years and a lot of work on my part to even trust any woman on a basic level, let alone sexually. I thank god everyday for sending me a woman strong enough to help me get past the shame you instilled in me and accept that nothing that happens between two people who love and respect each other is wrong. These are strong charges, and doubtless make for a powerful letter, but from what he's told us, they may not be representative of his real attitude/feelings at all.
Furthermore, did he/does anyone need their mother to help them "work through the natural exploration of human sexuality in all its forms?" I think it's the parents' job to "help" insofar as that help consists of standing back and letting the kid develop his/her own private sexual identity, which sometimes might include trying to pretending not to know what you do in fact, know.
Had MOTHER's mom not attempted to shame him and had she not castigated him for his sexuality, I don't think he would have come to her for advice about how to meet his kink needs.
Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps you can also point out where Jesse ignorantly assumes otherwise?
All he's saying here is that once a fetish/kink is established, it tends not to go away, which is not only true, but a completely different claim than the one you are attributing to him.
Huh?
Fuck I'm old.
That's pretty much exactly what I said, albeit with different words, yes, so I don't see why you tell me that I "give this toxic asshole way too much power".
I never said she had any right to anything, just implied she could make more of a mess than she already has. Because surely MOTHER also has a relationship with his father, siblings, cousins, etc. that his mother could try to mess up.
All I did was suggest that he soften the tone of the last sentence in the letter avast suggested. To avoid that kind of nastiness. I don't think the alternative I came up with was any less clear, just a tad less aggressive.
Seems to me a few people read way too much in my posts.
I agree with your analysis. It all does depend on whether this is a single crazy-making topic or indicative of a widespread lunacy.
And now a quibble-- Straight boys looking at pictures of naked women is normal, but that's not the point. It's HARMLESS. Hardcore bondage, slavery and whippings fantasies are likely not normal. I say "likely" because I'm not ready to make a pronouncement on a definition of normal. Here again though, the point is that they're HARMLESS. MOTHER's mother apparently disagreed and thought they stood in the way of a marriage relationship and children. That she thought shame was the way to "cure" the problem is just another stroke against her.
@85: There's a significant difference between being concerned and terrorizing your child for years.
She brought it up. She opened the door. He was willing to let it go and relearn how to love his mother. But she broke that treaty.
I think he has to respect his wife's desire not to be outed as a kinkster. But I also think he has to tell his mother how wrong her self-satisfied assessment of her own viciousness is, as a matter of ethical behavior, as a way of dealing with her gratuitous reopening of this wound, and yes, as a matter of protecting his children from her. maybe you haven't seen a grandchild attacked by a grandparent like this. I have.
You're never to old to learn a lesson about humanity and empathy and behaving properly and identifying and asking forgiveness for past wrongs.
But I suppose that's just me. I wrote my parents off long ago for less cause than that.
It's fairly normal to feel uncomfortable or confused when confronted with someone else's kinks or desires when we don't shate them, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong or harmful.
As long as it's not on the sidewalk, scaring the horses and all that.
Demanding an apology may not be the best approach with the offending mother, but I'm not particularly interested in how LW settles that little matter. Not everyone is capable of being Rhonda telling the terrible Tanya what Muriel saw Nicole and Chook doing at Chook and Tanya's wedding reception, and that's okay, but I'll admit that I'd salute a partner of LW who could carry it off with aplomb.
My point is that if the mother is as intransigent as you think she is, softening the tone is counterproductive. She'll take that as weakness and keep on abusing him (That's what bullies do!). The LW shouldn't be afraid of pissing her off, because if a stern ultimatum sets her off the way you think it will, he has no better options. He just needs to cut her out of his life.
@91 lolorhome: Bless you! I am still taking things easy for the next couple of days (my friend emailed to inform me that she had to sign for my release(!!) from the ambulatory surgical center after post op, and that I am restricted from the following: absolutely no alcohol (obviously!), torrid sexual intercourse (DANG!!), and otherwise soothing bubble baths over the next four days. *sigh*)
Oh, well. I can at least watch Thelma & Louise again for the ten quadrillionth time. Hopefully this will indeed, bring the long awaited desirable corrective results I have prayed for for so long.
I'd take that bet.
Glad you're feeling better.
Man, I love Rachel Griffiths, ever since six-feet-under, but Rhonda would be difficult to live with, refreshing as she is on screen. I had never seen that movie until my wife insisted we watch it last fall on DVD and ever since I've had a serious thing for Ms. Grandison. Cheers!
As for Ms Grandison, that was certainly an economical wordless seduction, and I like the parallel of setting that against the Waterloo Battle. Then Nicole gets replaced by Rose Biggs and is never heard from again. I wonder if she ended up working for Deidre Chambers.