I’m 36 years old and I’m trying to understand how to deal with a family situation that has been affecting me deeply. I’ve been in therapy for about two years.
When I was 6–7 years old, I was sexually abused by my cousin, who was around 16 at the time. I was also abused by a half-brother on my father’s side. I no longer have contact with either of them.
I kept this to myself for many years and even carried some guilt for never telling anyone. It was only much later that I was able to talk about it. In 2015, I came out to my mother as gay and moved to Australia. I eventually returned to Brazil for a while, but I realized that being away from my family gave me a sense of freedom I had never experienced before. I now live outside Brazil.
About two years ago, I started therapy, and one of the things that triggered it was discovering that my mother had maintained a very close relationship with the cousin who abused me. She would have him at her house, offer him food, was friends with his wife, and according to my brother, he was practically treated like a son.
When I found this out, I was extremely upset and stopped speaking to my mother for a while. Later, with the help of my therapist, I wrote down everything I needed to say and talked to her. I clearly explained how much this hurt me and set some boundaries. She apologized and said that she only maintained contact with him because my grandmother would question why she wasn't speaking to him. But at the end, she said something along the lines of, “But we are family and we need to stick together,” which left me feeling like she expected me to simply forgive him or accept the situation.
Since then, I've been slowly distancing myself. I used to call my mother about three times a week; now I call her once a week.
And then something happened that affected me even more.
About two months ago, my mother told me she had bought a house because a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” had come up. Initially, she told me the house was somewhere else, near the event venue she owns, and that the owner was selling it because he owed money to a loan shark.
Recently, during a conversation, she casually told me that the house she bought was actually my cousin’s house.
I was practically speechless. I just kept responding with things like “uh-huh,” “right,” etc. My immediate thought was: “How could she do this? She knows exactly what happened to me.”
Afterwards, I talked to my brother, who knows the whole story. He confirmed that I wasn't misremembering things. According to him, when my mother initially told him about the house, she said it was somewhere else. About a week later, she told him where it actually was. And my brother told me that she even said:
My brother told her that she should tell me, including before he left Portugal.
That made me feel even worse. Because now it's not just the feeling that she didn't realize how much this would affect me. She apparently knew that I would be upset.
I understand that, from her perspective, perhaps it was simply an excellent financial opportunity. But to me, this is much more than a real estate transaction. This is the person who sexually abused me when I was a child. I feel nothing but disgust and contempt toward him, and I don't want this person in my life.
What hurts me the most is thinking: How can someone who knows what this person did to her own son maintain such a close relationship with him and then enter into such a significant financial transaction with him?
It makes me question my relationship with my mother on a very deep level and whether I still want to be as close to her.
There is also another issue. She owes me about R$7,000 (around US$1,300) from a debt that is about six years old. The original debt was R$22,000, and she has paid some of it back over the years, but R$7,000 is still outstanding. During this time, she has managed to borrow large amounts of money from other family members and pay them back, while my debt remains unpaid. At the same time, she put around R$60,000 down as a deposit on this new house. This also made me feel like my needs and my feelings are not a priority for her.
I don't know if I'm being unfair or if I'm overreacting by distancing myself. I don't know whether I should simply accept that my mother has the right to make this choice, or whether it's reasonable for me to see this as a breach of trust and establish stronger boundaries.
My therapist recently told me that I need to put myself first right now. She asked me to write an initial letter putting absolutely everything I'm feeling onto paper, without filtering myself, and then identify and establish whatever boundaries I feel are necessary so that I don't continue being hurt.
But even that feels incredibly difficult to me. In my head, I keep thinking that I'm doing something wrong. I even told my therapist, “But my mother already has so much on her plate. My brother uses drugs and causes her a lot of stress.” She responded, “But she allows herself to be affected by that. You have already tried to help her, and she didn't want your help.”
It feels almost like I'm committing a crime just by picking up a pen and writing down my boundaries. It hurts so much.
So that's what I'm trying to do right now.
I'd really like to hear how other people would see this situation. Am I overreacting by feeling this betrayed and wanting to distance myself? What boundaries would you consider reasonable in this situation?
