Hello everyone,
This has been on my (29F) mind for a while now. I have had a stepfather since I was 13 whom I have hated a lot. He has been always an arrogant prick who liked to insult me and have inappropriate comments towards me. They broke up 6 years ago but still when I remember him my blood boils.
They have been together for 10 years and my mum worked in a different city, which meant I was often alone with him. He never respected my privacy, often going to wash his hands when I was in the shower, staring glances at me, once when I was 16 he even made me strip to put some ointment against acne he bought me on my butt. Well, this thing my mum didnt know. But she did see him walking around the house naked with a morning boner. The problem is, my mum had a terrible mother who put her down ever since she was a kid and she had me with a man 15years older than her, who drank himself to death in the end (she left him when he started drinking a lot so that I was not in the house with him, which made her depressed, resulting in her being on medication unable to eat).
She then found some other guy, who was an idiot and then this stepfather I am writing about, who was her former highschool friend and he was a manipulative prick, and she was easy to manipulate. I can tell because she was brought up in a family where what a man says is true and a woman should not fight back. So she thought him walking around naked is ok because he most probably told her it is not a big deal lol. Anyways I know it took her time to stand up for me, but the last 4 years of their relationship she finally found her voice and anytime he would be mean to me she would just yell the fuck out of this guy.
But I cannot shake the feeling that I need to have a conversation with her about the stuff he did when she was not looking, I told her about the showers telling her he was a perv and she froze and said something in the sense that “wow that is pervese” just staring and not saying anything else. I know she loves me very much, she does everything she can to help me out in every way possible, caring about me in all ways possible now that she has sorted her own head out and always putting me first and I love her very much, but this past just puts a strain on our relationship, that stepfather’s behaviour just made me disrespect my body for so long in my romantic relationships that I know it had a bad effect on me (I am much more confident now and do not feel sorry about myself, but I do feel anger anytime I remember that man, that anger is mostly directed at him, but sometimes I feel sad that my mum brought this man to my life and took several years before standing up for me, we talked about that and she admitted that she did not realise back then how harmful his behaviour was).
If you were in my place, would you bring it up? I want to start therapy as well so I do not know if I should wait after a few sessions to see if it is necessary to tell my mum everything that happened to push our relationship forward. I also do not want her to think that I think it is her fault, she should have acted sooner, of course, but it was not her who did these things and I do not want her to think I blame her, when in fact I blame him. We live in a world where women feel responsible for man’s actions and she is the exact kind of woman who was brought up this way.
Sorry for the rant guys, I just need some perspective 😃 I also feel like I really want to let him know what a piece of trash he is and that his behaviour is not forgotten, I hope I make sense here, I always go on a rant when I remember this dirt of a man.