Re: Azariah cntd

[Guest guest]

We have had a long standing antagonism towards his therapist, as we

felt she wasn't addressing the reconciliation issue, and was in fact

being divisive. Which was one of the main reasons we didn't see why

we should continue paying her fees. However tonight it became clear

that she was helping him on two main lines: One; to become a self

confident self made man, and in that she had succeeded; he has

achieved a first in his degree and has got a top job.. but she also

had another agenda; in fact she *was* encouraging him to increase

family ties, and to make more effort with us, and he blamed himself

entirely for his failure to achieve this goal. However, for him to

become totally reconciled with us again I think would be impossible;

he would want a complete breakdown of the entire past 25 yrs and for

us to accept blame and responsibility for all the things he feels we

have done to damage him..what he doesn't see is that he owes us

similarly for all the terrible things he has done to hurt us. DH said

it reminded him of the demands by for the British to

apologise for slavery 200 years ago. He is unable to put the past

behind him and move on..we treated him no different from all our other

kids, and every last one of them has an excellent relationship with

us and is extremely close; he is the only one out of synch. If we

*were* such terrible parents, surely they would all feel the same?

Another thing marred the talk; when Azariah got TOO full of himself

or too warped in his rantings, DH was unable to control himself from

uttering a sharp retort of some kind. (eg: Az said he was now ready to

get married if the right girl came along, and DH said something along

the lines of " but who's to say she'd want YOU? " ) I cringed because I

knew this would set the conversation back, and it did, but then again

I had switched into pure counsellor mode and was trying to be as non

confrontational as possible whilst putting our points forward strongly

but calmly. After almost an hour it became clear that we had better

quit while we were ahead ie. whilst we hadn't all disintegrated into

mud slinging and swearing; no further progress would be made tonight.

At least he didn't storm out slamming the door and no really harsh

words were said..there was just the empty nagging feeling that we had

an awfully long way to go to achieve full reconciliation, if we would

ever reach it at all.

Ruthie