Fake It Until You Don’t Make It
My parents are super controlling. I confronted them like a week or so ago and told them I was getting married this year, that I am an adult and I get to make adult decisions and I hope they will come to the wedding but if not, that’s on them. My dad broke down and said he wanted a better relationship with me and my fiancé. My mom was just mad that I had the “audacity” to speak to my parents that way.
Mind you, I was super calm and diplomatic. My mother then accused me of spreading lies about them and trying to blame all my problems on them. My dad told me he was going to work on her. This past weekend, my dad bought a bunch of pumpkins and invited me and my fiancé to come carve them with my family. We had a great time and even decided to stay for dinner.
At the end of the dinner, my parents told us they wanted to work on our relationship and had scheduled a family counseling meeting after work on Monday. We reluctantly agreed to go because it seemed like they were genuinely trying and it would be nice to have a moderator. I soon found out what a horrific mistake this was.
We went, and it turns out the “counselor” was fake and my parents basically paid this lady to agree with them and gaslight me. They tried to convince me I was “unstable,” possibly severely mentally ill, and I needed to call off the wedding and move back in with them immediately. The fake counselor lady just kept saying how perfect and caring my parents are.
She said that they have the financial means to take care of me. I ended up freaking out at them and telling them that they were not perfect parents and they were super dysfunctional and that what they just did was not okay. My fiancé (who was there) started yelling and defending me. When he did so, my parents started insulting him and told him he doesn’t know me and he doesn’t have the ability to take care of me.
The circus ended when my mom told everyone in the room that I was delusional and said that last year I fantasized that my dad was cheating and told all my siblings. Only, that’s not what happened at all. This was a real event, except it was my mother who thought my dad was cheating and told everyone. When she confronted my dad about it and he got furious, apparently she told him I made it up and convinced her he was cheating.
I ended up pulling up screenshots of messages that she sent that showed she was clearly the one who thought he was cheating and was trying to convince everyone else he was the bad guy. My fiancé was able to back me up and told everyone about the times my mom went off to him about how she thought my dad was getting it on in the back of his office.
My mom ended up admitting that she contributed to the cheating drama but she said she thought I made it worse. In fact, all I did was listen to her nonsense like I have my entire life. We all ended up storming out after that. I’m super devastated right now, I truly thought my parents changed and wanted to fix our relationship and then they did this to me.
I also can’t believe my mother tried to use me as a scapegoat when she believed my father was cheating and instead of being honest she threw me straight under the bus. To be fair, I’m not 100% sure the counselor is “fake” but I am 99% sure she isn’t licensed or broke all code of ethics because I have seen therapists in the past and this lady was nothing like them.
She didn’t ask us our names and there was no paperwork—every therapist and counselor I have ever seen had me sign several pages to tell me my rights and that I consent to treatment as well as disclosing medical history and all that other stuff. She didn’t have us take turns talking, she didn’t even try to hear my side of things, and she let my parents interrupt me constantly.