Originally Posted by Itse
I honestly understand why this stuff doesn't make sense to someone who hasn't really experienced anything like it, but I'm going to use my own life to explain.
I'm going to try make this short, because I don't feel like going into details, for obvious reasons. Obviously a massive amount of information is left out, I'm trying to keep it relevant. (I will also simplify a lifetime of stuff.)
I had #### parents, in a way that will leave a person seriously emotionally scarred and mentally unstable. Out of three siblings, I'm the one that got by far the worst of my parents.
I have also often been in need of financial aid, because I've been such a mess that for example studying was (and is) just impossible for me, which has lead to constant trouble finding a steady job that pays a living wage. (Multiple mental health issues also aren't exactly valued in the job market.)
When I was in need of money, my parents would provide that. (To some extent. That too was pretty messed up at times, because they used it as leverage, often in quite toxic and unhelpful ways.) I would accept their help because I felt it was only right they helped pay for the mess they created. But I also emotionally felt constantly in debt to them.
Much of my adult life I didn't even think about it that much. That just was my life, my normal. I was a mess that "would never get better", and there was some grim satisfaction in sort of constantly rubbing my problems in their faces, instead of keeping my distance to them like my siblings did.
It was only after I had enough financial independence that I was able to talk honestly about my history and my relationship to my parents with others, without always making excuses for them. Basically I had to stop feeling like I need them to think clearly. While I had been on some level aware that much of my problems go back to my upbringing, I thought that was the past I could do nothing about. I hadn't even realized how I had prolonged my problems by "living off" people who had poisoned my life and kept doing it when given the chance, and hadn't really noticed how much I had actually excused and flat out lied about them to make myself feel better about being dependent on them.
Because I wasn't technically abused and my parents aren't famous, I didn't sue them or try to write a book, I just completely cut them out of my life.
So, I absolutely understand why someone would keep living off their abuser, and only start re-evaluating their relationship to said abuser from a genuinely adult perspective once that dependence is cut.
By my experience, that's exactly how people behave.
EDIT:
I don't really expect you to get it. This is just stuff you that can't really be explained, because much of it has to do with the way abusive experiences distorts what is "rational" and "normal" behavior and thinking.
You kind of just have to accept that it makes sense to them, even if it doesn't make sense to you.
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