When somebody who can’t be wrong feels challenged, defied, they fly into a rage. It is embarrassing to lose control like that, humiliating even, and this type will blame the person they raged against, every time. “You did this to me, I just reacted. I did nothing wrong, you did everything wrong. You owe me an apology.” If you are a child, and this person is your parent, you stand up for yourself at your psychological peril.

No allowance. You’re grounded. You’re in my doghouse. You don’t love, or deserve to be loved. You can’t forgive. You cling to your hurt like a baby. You’re crazy. You don’t have the slightest clue how the world works.

This last bit is true. These types literally run the world, because they are deadly determined to always be in control so as not to risk being humiliated. It was their early life humiliation, and that terrifying feeling of powerlessness, that created their zero-sum worldview and tyrannical personality. My way or the highway, asshole. I’ve cut people dead for less than what you did to me, you ungrateful piece of shit. They demonstrate their terrible power by making good on their threats to exact payment for disobedience. If you want to be dead to them, keep insisting they had no right to rage at you.

The adult son is locked in a psych ward after some dramatic display of desperation, two days after arriving back at his childhood home. You, my friend, would be desperate too, if, whenever you needed support, one parent always blamed you for their rage and the other one always quietly agreed with the abusive parent. “We have to present a united face, so as not to confuse the child, it’s just basic good parenting” the abuse enabling parent will explain to others.

To his son he will say “your mother needs to be right, and she is right. She is used to being the boss, she took charge of her devastated family at age twelve and has always been in charge. You need to accept that she can’t be wrong, because it’s true. You are dead wrong if you think either of us is ever going to tell you that she was ever wrong, let alone abusive.”

Not surprising that two days after the adult son moves back into his parents’ home the weight of it all comes crashing down on him. I don’t know how he got to the mental ward, but I know he stayed there until they could stabilize his mood well enough to send him back into the place where his soul was crushed from the time he let out his first unanswered cries for empathy.

It is the biggest part of my current torment, to have the keys to his cell in my pocket and no way of getting them to him.