Deliberate Disobedience

If you are a first time guest, you may want to go back to July 1 to understand this blog or June 5, to get complete background information. Your comments are welcome!

My dad had his own livestock trucking business. The "office" was located out in the country, several miles outside of town. With livestock trucks comes manure, so it was best to be somewhere where we could clean out the trucks without the neighbors complaining. I spent most of my Saturdays and summers working at the office from about the age of fourteen. My mom also worked at the office from time to time helping my dad with the books.

On one occasion we were at the office with my mom when she was helping my dad. I think I was about 10 years old. My mom was working at her desk and I was standing right next to the desk, watching her work. My dad told me to get away from the desk, but for some reason, I couldn't move. It was as if I was attached to my mom. I can remember hearing my dad take off his belt and then the beating began.

Many years later I was studying Bonding and Attachment and this memory from my childhood surfaced. I had strong feelings towards my mom, and didn't want to leave her side. Otherwise, I would have quit standing next to her desk, because I knew what was coming.

Years later I also learned about Triangulation. The triangulation process is the result of an unstable two-person system under stress. In an attempt to reduce the increasing tension of their relationship, a third person is drawn in to form a triangle, or triad [Bowen]. "Triangulation means strangulation," as my friend Cliff would tell me years later.