It sounds obvious that it has to do with you, but is it guilty conscience or narcissism?

You are most likely right Paige.She tried to add my husband as a friend around about this time.He refused he said he has heard enough of her bs.

Good for him! I used to have hundreds of friends but I went through and milled them out, categorized them and use the filter excessively, sharing only certain things with certain people. Facebook can be damn triggering, sometimes.

It suggested my father (my abuser) as a friend to me once. I was immediately panicked. How did FB know I might know him?? Our names are completely different and we have no mutual friends! Scary...

Although I have to admit that yesterday I went into total denial about everything going on in my life and I spent almost the entire day scouring FB for funny things...laughed more yesterday than I have in a long time!

I tell ya.The dynamics around my family are insane.My cousin who admitted to me that my brother assaulted her still watches his kids for him.Her husband has no clue that my brother assaulted her and he is friends with him.I think that is one of the fears my cousin has about fully coming out and saying what my brother did to her.She would have to admit to her husband that he has been friends with one of her abusers for years and she knew about it the whole time. Every man around my family is a rapist and every woman has been raped. In just two weeks of separation from my husband.I was assaulted numerous times and so was my daughter.That is how bad it is there.A hell hole of abuse.

I understand. I've been able to trace my family's dysfunction back to my great-uncle who, supposedly, molested several of my aunts and uncles plus my father, most of whom (the men, anyway) passed it down, including assaulting my aunts (their sisters). It's insanity! I have nothing to do with any of them.

Wow! I am positive Family tree would not want that added to their genealogy profile! Although it could explain a lot of mental illness that is supposedly hereditary.

Here's a fun read she might enjoy:

"Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked. Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an effect on our characters, lives, or destinies? What force or influence, what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human beings and affect our development or fate? No amount of scientific-sounding jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way.... Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents the astrological influence.... If so, astrological predictions -- like those of any scientific field -- should be easily tested.... Astrologers always claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have generously done such testing for them. There have been dozens of well-designed tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them.... I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by the firelight, afraid of the night."

Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific (Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed, San Jose Mercury News, 8-May-88)

Maybe then she could get to the real problem.

Absolutely no doubt in that Steph!

i can see where you would draw that connection.

"I told my sister a few months back that our mother tolerating the abuse is actually a crime"

Quite honestly, I think that's the only reason my mother helped with the investigation once she "found out" about the abuse--she was saving her own a**. I know that she saw at least once, maybe twice, and just left the room like there was nothing unusual happening. For her it wasn't horoscopes, but Christianity. She hid behind it hoping that no one would see her weakness and tried to come off as devout as possible. I don't imagine it gave her any answers either, otherwise she would have owned up to it instead of continuing to pretend she didn't see. When I went to a counselor, she wouldn't have denied her crazy behavior (like trying to strangle me) rather than help me. People are nuts, and it never ceases to amaze me how often people do "the wrong thing".

My mother in law does the hiding behind Christianity thing Steph.Once my husband ask her if she was numb sexually just to see what she would say and she said yes but I leave that up to Jesus to take care of that. He was like okaaaay.He said to her you are nearly 60 years old and Jesus hasn't taken care of it yet. What makes you believe he is ever going to take care of it? He told her 60 years is far too long for a person to carry the burdens of these abuses with no obvious results from their religion.

We had a similar theme going on in my family with the waiting for Jesus to fix your deep rooted mental problems thing. At times, I've been pretty sure that they were only religious as a way to cover up things like schizophrenia (they claimed to "see" demons, banish evil spirits and ghosts, have prophetic dreams and "hear" god a lot). A few of my aunts came from different branches and it was almost like they were competing constantly for who had the most religious revelation from Jesus himself in order to prove they picked the right one. If you had emotional problems, depression, PTSD, BPD, scars from your childhood, a habit of self injury, anything at all, it was because you needed to "get right with god", not a medical or mental issue that required attention, therapy or understanding. I'm pretty sure my mom chalks her sexual issues up to it being wrong to have sex without the intent to reproduce; maybe tells herself she's just celibate.

My mother in law was raped and subjugated into a relationship by an abusive rapist.She got out of this relationship because my husband told her he would have nothing to do with her if she stayed in it.He told her he would not sit there and watch her being abused.He would rather have nothing to do with her than to have to watch that.That was a turning point for her and she ended it. Recently she was talking to me about her feelings with this person while the were having "sex".She told me she had panic attacks everytime they had "sex". She minimalized these panic attacks by saying it was because they weren't married and sinning in the eyes of god.She refuses to accept that she was getting raped and panicking over it.She also has told us that she suspects this same person of abusing his own daughter.She waxes and wanes back in forth with denial about that too.

I don't believe in the horoscope thing but I do believe that when someone wants control because they feel they are out of control or not in control they wll find anything they can--horoscopes, religion, etc. to get back that sense of control. They need to know what is going on all the time even if it isn't under their own roof. The more controlling they are the more helpless they felt as a child. The mind continues to fascinate me of how it finds a way to allow us to feel less helpless and more in control even when we aren't and that control is only an illusion.