Note: the last names of females mentioned below are different than what they were at the time since they took on the last name of their husband(s).

Members of our extended family knew it was happening. The emotional, psychological, verbal, and physical abuse, not to mention the emotional neglect. We had an aunt, my mother's sister, Aunt Maureen (Bingham), who was eight years older than our mother. Aunt Maureen had three daughters – Sharon (Salerno when we were growing up), Karen (Gleifert), and Linda Bingham. We called them Sharon, Karen, and Linda.

They were our first cousins, and they were adults the entire time when we were growing up. Sharon had sons named Dan and Jaime. Dan was almost four years younger than me, and Jaime was over eight years younger than me. Karen had a daughter named Barbara (Bingham), a daughter Tracy, who was about the same age as Jaime, and a younger son named Wayne.

I spent time with Barbara from time to time since she was just over two years younger than me. We talked about the abuse (sometimes my sister Carrie was present). I liked spending time with Barbara the most. I always could relate to females better than males and some of the activities that guys like, I didn't like, e.g., sports like football.

I enjoyed spending time with Dan, but I felt more comfortable with Barbara.

The thing is that during our teen years, Barbara became interested in boys and that doesn't include your cousin. I could see how guys would be interested in her. She was my cousin so I wasn't looking at her in the way I might look at another girl.

As an aside, my female cousins and/or aunt might greet us with a kiss as well. Nothing inappropriate but I still remember my aunt Maureen placing her hands on both sides of my face and kissing me on the lips when we showed up for Thanksgiving. I had never seen a kiss between my parents that was any different.

It's hard to put your finger on things like this but I reflected on this years later when I visited my family with Lynn, my wife. Even when my brother and his wife had a "newer" relationship they showed less affection than Lynn and I did everywhere, including when I visited my family.

There was nothing new or unique about where Lynn and I were in our relationship. Anyone would have or could have said something like "aw, you can see how they are in love." Even without me trying to make some kind of declaration of my love – like when I read a poem about our love and read it to others. More on that later.

I had noticed that males are socialized differently. I didn't greet my male cousins with hugs. In our culture, there are differences in the ways that two males relate to one another. Males maintain a greater amount of personal space between one another, in general than a male-female relationship, even if you are talking about close relatives.

I could always relate better to females and so I felt close and was more relaxed with Barbara than perhaps with a male relative who was the same age as me. Anyway, with Barbara, I would lay back on her bed while she put on makeup before we were going out somewhere like to the mall or something.

Of course, my mother got jealous of the time I spent with my cousins. I remember her telling me that Barbara doesn't want to spend time with you because she is into "boys" now that we were teens. Or she might say regarding all of our cousins that "they have their own lives to live."

In a more extreme example of this jealously and which may reveal the fact that our mother knew we were talking about the abuse, she would say "your cousins aren't going to let you go live with them."

So, anyway, we – my sister Carrie and I - talked to Aunt Maureen about how we were being abused. We spoke to Barbara about it... and I talked to Barbara when I was alone with her about the abuse. She spoke to her mother Karen about the abuse, and we also spoke to Sharon, Dan, and Jaime's mother, about these things.

Our parents were so cold and distant, which is a form of emotional neglect. So, I loved the contact of getting hugs from them at family get-togethers. It felt warm and so good to have these relationships.

When I talk about abuse, I am not talking about strict parenting. My paternal grandparents were strict, and they doled out spankings. They lived in the south, so we only saw them for about two weeks each year. I just heard stories about how they employed spankings. But it was for punishment. My grandparents never lost control of their temper or their actions. They were not acting in response to how they were feeling. What my grandparents did was predictable – a predictable result of a child's behavior.

With our parents, mainly our mother, it was more a matter of what kind of mood she was in. And if she was upset, so was our father. I remember being punched by my father as late as my teenage years. It actually didn't hurt at that point. I thought it was pathetic what he had done in that particular instance and I believe he knew his actions were wrong. He had noticed my scornful look but he had not responded to my response.

My mother had much less control over her actions and her explosive and unexpected anger. I have processed this in therapy, so I don't want to go into details too much. I would be punched in the face, arms, or elsewhere.

I saw her strike out wildly at my brother John who was over eight years younger than me. This happened when he was in high school. I heard my mother say that John used Aikido (a form of martial arts) on her, and she fell to the ground. I had no idea that anyone would get away with that. I had never attempted that. I just took it.

What I would later learn is that I needed something more than "protection" or you could say that the idea of protection might be something as simple as soothing words. Maybe it is someone saying "I'm sorry that happened to you" to indicate that it does not reflect upon you or your worth when something bad happens.

I would discover later in life that so many victims feel "shame." By shame, I mean the sense that there is something wrong with them as a person. I distinguish this from guilt. With guilt, we learn from mistakes because we feel bad for having hurt someone.

If we love someone and we do or say something hurtful, we feel guilt and that inspires us to not do the same thing again. We apologize, maybe we make amends and try not to do it again.

It would take years – when I was in graduate school - for me to figure out what was wrong with my mother. I will describe what I learned later in the book.

I did recognize our parents' inability to see things from another point of view.

This is what I had been noticing. Because of my mother's obsession with her specialness and other qualities it seemed that nothing I ever did was good enough. I never learned to develop a mind of my own until that was allowed after I went off on my own. When I came back from college and was talking to my father he responded with a defensive question "what's wrong with our values?" referring to his and my mother's "values." I wasn't speaking of moral values or ideas about right and wrong. I was speaking more along the lines of preferences and interests.

Maybe if I had been exposed to some psychology classes or certain forms of psychological counseling in high school, I would have learned not only about what was wrong with our family but a sense of what might interest me. I'd have to wait until I went off to college to learn about my interests and what kind of career would be a good choice for me. Instead, I went off to college in engineering which wasn't even close to being a good match for me.

A mother and father who never said, "good job, I'm proud of you" doesn't provide a key and vital need that every child and teenager have. It's so common sense and it's why we try to get the attention of our parents. We want approval... validation! Affirmations! Physical contact! For me, that would have to wait until first my friends in college provided some of that for me. They listened with compassion, empathy, and understanding. That relationship was transformational.

I had a counselor in college who provided those same things that I had always needed. And, dear reader, I'm sure you can imagine how this might have influenced my choice of close friends, romantic partners as well as a career direction.

Those friends also validated my feelings when I discussed the abuse. They felt with and for me. That's empathy. I would end up demonstrating that for patients and clients when I worked as an adult in the mental health/psychiatric field.

Let's briefly consider the book "The Five Love Languages" by Gary D. Chapman. The idea is that how we experience, and express love is different for different people. I took a psychological test recently and found out that my first preference is with physical contact, followed by quality time and words of affirmation. I scored lower in "acts of service" and "gift-giving."

This is often used to help couples but as a psychotherapist, while we do not use touch, we do employ the use of affirmations and validation which are related.

Keep this in mind when I discuss my most meaningful relationships in adulthood.

If there is something profoundly missing in our lives, we will hunger all the more for it.

I wanted to cuddle, be nurtured, comforted, soothed, hugged, caressed. I wanted physical closeness, intimacy, and physical contact. I found that first with a special person and her name was Celta. By intimacy, I do not necessarily mean sexual or sensual intimacy in this regard.

There is nothing wrong with sexual and sensual intimacy though. It is a need, a hunger, a desire. It was met first with Lynn. We lived as husband and wife for years.