Hey guys I recently had somewhat of a revelation that I’d like your input on.

For some background I’m a 27M who was raised by a single mother after a bitter separation from my dad. There was abuse and cheating from my dad’s part and he was overall kind of scummy, dealt drugs and beat my mom. Despite this, my mom had me and my older brother with him and they were together until I turned 3.

So this is where some resentment towards my mom comes in. Being a single mother meant she had to work a ton to support herself and us and there was never anytime to spend with us which sucked considering our dad was out of the picture(jail). So when she decided to remarry and have another kid when I was like 6-7 it felt like a slap in the face because it felt like I was being pushed to the side for this new family she wanted even though she barely had time to give us any attention. It always confused me as to why she would do this and then complain constantly about being so stretched thin and take her anger out on us(despite it being her decision to start another family) and it created this really strange high stress environment at home that made life absolutely fucking miserable. Like clockwork, stepdad ended up cheating(tbh I don’t blame him, my mom is kind of a frigid, tense high stress work hard type A person who has no chill and I don’t know anyone who would tolerate her) a few years into the marriage, she got divorced again and AGAIN decided to remarry and have another kid within less than a year of meeting someone else a few years later. I was entering high school at this point. I remember telling her, don’t you think you’re moving a little too fast? She said, “we’re grown, we know what we’re doing” She was around 40 at this point.

Well it was more of the same shit. Constant fights and arguments. High stress fraught marriage. She admitted to me that she regrets getting married to him. this really fucked me up and made me just hate my life and feel worthless. Of course I never really understood my emotions then or how to articulate them. Despite this I was a really high achieving kid in school and went off to college on scholarship but ended up dropping out after having anxiety and panic attacks which ended consuming a greater part of my 20’s which stemmed from me thinking I completely fucked up my life. I’m better now but upon reflection I think a lot of my anxiety came from thinking I had to follow “the path”. Go to school - get a good job to support a family - find a wife- get married- have kids and when I couldn’t have that I felt like a huge failure but I’ve recently begun to think I had it all backwards and my mom was the perfect example.

I think her preoccupation with saving face in front of the family(our family is very traditional, divorce not allowed/ is a sin, no abortion, sex before/without marriage frowned upon) and not just being happy by herself has caused her a great deal of pain that she could have avoided if she wasn’t constantly chasing this perfect family. I always wished she would chill the fuck out but I now think that she was more concerned with what her family would think than what was best for us. And now, when I realized that I had those same preoccupations, I realized I could just chill the fuck out and let them go and live my life on my own terms and not what my family thinks of me and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. But I think, will I regret this? What if I don’t pursue building a life with someone else as aggressively now while I’m still young? Will I end up regretting it later when I’m old? Maybe my mom thought this also. What do you guys think?