Guilt, my culpability, inappropriate behaviour

My counsellor said I'm perhaps "naive" and "trusting". My ex-boyfriend, co-parent and now good friend, once said I was "too trusting and that's why I get hurt".

I'm trying to work out why I succumbed to Parental Alienation as an adult. I used to think my male parent was never wrong, even perhaps when he behaved inappropriately towards me. I can remember how surprised I was whenever he did anything like that. His reaction was a smile and normal behaviour so I'd then worry that I was overreacting to him running his hand up and down my back to see if I was wearing a bra or rubbing my breast with the back of his hand when I bent over in front of him or even when he drew boobs on a picture of me my eldest daughter asked him to draw (which she remembers).

I feel so stupid at the moment. I also feel cruel and complicit in the misery the Parental Alienation caused my Mother.

I was manipulated into behaving angrily towards her. I was manipulated into attributing ulterior motives to all her behaviour. He used to tell me she was promiscuous. He said her second divorce (from a philanderer) was "karma" and that so was the cancer that killed her. He said that the cancer was her own fault and the universe avenging itself upon her. I was in my early twenties when he blamed her divorce on karma without knowing the details, and remembering wondering if he was right. At the time, I was still furious with her and "on his side" so I agreed in a way. I was not fully convinced in karma at all, not having any religious beliefs of any kind at the time, but I certainly believed that if karma existed, then she was reaping what she had sowed. He once said she would never be faithful to her second husband (I don't believe she would ever have been unfaithful, personally. Even when I was angry at her, I would never have thought it in her character) and that she would "soon be out on the randy again". That quote comes from my latter teens. It so disturbed me that I asked my then boyfriend if I should tell her. He said "Keep it to yourself". I'm glad I did.

The cancer? He shocked me when he said that the cancer was her own fault. I was in my mid-twenties and, with the help of my new found bravery from my faith (having stuck up for myself against him for the first time in my life, much to his annoyance), starting to realize that the male parent wasn't infallible. The shock of her actually developing it in the first place was frightening enough because my relationship with my mother was beginning to change. I had actually begun to look forward to a thawing, perhaps an understanding of why she disliked me so much (my beliefs at the time due to his influence). I was looking forwards to creating a meaningful PROPER mother-daughter relationship and I think she was too. I was very afraid and rightly so because she died a year and a half after the initial diagnosis. To hear something SO nasty and cruel from him stunned me and I think I can now look back and see a beginning there. At that point, though I was still confused by his attacks on my religion, I probably began to distrust him. I couldn't quite believe I was hearing that she deserved her cancer, that it was all her own fault, that she had brought it upon herself.

More later - have to do something.