Personally, I've explained. I'm 49 years old, I explained for decades. I spoke out. I gave medical evidence. I gave academic and human rights evidence. When I finally made it clear that I was never going to back down and that I expected accountability, I was shunned. Sent out into the supposed wilderness. The goodbye email, sent with love along with shutting the door, was signed by my mother for her, my dad...and the pets. What was meant to be utterly serious and the ultimate punishment was absurd, juvenile, and a joke.
What I've learned is that the abuser cannot hear the abused. They can maybe hear others, but only if they respect them and value their opinions. But usually, rather than back off from their position, they will double down. The only thing that ever made a slight impact was when my mother was heard as an abusee herself. It was maybe fifteen years ago. She was talking about something from her childhood, which she generally views as ideal but with some painful things. I reframed what she was talking about. I said it must have been really difficult as a child to be in a home with domestic violence (her father hit her mother and was an alcoholic, though unlike most people, he did eventually realize the harm alcohol was causing and he stopped drinking and stopped hitting, and we were talking about what she witnessed). When I made that compassionate comment, she got quiet, and then she said, "Yeah, I guess I brought some of that to you."
The physical violence toward me had already been over for many years, and that's what she was referring to, but her efforts to control me, to override my autonomy, and her emotional blackmailing never stopped. After she said what she did, she made no effort to become accountable, to make amends, to try to reconcile with me. She continued on with all of her interference, attempts to control, manipulations, tantrums, and discards. The last time she discarded, I stopped returning, as was the previous norm, and as with all of her other malignant behaviors except for the physical violence that ended when I was 18, she continues to double down when I have refused to accept what she wants from me or of me.
My father is her enabler. As long as she has his support for her actions, she has support to continue as she is. As long as he is emotionally weak and she is his primary emotional support, he will continue as he is. The more outrageous and utterly unreasonable she is, the more he hates me, the victim, for not going along with it and capitulating. It makes things more uncomfortable for him when I don't. Poor guy.
My story is not yours. I cannot say for certain how it will turn out. I will say that I've read a lot, and the book Boundaries supplemented by In Sheep's Clothing, and most of the books by Nancy Evans have shown me how my parents operate, how my family operated, and that unless they themselves seek change, both abuser and enabler, they will not otherwise be motivated to do so and will only double down.
You definitely do not owe it to those who abused you to point it out to them. If your situation was anything like mine, the focus from the time I was a child was to make them feel better, and trying to point out the harm and get them to heal was a part of that. It was not welcome. I spent decades trying to figure out how to get through to them, to break through the utter irrationality and the actions that were the opposite of love. Again, the focus was on them. They did not welcome that kind of focus, they were fine with the way they were, they felt justified because of the combination of their cultural (Midwestern US, baby boomer generation) and religious (Christian) foundations that said parenting is about controlling a child, getting respect from them, and beating them into submission. When I was 18, the last time my mother hit me, I told my dad I almost hit her back and he snapped at me, "Don't you ever hit your mother! She has every right to hit you!" I cannot compete against their irrationality and their illusions.
I offer you this quote: "No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude."
I wish only the best for you. I shared my story in case there are enough similarities that can offer some predictability, and I shared resources. I caution you to be prepared that the likely outcome will be to be further pushed away for not accepting their narratives and rationales. If you do approach them, I would think that the best way would be to focus on the things that hurt them and caused them to be that way and to soften them with compassion, but then it makes it all about them and not you and what you need, so your well-being is again postponed and sublimated for their good, and unless they're already motivated and willing to pursue their own healing, your efforts are not likely to make a beneficial impact. They likely don't want to be impacted. If they're like my parents and many other abusers, especially the ethical ones, and if they tell themselves a revisionist narrative of their own childhoods and abuse, then they stand on shaky foundations that to them seem firm and on which they know how to balance, like a sailor who can handle the seas but has to adjust to walking on land and would rather be at sea. If they don't have new, rational, and emotionally safe foundations to support them when they face the truth, they aren't likely going to want to face it. If they weren't fine with what they've done, they would have sought to change it; showing it to them is not something that will be seen as a gift, but something to shove away, and potentially you along with it.
I wish there was a better outcome for this as far as your relationships with them. The best outcome one can usually expect is to learn to focus on the self, respect the self, and belong to the self. For me, it has been hard work to do so, and very rewarding the longer I've done it. While I may have felt a little more empowered to have been the one to instigate no contact with my parents, I am now empowered because I've made good use of it and I have myself, I have reality rather than illusions. In order to have my parents, they really have me, because I have to sacrifice myself. Now that I have myself, I know that they are not worth it, they will never stop harming or seeing me as other than who I am, which they've always done. I am worth all of my struggle to not fall back into their world of their illusions. I am grounded. I am no longer enmeshed. I define me, and I choose my direction without having to fight anyone over it. They no longer do either of those things to me, and nor does the relationship.
