Trying to understand why a mom would want her children to reject their dad for no valid reason?
After 8 years of being divorced, my husband's ex-wife is still holding a grudge against my husband blaming him for the failure of their marriage. She is still just as mad, angry, bitter, and probably hurt which is driving all of this as she was the day they divorced. And no, she's not remarried.
Shes always HATED that the kids want to spend time at our house and she more than hates that the children love their father and myself. It's clear through her behavior over the years that she hates us and her goal in life is to get the kids to hate us too. Keep in mind we have done NOTHING to the kids (or her) to warrant the kids having any of their own issues with us.
Recently she has recently taken her parental alienation tactics to a whole new level.
Hypothetically speaking, let's say she's able to convience the kids that we are these gosh awful people she's made us out to be and the kids start believing her and stop wanting to come over or have anything to do with us. What does a mom (or dad) get out of convencing their children to stop having anything to do with their other parent just because the marriage didn't work out?
I just don't understand how alienating a child from the other parent could bring any kind of happiness to the parent doing the wedge driving. The burden that a child is forced to bear when one parent fails to recognize their child’s strong need to love and be loved by the alienated parent is absoutely insane and I don't know how someone could take pleasure in their child carrying that burden.
Is it like "haha, I won the kids!!" or does it bring some kind of sense of joy, happiness, pleasure to her life that the kids are "all hers" now?
Some parents hate the other
Some parents hate the other party so bad they don’t see how their actions are harming the child. Even when dad does do something bad to mom (cheat) that doesn’t mean he’s a bad parent but they can’t see that. They only see their own pain and they project it on the other parent.
It can also be a way to control and hurt the other party. Before I came into the picture BM would use the kids to blackmail SO.
Sure you can see the kids if you give me money.
Bring me food or you can’t have the kids Saturday like we agreed.
No you can’t have the kids because you take them to see your mom and I don’t like her.
Yeah I know I said you could have them the day after Christmas but I changed my mind because my family matters more than you.
So on and so on.
BM also gets off on being the victim single mother. She lied during the divorce process and claimed SO refused to see the kids. She told people at the kids’ school he wasn’t active in their lives. She got a lot of sympathy playing abandoned mother.
Some parents hate the other
Yep. This.
This is exactly what DH’s lawyer told him post divorce when he was dealing with a crap ton of PAS behavior out of BM.
“Some people’s hatred for the other parent outweighs the love they have for the child(ren) that came out of that union.”
BM was the cheater - habitual. DH was the one that filed for divorce. For the first year, post divorce, BM played the “Poor me, I’m a single mom” card so hard with the old codger, retired oil field workers that came into her family’s restaurant (where she worked), and they threw money at her all the time.
Shameless.
My ex husband did this to me
My ex husband did this to me over the course of the last few years with my oldest DD (16). He’s done nothing but try to make my life hell.....I rarely see my oldest daughter now. She now thinks of me like her dad does....he did it because he wants to “win”. I was and am a great mom and was but is no longer a great dad. I actually cannot believe that this happened. He tried hard to turn my other two kids against me but he failed. He’s lied about me, called me names and a bunch of other horrible stuff.....all BS because I was a stay at home mom until the divorce so I spent 13 years of my life raising our kids and doing everything for them.....but somehow we divorced and I’m the worst mom ever.
he told my dd16 that his new wife (my former best friend) would be her mom now and how they have more money to buy her whatever she wants and she has no rules etc....
we are approaching year 4 and the hate he has for me has grown not gotten less
and then we have my DH whose wife is the same as my ex.....she will be hateful until the day she dies.
both of our exes enjoy playing victim and will ride it forever
What does a mom (or dad) get
What does a mom (or dad) get out of convencing their children to stop having anything to do with their other parent just because the marriage didn't work out?
In my case, BM gets to be the martyr. THE parent who has been there for her child, THE only one that the child can depend on. She gets to have complete control of the child, even beyond childhood.
There is almost always an underlying disorder, whether it be BPD or narcissism. It may seem like hate of the other parent, and that is sometimes part of it, but it is really more self serving than that.
Agree
This was and is my DH situation.
It depends. But with us, BM
It depends. But with us, BM thinks she is superior simply because she is the mother. Thinks that automatically means she knows best.
Well that's what our world
Well that's what our world tells her. She's the end all be all when it comes to kids. She carried them in her belly for 9 months and gave birth to them so that means she KNOWS what's best.
I labelled the BM in our
I labelled the BM in our lives "NPD BM" very early on, as she has narcissistic personality disorder - she ticks just about every box for the symptoms. Read some books, or google about this disorder and you will have a better understanding of the hows and whys.
In our case, BM has
In our case, BM has borderline personality disorder and unless the kids are devoted to her then they're abandoning her. It doesn't make it any easier to live with, but any signs of 'disloyalty' to her are an existential threat.
She also has the martyr complex of 'living her whole life for her kids', which while parenting does involve sacrifice, shouldn't involve subsuming your life as she's claimed she's done. Choosing not to be gainfully employed isn't the same as doing 'everything' for your kids. But her reality isn't anyone else's reality. She has a personality disorder.
If you asked her directly she would say that it's important for the kids to have a relationship with their dad, but it really depends on her emotional state if she's actually standing in the way or not. And when she's in one of her 'moods', she's will lash out at anyone. At dad, at me and has even used my son as a target. Certainly her kids are not immune from her anger and her emotional and sometimes physical abuse.
In a narcissist’s head, they have been wronged
by their spouse ending their marriage even though the narcissist was a main reason why the spouse had to end things.
In my husbands case, he has been divorced 11 years now, ex wife is a major narcissist and abuser their whole marriage including her family who threatened hubby. He shut down in order to cope as he felt he could’ approach his family for help on how to deal.
stuoidly he though her getting pregnant would change her, pregnancy number 1 she faked a miscarriage when she had an abortion done while he was at work. Then baby #1 came and hubby was not allowed at any dr appt, when it came to delivery time she screamed “cut this thing out now”, she never wanted to be pregnant and did everything she could to sabotage getting pregnant.
when child 1 was born she realised she could use it to get back at hubby. She treated child 1 as her personal maid and never nurtured her and even neighbors would see this child rushing to do houseworj before school while exwife sat on her arse doing nothing.
stupidly child #2 & 3 came before hubby realised she wasn’t gonna change. She knew hubby was ending things and signs were all there so she accessed personal savings accts and cleared the lot out and still played the victim
after the divorce it was poor me i’ve been wronged. She even convinced and brainwashed daughter 1 that her and her family threatening to kill hubby and her mum going batshit crazy during divorce and kidnapping the daughters for over 5 yrs was justified because hubby divorced her and destroyed her life.
the reality is she brought this upon herself but the kids are too brainwashed and alienated that they wrong hubby
ridiculous thing is she remarried barely 2 weeks after the divorce and it cake out she’d been cheating behind hubbys backwhilst they were still married and her current husband is an ex high school sweetheart who left his wife to marry her. They got married while hubbys kids were in school and exwife tells them when they get home that they have a new daddy. This stepdad has alienated them further from their bio dad banning them from seeing their dad and the girls stupidly follow this even sd23.
A narcissist can do no wrong, they have played no part in the demise of their relationships or marriages and kids are possessions not human beings. They are incapable of nurturing.
my husband know its a lost cause with his 3 kids with ex so he settles for the bare crumbs of a relationship and these kids manipulate him as thats all they learn.
there is a big difference in my 2 kids because their love for hubby is unconditional and you find now hubby craves them more as we help destress his life while exwife and kids create more
my husband has learnt to be in denial to cope with exwife and my stepkids and hubbys family have seen it and often raise things up with me to understand. They know why i avoid stepkids and they are just shocked at how these stepkids treat everyone but this cycle of narcissm, alienation and dysfunction will continue down further generations.
the way relationship is with skids, i don’t see hubby jumping for joy when grandkids are born because there really is no relationship to begin with. There is also a chance when we decide to have more kids in a few yrs that eldest sd will be married and potentially having kids. What hubby feels for our kids won’t even compare to what he’ll feel for his daughter and her newborn child..
skids don’t realise that this narcissism, manipulative and alienating tactics they use on hubby to maintain a so-called relationship actually alienates him more
There are any number of
There are any number of reasons why a person would sabotage a relationship between their X and their child. The root cause is lack of character and a preponderance of manipulative evil crap at the core of their being. Beyond that, I don't care about the why. I care that they are perpetrating this vile evil and I care that they are brought to such an extreme point of discomfort for doing it that they would do anything to avoid experiencing that much pain ever again.
Part of this is making sure that there is a CO in place that sets the structure for the kids to have a relationship with both parents. The most critical element, IMHO, is that the kids need to be fully informed of the history, the CO, the rules and the consequences that are in play for the manipulative evil toxic parent if they perpetrate anything that deviates from reasonable and acceptable behavior.
The kids need to understand that their BM has zero say in their time with dad and his family. They also need to understand clearly the crap their BM is perpetrating and they need to understand clearly that they and BM have no choice other than to comply with the CO including dad's CO'd visitation time.
In theory this sounds
In theory this sounds beautiful. However, with a parent who is hell bent on alienating the kid(s) the CO is nothing more than an (expensive) worthless piece of paper. You cannot force them to follow it- cops don’t care and won’t get involved. Often the parent will just not be around. You document it all, but honestly the court doesn’t REALLY care and they won’t “punish” the custodial parent..... afterall, it wasn’t her/his fault the kids refused to go or don’t feel comfortable- it is the other alienated parents fault. To actually get somewhere with an alienation case it takes years and years and years.... which you often don’t have as the kids are teens and endless money- and even then you have to fluke out and have the right judge. Judges don’t like to make changes from the status quo it is VERY rare they will reverse custody and as long as the kid is in the alienaters custody you have zero chance of correcting it or making change.
The kids are also not normal kids- they are kids who are covertly abused and don’t see reality (no matter who tries to explain it to them). You can tell them all you want or try to “reverse alienate” them but it won’t work. They have been trained to believe you are a worthless liar who is ruining their lives and their precious other parents life and that they are the scum of the earth. Even attempting to do so will actually cause you more problems because if you show anger or discipline or behave like a parent they see their other parent as being validated in all that they say- you really ARE a monster!!! Even therapists have an impossible time getting through to them. DH’s kids would go to therapy with crosses arms (as directed by the mom) and wouldn’t breath a word to the therapist- they absolutely refused to talk. The therapist goes to court to say what is going on and mom says “I can’t control or change their emotions”.
It is a losing battle. I thought like you did at one point but after seeing how it really works think that if you are dealing with a fully unreasonable personality disordered parent who is in the drivers seat with the kids it is hopeless.
THIS - we don't have it as
THIS - we don't have it as bad as some... But life with BM is what they know. All we can do is provide a peaceful home and try to stand firm as much as possible.
My mother is personality disordered and she painted my dad so black there was a point where I really didn't want to spend any time with him. He didn't help himself though - he was an active alcoholic and could be very frightening - so it wasn't just my mother's propaganda it was also his own behaviour. But my mother's propaganda did include her own 'perfect' self-image and for a long time I really believed that and didn't see what she was doing. I can remember being in therapy and the therapist asking if my mother had any contribution to the situation and me saying - genuinely - "no, she's a saint". She wasn't. She's classic NPD, and I was classically brainwashed.
This is not to say I should have been with my dad, because he wasn't a safe parent either. There was a time when I would have gladly traded safety for the much better educational opportunities available to me at Dad's, but on the other hand, going to a rural high school has given me perspective about a lot of things that I couldn't have had at an exclusive prep.
Far from only theory. It has
Far from only theory, it has worked well for us in reality and it has worked well for friends who have followed the same model.
You are absolutely correct that it takes total commitment and zero tolerance to work. If your dad had kept the spotlight on your mom's personality disordered manipulations, kept you fully informed, and continually pushed for his parenting time you may have avoided being as duped by your toxic mother.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda doesn't work though.
I am sad for you that both your mom and dad were toxically lacking and that you had to experience the travesty of being raised by toxic parents.
I have always maintained that I won the parent lottery. I have done everything I could to give my kid (Adopted Skid) those same advantages. Not without mistakes of course. But his mom and I committed to do what we thought to be best as we navigated the blended family maze of raising him under a CO that required visitation with a shallow and polluted manipulative SpermClan gene pool. Ultimately the total confrontation, full disclosure, hold them accountable model worked for us.
It was not always pleasant, it was expensive, but... it was what we thought best at the time. In hindsight, all else remaining equal, I would not change a thing. However, I would hope that if we had it to do over again, the SpermClan would be more intelligent and adopt a level of reasonableness that they never could grasp the first time around.
Exactly. If enforcing the CO
Exactly. If enforcing the CO and telling the kids to knock it off was all it took, there would be no such thing as parental alienation. There is not a simple solution, and people aren't "allowing themselves to be alienated" as some like to believe.
Beating children into submission is not the cure for alienation.
Beating the opposition parent
Beating the opposition parent into submission is the cure. Baring their ass publicly, legally and with the kids works. Not pleasant, but it works.
When you turn on a bright light in a roach filled room the roaches scurry for the dark corners. Turn on the light and keep gassing them with a can of Raid and they run. The light in the case of the toxic blended family opposition are the complete facts broadcast constantly. The raid is a rolled up copy of the CO that you beat the opposition with in front of a judge any time they step out of line. It takes commitment, resources, and not tolerating the courts to not do their job.
That is what it took for us to prevail over attempts to gain custody, failure to return the kid home on schedule from SpermLand visitations, etc, etc, etc.... Roaches do not like the light being turned on in front of their neighbors, in their church, at their work, etc..... We made sure they had nowhere to hide and could not perpetuate the bullshit of their polished turd of a reputation. As much as they polished, we made sure the courts, their community and their work environment knew full well they were nothing but shiny shit.
They did nothing to demonstrate otherwise, particularly with the kid. He learned early that they were manipulative and their repeated breaking of his heart taught him to protect himself with the facts. We made sure he had the facts. Our son is not a man of honor and standing in his community. His three younger also out of wedlock half sibs by two othe baby mamas are unable to support themselves, two of them are in the revolving door of jail and gang activity, their SpermIdiot is a dope head useless POS and the SpermGrandHag and SpermGrandPa try to maintain the facade of how wonderful their family is.
They are fooling no one. Particularly the eldest of the Spermidiot's spawn.
What we do as Sparents is not an easy thing. It is far worse when the blended family opposition is out of touch with reasonableness. One thing is absolute. Tolerance of toxic crap does not work.
We did not tolerate it.
They want to "win".
They want to "win".
They want to win, they want
They want to win, they want sympathy, they want control, they want to be the victim, they want to be the hero/viewed as the superior parent who is protecting their kids, they want to show the world they aren’t together with this person anymore because that person is horrible (and it isn’t their fault), they want to punish, they think it is a game.
Any parent who does this is personally disordered.
OP, have you watched any
OP, have you watched any videos on youtube by Dr. Craig Childress?
I believe BM in our case is a
I believe BM in our case is a mix of NPD and BPD (borderline). She is diagnosed Bipolar. I think she did/does genuinely fear losing SS to DH (in her world, you can only love one parent) and feels abandoned and betrayed if he doesn't align himself with her.
She also believes herself to be a victim of DH leaving her (even though she had an affair) and really began to believe that DH was somehow harmful to SS as well.
She also wanted to control DH and SS, and punish DH for leaving her. Some of her actions were very conscious (visitation interference) and others were not (telling SS all kinds of bad things about DH, most of which were just imaginary or her feelings about things).
It worked, and SS19 didn't speak to DH from ages 15-18. Now that he's back in our lives, I can see that she still struggles with fearing she will lose him to DH and tries to interfere. Unfortunately, he doesn't really see it clearly yet.
Yeah, when BM is personality
Yeah, when BM is personality disordered there's little you can do. Because you're fighting against a made-up reality. It's not like they're 'choosing' to be manipulative although it often seems like they are choosing it. (I struggle with this with BM, my ex, and my mother - they can choose to behave differently sometimes). They fade in and out of rationality. And if they're reasonably high functioning they're pretty good at manipulating things within their frame of reality. That frame where it's ok to hurt and lie and steal and triangulate and stir mischief. You can't appeal to reason and you can't appeal to empathy.
As the non-personality disordered person you must set boundaries and continue to seek to do the right thing from your own internal value set, but if you engage with them at all they will tromple the boundaries and tromple and tromple to the point where allowing them to cross the boundary is less painful than enforcing consequences sometimes.
Yes, exactly. She is very,
Yes, exactly. She is very, very invested in looking normal and classy, so she doesn't show her ass to anyone but the closest to her. Sometimes she seemed almost psychotic in her fear, early on, that DH was trying to take SS from her. We took him on a trip to a neighboring state when he was 11, and she texted him and DH frantically saying that it would be inappropriate to take him out of the country, over and over - we weren't planning to, but that was her fear. I think finally getting him to refuse to see DH made her feel much safer.
Now that he's back in our lives, and the power struggle of a custody order is gone, you can still see all the little things she does to keep SS close to her. Even at 19, she is so afraid of losing him to DH. I can also see how jealous she is that DH and I are still together and happy, which of course makes it seem like she was the problem all along.
I no longer hate her like I did, I can see what a horrible, miserable existence she lives. But I do hate what she's done to SS and DH's relationship because of her fears.
The BMs in our lives are so
The BMs in our lives are so similar, tog.
After BM and DH separated, skid was basically dumped on him at the very least 75% of the time. BM couldn’t be bothered with being a mother. DH booked a flight for he and skid to visit his parents. BM knew beforehand, but once they got on that plane a switch flipped and she began frantically texting DH, while he sat in the Phoenix airport with a really young skid, informing him she was going to call the police and have him arrested for kidnapping.
When they were separated, BM
When they were separated, BM had no issue with giving DH 50/50 and letting him take the lead on parenting stuff - but she thought they were getting back together. And as soon as he filed for divorce, she began interfering and trying to get 100% of SS's time in whatever way she could. Withholding visitation, etc.
I don't believe she is capable of giving any thought to what is best for SS or how any of this affects him. She is too caught up in her own needs.
So similar
The BM in my life is so similar to many other BMs on here.
When DH and BM divorced, BM hid DH's passport and refused to give it to him because she thought he was going to try to kidnap the children and take them out of the country.
She had no reason to believe this. DH is not a mastermind and he didn't even try to fight her for 50/50 custody.
In her mind, DH is out to get her and it doesn't matter what anyone says or does, she digs her heals in and commits herself to the fact that her delusions about DH are true.
My husband's ex is borderline
My husband's ex is borderline personality. I believe my mother also is borderline. One of the earmarks of this disorder is fear of abandonment and I've seen it haunt these women.
BM did a number on SD by telling her I would take her father away from her. It worked. SD was nothing but a monster to me for all of our marriage and I haven't seen her in two yrs. She almost busted our marriage. SD and I will never have a relationship because BM only saw it as a threat and, frankly, that crazy fruit didn't fall far from the tree -- SD always competed for her father's attention when I was around.
My mother is the same. She is jealous of time I spend with friends -- I'm 52 years old! She becomes petulant when she's not leading or controlling a conversation and she will interrupt or talk over you until you end the other conversation. And every single time she dropped me off at college, inevitably, a huge fight would develop out of nowhere just as they were getting ready to leave. Same with my sister and brother. I felt endless guilt going to college, and a level of relief words cannot convey.
I know PAS happens even without borderline personality disorder because people are naturally competitive and jealous in times of divorce. But if it rises beyond a certain level, you might want to check out the traits of borderline personality. You can't fix it. It's one of the hardest mental disorders to address because of its nature -- these are not all-out crazy people who will be locked up because they're walking around the grocery store naked singing Donna Summer. They are shifty. Their tool is manipulating reasonable people's guilt and insecurities to get what they want. They can turn this shit on and off like it's nothing, so the average person thinks they're charming, engaging and altruistic. But when they target you, you're fucked.
PS: I disengaged from my parents just about a year ago. Heaven!
I'm fairly certain that BM
I'm fairly certain that BM has BPD, confirmed by multiple counselors I have worked with who told me that BM was exhibiting "borderline tendencies."
Your description also makes me wonder about my MIL, though. I always knew that she was manipulative, but she treats DH's sister the same way your mother treated you, so I wonder if she also has BPD. She pouts when sister is home and not giving her complete attention to MIL. Sister also told me once, "I've stopped bringing boyfriends home for holidays, because my mother really only wants to see me, so she gives whatever boyfriend I've brought the cold shoulder and I don't want them to have to deal with that." She also fawns over sister whenever she is home and plans lots of girls outings.
Recently, DH's cousin's daughter was wearing a tutu-like skirt and MIL said, "I wish I could have gotten sister to wear clothes like that when she was younger." DH replied, "you did, mom, you had her wearing stuff like that until she was 11 and started to refuse."