Schmoopie Dumped Him, He Blames the Kids

This is an excellant opportunity to demonstrate a valuable life to your kids- boundaries. Stay out of it. If they come to you wanting to talk just listen. If they ask advice offer general tips on boundaries, not well earned venom about FW Dad or AP. Teach them boundaries by how you react. Use words if necessary.

Yes, boundaries-boundaries-boundaries. His relationship drama (or even lack thereof) is not your business and not your kids’ business.

I guess because mine was a gray divorce where he and his family dug into every aspect of our relationship with great abandon (of course my side wasn’t believed), I’m really wary of relationship discussions in general. Sure, I’ve made exceptions, but my elderly aunt once said that she was careful with that sort of thing because she didn’t want to sit at the dinner table with the partner of a friend or relative, knowing all the dirt in their marriage. I’ve certainly lived out the wisdom of that. She had been married twice in her 20’s and then married for 40+ years to her third when he died.

It is a true test of “meh” as to how you respond to this. For me, I was almost two years out from the final D-day where he left me and our son for the OW when she dumped him. He was cheating on her, imagine that?! Our divorce wasn’t even final, oh the irony. When he texted me to let me know (because he was informing our 11yo son) my only reply was “OK”.

What else is there to say? Poor you? Could’ve predicted it, should’ve put money down on a bet? Wanna come home? THERE IS NOTHING TO SAY. You are no longer part of the narrative (great song from Hamilton)… remove yourself when they try to pull you in to their pity party. (Sounds like your FW has the Pity and Rage channels nailed down!)

Minutes later, he had a new GF at the gym (my son basically watched him pick her up). After her six month trial run, he asked if I wanted to meet her before he introduced her to our son (even though our son had been watching his “courtship” at the gym), I declined. What would be the point?

And I think that is the heart of the matter here… you and your kids have survived the implosion and discard; your lives have gone on without the FW; keep reminding the kids of what boundaries and self-caring look likes… model it… put your joy in to the life you’ve built. Don’t look back, even to laugh.

It’s really hard for kids to navigate their new relationship with the Cheater when they know that the Cheater blew up their family for the AP, and this area is rife with opportunities for manipulation and blameshifting.

Our 3 kids take a very dim view of what Ex-Mrs LFTT did and an even dimmer view of her AP, who she now lives with. They have as little to do with him as they possibly can, and the youngest flat out refuses to visit her mother’s house or attend anything that involves the AP. Ex-Mrs LFTT put a huge amount of pressure on all 3 of them – and the youngest in particular – to accept the AP, saying that their refusal to accept him was undermining her relationship with him. She went as far as saying that if she and the AP broke up, then it would be the kids’ fault.

Thankfully for them, the kids put her firmly in her place; thankfully, they are now unafraid to put firm boundaries in place to protect themselves.

LFTT

Sometimes kids just need to emotionally detach and limit contact with a parent. Kids should also learn, Trust that they suck. When you dont need anything from the parent its alot easier. If you still need financial support its tough. But when a young adult becomes independent from the parent and has a life of their own they can fill that parental void with friends, kids, spouse. Ultimately, thats what we want for them anyways. To be ok when we are gone. FW may ask for money or emotional blackmail when no one is left, hopefully kids will at that point learn to not care and say no.

They say it’s over but is it? All this triangulation just to yell at the kids. I bet it’s still FWB relationship

I read an article in GQ or Esquire, I can’t remember which, but it was about a soldier who said he missed war. The highs and the lows. I think what your ex enjoys are drama and trauma. He makes them up and he destroys them and make some more up and destroys them and he’s having the time of his life. You were just this normal boring person who got on with day to day stuff. (It is amazing that with no active wars for us we don’t know what to do with peace. We burn down cities, we storm capitols and generally creat mayhem). He is his own worst enemy.

To your kids, if they bring it up: “I’m sorry to hear that you’re caught up in your dad’s relationship drama, that’s not fair to you. I highly recommend you refuse any calls from his ex ladyfriend, and block her phone number, and tell your dad ‘no thank you, I’d rather not hear about it’ if he tries to discuss it with you. That’s a good boundary for you to have.”

To your ex: nothing. absolute crickets.

To yourself: nothing. absolute crickets. practice not caring one bit.

I think the question of how to help kids process a FW’s bizarre behavior is valid. An understanding of bizarre behavior in general can help kids develop life-long immunity to fuckery. It’s a little tricky though. Survivors always have to be careful to avoid fabricated “parental alienation” accusations because courts can be really unfair in how this is applied (battered women losing their kids because the kids know mom was battered? Absurd but it happens). Personally I’ve found that a lot of foundational wisdom about abuse can be imparted indirectly through discussions of politics, human nature, evolution, corporate corruption, government malfeasance, criminal law, you name it.

I didn’t plan to provide my kids with a basic understanding of abnormal psych so that they could grow up with the ability to put their FW dad’s fuckwittery in perspective but that’s kind of how it worked out. I didn’t know FW was a fuckwit until I did and it wasn’t my doing that the kids found out about it too. Long before that discovery I thought I was preparing the kids to live in the real world because that’s how I was raised, at least to the best of my parents’ ability. There wasn’t a lot of discussion of narcissism when I was growing up and lists of intricate red flags for relationship vetting seem like a product of the internet age and online survivor forums. But my family provided me with an interest in human nature. I was also just following the cues of what interested my kids. They’ve always been the “why, why, why” types. I’d have to study up for routine bedtime chats or I’d get stumped.

“Why do bad people do bad things? Why can’t we just put them all in a dungeon and make the world a perfect place?”
“Well kids… ” (history, law, social justice, activism, criminal justice, politics, spheres of influence, bystander psychology, evolution, psychotraumatology, behaviorism, dramatic depictions in films and novels, blah blah blah, why why why).

Maybe it’s a genetic family trait to be fascinated by human nature/failings. We’ve got a lot of professional sociological skein untanglers in the family related to law, journalism and business, even accounting. My mother and uncles were also very cheerful people and were more fascinated than shocked by the “dark side,” so my impression was that realism might actually be one of the keys to happiness. That and ethics. Turns out there’s a kind of science to ethics and that was dinner table conversation growing up. Then I trained as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence which involved studying criminal psych and later applied a lot of that to working for an environmental health publication. Oddly enough that was a seamless transfer because environment relates to the politics of science and all the human foibles and corruption that surround eco disasters and cover-ups. There was DARVO involved in the Gulf oil spill.

The family tradition continues! The kids were teethed on this stuff because it’s just what mom always talked about. As the kids hit puberty, the endless questions started veering towards all things sexual, including the dark side of it.

“Who’s Harvey Weinstein? Why does he look like a warthog? Why did it take so long to catch him? What’s #MeToo?”
“Well kids…” (sex and porn industries, abuse of power, human trafficking, abuser psychology, financial influence, the difference between love and dependency and control, blah blah blah, why why why).

You’d think this fascination with dark subject matter would make the kids gloomy, depressive or cynical. But like I saw in my family, it’s kind of the opposite. The kids are cheerful and resilient and building radars and an understanding of the world. When the kids run into conflict or see crappy people doing crappy things, they might become tearful and sad at first but then they quickly start looking at things philosophically and are back to being happy-go-lucky. For instance my daughter was heartbroken at 12 from being ghosted by a friend from one of her classes until her music tutor pointed out that the girl’s physician parents cornered him at a party to tell him all about the David Ickean theory of lizard aliens and they probably thought we were illuminati reptoids trying to take over the planet. She thought that was hilarious and researched everything on David Icke, “crisis cults” and on and on. Curiouser and curiouser.

Then one of my sons is prone to rumination and loses sleep over things like slave labor in the garment industry and climate change, whatever. I already limit screen time but limited it further and asked him to stop doom scrolling but he’s naturally drawn to problem-solving. But then it all turns into an interest in politics, social justice strategy or protective humor and creativity and the kids’ friendships are forming around these interests. My daughter formed a club around her aspiration to be a graphic novelist and incorporates everything– even the dark stuff– into character development, world-building and story lines. Fortunately the parents of the kids’ minor friends are cool with it (the ones who don’t think we’re lizard kings). For instance, one time when the grownups in our COVID bubble were hanging out in my kitchen, the parents of one of my daughter’s friends tiptoed into the living room to see what the all the shrieking was about and found the kids rolling on the floor and making up a travel jingle parody about Epstein island. That could seem a little iffy but the jingle wasn’t callous towards victims, more a warning on how to avoid predators. Then the grownups got to talking about raising resilient kids. We’d all been horribly worried about the fact that teens and tweens around the world were suffering an epidemic of lockdown depression. But ours were rolling on the floor for seven hours straight. That might provide a hint that something must be working.

Now that the kids are showing interest in eventually dating, the issue of character, boundaries, respect, love vs. pathological limerance, gaslighting, red flags, personality disorder and safety come up. More why why why.

Anyway, at this point FW would be screwed if he tried to foist any weirdo narratives on the kids so he doesn’t even try. They would instantly see through it. Even before D-Day I saw him blanche when the kids would joke or rail about pervy public figures. While he was busy with his double life, I was raising the kids. That’s his bad luck.

My good friend was married to a serial cheating narcissist. He left with the mistress that was younger than their oldest daughter. ( he had 5 kids and was 72 at the time)
His kids were all mortified and shocked at his behavior and weren’t afraid to let him or her know how they felt. ( they had a term for the over the top home he bought living with Smoops, it was referred to as the ‘McMansion’, like a Ronald McDonald clown life, it sure fit!
He invited me many times to pool parties at that place ( image management 101) as both our families had been very tight forever. I refused all those offers, I’m not playing any clown games with him and his Schmoop of the month. (This was formerly a very highly regarded astronaut, deciding to just blow up his life completely after retirement, eerily similar to my own serial cheater who also threw a successful career out the window for the call of his throbbing dick.)
When Schmoopie bailed at about 2 years on this guy, he angrily blamed his kids because he said they were “just so mean to her.” ????
He crashed and burned and was pretty despondent for awhile after that and admitted to them all his mistress was maybe a little too young for him. ( you think?!)
But not to worry, he’s back in the saddle once more with some other pretty young thing that he can fly around in his jet and probably believes he actually DID hang the moon, since he has the suit to do it in! ????
Sure wouldn’t want his lack of integrity to prevent him from having fun in life, would we now?
Very successful losers, a justification does not exist that can explain that level of disordered.