My Kids Don’t Believe Their Father Cheated on Me
Her kids don’t believe that their father cheated on her. She’s trying her best to sane parent but watching her kids’ hopium about their no-show dad is breaking her heart.
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Dear Chump Lady
I am always on the lookout for posts about the teenagers/young adults. But it seems that chumps often write stuff like, “My kid doesn’t want to have anything to do with his Dad” or, another one is “they found out about the affair and were disgusted,” et cetera.
My kids, though, are not clear at all on where they stand with their dad.
He moved out and stopped most communication 4 1/2 years ago. And he has successfully hidden his double life from me and the kids to this day (I can infer it from educating myself about behaviors and patterns, and secondary clues like his multiple burner phones (!! don’t laugh at me, he had a plausible reason to have these because he was an investigative journalist) and an AMEX account that was delivered to the office and was omitted from discovery.
But of course my kids really really don’t want to hear about all that. He became what another chump brilliantly called “Uncle Dad”.
He has of course a completely different version of his behavior, some of it demonstrably, glaringly false, but the kids have hopium and don’t want to know about it and live in denial.
They are as conflicted and heartbroken as ever. His behavior is confusing. And of course, as the safe parent, they take out their anger and frustration on me. It’s awful because the misdirected anger they direct at me reminds me exactly of the way their dad acted. I thought things would get better with time, but every time he shows up, in person or in conversation, the kids go right back to searing emotional pain, years later.
We still can’t have a calm discussion about anything to do with him. The worst part is. I see them engaging in chump behavior with their dad and I can’t persuade them that he sucks! I can’t protect my daughters from being chumped by their dad and I worry they are going to recreate these patterns in their future relationships.
Who are all these women whose children have their backs and have rallied completely behind their chump parents and defend and protect them? They are so lucky. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if they’re telling the truth!
Having to deal with my conflicted, sad, in denial, confused, hurt, lashing out young adults is a trial.
It feels like I got rid of the FW but his anger and cruelty remains in my household like a virus. And my poor kids don’t have peace or resolution like these mom champions who triumphantly live in harmony with their supportive teens who see their FW dads for who they are. Like, come on! I don’t buy it.
Chumpty Dumpty
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Dear Chumpty Dumpty,
Look at any family and you’re going to find people who believe in fuckwits and people who spackle. People who character assassinate and people who rug sweep. People who believe in unconditional love, and people who practice no contact.
Where there are FWs there is chaos.
Take your own FW out of the equation for a moment. Don’t you have a racist uncle? A hoarder in-law? An addict cousin? Someone for whom the family makes excuses? That’s just how people spoke when Uncle Gary grew up. He doesn’t actually hate black people. (Yes, he actually hates black people.) Well, she’s going to clean that basement, but she’s never been the same since Herbert died. (She’s never going to clean that basement, she has an untreatable mental illness.) Karen used to like to party, but she’s sober now. (Karen stole your identity.)
No one likes to believe that anyone — especially those closest to them — is irredeemable.
Which often means ignoring a lot of evidence to the contrary. It’s natural to want stability and normalcy. And when you have an agent of chaos throwing a spanner in the works, people try to steady things. That says more about them than the FW. It says they believe in their superpowers of persuasion. Or they’re avoiding a wall of pain. Or they’re simply EXHAUSTED. (Exhaustion being a FW tactic.)
Think of how long it took you to figure out your ex was a FW.
They’re just kids. And they have a primal bond with their FW parent. I know that feels unjust. I write about this a lot because it is so painful and unjust. It takes a LOT to fall out of love with anyone (unless you’re a FW, in which case it comes quite easily). Normal humans BOND. Children bond. You bonded and I’m sure you absolutely spackled.
A little spackle isn’t a bad thing. We all have to overlook each other’s flaws and mistakes to maintain relationships with one another. The problem is false equivalencies. There are flaws and then there is abandoning your children. There are mistakes and there are deliberate double lives.
From where your children sit, he only hurt YOU.
Did he cheat on you? He says he didn’t. And even if he did, we live in a world where most people don’t find that terribly offensive. The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants. You would never, ever wish that pain on them. A loving parent would never want them to experience a betrayal that would make them understand. They don’t have the life experience to understand. They don’t have years of shared investment, or know what it is to have a child or a mortgage with another person. To be that intertwined and dependent or vulnerable.
Your pain is scary to them.
Children and even young adults need you to be the sane parent. (Is that fair? No, of course it isn’t.) You have one no-show Uncle Daddy, so stability is riding on YOU. You don’t have the luxury of falling apart. Which is why it’s so important to find support elsewhere and not slop your grief on minors. They cannot carry your grief, they’ve got their own.
He has of course a completely different version of his behavior, some of it demonstrably, glaringly false, but the kids have hopium and don’t want to know about it and live in denial.
Their relationship with their father is their business. You do you. And if they try to make it your business, like casually bringing up what an awesome person Dad is, you shut that down. The corollary to “their relationship with the FW is their business” is you get to have boundaries. Change the subject.
He moved out and stopped most communication 4 1/2 years ago.
He’s doing a terrific job convincing your children that he’s a FW. Dude does not need an assist.
They are as conflicted and heartbroken as ever. His behavior is confusing.
Be the sane, show-up parent. Your actions demonstrate your values. His actions demonstrate his.
And of course, as the safe parent, they take out their anger and frustration on me. It’s awful because the misdirected anger they direct at me reminds me exactly of the way their dad acted.
They aren’t their FW father. They’re kids.
Sane parents don’t take shit. Keep parenting your values and don’t bring your FW into it. They don’t get to take their anger out on you or anyone else. Learn healthy ways of dealing, young person! You are their mother, not a rage receptacle.
I thought things would get better with time, but every time he shows up, in person or in conversation, the kids go right back to searing emotional pain, years later.
Get them therapy, or a new custody schedule. If they don’t want to see him, they often don’t have to at their age (if they’re teens). I know it’s painful to watch, but remind yourself this is THEIR relationship to work out.
We still can’t have a calm discussion about anything to do with him.
DON’T DISCUSS HIM.
Cool, bummer, wow instead. And for the love of all that is holy, do NOT try to convince them that Dad is a FW. He is providing plenty of material for them to draw that conclusion. I know you want to throw yourself on that grenade — to spare them the pain. HE IS A FW! STOP! And you also want the sweet, sweet validation from your kids that he sucks. (You probably aren’t going to get it, so give up.) But trying to convince them just makes them dig in deeper to defend him. That’s how it is with FWs, who play the sad sausage so convincingly. You’re the Big Bad Meanie! Step out of that frame. We. Do. Not. Discuss. HIm.
The worst part is. I see them engaging in chump behavior with their dad and I can’t persuade them that he sucks!
It is so not your job to persuade them. Please stop that immediately.
I know it’s unjust. Really, I get this in the marrow of my bones. I bred with a FW and I’ve been the codependent harridan waving my arms on the sidelines of family dysfunction. Let FWs FW. Stay OUT of it.
As they say in politics — “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
You know how you convince someone that a FW is a FW? Boundaries. Cousin Karen wants to borrow $50? Sorry, can’t help. Cousin Karen wants to borrow $50 from Aunt Mary and Aunt Mary has abundant evidence of Karen’s character? A powerpoint presentation of Karen’s criminality makes you look like a loon. (BUT IT IS DATA!) Assiduous avoidance of all things Karen is much more powerful. Let your actions speak.
I can’t protect my daughters from being chumped by their dad and I worry they are going to recreate these patterns in their future relationships.
They might. But then they’ll have your amazing example of mightiness to guide them.
Who are all these women whose children have their backs and have rallied completely behind their chump parents and defend and protect them? They are so lucky.
They’re like any other family with FWs — some get enough kicks in the teeth that they go no contact. But some do not. Some people will go to their graves believing the best in FWs.
I understand why you think they’re lucky — because it means their children have more empathy for their chump parent than their cheater parent. That’s validating, it’s a sign that they have values that align with yours. (Cheating BAD, showing-up GOOD.) But those kids are not “lucky” — that knowledge is super painful. That one parent abuses the other parent, abuses them, doesn’t show up for them in meaningful ways.
So many kids are living a muddle. A FW parent that sort of shows up. Who is dazzling and invested, so long as they don’t have to do the heavy parenting lifts. Those kids may spend years or perhaps their whole lives not understanding why their family broke up. Or how heroic you were to single parent without support. They may be myopic, or selfish, or just concerned with a thousand other things that aren’t your pain.
Show up anyway. Keep showing up. It’s the most convincing argument I know.
Therapy is somewhere your kids could vent and sort all of this out. We are not born psychologists. In my own case I don’t think my grown sons believed me either that their father had an affair. One son embraced the OW in a very short period of time, the other one took awhile. It all blew up anyway so it didn’t matter. They love their father and that was all there was to it. I find they watch for cues from you. I walked out and never went back, my oldest son complimented me on how I handled the entire situation. I did not want them choosing sides. Now he is aging, his health isn’t good and he is trying to sell a house he bought, against my sons wishes, with another women he met and knew briefly before purchasing a million dollar home. They can see for themselves who is thriving and who has been in a nose dive ever since he blew up his family. So why add insult to injury? They are seeing for themselves this real life tragedy unfold before their very eyes. I am not vengeful, hateful, what added value would that be for my sons? Be kind wherever possible, and its always possible. Its up to you.
My daughter witnessed the abuse and gaslighting as well as inappropriate behaviors with many other women. But at one point she tried a normal interchange with him which involved her doing many hours of handwork on a project for him that was intended for a Schmoopie-o-the-month. She got a deposit (smart) but sent item off without final payment (dumb.) You guessed it—he conned her. Huge hurt again but even bigger lesson. They never change nor do they get character transplants! Enjoy the Grateful Dead skull poncho, sucker, until you are replaced with the next hippie chick.
Sometimes, unfortunately, finding out firsthand is the way it really hits home. The money is ultimately less of a big deal than the con. You can’t do this kind of thing to people and expect that they will forget..especially your own child! What a dumbass.
Therapy would be very beneficial to your kids because what happened to them is so confusing and you are not the one to talk to them about it. My kids were confused they of course thought I was the argument starter and he was the easy going one. Once they found out she was the affair partner one daughter was okay and the other wasn’t so they were fighting about how they were going to handle it. The oldest went to therapy and felt
very validated on her feelings. After one therapy session my older daughter called me and said “you are extremely moral and reliable” so it I was happy about that.
The kids are afraid to lose his love. You can get a new partner but that’s their only dad. After a few years I told my kids that I would validate their feelings if they felt he was lying so they will not be gas lit. He told them “ you have to accept her” which is not
True. That is just easier for him. But they do have to figure it out and it’s very painful.
I decided to refer to his behavior as “emotionally immature” and I bought a book about “ the emotionally immature parent” and left it lying around and they both read it. I like that term because on some ways an immature parent can mature? Maybe? Therapy because who doesn’t want someone on your side?
Information is so powerful. Even if you can’t make direct statements because it’s not age appropriate or they don’t want to hear it, you can have those general discussions or provide them with the tools/resources for them to put it all together. In this way, they are more likely to stay safe themselves going forward with the other parent or other similar people in their lives.
What’s unclear to me is why are the teen daughters unwilling to believe FW cheated given he moved out years ago and is an unreliable parent?
Is it because covering for FW /no evidence shown? FW is a superb actor? Why aren’t they setting boundaries, demanding accountability, seeing through the gaslighting? They’re not toddlers incapable of logic and reason.
What’s worrisome is then the kids are ripe for falling into relationships with abusive FW types or end up being she FW as adults. That’s the story of my ex FW. Abandoned by his own cheating dad who moved far away who played uncle daddy occasionally, grew up confused about the divorce because MIL didn’t disclose the serial cheating. FW then became a narcissistic sociopath who made me a chump. Guess what? He shits on his impoverished mother who raised him as a single parent. Won’t give her $200 for food while blowing thousands a month on himself and escorts.
Generational trauma is real.
There is no evidence and FW is a superb actor. However, there IS ongoing, documented failure to pay support and failure to invest in FW’s children. What are they going to believe, him or their lying eyes? You can’t set boundaries if you don’t acknowledge the behaviors.
Generational trauma, yes. On reason I didn’t have children was that I didn’t want to risk passing along the crazy alcoholic cheater genes from my father.
Unfortunately, the world is full of people of non-toddlers who are incapable of logic or reason. We’re seeing this play out in the US in the public square on a daily basis. I have a family member who, despite being educated with a Master’s degree in a STEM field, has been a member of a well-known cult founded by a mediocre science fiction writer and is in complete denial about the value of vaccines. I think some people just want to be told what to think because wrestling with thorny issues can be emotionally taxing.
Wow. This is my concern for my son who I feel is being groomed by his father. I can only suggest therapy somewhat regularly. I get it, he doesn’t want to be like me- a “victim”- and wants to be like his dad, a successful happier man, with a new wife and children he loves. Now, most stories here don’t have that- all the stories are about FWs being miserable. It isn’t my case, and I know I’m not alone. That said, I don’t miss him! I am not “meh” because I have rage and other issues..but I’m so much better. But I am alone, and I have a crappy 2 bedroom, while he has houses and cars.. and he’s an excellent manipulator. Anyway, the main thing is Tracy’s post today was EXACTLY what I needed. I cut and. pasted most of it in my notes. The holidays are hell for me.
Hey chumpty dumpty
I feel ya.
I have 3 adult children – DS 29, DD 27, DD 25 – thats the ages they were when the shit hit the fan over 5 years ago following a 35 year relationship (31y married). In the beginning (and thanks to this safe space) I made it clear that any relationship they had with their father was between them. It was nice to drop the ropes. I was deep in grief. I knew he’d f@&k up eventually because I was always the rock for them between the storm that he was when we were together. He quickly showed his true colours to middle DD and when challenged he cut all contact with her and her children. He continued to see the other two. DS took the longest to see him but eventually and mainly out of duty and box ticking he does have a relationship with his father and tolerates the OW, but I know this is strained as he has to come to me everytime to ground himself. Never talks about the visit or FW other than to snark occasionally and I’m ok with that. I don’t judge or join in, I just listen then move our conversation on when appropriate. With youngest DD who also has 2 children their relationship is volatile as FW will try to introduce OW to her. She’s shut that down a few times, explained herself clearly but you know what narcs are like with boundaries. So he trys to push this on her, she says no, he gets angry, sad sausage and plays the victim and she kills the convo. He disappears for a few months then circles back and trys again. It’s like a pathetic carousel.
They are all adults navigating their way through a storm caused by him, I am their calm. Sometimes it’s very painful to witness because I don’t want them to be hurting and as a mum I want to make it better, I want to take that pain away but I cannot and I am sort of at peace with that. They have a narc FW father but an awesome mum… and I’m ok with that.
It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Insidious. Every now and then it explodes, emotions are raw but they are getting there, one day they will sit on peace mountain with me but for now I can only model this for them.
Big hugs x
Chumpty Dumpty,
A Chump often struggles with the loss of the relationship that they though they had and finds it difficult to internalise the fact that they person that they had the relationship with isn’t the person that they thought/hoped they were. Your children are clearly still struggling to come to terms with who their father actually is, and are not adjusting to the fact that their father isn’t who they thought he was/hoped he was/presented himself as.
All you can do is give them time, be patient, be sane, be supportive (therapy for them would help) and be present. You should recognise (and enforce through appropriate boundaries) that their relationship with their father is for them to navigate as young adults; it is not something that you control, and it is not something that you are responsible for. It will hurt to see them suffer as a result of their father’s f*ckwittery, but they will eventually see him for who he actually is, and develop mechanisms to protect themselves.
LFTT
Dear Chumpty Dumpty,
You know how teenagers can have boyfriends or girlfriends who are not great people? As an adult we can see the issues but they have undeveloped brains and are in the throes of puppy love and miss the red flags. As a parent the worst thing you can do is demand the end of the relationship. The kid will dig in and declare the boy/girlfriend is the best person in the world, yada yada yada.
When you try to explain why Uncle Daddy is a bad person they are doing the exact same thing. He moved out and they don’t know why. And now you’re saying he’s evil. In their minds you drove him away from the kids that he loves. They think everything is your fault.
It’s time to never, ever discuss him with them unless THEY bring him up. And even then remain calm and don’t say anything negative unless it’s the correct answer to a direct question. Back away from the conflict if at all possible.
If you give their sperm donor enough space he will prove to them that he’s an asshole. Over and over he will show them exactly who he is. I know it’s terrifying to think that your kids will follow in your footsteps. But you survived. They will too. Either way, they are more likely to recognize the red flags if you leave them alone about Uncle Daddy. They’re smart. They’ll figure it out.
My oldest sadly found out Ballbag McGee is a terrible person and father – and It’s left a mark on him.
My younger kids still live with Ballbag McGee and have witnessed all sorts of shit at his and OW’s hands.
At gatherings when we both have to be there my girl will sit with them and not say too much to me and my family- brainwashed loyalty and it does sting.
I feel so sorry for my kids – they deserved so much better for a father.
My fw ex has convinced my 6 year old that I’m pure evil, that I won’t make nice and be friends because I’m hateful, that I instigated the divorce because my son is not a girl (??!), and who knows what else. Fw ex encourages him to spy on me and lie about the things I do when fw ex isn’t around.
These people are absolute garbage, and nobody will ever call them out on it. Mutual friends are on fw’s side. Family doesn’t believe you. The law doesn’t care. It’s fucking exhausting.
I’ve noticed that FW are well aware that Family court is a joke and the law does not care, so use it to their advantage. But most chumps play by the rules and are afraid of doing anything but taking the saintly high road. Kind of like the dynamics of the entire mirage marriage 🤔
Yes! Agree!
But if you don’t take the high road, you’re the crazy one, and everyone will find out about it. Ughhhh.
Early on he groomed my youngest son to spy on me and he still does and it kills me but I say nothing. The other son he abuses..maybe not so much anymore, but I noticed it even before he left..wtf with the spying. So awful.
The way they harm and use children is absolutely criminal, and I can’t understand why nobody cares. It makes me physically ill. The bad people always win and you can’t do anything to stop them or you’re the bad one.
agreed
My children were young adults when I divorced their father, it has been 8 years. I had one child who was mad at the FW and the other that defended him. My son did not believe his father cheated and tried to get me to reconcile. I felt the best response was no response. I would say, “you just don’t understand marriage and commitment” and then walk away. I felt my children’s relationship with their father was different than mine. Eventually my son got that I was not getting back and he stopped bringing it up. I never have spoken ill of their father and rarely bring him up. As adults they get to decide the level of interaction they want with him, it is not up to me. I try to foster my relationship with them and not concern myself with his.
I think it is best to not put the kids in a position where they feel they have to defend their father. If I were to bad mouth my ex, they may try to protect him. So, I kept my mouth shut, which was not easy at times!! Good luck! just know if FW is a jerk, they will figure it out in their time.
It’s not easy. Especially this time of year.
Definitely. In particular when you feel like you are losing out on quality time with your kids. It’s so hard. But it does become their choice at some point.
This situation is very close to what I experienced with my kids with the later complication of their dad then dying. I had hidden the-worst-of-the-worst from them thinking it would be best if we wreckonsiled (which we did) but after he died I learned it was all much worse than I initially knew but telling grieving kids there dad was a worse person than any of us knew was not going to help them in any way.
What I had to do was be as decent as I could about their father’s memory and let them process stuff on their own time. They each circled back around in different times, in different ways for different reasons. I think I told the oldest the most but never did a full dump on the younger 2 (now 29 & 34) and likely never will unless they specifically ask.
All of us have also had to process the weirdly awkward reality that in a year when he treated us all very very badly and pulled nasty crap around every corner, he spent about 0.0005% of his time and .004% of his money buying a life insurance policy which has served us all very well. (He was trying to “set us up” before he left for OW to diffuse the criticism he expected. I believe he did it to soothe himself, not to care for us.) Does this redeem any of his abuse? Do genuinely bad people do good things? How does one keep it all in context?
Im 20 years out and still sometimes lay in the dark and stare at the ceiling contemplating it all.
It’s impression management, but for himself as well as others.
After thinking of a fatal accident for me FW became incensed by my surviving a real (not planned) life threatening injury. He glared at me and then the ILYBINILWY speech that I was too dumb to understand the narcissistic discard was coming. FW narcopath was hateful but then ‘set me up’ with a nice vehicle to convince himself he’s not a monster.
It’s a recurring cycle once seen cannot be unseen. Even post divorce. I’ve learned it’s nothing to do with me but rather his own cycling through a narc cheater version of Jekyll and Hyde but mostly he’s the terrible Hyde. It’s key to remember he’s 99% Mr Hyde
It is a mindfuck on so many levels. I also experienced terrible treatment (although mine was more of the secret undermining variety with passive-aggressive ex being seemingly checked out until I called him on it, which is when I got the confession), but he pays child support and is (or at least has been trained by my interactions to be) business-like and mostly without drama in communication regarding daughter. Are any of these things reparation for all the deceit and damage he did? Does it matter? How do we just put down the rumination over the capacity for such awfulness juxtaposed with good/normal times? I am going through EMDR and have said to my counselor that even if I can process what happened to me, I don’t know if I will ever be able to feel fully okay sending my daughter with him, feeling such an ingrained sense of danger and despair for knowing (or rather not knowing) who this man is.
Thank you so much for that last sentence. I know I am better, doing better, thank I was 10 years ago when the truth surfaced and the end began. But some of us will occasionally star at the ceiling and contemplate it all. Thank you so much for this. I find this time of year excrutiating. I’m doing all sorts of things to ease my suffering and make myself less miserable- yoga, travel, meditation…but sometimes I just suffer. And I have to forgive myself that I am not. meh. I am better. And that is all.
10 years ago, I had just learned that he was most likely a serial cheater from the get-go and I was newly married…there was a LOT happening in my head every minute of the day. I find it remarkable that I was able to trust my new husband so much. I think it was easier because in my later in life marriage, I have financial security and my kids are raised – as much as I hoped for a rest-of-life love, if he cheated or quit loving me, I knew that I would not again stay with a bad person.
My inner dialogue is now a remembering that is not really painful but simply present. This morning I laid in bed thinking of the time he got annoyed with me while flying cross country and simply walked away from me and 2 LITTLE kids, their carseats and all out carry on luggage. He grumbled something about “punishing” me and disappeared into the crowd. I can still see the back of his head disappearing into the crowd. I had to get a tram to another terminal and I had more things that I could possibly carry…I stood there and wept until a janitor offered to help me. What a fucking asshole he was.
I never imagined the future where I remembered what he did but it didnt hurt. I can now reflect back on my life with almost no angst at all…it’s like a movie of someone else’s life.
I like that- “present”. I still feel hurt or angry but sometimes have to laugh at the absurdity. I think present sounds fine. Every vacation I put together for us- Spain, Puerto Rico, Arizona- he called me a bad mother at some point. He was like the mean overlord of our adventures. I truly don’t miss him. When the three of us would go on adventures alone, which we did because he worked all the time and traveled for work a lot, we had so much more fun than when he was with us. I do think about the significance of that, but this time of year is hard.
Cheater was Hell On Wheels to travel with…so much so that for a while I convinced myself that I didnt like travel in any form – imagine how surprised to realize that travel wasn’t the problem, he was. Some minor inconvenience would inevitably set him off and he would rage. It was normally something small but God forbid I make an actual error..once I goofed up a reservation for a hotel room and we got to a crowded touristy city and had lost our room. Rage rage rage in front of the kids, it was horrible – yet in the end, we found a room in that city, it wasn’t like we slept in the van.
In the last 2 years of his life, I finally refused to travel with him. We went a long distance to throw a party for his parents 50th anniversary but I made separate reservations. I wish I had refused years earlier.
I wanted to be a stay at home mom for a time when my kids were little but he refused to follow a budget so I had to work. If I dared approach him with talk of budget, he would say “You think Im a failure!!”. I was an ICU nurse so brought in good $ when I worked but 12 hour shifts are hard after chasing kids all day. I didnt want to be working but made the sacrifice for the benefit of our family.
Once, I was prepping to leave for an overnight shift and the kids were elementary school age. He loudly said to the kids:”Your mother is going to work because she doesnt love you …she is selfish and wont give her career up for you”. Asshole. HOAC mentions on this thread somewhere that some abusers groom the kids to become abusers themselves. They have never been anywhere near as bad as him, but there are moments when I see a lack of empathy in them for me which likely leads back to his abuse.
This is why I come here- to remind myself – one I am not alone. thank you for sharing- and 2- nothing to miss! Free of all that garbage!
Dear CD,
I would recommend subscribing to Dr. Emma Katz’s Substack and following Dr. Christine Cocchiola on Youtube for discussions about how coercively controlling abusers damage children and sometimes pit children against protective parents.
Dr. Katz actually did a small study to figure out what variables might lead children to side with the protective parent and which might lead them to defend (and emulate) the abusive parent. From what she describes, it sounds like some abusers “groom” and seduce their children in order to triangulate them against the victim parents while other abusers are less able to do this because they’re consistently grumpy, detached or abusive to all members of the family. The key to “Pavlovian conditioning” and setting off Stockholm syndrome/captor bonding in kids seems to be the combination of abuse (either abusing/scaring the kids or scaring the kids by abusing the victim parent) and then lovebombing.
I’m one of those chumps whose kids are on team chump all the way but it’s not so much due to luck. Quite the reverse actually. As a toddler, one of my sons was diagnosed with a very serious chronic medical condition that affected speech and learning while his siblings developed severe allergies to multiple foods and substances that sometimes had neurological manifestations and affected behavior (for instance, if my daughter breathed paint thinner, she would start crying uncontrollably). All required a restricted medical diet and toxin-free environment which made school and socializing hell on a stick until I began meeting local families whose children had similar issues.
But it was especially my son’s learning and speech issues that led to people– even extended family members– excluding my children from social events that everyone else was invited to. It really boiled down to a kind of “eugenic” attitude where these family members didn’t want people to think their gene pool was tainted (even though the condition isn’t genetic. Go figure). Some just think children are there to entertain adults and find disability in children a “bummer.” Naturally there was a point when the kids began to notice they were being left out and rejected.
This could have set my kids up for spiraling adolescent depression so I began teaching my kids how to “consider the source” (“trust they suck”) rather than internalizing rejection or mistreatment. I was very, very careful not to go overboard and teach the kids to blame everyone for their own problems or use psychobabble against everyone who didn’t cater to them.
It was all centered on specific types of abuse and unfair behavior. Because I trained as an advocate for domestic abuse survivors years before, I knew a thing or two about abuser and “negative bystander” mentality related to personality and attachment disorders, so I began sharing this information in age-appropriate ways, sometimes seriously, sometimes using humor and song parodies.
I should have known by the fact that I have two uncles who are organizational psychologists that discussions about personality, motive and internalization of generational abuse would catch fire in my kids. Not only weren’t they bored by this stuff, they barraged me with questions at dinner and bedtime. They even went “macro” and wanted to know what forces would create psychopathic politicians and abusive global power figures. Things could get pretty macabre and “Addams family” but the kids had a gas. Their favorite bedtime games were things like “baby Hitler” (would saving him from his violent father at birth be soon enough or would you have to rescue his pregnant mother to avoid prenatal violentization?) or “Epstein island invasion.”
Obviously I lean to “nurture” more than “nature” in trying to understand the motivations of toxic people and another favorite subject for the kids was learning about the history of the genes/environment hypotheses. I even got them to read very dry, technical books on the dark history of eugenics, human and ape evolution and the weaponization of psychiatry against women and minorities, etc. I also think the kids learned that understanding why someone does something isn’t the same as giving amnesty for it. They could feel sorry for the traumatized children abusers once were while feeling no sympathy for the criminally disordered adult.
You’d think this stuff would make the kids gloomy and cynical but, nope, like my uncles and my mother, the more they understood about the world, the more impervious they seemed to gloom and the better able they were to bounce back from disappointment. I think it’s because most of what we think of as “depression” is when people fall into the gap between what they’ve been brainwashed to believe is true and what their guts know is actually true. It’s like depression is mostly exhaustion from trying to maintain an impossible cognitive dissonance.
Anyway, though I wasn’t teaching the kids these things to prime them to turn on FW because I knew nothing about his double life, it was just his bad luck that the kids had long been primed when he got busted. Then my daughter hacked devices and learned more dirty details than I ever would have shared, including how much family money was dissipated for the affair. That pushed it over the brink and the next bedtime game became “Which personality disorder does dad have?” or “AP nickname generator” where the kids would compete for most hysterical epithet for the affair partner (“Beefy the Danger Pig” and “Debbie-wise the Gutter Clown” were faves).
I was concerned enough about the dark humor that I consulted with a trauma psychologist with a background in child development. But, as long as the humor didn’t become violent, she wasn’t concerned because, along with cracking wise, the kids were also emotionally processing their sense of betrayal in other, more vulnerable ways. Her view is that gallows humor is a very important tool in surviving trauma and adverse experiences but just shouldn’t be the only tool or it risks desensitizing. She was particularly impressed that both my sons seemed to express empathy into a passion for social justice and my daughter channeled it through story writing and character development.
All the same, my kids weren’t completely immune from internalizing some of FWs behavior such as his “spoilerism” (ruining special occasions) but they at least catch themselves or each other. If my daughter starts to get bitchy for no discernible reason before some important event, she pulls herself up short and says, “Bleah, I’m doing a dad.” Or one of my sons started pulling a bit of “weaponized incompetence” when asked to do chores, such as, say, cursing at the vacuum cleaner hose for getting tangled, etc.. The other kids will drily say, “Stop doing a dad” or “Don’t try to scare anyone into doing your chores for you.”
Of course FW tried the whiny-whiny-woo and victim posturing when he was thrown out but my daughter would call him on it immediately. FW wanted so badly to accuse me of “alienating” the kids but they were old enough to account for how they learned to spot and decipher abusive behavior and it had zero to do with me trashing him. They didn’t even learn the word “gaslighting” from me but from their own reading and podcast-watching.
Personally I think it’s never too late to educate and immunize kids against abusive tactics. These object lessons don’t have to be conveyed using an abusive ex as an “exhibit A” but can be applied abstractly since the world never runs short of power-abusing narcs and sociopaths to use as exhibits. There are examples all over the six o’clock news.
At the very least, no chump should ever allow any blameshifting by the FW for the divorce onto themselves.
IME FW can be sneaky and repeatedly perform sad sausage, insinuate chump deserved to be cheated on (bagged salad?), downplay or outright deny the infidelity and also other abuses.
Whatever you do, I don’t recommend staying quiet in the face of narc blameshifting. Silence can be interpreted as agreement. Sadly, these FW tactics can/will succeed if left unchecked. FW poison is very, very long acting. I see its effect 40+ years later in the case of my FW ex-FIL.
Vet any therapist for your children extremely carefully lest they’re cheater apologists or ignorant.
There is a fine line to tread, but I agree – you do not have to nor should you accept any sort of verbal haranguing for what happened. Deflect without putting the same level of vitriol into putting it on the other parent. I think if anything, being able to do this will show that you are not “protesting too much”, but rather offering a level-headed and therefore more truthful telling of what happened, regardless of how many details you disclose. Unfortunately a big part of the “gift” that these FWs leave behind is that chaos (of life, of emotion), as CL says.
Right. It was helpful to read that I am not a “rage receptacle”, which is what it feels like. Definitely my ex still feels free to help himself to me as his secret rage closet. (And no, I don’t respond, but it still isn’t very pleasant.) As the kids grow into adulthood and gain more self-awareness and self-control, I’m reading them the riot act more. l say, “I understand you, completely justifiably, have a lot of anger and confusion, and you don’t have any opportunities to have a conversation with your dad about it, and I am truly sorry and sympathetic, but there is no yelling and no insulting in this house. We treat ourselves and each other with respect and kindness when we walk in this door. Those are the rules, and if you can’t or won’t follow them, you’re not welcome here.”
(Need I add, this is a bluff! I think everyone involved knows this, deep down. But it’s salutary to say. I mean it when I say it.)
Needless to say, in almost five years, there has never been any reckoning or explanation or admission of wrongdoing by their dad. Going without new shoes? No cell phone? Eating discounted produce? No money for trips? You see him twice a year? Nothing to do with him, he tells them before he leaves for destinations unknown yet again. He tells them to their face he was sending money, that he has been trying desperately to visit them and was, for very mysterious and impossible to describe reasons, obstructed. No wonder they emerge from every visit mentally dazed and shell-shocked. Their reality is flipped upside down for a few hours, then they are spit out again.
I think it would be icky to press them to concern themselves with their dad’s putative affairs, and I actually don’t. I realize perfectly well it isn’t central to them. Like I said, I don’t even have any proof. It also sends the message that the very worst betrayal is sexual — which is a very male world view that treats women as possessions that can be “taken”. Really, if he had affairs, but he was a good father to his kids, I would be at peace.
The worst thing he did was hurt his own defenseless children who rightly trusted him. What I really care about is the ongoing mistreatment and lying. The issue is that the scales have yet to fall from their eyes and I have to stand by while he neglects them and they, parched for any proof of love, drink in poison lies for want of anything better.
(I mean, if it turned out he’d had affairs, I would have divorced him, of course!)
Two great points. Yes, always vet the hell out of children’s therapists to weed out victim-blamers and abuser-coddlers (which is probably over half the field). And, yes, kids need to have an age-appropriate explanation of cheaters’ cheating and abusers’ abusing.
I would even say it’s worth hiring a PI to get the incontrovertible proof of FWittery, not just so chumps can defend themselves from gaslighting or get back dissipated assets but so FWs can’t gaslight, weaponize and alienate the kids against the protective parent.
In my experience, it’s really learning about the time and resources that FWs rob their own children of and spend on others that’s the kicker for kids. There was even a scene in The Sopranos where the psychopathic lead, Tony, at first expresses his deep internalization/emulation of his late father’s abusive personality by idealizing one of his dad’s former mistresses. But then even Tony’s perspective turns sour when he learns that his dad actually took the beloved family golden retriever and gave it to that former mistress and then told young Tony and his siblings that the dog ran away.
Yes, FW narcopath stole a 7 figure sum from the marital assets which was sorely needed especially for the disabled child. He robbed my children of resources, time, energy to spend on escorts!
The kids see him post divorce continuing to lie and spends $ on himself while depriving them and trying to convince them he’s low on money. It’s painful to watch but I want them to recognize gaslighting and abuse and protect themselves from vultures. I am privy to some of FW financials even post divorce and the teen has copies of the evidence should the need ever arise.
Because of my brushes with death at the end my marriage, I’ve been asking myself: have I taught them enough to avoid further lies, theft and abuse if I were to die tomorrow?
Macabre?
Necessary.
I certainly hope you stick around for a very long time but maybe it would be a weight off your mind if you can write down all the things you want your kids to know and leave a draft in trust for them?
Actually I think I’d like to do that for my own kids. I’d probably end up writing a thousand novel length drafts. Brevity has never been my thing.
“Vet any therapist for your children extremely carefully lest they’re cheater apologists or ignorant”
I’m often left wondering if my oldest child’s (mid 20’s) therapist is contributing to the inability to see FW for who he really is. There’s been some blame shifting to me and I can’t figure out why. My friends think it’s the therapist and I’m leaning that way myself.
Oh no- it really could be!I called marriage counseling before I found this place abuse enhancement. Tracy inventing the reconciliation industry complex – I knew I had found my place.
Statistically speaking, it’s probably the therapist. My kids’ multiply-degreed tutor dropped out of a psych undergrad program a few credits short and switched to language arts because of the blatant, galling misogyny. And he’s a 6’1″ blond cis guy with two giant brothers and a long term girlfriend.
I don’t think his basic identity turned him into a snowflake. It’s just that the university program was brazenly sexist.
It’s probably also similar to my Catholic teachers who kept telling us “all sides are to blame and you have to sort it out among yourselves” when I was getting bullied by the same kids over and over again for many years. This mentality seems rampant in some professions.
Any institution which pretends there’s never a bad guy and it always “takes two to tango” is deeply, grotesquely corrupt.
Switch out the therapist pronto! This can bite you in the @SS big time down the road. A friend’s child was influenced this way to help FW restart litigation abuse of the chump.
He’s an adult so I can’t do that. It’s not up to me.
oh yes, this is where I am. My younger son has been groomed by his father before he even left. I want him in therapy because we all know that therapy is good after children survive the hell of divorce with an abuser-but he’s resistant and I am concerned about the bad therapists out there. I hope you can sometimes talk about to your child and say, how’s therapy going? My other son has a therapist and I hear about his session sometimes. Never specifically about my ex but we talk around it in a safe feeling way for both of us. I just wish my younger one could get some help. So I feel your pain. I do think it’s OK to suggest things though.
Consider seeking a coach through Dr. Christine Cocchiola’s network. You may know of her from the podcast interview with CL and because she’s testified to legislatures around the country to get statutes passed related to coercive control, including Jennifer’s Law in Connecticut where Dr. Cocchiola teaches.
She was mentored by the late Evan Stark in understanding coercive control and in turn she trained the therapists listed on her site. Also I think most have degrees or training related to child development because the focus is supporting “protective” (victim) parents against post-separation abuse and abusers who try to triangulate kids and weaponize courts.
It seems like a safer pool of therapists to me because there’s no risk that anyone in this network would victim-blame or try to “reunify” a kid with an abuser or fall under the spell of a sparkly turd.
I don’t understand where the line is. Family court judges prefer that you say nothing at all, or put a positive spin on things for the kids. In my perfect world, I would tell my child the truth, because if you don’t, fw gets to control the narrative. I say as little as possible and answer questions when they come up. But it seems like a situation that is impossible to win.
Right? It makes me think of the former East Germany where people lost custody of their kids for not properly brainwashing them about the faultless perfection of the state.
It’s quite horrible to have to “play the game” in situations like this.
Draecena and HOAC: there was nothing more bitter than the realization the courts put the dad’s image over the well-being of children. I had an eager and complicit family law attorney accusing me of parental alienation within a week of abandonment. I remember the FW used the phrase before he even left and it was unfamiliar. It was a key part of his strategy to manage his image, and it absolutely muzzled me. Every family law attorney on both sides made it clear that I was expected to tell the children what a great dad he was. “The best interests of the children”, my ass. Their industry depends on perpetuating the myth that they are helping children. At least in my case, tens of thousands of dollars streamed into legal firms to pay for image management and lie-repeating. In reality, it was all about what was “in the best interest of the father’s self-image.” So much money wasted on his PR.
He walked out on his kids and was utterly indifferent to them except in their usefulness as legal means to intimidate and harass me. Accordingly, the age-of-majority child was discarded and at times yelled at during his rare phone calls. The minor child, however, he zeroed in on as the most effective threat in his arsenal. He treated the children very differently, based on their usefulnesses as tools to frighten me and intimidate me into silence. He had the full weight of the courts and the RIC behind him and he pressed every angle in order to cause maximum distress. I will never forget the revolving door of “experts” and “professionals” who jumped in to help him cudgel me into acquiescence. I spent years focused on not giving the courts a reason to take my child away and jumping through hoops, fending off his attacks and false allegations.
Makes me sick. I see what Drs. Emma Katz, Elizabeth Dalgarno and Christine Cocchiola are doing by building up the body of science supporting the idea that abusers (overwhelmingly men since time immemorial) cannot be good parents as one of the most important political resistance movements today. When children can no longer be used as weapons and chains binding domestic abuse victims to their abusers, the entire fabric of society would shift.
Short term, talk to your lawyer about your own situation. Long term, work to change the narrative. I advise to tell children in age appropriate ways with zero editorializing. (“Dad had a secret girlfriend. I chose to end the relationship, because that’s not my idea of marriage.”) If cheating is no big deal, it doesn’t define them, we should get over it, etc. then why is it wrong to talk about why the marriage ended? I don’t think gaslighting children, even with the best of intentions, is okay. I have whole blog posts on this in the archives.
I chose to use third person in helping the kids understand why he moved out e.g. “When two people marry, they are promising not to have anyone else come between them, so no ‘special girl/boyfriend’. When that happens, that person moves out because they have broken their marriage vows/promise and chosen someone else.” It’s not just that cheating isn’t MY idea of marriage. The cheating/girl or boyfriend has broken the marriage.
I decided on third person to avoid a blame/fingerpointing type narrative. But also so that I wasn’t saying that I was choosing to end the marriage, because they could then interpret that I could also choose to NOT end it.
My friend said her pastor suggested she tell her kids “Dad has a different idea of faithfulness to me”. I realised I disagreed: “faithfulness” has its definition. Dad chose not to be faithful. Fullstop. We don’t want kids thinking they can choose to be faithful in the way Dad (in this case) defined faithful. That’s my take on it anyway.
um, there is only one definition of faithfulness, what on earth is that pastor saying?
I went with, “I don’t speak to [name] because I don’t like the way [name] treats me.” When I was still trying to play happy family post divorce, fw would berate me in front of the child, so I’m not revealing anything the child hasn’t already witnessed.
My lawyer thought even that was going too far. “The judge would prefer to hear that you lie to your child and say that fw is awesome.”
%$#^ that %^$#ing judge.
Sorry, I was choking on bile reading about what you’ve been through. Since you can’t afford to hate the judge lest the merest ripple of contempt flickers across your face in court and deepens their preexisting bias, I’ll hate on them for you.
We’ve kept things out of court so far, but that could change at any time. So far I’ve paid a lot of money for advice like “give this person everything they’re asking for, a judge would give them even more than that” and “Well I know that’s upsetting to you but a judge is not going to care so there’s no point in bringing it up.”
These lawyers are either compromised from representing too many abusers or they’re simply reporting how shitty and biased the court system is. I just think for the money you’re paying them, they could be a bit nicer if the latter is the case.
I don’t know. My initial read was that my lawyer was being sympathetic but realistic. After my lawyer briefly met with fw during mediation, a meeting I wasn’t present for, I started getting “I think this person is blameless and I don’t believe you” vibes.
Everyone reacts to fw this way, whether they are a friend or a paid professional, and I don’t know how fw keeps getting away with it. Have Lifetime Original Movies really convinced everyone that abusive people are always shouting and punching things? You’d think an experienced professional would know better, but here we are.
Of course they act “sympathetic but realistic”. How else can they justify participating in these tragic farces? If they are taking your money and billing hours beyond what is reasonable, they are complicit. Shaking their heads and tut-tutting at how unfair it all is while they scoop the money off the table into their laps. Please.
Ugh, your heart must have been in your shoes when this lawyer turned coat like that. It reminds me of the crushing scene in Life is Beautiful when the protagonist is in the death camp and encounters the German former “friend” he used to trade riddles with before the war. This “pal” wants to make believe everything is normal and tries to share another dumb riddle.
Anyway, the look on Roberto Benigni’s face says it all. https://clip.cafe/life-is-beautiful-1997/fat-fat-ugly-ugly-all-yellow-in-reality/
I have felt like that when encountering people who negated my traumatic experiences or argued amnesty for perps. Personally I don’t believe people like this are normal and simply “naive” because they’re way too consistent in cuddling up to the most dangerous monkey in the room and too consistent in throwing victims under the bus. I think they’re conditioned from birth to do this whereas someone genuinely innocent and healthy would have a much different reaction.
In any event, if you need support to yank these radioactive victim-blaming/abuser-coddling shards out of your soul to stop the bleeding and possibly find better legal resources, Dr. Cocchiola’s coaching/support network specializes in addressing this kind of “second injury” of domestic abuse (where bystanders, bad therapists, legal figures and other so-called helping professionals increase the trauma by splitting blame on victims).
I have no stock in this network, just think it’s packed with non-blamey resources and clinicians: https://www.coercivecontrolconsulting.com/
Thanks friend, I always appreciate your responses.
De nada, compañera! Your comments are always a comforting reminder we’re the sane and human side of this standoff.
I was SO glad I had found you before this topic came up with my oldest. I had read the archives and saw a lot of conten re explaining how to answer questions in an age appropriate way. I saw a lot of sense there, but I was also somehow very afraid of committing parental alienation and was struggling at that time (not anymore) with understanding how to navigate the truth without being accused of alienation.
My oldest had caught him cheating. I did NOT know she did.
After we separated with the whole “we still love each other and are family but are not IN love anymore” crap told to the kids, my oldest, a tween, weeks/months later asked “do you know dad’s friend <schmoopie>, how does he know her”?
My stomach nearly fell out of my body.
I basically told her that some things are between adults, and that I didn’t ever want to lie but that meant we probably shouldn’t talk about <schmoopie>.
Not the best response, but I am ok with it as I was vey much caught off guard by the question.
She later confided that she had caught him communicating with her and that it was VERY clear that he was having an affair. So I am very glad that I didn’t make up some lie like “oh yes, <schmoopie> is an old friend of ours” to cover for him as she would have known I was lying.
And I have to say, there is NOT a lot of information out there for Chumps that pushs for age appropriate truth telling. So much of it encourages the chumps to be complicit in the cover-up.
the controlling the narrative! What to do?
Well there’s nothing preventing them from overhearing you loudly complain about the cheating-divorce to a sister /friend /relative. Just sayin’ LOL
They’ll call it parental alienation anyway.
For me, the “lucky part” after D-Day was my FW telling our mostly adult kids (we still had one teen at the time) himself, that he had cheated. This was something I insisted on during the horrible “pick me” period and he complied, begrudgingly. He told each one of them separately (in my presence) and they each had a different personal reaction, but all of them were certainly not happy with him. After his confession, some of them wrote letters/texts to him, sharing their displeasure and even their anger, with him. Some of them barely speak to him nowadays. Our youngest, who was very close to me, told him to his face that what he did was unforgivable and wants nothing to do with him and that he hates him.
Since they are all adults (now), I definitely let them navigate their relationship with him and I don’t get involved, thankfully.
But it is hard to see a few of the kids, 2 of the 6, that act like I should just get over it, it been years! (I still struggle with it 4 years later) and that ‘people do dumb things” and not that big of a deal. Really hurt me back in the day and still kind of stings to this day, honestly. But that is not mine to bear and I try not to let it get to me. 3 of the other kids hate him and can’t stand him and try never to speak to him unless absolutely necessary. And 1 plays Switzerland and the “He’s still my dad”, type of thing. It does help that I don’t have to see them and him together anymore, but I do hear things from them about him, from time to time.
Me – I am still so angry after all these years, that he willingly chose to destroy our marriage and our family with so little deference and just zero shits given. I can’t believe that was the man I chose to marry and was with for 30 years. I can’t believe he used to talk about how much he loved me and our kids over the years, and then chose to betray us in the worst way possible.
It is so hard for for everyone, adults and kids (no matter their age) when someone does something like this. So hard to navigate. I feel for every person going through this.
I’m 10 years out and lost my mind for a long time but I am better, but some say I many never get over it, which was like a kick in the chest at the time, but now I use that as a way of having compassion for myself and others, and all the other people in the past whose dissolved marriages I didn’t understand the impact of…. I am free of him and that delights me, but the suffering he caused has a permanent place, or at least a 10 year place in me.
Same. It really changes a person in every way to be chumped.
It’s an unpleasant possibility some of our kids will take after the narc cheater, by nature or nurture who knows.
Some older CL posts had commenter concerned about the kids turning out like FW and I have those worries myself about my younger one.
Another sh*t sandwich to choke down. Sigh.
It’s funny that you mention that because the 2 that have the “no big deal, move on” type of mentality are high in narcissistic traits. Much more like him than they are me.
I still love them, though, and they get unconditional love from me because they are my children. But adults like EXFW, no…adult love has conditions and he very well knew he wasn’t supposed to be cheating and doing all the horrible shit he did, hence the sneaking around and lies/deception. No excuse!
Kids have this tendency to romanticize their parents. It’s kind of like why infants and toddlers scream bloody murder-it is literally the worst experience of their lives when they are crying. Their frame of reference is only their very, very limited experience. They don’t see outside of themselves yet.
Clinically, I’d be very curious where the pain comes from for them. It’s the kind of things that they can (and should) sort out in therapy. I wouldn’t at all be shocked if they were trying to sort the conflicting messages they are getting from either side…and by extension starting to come to realizations (see below.)
In my own healing journey, I’ve spent a lot of time unpacking childhood messages. My mother was a serial cheater. They “stayed together for the kids”(cough). There were a lot of conflicting messages growing up, particularly when the cheating got bad when we got older. One parent was the sane and rational and sad one. The other one was accusatory, paranoid, and abusive (guess which one was which?) One of them did their best to show up amidst their “stuff”, one stayed out of the house as much as possible and seemed to enjoy “getting one over” on their children. You can probably safely predict which one I keep in touch with as an adult.
I didn’t (or frankly, couldn’t have) appreciate(d) what it was like for my father when I was that age. I was a kid and was too wrapped up in my own stuff (and in a household filled with verbal abuse? “Being glad if not smug it wasn’t you” was sort of a way of life until the family imploded).
And you best believe T+3 days after D-Day when I told my father what had happened that I apologized for being a shit about it. He was graceful in his response, for which like many things from him I am thankful.
Your kids will come around. Sadly, they will probably have to go through some shade of it themselves before they really comprehend what the hell happened. Kids are also smart and fuckwits are also unreliable-sooner or later they will correlate the contents of their brains and see their father for what he is-and have the sad realization at the same time that the people we keep closest do not always have our best interests at heart. Learning about love sadly only ever seems to happen “the hard way.”
“Listen to me now, hear me later.”
You’ve got this! It just takes time.
Happy Tuesday To Those That Celebrate!
Your dad sounds like a rare gem. Give him a big hug from me, a fellow Chump.
I feel you OP. I really do.
Both of my children are adults now. My youngest doesn’t speak to FW anymore. Hasn’t in years. But my oldest has a very hard time with the fact that our family is no longer intact. And I shoulder some blame in his mind. Not for FW’s cheating, I think he sees that is all on his father, but for cutting FW out of my life, divorcing him, and breaking up our family.
He is upset with me for holding boundaries with FW. He thinks I should open communications with FW and not shut him out. He thinks we should be friendly because that’s what FW wants. In his mind the cheating is behind us and we should move forward as a family.
I hold firm in my boundaries. I love my children more than anything, I would die for them. But I am not bringing FW back into my life and subjecting myself to further abuse. I am not the one who destroyed our family. I’m the one who walked away because I had to. I hope my son can see that one day soon.
“I am not the one who destroyed our family. I’m the one who walked away because I had to.”
It’s so hard to show kids (without them experiencing the same sort of thing) that sometimes life compels you to make these hard choices. We can’t sacrifice ourselves on this level – not then, and not again at the behest of our hurt children.
Yes it’s the airplane put oxygen mask on yourself first before assisting children principle.
It took me a while to truly understand being a sad, exhausted, selfless saint wasn’t healthy for my kids or myself in the long run.
Be sane, they are not your counselor. They are trying to navigate a mess you and they did not ask for, but you are the adult. You have to realize you are dealing with a person that lacks any self-reflection or awareness, and they will continually operate the way they do, which sucks. You will have to interact with them from time to time.
It can be so hard, but I’m trying my best to not talk too disparagingly because I do also fully believe that in time being the show up parent will be evident. It’s been hard lately because 1) my daughter is now 10, and 2) her father is living over an hour and a half away and this makes him being able to uphold his time/obligation harder in general but also somewhat forcing her to makes choices based on his choice to move so far away (my tongue is bloody from the biting). We don’t really talk in detail about what her father did and I don’t feel the need unless she explicitly wants to know, but she does know some age-appropriate generalities. We do talk about what is okay and not okay in relationships of all sorts. It’s also pretty obvious that I am the one who helps her manage her life, signs her up for and drives her to the things, comes to the school, hooked her up with a counselor to talk through the things she needs a neutral party for, etc. Where is he? Over an hour and a half away. Living with his next victim. Again, his choice. Honestly, I am at a place now where it would have been great if he actually followed through with his stating that he wanted to move closer so he could have more seamlessly been a part of her life, but he continues to demonstrate his priorities by remaining at a distance. Whereas I am the show-up parent who demonstrates her values by separating herself from a shitty partner, living her life independently, and is there for her child. The kids don’t know what they don’t know (or want to know), but you can hold your head high knowing you’re doing the best by them by being you. In time, they may see enough for themselves, or be at a point where they will have questions to which you will have answers.
CL nailed it. I agree with her regarding communication style if they bring him up. Cool, bummer, wow. When my daughter was a teen I learned that communication technique and it works so well. She asks my opinion I say well what do you think? I tried not to give any opinions. I would make alot of noises, hmmmm, ahhhhh, ohhhhh! Teens like to talk about themselves so She would tell me ALOT. Sometimes too much. But I wouldnt say jack. At the end Id give her a hug and say good talk. I still mostly do that. As a mom we have to let them go, not try to control them, trust that they have a good foundation and hope for the best. Mother daughter relationships are fraught with peril even under the best of circumstances. As teens they do pull away, its normal if heartbreaking. But they do come back and when they do its really great.
That sounds great Imtired… sometimes we all just need to be heard and hopefully understood. Not to have the problem fixed for us. But a safe place to offload as we process what’s going on inside. And then have a hug, best way to finish. X
Don’t forget: there is Normal Irritating Teen Behavior and sometimes it has nothing to do with the whole cheating thing! When my daughter was in her teens, she would challenge me on practically everything.
Learn how to sail to the west to reach the east. The more you disparage your ex (or argue over politics or healthcare or whether DJT is a moron) the more they’re going to take the other side. It’s a phase they go through, but it does come to an end. They’re just rebelling, that’s all.
I understand why you think they’re lucky — because it means their children have more empathy for their chump parent than their cheater parent. That’s validating, it’s a sign that they have values that align with yours. (Cheating BAD, showing-up GOOD.) But those kids are not “lucky” — that knowledge is super painful. That one parent abuses the other parent, abuses them, doesn’t show up for them in meaningful ways.
My child fortunately has no contact with my ex per court order, but that’s because his behavior was so violent and psychologically damaging that a court-appointed parental assessor, the police, child protective services, therapists and ultimately a judge determined that he should have no further contact, ever.
While that stops further damage, it does not undo what he’s already done. My child has more empathy for me because he was directly harmed in similar ways. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone’s kids.
That said, when I hear stories like yours, Chumpty, I feel a lot of relief that teen is also no contact and I don’t have to deal with ex manipulating teen.
If anyone out there is wondering if it is better to leave when the kids are small, or when they are older, I hope ChumptyDumpty’s story encourages you to leave soon.
This isn’t to victim blame, of course the sane parent wants to do the least damage to their kids possible.
Kids also have an instinctive understanding of who holds the power in the house, and some of them choose to identify with the abuser, in order to feel some measure of that power for themselves.
I just want chumps to consider the damage done by kids seeing one parent treat the other badly. Kids model their future relationships on what they see at home. The older the kid, the more time they have to internalize the abusive dynamic. You don’t want them to think what is happening with the FW is just normal, and how married people interact.
Chump lady does not shy away from difficult topics! Thank you for that and for how you capture all the cheater nuances. There is no one like you who reads the blue print.
. I may be the oldest double Chump here so I have seen 38 years past my first horrific Chump experience and now 2vears post second chump experiences. My 43 year old son of #1 cheater, stays silent and does not bring up his 6 year old self ,crying for his daddy who walked out for his AP in 1988. But he lives 10 min from me and has been kind..but absolutely no discussion and I couldn’t tell you how he really feels about his childhood. His dad has medical needs and son is kind to him too. My daughter, born at the moment of cheating, has never known her dad and I together. She is daddy’s girl as cheater did everything to pamper her from birth onward. She believes whatever story her dad told her to this day. I tried to tell her my side but she does not want to hear it at all. And she does not ask about my story, nope 38 years old, now with 3 kids 5 3 2..she is busy with no time for old stories. Tracy is so right!!! Keep showing up, watch for any reaching out and be there. Show up, get therapy for the unfairness, take care of you!! My Ex is obese and sickly, can’t travel to see grandkids, complains and is attached to his AP turned wife for all his needs. MY Freedom from abuse alone is a gift in itself. Whether my adult children throw me under the bus or elevate me to sainthood, does not stop my life. Keep living and like me, find the joy in everyday. Count the blessing of no creepy cheater, stealing money, time, health and mental stability away and draining my life forces. I want to stay strong and healthy and no one, not angry kids, or cheater tactics will stop me from living my best life. Regardless.