You certainly have a point and your advice would be the policy to which I would offer anyone else. However, you need to know that I've already been down that path. For the first year of our separation. I DB'ed the h*ll out of xW and tried to validate all the complaints and rants she lodged against me -- including some insane stuff that I look back upon now that makes me want to cringe.
Where did that get me? D'ed.
The problem in our M is that she had absolutley zero respect for me as either a H, a father or as a human being. She was and has all along been practicing a scorched-earth policy to totally obliterate any possiblity we might ever get along. It has been methodical and unrelenting since weeks before the bomb. Any effort I took to restore her confidence in me as a person and to achieve even a meager level of conciliatory respect for one another has been met with utter derision and hostility. The most positive response I have ever gotten out of her is a pooh-pooh sort of refrain, "Too bad it's just too little too late."
My ex has some severe emotional problems. That much is now plain for me to see. She has decided that she has to scape-goat me in order for her to be able to be happy. And she has continually displayed extreme anger and frustration with me simply because I will no longer fall on my sword for her.
So, yes, in an ideal situation or even in a normal situation one can hope to win one's ex over with kindness even in the face of their hostility. But in our case, I have learned that anything I do becomes fodder for her hostility -- and turning the other cheek just breeds even more contempt and disrespect from her. Her mother is the same exact screwed up way.
But is there anything I can do to help alleviate the pain my S's are undoubtedly suffering in this insane situation? That's what I keep asking myself. At this point I have settled on my current approach, for better or worse. Given her bent, I would prefer we never talk to each other except for the strict business of raising our S's. NC. Unless it deals directly with our S's, then nothing else.
But she will launch these attacks from time to time it would seem. I think part of it is her own angst, her own guilt and insecurities eating at her; part of it is a pretense to playing the goodly, "better" parent. And part of it I suspect is to establish a paper trail in hopes she can use this some day in a court of law -- I don't trust her one whit on this one, not any longer. She's already proven to be dangerously mercurial on that score.
I am learning to ignore her. Some things she spews I still feel compelled to not let stand unchallenged. But I am learning.
She's a completely different animal than what you're used to, Dylan. (What still haunts me -- and likely always will -- is that I did indeed love her with all my heart in spite of how she really was.)
As for discussions with my S's, well, I can say without reservation that it's quite a bit different when your oldest has Asperger's. S5 is oblivious to such concerns, mostly due to his age and being neurotypical. But S8, being AS, will indeed spout things quite spontaneously -- and he will suddenly latch onto subject matter that requires a huge amount of patience to extricate the both of us from. And I will not ever lie to my S's -- ever. I will try to withhold inappropriate information where I can, but S8 is completely no-nonsense regarding lies and obfuscations. It disturbs him greatly if he ever finds out something is different from what he's been told.
Shielding your children is a dual-edged sword. Sooner or later, one way or another, a parent is just going to get cut.
