So... I don’t even know where to begin. I feel like I ducked up. I also feel like I did the right thing and I only feel like I ducked up because of XWs rage. I don’t know what to think anymore TBH. A years worth of this make me question myself all the time. I’d appreciate some honest feedback.
Do my best. Dealing with rage is one of my issues too.
Cupcakes at school were awkward. XW texted me with lots of exclamation points beforehand demanding to know what I was bringing. I didn’t respond to those texts. D was happy, XW kept trying to (positively) engage me but I said a total of five words to her the whole time I was there.
So far so good
Left school and went to my C appointment. I felt good when I was done with that and GF was actually next door (her mother was buying a car) so I got to have lunch with her and her parents. GF and I leave lunch and are driving to my house. It’s about 3:45. We’re a mile from my house and I see XW and D. No idea why she would be there. XW would have gotten D by 3:10 and where XW was parked is between school and my house and not the way she would normally drive home.
Set up hijack move.
I don’t stop. My phone rings and it’s D asking me to come back and see her. I explain that I can’t, that I love her, and will see her on Sunday.
Right approach, you avoided a set up for triangulation.
D is clearly upset but I tell her to have a good time with mommy. Then the texts start. Typos are hers not mine I’m copy pasting.
Thank you this is helpful
XW: EastTN I don’t care if you were GF if you were the [censored] president you don’t do that baby like it
Word salad. At this point disengage, turn your phone off. This is a sign of decompensating and deterioration. Never engage with word salad.
Me: You may have noticed that I never involve GF in your parenting time.
No need to explain, she is not listening.
Also short visits like that can cause D to get upset.
She knows this that's why she does it. Then she will blame you.
Enjoy your weekend.
XW: I know it upsets her more the fact that you couldn’t stop for two seconds to give her a hug and GF could keep her ass in the truck just saying that is a sorry ass excuse! do not even
Set up
XW: She seen you I didn’t I could care two shits about GF but when this baby wants to see you for two seconds to get a hug and say hey the least you could do is act like she is here instead of making that one that’s in your passenger seat right now more Important I do not appreciate D getting upset because she seen you and you can not even stop and wave at her or say hi to her or anything that is a sorry ass excuse. Don’t even try to say it’s because you have GF with you because it’s taking away my parenting time it’s not if she wanted to see you I would bring her to see you but no someone is far more important As soon as you don’t have D around. Get your priorities straight! You are not in the right with this that’s for sure!
yes, it's a set up to spoil your R with your gf. It's a triangulation position D or gf?
Me: Feel free to drop her off and I’ll keep her the weekend. I know who the most important person In The world is and that’s D. And that means she gets to have her time with you on the weekend. Without me. Without anyone from my life that could be confusing to her especially given your living situation. No matter how much I might want to see her.
You took the bait.
Please do not text me back unless D needs something.
You have no control over exW. How about I am switching off my phone now instead.
XW: How dare you bring up my living situation it is not a situation it is a relationship and OM loves her more than I would’ve ever thought possible at least he is not afraid of a seven -year-old that would not hurt a fly like that little Miss priss GF that’s in your seat right now. You say that D is more important but you not even waving at her or stoppingand telling her that you cannot come back to see her shows her Who is more important that’s why I’m telling you what you did Just now was not OK that is a sorry ass excuse do not bring up who I live with or how I live to justify how you just hurt that Ds feelings! Period!
If you had turned off your phone, this would have stopped this short. This is in your control to stop by ceasing engagement.
XW: Now take your poor excuses and sit on them this weekend while D is upset and mad and I make her feel better bc she seen how you did her! I sure do hope when GF is around and you have D you don’t do her that way!
And later, when D would normally call:XW: Normally I’d make D call you but I just asked her and she said you make her feel bad. So I’m sorry I will not make her tonight
sadly she will do this. Don't give her the opportunity to rage. Disengage.
So... am I an ass? Did I screw up? Have I done the wrong thing? I don’t feel like I can tell sometimes anymore. Is she right? I’m not looking for validation here just honesty. I feel like trash again.
this stuff is the hardest to deal with. It's a set up. So disengage with W. When you see them on the road, Wave cheerfully and drive on. Turn your phone off. Those are my thoughts.
V
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose. V 64, WAW
EastTN, my heart goes out to you, but especially that little girl of yours. You really really need to take some serious and emergent action.
First, you could not have won in that situation at all. She would have started bad mouthing you and GF in front of D. Whatever you would have done, you would have lost in your ex's eyes.
Vanilla is 100% right. Do not engage. Shut off the phone. Just end it. You can't make her stop, so you need to avoid it. You need to cease communication with her unless it's done via email. Stop trying to reason with a crazy woman. Just reading her posts, and I don't mean this to sound offensive, but she sounds either highly unstable, or highly uneducated, as if you would see her on Maury.
Parental alienation is not taken lightly in the courts at all. You need to document all of this. You also need ot get your daughter into IC STAT. This poor little girl. What your ex is doing to her borders on abuse. I rarely say this, but you should go for full custody with supervised visitation. being with her mother is going to harm her emotionally and mentally if she keeps this up. Start the IC now and not only will your D get the help she needs to deal with this, you will also have documentation by a mental health professional this is going on. Maybe when your exW gets some IC you can rework the custody schedule. But I seriously fear for your child and the emotional damage your ex is inflicting on her.
Please be proactive, spend your time consulting with lawyers and reading online what you can do legally to stop this or minimize it.
You sit there feeling like you might have done something worong, doubting yourself, imagine, your D is probably so confused right now not knowing if her feelings are right.
Please, make this your number one priority and focus on how to minimize this damage, because there are legal ways to do it.
Thanks very much for the support and advice. I feel stupid for engaging, but at least I'll say that what I posted above is ALL I said. The only button she can push these days seems to be "I think you're a bad father" and even though that's not true, it still pushes me to respond. I'd like to think that this is enough to get me out of that mode for good.
I felt better when I woke up the next day. I knew there was no good response, that ANYTHING I did in that situation would have been wrong, and strangely that made me feel better.
I'm going to talk with both my C and my L about what steps to take, here. I've "known" that she's been alienating, but my strategy has been "be the sane, stable one" and that doesn't seem to be enough anymore. I've started reading up on what to do as well.
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Just reading her posts, and I don't mean this to sound offensive, but she sounds either highly unstable, or highly uneducated, as if you would see her on Maury.
A good friend of mine told me, "This is what you get for marrying someone who has been on Jerry Springer." I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. By the time I found out about that bit of her past, I was highly invested emotionally in both her and D, and went along with the "I just did it for the free trip and the money, all of it was fake" explanation.
Great assessment Ginger, you were only a few channels off and a show down the dial!
Seriously, East, you can't fix crazy. There is no point in trying. The best you can do is protect D. She has no voice - you must protect her!
Tough as what I'm about to say will be to hear, you really must look inward as to why you refused to see the signs that had to be right in front in front of you! You don't go from Jerry Springer to normal back to Springer again. The signs had to be there. Why did you ignore them? That should be explored before getting involved in your next series R. Or is it already too late for that?
DonH Midwest Me 56 WAW-EXW 55 Met 11/95 / Married 5/00 Bomb 6/20/05 / She Filed on 6/2/06 / Divorced on 10/9/06 4 who'd qualify as GF since D & dated about 25 women since D
D didn't call Saturday night, either. I'm ok with that.
XW was not there when I picked up D yesterday. When I saw D, the very first thing she said to me was that what I did to her was very hurtful, and that I was a bully. We had a talk, and thirty seconds later she was fine. Pretty sure that was rehearsed, because I didn't hear another thing about it. After she got out the rehearsed part, she told me that "mommy says GF is afraid of me, and that's because she thinks I'm bigger than she is" (I guess that means "more important?") "but I know that's not true, because GF is nice to me, and she plays with me, and she's nice." She also told me they'd been sitting there waiting for me on Friday, and were giving up and leaving when GF and I passed. I did not ask D WHY they were waiting there. I try not to ask her things like that.
As I was picking up D, I got a text from XW: "You better no be ignoring her when you have her around GF! Bc the way you acted Friday sure does make me think that! She is still not happy and didn't want to some home today with you. I told her she had to bc of school. But I'm sure you've bought her something to counter the fact of how you did her Friday. Great parenting there! Shove toys and gifts in her face and tell her everything is ok like you do every time you pick her up. Always got gifts just to get her in your vehicle. Tell that to your psychiatrist! Bet they'd have words to say about that!"
Took D to visit her grandparents and great-grandmother on our way home. She wanted to do that last weekend, and I promised her last week we'd do that this weekend.
On the way home, D fell asleep. 9:00 my phone starts ringing. And ringing. She called 11 times. I did not answer. Texts:
XW: "It would be nice if I could talk to my daughter." XW: "You're a piece of work." Me: "She fell asleep on the way home. She will call in the morning." XW: "You should have had her call me after you left MY dads!"
Not engaging. Will be talking to L and C this week about the alienation and what to do.
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Tough as what I'm about to say will be to hear, you really must look inward as to why you refused to see the signs that had to be right in front in front of you! You don't go from Jerry Springer to normal back to Springer again. The signs had to be there. Why did you ignore them? That should be explored before getting involved in your next series R. Or is it already too late for that?
Not hard to hear. I've been looking at that for a long time, now. I readily admit there were signs and I flat out IGNORED them. I knew what she USED to (I thought) be, and believed the "when I got pregnant, everything changed." And maybe it did, for a while. But I remember warning signs. And I remember being concerned. And I remember telling myself it would be ok, because we loved each other, and our daughter, and that was enough.
Stupid, I know.
I remember being conditioned, and ignoring it, because I wanted what I was being conditioned for.
I fully accept that my choices led me to where I am today.
I still fight against MNG. I still want to be a peacemaker even if what makes the peace isn't what I want. The things I have written on my bathroom mirror are all about remembering that behavior and fighting it (well, I added one this weekend that said, "You cannot reason with crazy.") Possibly repeating my past mistakes scares the hell out of me.
This morning, D was very difficult. She woke up happy, but things went bad fast. She wanted to have a bath while we were getting ready for school. I explained we didn't have time, she'd get one tonight, and that she was asleep when we got home last night, which is why she didn't have one. She said she hadn't had one all weekend, and felt dirty.
Didn't want to brush her teeth. She usually dawdles on that in the morning, but today she was REALLY not wanting to. When I finally got her to go to the bathroom to brush, she came out fifteen seconds later crying. She said she'd peed on herself. She had. She's a bedwetter but has NO issues when she's awake. That was a behavior. She lied and said she tried to get to the toilet and couldn't.
I asked if she'd had a good weekend. She said she had a really bad one. I asked why, and she said her (four year old) cousin called her a "b---- f---er." As far as I know, her cousin wasn't supposed to be around this week, so I don't know if that was the four year old or someone else. I hugged her, told her not to use those words and she started crying saying she was bad, and she wasn't a good kid, and she was sorry, and I tried to say she wasn't in trouble, because I understood she was just trying to tell me what someone said to her, but she was REALLY upset and ran back to bed.
It was a bad morning. Probably the worst morning we've had in a year.
Sorry to hear about your D. You're going to have to be dealing with the baggage of her time with her Mom. I think providing the safe, reliable, and predictable home will eventually make her feel much safer and ease the transition for her. Not sure what else you can do.
