"I believe that W does love the girls, but she seems completely unable to express that love. She says wonderful things about them to other people, but she’s always fighting with them and is hyper-critical of virtually everything they do. I’m constantly having to listen to diatribes about how worthless they are, but I figure it’s better to have her anger at them dumped on me than to have it dumped on them."
--Whoa. Forgive my blunt response here but you need to get these kids away from this type of destructive, ego-destroying, self-esteem obliterating projection of anger behavior...ASAP.
And I speak from experience on this one. I love my mother dearly but she was extremely hypercritical, mentally, and, I have to admit, physically abusive; ie, wooden spoons, tree "switches", belts and the like. Your children WILL have low self-worth issues that will prevent them from being happy with achievements and holding themselves in their careers/personal lives with charismatic self-confidence and magnetism that one gets through unwavering self-assuredness. Guarantee it.
I'm in my 30s andSTILL working through all the damage I've received to my sense of self-worth. I don't think I had ever once heard I had done a fantastic job in sports, academics etc. In school, Bs should have been As, nevermind there were a paucity of As to go around to anyone. And I had loads of athletic talent (father was an all-American football player and NFL draftee who wisely chose the white collar world instead since this was the 50s)...but I lacked all confidence to make any real impact and even this 'timidity' to take over was resented by coaches and they responded by either criticism or benching to 'teach a lesson.' The further downward spiral. --Wrong approach, you dimwits. .
Well, anyway, your thread is not for my sitch (there I go again) but I wanted to show you first hand what will happen to your kids when they reach my age if this treatment from your W continues. And I blame my WA's recent cutting me loose in no small part due to this issue. I actually thought I had a grip on confidence until she had an PA with OM...
...after that, I literally disappeared inside myself, found that sad, worthless-feeling little kid inside of me, grabbed him by the hand and proceeded to kick the living sh^t out of him all over again.
Needless to say, women aren't very attracted to that kind of weak, insecure jealousy-inflicted male. It's biological and they can smell it like an animal smells danger. Look anywhere in the animal phylum. The Fs do NOT go for this and as soon as a confident, charismatic alpha male crosses their paths...the 32-chromosome genetic pull to keep the species strong completely colors their unconscious and spurs them to some form of flirtatious action.
Enough Darwinian logic. I think the C is crazy for letting your kids "ride out the storm" In teh meantime, I would sure as Hades do some major damage control on them and build them up at every opportunity. Go get "The Anger Trap" book for your W. May wake her up to what she's doing.
Even the know-it-all narcissists sometimes defer to authors with "PhD" after their names
-Stigmata-
The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is the warrior views everything as a challenge; the ordinary man views everything as either a blessing or a curse.
-Yaqui shaman Don Juan-
...and that holds 2x true for nice guy wussies, DJ
