Dad’s troubles with a sociopathic ex-wife
A Lovefraud reader, whom we’ll call Joe, recently sent the following e-mail. Joe’s ex-wife has custody of their daughter, whom we’ll call Suzie. The ex-wife is clearly using the child to sponge off of Joe.
My daughter’s mother always wants to control me and our daughter. I’m sure you’ve heard of these types of cases before. My daughter’s mother is constantly trying to use my daughter against me to control me like a puppet. I was with my ex for a period of years before our daughter was born, so I blame myself for seeing some of the signs, but not leaving.
I see some change in my daughter’s behavior as of late, so I’m a bit concerned. When I have her, she doesn’t want to go home and every time I drop her off after my custody days, she clings on to me for dear life. My daughter and I do so much together, but when she’s with mom, she sits around the house and does nothing. Would this affect her behavior?
Suzie is starting to say things like, “Mommy says that she doesn’t like you, Dad,” and “Daddy, Mommy says that we’re not family.” My daughter used to call me all the time and now the phone calls have stopped and when I do talk to Suzie, she says “Daddy, I have to talk to you later.”
I’ve done the attorney thing time and time again, but just when I think things are going well, my ex somehow cons the attorneys into believing her stories. It’s amazing! My ex is never wrong and always blames others for her downfalls. My ex has a four-year college degree, but continues to live off of my child support and use the system. She won’t go out and get a real job, and whenever I try to inquire about anything pertaining to Suzie, she’s always two steps ahead of me. I feel as if I’m the bad guy when I check up on Suzie’s welfare at school, the doctor’s offices, the dentist office. I pay almost one hundred percent of my daughter’s care, so what rights do I have?
I keep pretty good notes, but feel like I should just hire a private investigator to cover me just in case. I’m a peace officer, so I have everything to lose. My ex has already filed false police reports and a false restraining order in the past, in efforts to prevent me from seeing Suzie. My ex has burned so many people that recently someone vandalized her new car. I’m worried about Suzie’s safety, so what do you think I should do to put myself in a better position? My ex already has my social security number etc., so how can I change some things?
Sociopathic parasite
This letter is so typical of what Lovefraud hears about sociopathic women who are essentially parasites. They get pregnant—with or without marriage—and use the child to sponge off of the father for as long as possible.
Sadly, children are nothing more than meal tickets for these women—and those are the best cases. Some situations are worse. The sociopath may emotionally damage the child, trying to turn him or her into a manipulative mini-me. In the most despicable cases, the children are exploited.
I don’t know what Joe’s ex-wife might do, but he is right to be concerned about his daughter. The fact that Suzie doesn’t want to go back to her mother is a big clue that, at the very least, the mother is creating an unhealthy emotional environment.
Love and documentation
But what can Joe do? Courts are unlikely to take the child away from the mother, unless she does something terrible and it can be proven. That may not happen. Sociopaths are skilled at going up to the legal limit but not crossing it. They know just when to stop so they can keep the gravy train chugging.
Here’s what I wrote to Joe:
You may want to try to get more time with your daughter. This, of course, will be extremely difficult, because your ex will lie, file more false reports, etc., to keep her meal ticket. You are right to keep notes. In fact, you should document everything that happens in case you ever want to try to get custody. You should also continue to get your information directly from the schools, etc. Do not let the woman cut you out of your information.
Hopefully, providing Suzie with as much love and affection as he can will help Joe counteract the negative influence of the sociopathic mother. And if the woman really starts to become dangerous, his documentation will help him save his daughter.
written by Donna Andersen • Permalink •
Ariadne says:
Oh man, this story is exactly what would have happened if my father had divorced my S stepmother. I guess that’s why he chose to stay with her all these years. He must know that she would be able to cut him out of the kids’ lives while getting some serious child support that he would definitely pay because he is trustworthy. It is almost impossible for a man to get full custody of the kids unless the mother is visibly crazy. Unfortunately, my s stepmom is covertly crazy. It’s not enough.
I respect this guy for having the guts to leave the s because yes, if he had stayed, he might have had a little more time with his kids but at what cost? I’m not so sure it’s worth it. My dad is constantly drained from dealing with her crazy making and doesn’t have energy for anything else.
I can only hope that the kids realize with time that their mom is an s. I have never said a word against her in their presence, although she has told them horrible things about me. I think that with one parent who is there to love them unconditionally and make sure they know they are not to blame for anything, they have a good chance of turning out to be normal adults.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008 @ 11:10am
OxDrover says:
This is such a common story with the “normal” parent of a child born of a sociopath and another person. The S uses the child as a “club” to hit the other parent with, of course, injuring the child in the battle for control over the X spouse.
It is so sad, and I am sure painful to the other parent to see that the child is suffering and there is not a great deal the good parent can do.
The advice given to the father I think is good advice, but I would also counter that when the child comes and says things that she has obviously heard from the mother, he might consider things like “Yes, dear, I know your mother doesn’t like me very much right now since the divorce. She is angry at me right now, and I understand that. Sometimes when people become angry at another person they say or do bad things. Anger is not an excuse to do bad things, but I do understand how she feels. I hope that she will resolve this anger and that she and I can be friends. I am your dad and I will always love you, even if I am angry at you, I will never quit loving you.” etc.
It is also obvious that the little girl is getting the idea already that she can’t “talk” to her father without getting a ration of crap from her mother. I think the father should also validate the child’s feelings on this by maybe saying, “I love you, and I think that sometimes when you talk to me on the telephone it upsets your mother. You do not have to choose between me and your mother. It is okay with me for you to love your mother even though we don’t agree on things. Just because she is mad at me doesn’t mean that I am angry with her or that I want you to quit loving her.”
So many times the Ps do the SPLIT between the other parent and put the child in the MIDDLE. If you love me you can’t love your father, or vice versa. I think it is so important for the child to know that they do NOT HAVE TO QUIT LOVING ONE PARENT in order to please the other one.
I have the greatest amount of empathy and compassion for the parents of children born with anothe rparent who is a P. Having to stay i n contact with the P and also try to defend their young child from the VENOM of the P, must be the most heart rending scenario that I can even imagine.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008 @ 11:33am
Yarra says:
Joe’s story is similar to mine - in reverse. My 9 year old daughter’s father has dragged me through the courts 5 times in 6 years. Each case has involved hundreds of pages of documents that I have to answer, repeated submissions of ‘new’ evidence that I have to answer, and many days in court at a cost to me of over $100,000, most of which I’ve borrowed. This was to make small changes to arrangements I’d already agreed to. In some cases, he reduced the amount of contact I had proposed - yet constantly accused me of refusing to let him have a relationship with her.
Yet when she is with him, he spends much of the time playing computer games or watching TV. She is very lonely. She begged him for a pet and he promised to get one for 3 years, even taking her to pet shops to choose one, but there was always a reason why he couldn’t get it then. He finally told he she couldn’t have a pet because I had reduced the time she spends with him - the opposite is true.
He constantly puts her down and accuses me of not caring about her. He changes the access arrangements at the last minute and when I say I’m not available or can’t get to changeover that quickly, he tells her that I don’t want her.
There are many petty actions to make my life difficult. Clothing goes missing and is returned months later when she’s grown out of it. Lunch boxes are never returned. He insists that I have to provide lunch for her, even when he takes her to school after contact visits, because he can’t be bothered and she’s my responsibility.
Yes, it does affect her. She had frequent nightmares from age 3 to age 8 and still needs frequent reassurance from me. After extended holiday contact with her father, she returns very clingy and sleeps in my bed for a couple of nights until she settles down. She is very easily frustrated and is very hard on herself.
I agree wholeheartedly with Ox Drover’s suggestions. It is very important to support the child and build up her self-esteem to counteract all the put-downs and criticisms received from the S parent. It is important to support the child’s relationship with the other parent because they do love them, despite the way they are treated.
My daughter is starting to make critical comments about her father - his meanness, his neglect of her, his cruel comments. She now recognises that her father lies to her and sometimes she checks things with me to confirm that what she thinks is really true. It’s really hard to respond in those circumstances because I don’t want to lie to her (her father is already doing that) but I don’t want to be negative about her father. I’m also scared that she might say something to him that can be twisted and turned into yet another excuse to drag me back to court.
Saturday, 3 May 2008 @ 11:26pm
OxDrover says:
Yarra,
My sympathy and empathy for you and your daughter. I wish I had a magic wand to wave and make him become the ideal father to your daughter, who deserves at least a reasonable one, but unfortunately there’s no “magic wand.”
I was speaking with a dear friend of mine whose son is a P and her ex husband is a P. After the son’s first divorce, hhis mother raised the child from age 1 to age 8–he is a fireman and works 24 on at a time…then he remarried to the “typical” N woman who was looking for a meal ticket. She was hateful and nasty to the dtr, but he insisted the dtr stay with the “wicked step mother” instead of the grandmother who had raised her, in fact, almost disallowed contact with her grandmother. The mother of this poor child is apparently a borderline personality disorder, but the grandmother cult6ivated a relationship with the mother in an effort to get ANY contact with the granddaughter.
It is sad really because this little girl is apparently so loving and sweet and with a P father, a BDP step mother (who now has her own child) and a BPD mother, this child is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. For the past 4 yrs the grandmother has done everything imaginable to maintain the bond between her and her granddaughter, even volunteering at the child’s school in order to be able to see her at all. Fortunately, the bio-mother of the child is letting her see the little gir on her own visitation times. The child does not want to be either with her father or her mother, but with her grandmother who has been her primary caretaker from almost birth.
How the Ps and BPDs use the children as weapons to “hit” out at others. My friend is finally starting to see that the problem is her SON not the women he marries….his rage is against his mother, and he is using his daughter to “pay back” whatever N-injury he perceives his mother has dealt him.
I’ve known this family for 3-0+ years and out of my friend’s 11 children, all of whom are very bright and successful in their careers, six are some form of personality disorder and the others appear to be well adjusted. Her x husband was an alcoholic P, who is now deceased.
The stories of the family read like a soap opera with the personality disordered ones and their multiple marriages, and so on. None picked up the alcoholism, but the boys seem to be pretty much like their father in most other ways.
It is like you could write all this down and make a play and just vary the names and faces, and it would be from the “P-Script Book” that they all seem to play by.
I don’t know how old your daughter is, but I would suggest that you find some way to VALIDATE her feelings that will be difficult to twist for a court appearance. I am sort of at a loss to what that could be..like maybe “I’m hearing that you’re upset with your father for telling you XYZ (a lie) I can understand that we all get upset when we feel like we have been deceived. (Or when we think someone breaks a promise to us, etc). Then reassure her that you will not deceive her or break a promise unless you explain toher why you had to break the promise and that you will make it up later. Like if you have to break a promise to take her to the zoo because your car gets sick or something,, just explain it to her and then take her the next week or wahtever.
I am sure the pet thing with her father is upsetting, maybe you could get her a turtle or gold fish or hamster or some small pet, Hermit crabs are cute for kids too, or a small bird. Something inexpensive, clean and quiet. If you can have a cat, they are quiet, clean etc. and free most of the time.
You might also acknowledge that her dad is angry at you and may say some things negative about you, but that you understand this, and that while you don’t think saying negative things or name calling is appropriate behavior that you do understand why some people do this, but that you would prefer not to. It is a dance I know, but kids are NOT dumb, they catch on to who is honest and who really loves them. Good luck and God bless.
Sunday, 4 May 2008 @ 1:22pm