Antisocial Personality Disorder and alienated teens

[s3s1]

I would like advice on how to reconnect with 17 and 19 year olds who have been severely alienated from me recently. I believe my ex has antisocial personality disorder and underestimated his ability to manipulate our kids – especially since I was an actively engaged parent who devoted my time and energy to them full time and by their own accounts, his parenting has left a lot to be desired. I’m not a perfect parent, but I certainly didn’t engage in alienating behaviors and am struggling to understand how I can be in this situation. Does anyone have experience with this and advice? Are there any happy endings? Do the kids ever figure it out?

• This topic was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by s3s1.

[Stargazer]

Dear s3s1, I don’t have any kids, so I cannot answer from experience, but I’m responding to you because I’m on here right now and thought maybe you could use some support. There are many articles here on co-parenting with sociopaths and many people on here who have been in your situation. If you do a search, you will find the posts. If you feel your children are not innately anti-social like your ex, there is always hope. The advice I see given here over the years is just to be a constant supportive anchor for your children and let them know you are there for them. Don’t try to alienate them against your ex. If you don’t play into your ex’s game, I believe there is always a chance that they can eventually come around, but I don’t know for sure. I wish I could offer more hope – it’s a really sad situation, and it’s very unfair. (((hugs)))

[Donna Andersen]

s3s1 – I am so sorry for your experience. The key here, as Stargazer says, is whether your kids have inherited antisocial personality disorder from your ex. If they have, your ex’s efforts to manipulate them against you have a higher chance of succeeding. If they have not, and are kids who are capable of feeling love, they will probably come around to you at some point, once they realize what their father is. Keep being consistent with them, and keep telling them that you love them.

[s3s1]

Hi,
Thank you for the replies. I don’t believe my children have inherited antisocial personality disorder as they were normal loving children until the late teenage years when their dad moved very locally and began filling their heads with hatred. I found out that he took them to websites to try to identify me as a narcissist. I found it confusing because it is so obvious that I am not. However, upon researching this more, I discovered that his motives for this were to “prove” that I engaged in alienating behaviors against him so they constantly were analyzing my actions through that lens. Couple that with providing an environment for a teen where you are “treated like the adult that you are because I trust you and your mom doesn’t” mentality and I can understand, in part, why the desire to be there. What I can’t wrap my head around is the estrangement piece. I certainly didn’t engage in any behavior to have them shut me out and really tried to handle the trauma with maturity and stability. But, things are getting increasingly hostile and I don’t want to share too much for fear it would be too identifying. The legal system doesn’t help as they can’t seem to figure out that high-conflict cases are fueled by Cluster B personality disordered people. It’s unfortunate that we can’t simply order brain scans of these people to prove our case. I would comply with an order to do so to make it equitable. It’s so devastating and frustrating – emotionally, financially and physically. It’s easier to understand their reprehensible behavior toward me knowing they are victims, but it doesn’t make it less painful and humiliating. I’ve been reading voraciously to try to understand, and am working to forgive myself for marrying him. The red flags were blaring throughout the entire relationship. I left him twice during our engagement, but came back. His parents even met with me to talk about all the abuse he had endured with previous girlfriends and made apologies for him. Another clue! He has bled me dry as I’m still paying loans that I incurred as a fall out from the divorce and his lack of paying child support. I desperately want the kids to see what’s going on, yet I couldn’t and I was an adult! I thought by taking the high road and maintaining a loving relationship with the kids and following the court order (my kids did go with him every other weekend and alternating Wed for dinner) that they’d see the distinctions so clearly and over the years, they certainly seemed to so how their negative memories of their times with him are erased and my positive ones are erased is difficult to process. They don’t have enough understanding to think critically about what he is saying and I don’t have the access to do so. Not that at this point, it would even be valuable to engage in that type of discussion. It seem that I have to wait for them to figure it out. It’s just so shocking because they’d often share their frustration in his behavior and how he’s been an absent parent who borrows money from them, and I’ve been the loving, responsible parent. I pray that as they meet other peers and they share their stories, that people will help them see that what their dad is saying just doesn’t make sense. I also don’t know how to deal with the smear campaign as another person wrote about. Of course, people who know me are standing by me, but the humiliation and pain when your child is going around saying horrible things, of which I don’t even know what it is, but I’m being shunned in circles beyond my friends, makes me want to defend myself! I’d like to post his behaviors and share it with people my child is interacting with – teachers, coaches, parents of teammates, etc. AHHHHHHHHHH!

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