Editor’s note: The following article was written by a Lovefraud reader who we’ll call “WalkonMom.”
I used to think that “six” was my lucky number. And sometimes, I used to remind myself to show gratitude for six little things, like, the sound of New England leaves as they rustle underfoot, the first snowfall with really huge flakes, each breath flowing in and out, especially when you recognize that you are free for the first time, the scent of your baby’s head as you cradle and rock her in your grandmother’s rocking chair, the preciousness of each holiday, along with the sacred spirit of wonder that fills you as you see your child grow from year to year. Falling in love, and realizing that, no matter what, you’ll be strong enough to fix any boo boo or heal any abuse in the relationship, however seemingly impossible, because, well, you chose to love that man, and that’s supposed to mean forever, and, besides, you’re a mom—that should be enough.
But to survive in a situation of domestic violence, how much love could it EVER take for you alone to mitigate or hold it at bay? And when you realize that nurturing is never enough, that you can’t solve or ever heal it, and when you need to leave Hell to save your child, how much LOVE will it take to get you both out—alive? How much love will it take, years later, when your once kidnapped child chooses borderline behaviors to blame you for everything the sociopath did?
I’ll never forget. November 4, 2008. The night my 17-year-old daughter returned to NH from NJ after nearly six years, finally reaching out to me for help—a plea in the darkness. It was late, and I was tucking her into bed. My second husband and I had just returned from our honeymoon to pick her up in Hartford earlier that night. She had recently voiced some problems (again) with her Dad. I wasn’t given to know what the seriousness of his issues were over the past several years. She and I had only visited on a few rare occasions during her six-year transition to womanhood.
This is what I do know: While she was away, she’d attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital on multiple occasions. She’d cut herself, developed impetigo from self-injury. She took varying cocktails and combinations of drugs over the years, sometimes in dangerous and lethal quantities. She’d engaged in dangerous sexual activity, run away, sometimes being found on a city bench. Most horrific of all, as I was to discover that night, she held an ominous secret close to her heart, one that loomed much larger than the two of us. Bigger even than life itself.
No match
I’d left my first marriage in 2000, and with nothing, save one child, and a NH restraining order. I was no match for this cruel man who would stop at nothing to punish me. He was incapable of love, and as his warped mind was obsessed with obtaining and destroying the one thing he knew I cared about, his sole aim became that of molding our precious child’s soul into something he could torture me with forever, a meted out, deliberate punishment for my daring to leave his controlling, jealous, narcissistic personage, a payback for my rejecting his penchant for enjoying watching me suffer—and for leaving the abuse. “You’re it until I die, baby,” he used to say, over the years. “You’re IT.”
And so I had to borrow money from Mom to keep NJ courts from snatching my daughter back unwillingly, even as she and I had moved to NH with his physical help, and his written, signed understanding that I had no choice but to leave the marriage because of his abuse.
We endured death threats, were in hiding twice, hired one corrupt NJ attorney, “enlisted” the aid of therapists, NH DOVE attorneys—family services workers. But we were no match for the lies, death threats, the unending stream of NJ Italian family money, all fueling corruption that carried a singular purpose: to wear me down while making me appear as “crazy.”
Thus, we fought a three-year long, fledgling court battle with a corrupt judge, between two states, both warring for the acquisition of my child’s tender flanks.
Kidnap
It was in 2003 that he decided to kidnap our child, at the end of a month-long visitation. And it was during that fateful year that the same vulnerable girl who used to plead desperately for the abuse to stop, decided inexplicably, to go back to NJ—to live with her father.
When she returned for a short time to NH with FBI help, she’d evolved into a demanding, enraged, uncontrollable, borderline, destructive teen, filled with angst, three-inch devil horns super glued to her forehead, and Celtic swirls painted where two eyebrows used to be, in the style of her famous half brother’s band.
Once I’d witnessed just how cleverly he’d turned her head with those expensive Lolita skirts, shit kicker boots and a multitude of other promises to be involved with the band, how he coerced her with things he purchased during his “quality kidnapping time,” I knew my role as a mother was over. All I had left was my right to mourn, to breathe, and to try to walk on.
She walks away
At 12, she’d arrived at her own ironic version of an age of reason. For me, it was just another hellish turning point in the ongoing dialectic of domestic violence, an unholy grail of horror from which I knew I would never emerge, because he’d continue to use her to seek and secure a lifetime of vengeance and vitriol from me. What else could I do? I had to play dead, and let her go. She tried to push my mother down the stairs—threatened to kill all of us. So on one fateful summer day, I watched her put on her goth armor, the teeny weeny sexy skirts he’d purchased, and I let her choose to walk away. July 27, 2003—that remains the date of her death, regardless of our current and future interactions.
And so, this same beautiful soul and creature who once begged me to leave her father, now openly rejected the peaceful life it had taken several years for me and Mom to create for her, after finding the courage to leave the abuse. In the silence of one oceanfront family home, I was left alone to nurse these impossibly painful, openly weeping, inner wounds. From that day on, I mourned my daughter as dead. The mere possibility of having to hold, within, the fear and possibility of her death at his, or her own hands, in light of the risks I knew awaited inside the Hell she was to re-enter, now alone, without a mother’s protection or presence, would have driven any mother mad. I screamed and ripped my hair out for a week, and cried and vomited for one more. Then, I donned my teacher’s clothing, and went back to work, telling the story as if I were reciting summer vacation details. The only eyes that no longer had tears were my own.
No one validates this kind of death as mourning, so again, I was not given the grace of sharing it with anyone, for fear of being called crazy, or over-dramatic. Those few people I brought into the circle of the story blamed me, for being stupid enough to “choose” a sociopath, for letting her go, for feeding her Twinkies in grade school, for simply having been born at all. “What kind of mother leaves her child?” they would query. Well, the kind whose child threatens to kill Mom or use their Daddy to kill the family so that she can live the “Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (that he promised her, replete with sex, drugs and rock and roll in NJ), that’s who! I couldn’t compete against a band that was becoming famous; without that, he’d have had no power to sway her into the world of the perverse. Boundaries. It all boils down to boundaries.
Loss of motherhood
For six years, half of me tried to imagine living again as some fictitious single woman, one would never be again a wife or mother, while the other half keened as the woman whose child was absent and had died at the age of 12, to a murderous and conscious-less husband. I checked the NJ obituaries on a weekly basis.
Since that time, regardless of whether or not my daughter still breathes, I will always mourn the loss of motherhood. Life can be ironic, particularly if the devil won’t let you out of Hell.
I’ve read that children of divorce in the context of abuse tend to seek love unrelentingly from the parent with whom they feel unsafe, the one they instinctively know does not love them sincerely. My daughter and I were always so close that, had I demanded she stay with me, she would have given me the middle finger and left anyway, not because of hate, but because she needed me to prove to her, against her father’s protestations, that I loved her enough to let her go, to figure out who her daddy was on her terms, not mine, or the court’s, or any therapist’s. She compartmentalized her love, keeping me in a box only for the tough times.
Meanwhile, after years of trying to keep her safe before puberty, and to hold all of this up alone, I was battle worn, devoid of personal power and hope; in some ways, it was a relief to let her go. Years of his unrelenting torture had kept her hostage, and me from moving on with some kind of half-life. You see, she and I were so connected that I know that she knew all this, too. Deep inside, she knows that she and I were always just pawns, even as her budding psyche needed to fill that void in inner space in which we all need to KNOW that we are loved by our parents unconditionally, even if it’s not true.
Just a pawn
She had always been scared of her father’s unpredictable, controlling nature—many NH friends who called, after she left, validated this when they told me how shocked they were to discover she had chosen to live with him. But the hardest part for me throughout all the “she said” accusations, and through all the dirty legal tactics, his M.O., to avoid accountability, was my knowing from his eyes (and her mouth) that she was “just a pawn” between two equal parents, and an innocent victim of a lose-lose, power-over scheme, in which her Mom was the sole instigator, merely a cartoon character in a b-movie, a buffoon, an inconsequential, incompetent piece of shit, whose indomitable spirit as a mother existed in order to be squelched and mocked, at all cost.
Yet she could only see the situation at that time as any child would, stuck between two divorcing parents who would act upon love only and therefore fight for HER behalf. In spite of circumstances, children all need to believe that their very existences hold real meaning, and that both parents are acting sincerely. That is why she felt so vehemently angry. Since she knew that she could always be herself with me, and that I would love her back without question, while holding her very birthright, which carries also a permanent reminder of my sole personal responsibility for her rage about being born in the first place, within my own being.
In 2008, six years had passed since I’d experienced being a mother to my only child, six years since I’d been lost inside his torturous definition of divorce hell, a place in which I was stripped of all motherhood, raped from the inside out by a cruel and damaged man. Looking back, she and I both knew that all this irony and complexity required that she release herself from the fire of her daddy’s life, and from mine. She had needed to figure it all out by herself, to pull herself up by her Goth corset straps, and eyebrow-less face.
Something to show you
Within this set of sixes in years, I hadn’t known if my child were alive or dead, or even whether or not I’d ever find the will to continue living for myself. So simply for us to come back together, just before she reached the age of 18, was a small miracle. Naturally, she and I were catching up, that November night, on lost years of talking, about little things—how she’d run away from Dad again, how she was missing too many days at school in her senior year, how she didn’t want to live in NJ anymore. I remarked on how very thin and frail and sad she was, compared to how she had looked when she had visited in the summer. I asked her if she was feeling better. She’d vomited when we picked her up, lying in the back holding her stomach all the way to NH. She said, casually, “Oh you know, Mom. I’m withdrawing from heroin again; when I ran away from Dad last week, I had to stay with my friends.” Her friends had held her together, even as the drugs to mute the pain of trauma and long-term abuse were gradually killing them all.
I tried not to pry, even as I felt that sudden, old and all-too-familiar adrenaline rush from the past, that trembling murderous rage within that makes you want to kill the bastard that did this to your child, to erase that power-ridden, sociopathic smirk forever from his evil, stinking face.
It was then that she said, “Mom, I have something to show you.” I tried to draw her out tenderly by guessing what it might be, but then she slowly lifted the fabric of her pants up over her emaciated pajama-donned legs, revealing a horrendous, ugly truth, a horrific badge describing the six years she had taken on a un-winnable and pointless battle all on, by herself. Her precious flesh hung in tatters; there was a long series of deep muscle scars running up and down her thighs; some cuts were half-infected, others long healed. A few were one to two inches deep. I could not breathe, but I knew this moment could either save her life or end it; her future, carrying the basic will to live, was in my hands. I felt IT coming. I stayed steady, like a ship withstanding a rogue wave, turning my bow into the white squall.
His son
And then she said, “I know now why I’ve done this since I was young.” My response was a silence in deep waves of impending grief and doom. I held my breath, as I could sense that dread and nausea and relief were rising up faster than I could feel the blood coursing through my veins. Slowly, and with utterly slow agony, she revealed that her 29-year-old half-brother, son of her father (from his 1st marriage), had raped her, had sex with her. He’d done it while her father was downstairs; my former stepson and daughter up in her bedroom. She said that it was consensual, that she loved him, but that it also led her to take heroin. It made her cut. It made her run away. She’d stopped going to school. It was her senior year. She had done this over the years. I knew then that it hadn’t been the first time, but it wasn’t mine to say it. Her half brother had thrown her across the room before coming to see me; that’s when I realized there was no going back. This was bigger than incest or abuse. This was a life or death situation.
My daughter’s precious life depended, in that moment, for me to be stronger for her than the ocean is deep. She needed, more than oxygen, for me to hold her as a fortress- of understanding, compassion and love. And so as I rocked and held her, I struggled to keep all my past wolves at bay. She spoke only of one incident, yet the cutting and the sex and the problems with her father and his son likely occurred since she was a little girl.
As long as I could focus on breathing out into that eternity, into the inferno of that moment, and as I held her, I felt that we both began to let go, to breathe back in all the life from those lost years back into the corpses of one other. To keep the horrendous thoughts from ripping me apart, I consciously drifted into my realm of gratitude, and uttered seven silent things for which I was now truly grateful, as “six” was no longer my lucky number:
For scent of song in a sky of blue, for dancing and healing and walking on, for the gift my daughter bestowed, which was to let her mother go so that she could be free and learn to grow strong enough to climb back into the abyss again to save her daughter’s life, for the phrase “love goes on forever” engraved on our laundry basket by one nine year old child, for newspapers that do not yet contain the obituary of my own child, for the hope that someday truth will prevail over lies, with the spirit of good triumphing over the hell of insincerity.
Lastly, for the power of imagination lying deeply within the understanding that there will always be many different kinds of deaths we must accept, all of which she and I have endured.
Into the fire again
As she was a minor, the abuse was reported by her, to therapists, and to her father, and to DYFS. Yet still, She chose to enter back into the fire again. She is now 21, trying to bully me into believing that “none of this happened,” trying perhaps to assuage her guilt that I’m slowly dying, by striking the truth from the records of her history. She also has developed borderline personality. In the meantime, I’ve been diagnosed with a rare connective tissue disorder, and fear that these things will never be resolved between us, as my time on earth is limited, keeping me from being able to let go of her. Time is short; most of all, it is unfailingly precious.
Motherhood, too, with a sociopath, is a tenuous, bitter, lose-lose hole into which we fall; it burns me inside that the revelation of the perpetrators must die with me. Yes, against my better judgment, I must do as I am told by US therapists: to keep these secrets under wraps until after I die. One never wants to stir the hornet’s nest, and the revelation of the names themselves will be the margin of safety I leave for my new husband and his family, in the event they are ever threatened. It all seems so ludicrous, and it is exactly why perpetrators continue to get away with murder. I will never see the fruit of my womb heal from her own wounds; I will never be able to protect her from this genetic disease, which she, too, carries. Most of all, as she eschews the truth of her history, she refuses to honor our connection as mutually respectful. I am no longer a mother.
In life with a sociopath, I believe now that one gives up the right to motherhood. The rights to breathe and live on are defined by sheer whim, luck, space, and a lot of grace.
Yet, The one thought that will always bring me the only comfort as I die is this:
In the bowels of Hell, there is but one gravestone, and the only surname that is and will ever remain engraved on it belongs to the sociopath and his son.
Dear Walkonmom,
I appreciate your expression of what a parent feels when their child cannot break free of the delusion of a psychopath parent. I honor your strength to listen and support your daughter. Your post is invaluable to so many others who have children with a psychopath and those women who cannot leave the psychopath. Too many parents endure the punishment inflicted on the children after they have chosen to leave. Psychopaths are never satisfied in letting the children and spouses escape.
My personal experience has been similar. I do not have a child with this man. He still cyberbullies and inflicts emotional harm on me. Your honesty helps so many of us. We are not alone, you can express our pain through your story. Thank you for your honesty!
Walkonmom,
I’m so sorry what you have lived through with the spath and your daughter as a consequence. At the same time I admire your levelheadedness and your actions and stance towards her, despite your illness. Opalrose’s post was indeed a powerful gem. Someone’s good influence does not stop with death, but only if we stop remembering them.
Borderline is not the same diagnosis as a sociopath, even though the behaviour is as destructive and in many ways similar. But borderline can lessen with a certain therapy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_borderline_personality_disorder#Dialectical_behavioral_therapy
That knowledge may not help your relationship with your daughter, but your daughter isn’t necessarily lost to ever find her way to a healthier life.
I’ve been thinking more about this and reading the posts.
I’m thinking that if there is a space inside us which is undisturbed, then good thoughts and good examples can rest there until a time when we can access them. WalkOnMom has given her daughter priceless words and actions which can help her find her way “someday.” What the daughter needs is there should there be an opening in the chaos at some point. Once those buried treasures are accessed, they become incredibly strong. That happened for me.
I have been called borderline, anorexic, autistic (really) – but as I’ve had time to study and research and read by myself, I’ve realized I was sleep deprived, hyper vigilant and have PTSD. I learned there is a part of me which remained undisturbed – I never liked the life of the sociopath – I just could not find a better way to cope amid the chaos.
Something about WalkOnMom’s daughter sounds familiar and I’m hoping that the treasures given her daughter will become clear someday. I’m really glad about the boundaries set – that is a great example as well. I don’t want to trivialize the losses we have or think that true sociopaths have anywhere within that is undisturbed. Just so grateful that the daughter has been given the same gifts my father gave me.
Annie – you understand completely – bless you and thank you for your post. I visited my father’s people and his grave this past weekend (many hours away from where I live now). I took yellow flowers (his favorite color) and stood above his bones while I honored him for being the unsung hero in my life.
Oxy – thank you for reminding me that I will always have the gifts of kindness and truth my father gave me.
WalkOnMom – thinking of you and sending love and prayers.
Seeing the title of this article..made me cringe. I was married to an abuser for twenty years. Abuses happened that I do not even want to speak about. Four sons were made during that marriage and at one time I was life to them.
I have been divorced for 11 years and it has been 5 years since I have spoken to my sons. The oldest is 25 and the youngest is 19. To them I am crap..I am the useless tender of life. The actions the writer described happened to me and daily I grieve. I no longer define myself as being a mother..an odd place to be in.
No one seems to understand, except those who sadly, have walked the same path.
I too have a serious disease..Parkinson’s and it is killing me. Time here in this place is limited. I have had a bout of Pneumonia for four weeks now. No signs of getting better and is a death curse for those with this disease.
I only desire for them to glimpse again real love..the love I give to them. One must go on..one must walk away..one must breath..even if it is the hardest thing I have ever done.
WalkonMom, I am too overwhelmed to write more…having recently had my daughter take away my grandchildren and go no contact on me and her psychopath dad but I must say thank you. It is important and helpful to distinguish between Borderline Personality Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Sandra Brown, author of Women who Love Psychopaths, says that victims of Psychopaths often have PTSD and the symptoms are similar to Borderline Personality Disorder. These symptoms do not mean that an individual actually has BPD. PTSD can be treated and healing is more favorable than for full fledged BPD. There is hope for our daughters. God bless!
As I was reading your post, it literally made complete since and made me shudder at the thoughts of how you could have been feeling over all of these years. I want to tell you that it has given me even that much more inspiration and fire up underneath me to NEVER ever give up fighting for my baby girl, who is 9 years old right now. I WILL NOT allow this to happen no matter what it takes and yes she too is siding with her father for the same brainwashed reasons. But I can tell you that God is stronger than all sociopaths put together and His strength WILL get her back to me no matter what! I will settle for nothing less! She may not like it at first, but she doesnt have the capacity to see the future and what it can hold as your story clearly showa. I will use your story as my internal strength to battle this war and I will win this for her no matter what! No matter what and I will not stop! I refuse to let another soul suffer from a sociopath if I have any type of power what so ever. I am so sorry you have had to endure what you have and my pprayers are with you!
I am so thankful for this site and for your testimony. As I write, I am 22 weeks pregnant with my sociopath’s baby. I have lost so much in my relationship with him from thousands of dollars, the opportunity to complete my masters degree on time to even aborting the first baby we were to have together. While I almost bled to death at home, he was out stealing from me yet again. I believed his lies and was introduced to his family but given false titles so I didn’t know his nephew was his son. I met him on my job and he has come and spoken all he’s done to me on my job and people who I’ve never bothered with have become my cruelest enemies, laughing at my victimized state. If I quit my job, I will not be able to get maternity leave and health insurance I need for my unborn son. I will not have money to pay for my brand new car which he tricked me into buying. I left my church because of the expected criticisms of the members. I was engaged to him long before I became pregnant and he never intended to marry me. My job knows that. But worst of all I worry what I will tell my son when he is born and grows up. From odd comments and specific lies I believe my spath would molest my son and do what he can to turn him against me. I don’t know what to do.
wok_chang,
I’m so sorry for what you are going through.
It is so difficult to advise you. Try not to let him affect your emotions. ( I know that is impossible, so just don’t let it show)
You can do this. You can. Don’t worry about the future, the present is all you have. If you feel love and happiness for your child, the child will have that forever. Stress, is what the spaths want for us. Don’t let him have it.
Control your emotions. create boundaries. I’m so happy that you came here for healing. let’s get started.
For everyone who is a mother or father of children that were the result of spath entanglements, I feel that it is vital for us to seek out some sort of relief in the form of support groups or counseling therapy with someone that “gets it.”
Having a child(ren) with a sociopath is no easy task to manage. I did not have a child with the second exspath, and I am so grateful that I didn’t. The first one damaged my sons, thoroughly, and the eldest was diagnosed Borderline and is absolutely spath. The youngest was groomed into a helpless victim and is just now learning important values that were never taught to him during his childhood.
Support groups and therapy are helpful because, unlike reading books and studies, there is face-to-face interaction, and we NEED this, as human beings. We can absorb all of the printed words in the world and regurgitate them, at will, but a group or individual can provide priceless observations on how we are actually managing the damaged pieces of our lives.
This site provides the best alternative if support groups or counseling aren’t available, but I would urge parents to use every means available to help them manage the myriad issues that are a result of being involved with spaths, and the aftermath of those damages that are foisted upon children of sociopaths. There’s a completely different language and approach in raising these kids, successfully – I didn’t know this fact (as most don’t) and some things may have been interupted before they had developed into full-blown sociopathic tendencies.
Skylar, you are spot on. Wok_Chang, you CAN do this – you can survive along with all of the other parents posting on this article. You can survive, you can emerge, and you can teach your precious child about their self-worth, self-esteem, and boundaries through your own experiences.
Brightest comforting blessings to everyone
Skylar,
Skylar, How beautifully written :). Wok_chang, MandyMe, Tinkerbell, Betsybugs, OpalRose, Ox Drover, Kim Frederick, Eralyn, Stargazer, Truthspeak, rebeccap, (and I hope I didn’tmiss anyone) you are all my heroines, sisters in spirit. I’ve read all of your stories, and send prayers, love and light. Darwinsmom, Ox Drover, Annie, OpalRose, and everybody, you’ve all helped so much with your thoughtful and caring posts. There are so many stories and responses, I don’t know where to start- I’m hoping to have the chance to respond to each of you individually- have been in the middle of preparing for a very scary surgery, so I feel a bit like a deer in the headlights with the health, but…what I can offer is this:
Spaths don’t want our children because they “love” them; they want them ONLY because they interpret “love” as enjoying the OCD rush of torturing us, for questioning their power over us, for our daring to leave them, for loving our children while the spaths have led lives without love, often starting from youth. Their propensity to torture often emerges from their knowledge that we care about two things in life: 1. breathing 2. our children. If they can’t have one, they’ll sometimes take the other. So first, the most important thing is to try to find a safe path for us first, (on our own terms, not anyone else’s), but doing so only when we have accepted the risks, and then equally the risks for our children (which the system will give back to the abuser, unless we have more money and power and safety than he does, and evidence). If he knows we care more about our children than life itself (which we do) then that’s what he’ll go right to the jugular for, so while we fight for our children, we have to create a safe place from which to do so, so that he can’t predict what we will do next. “If we do what we always did, we’re going to get what we always got. Before leaving the abuser, I spent two years finding the courage to let go of the outcome of my own life and that of my child, because one thing the books don’t say is that the law protects the spaths, and once we start telling the authorities what he does to them, we become relegated into the world of “she said.” Mom and I fought tooth and nail, to save my child, until the ex bled Mom dry, and I told her to set a boundary, because he tried to ruin her financially, too. We had people follow us, and at one point, I was beaten to a pulp and drugged by thugs, in front of my child. Aaah, the long arm of sociopathic connections- always go on instinct, and only trust those people who show us who they are (actions matching words consistently). Fact is, had I known he would have taken her definitively, I would have stayed until she was 18, but I’d also be dead, because my heart was behaving bizarrely (an early sign of the worsening of the disease), and his abuse was escalating.
One surprising discovery that I made in all of this: our kids LITERALLY have only known us as the parent who used to cower and hide, or to cry and/or fight back with the father, not the confident, radiant, full-of-life and hope person we used to be before we met the spath, (which really is confounding to the kids as we evolve into someone they literally do not know or trust!) Getting back to being that person we were by attending to the trauma, (even meditation while still in the situation can help, but with the goal of envisioning one’s future 10 years from now- my vision actually came true!) and then making ourselves strong, not just by fighting for them, but for fighting for our birthright, are critical; this process of healing US serves to model to our children who we used to be, which gives them a very confusing message (because they REALLY don’t know who we are because the spath has lied about us for years, and because they know nothing else but the cycle of violence!), but some of it eventually does stick, in small ways, just as OpalRose so eloquently wrote.
Letting go while embracing our children, is really hard, but we must be ready, because depending on the spath, we might just do everything to save the kids and still lose them, unless the choice is made to go into hiding, which can so easily fail. We must always be prepared for losing our kids, just as we fight for them, by building our lives back, piece by piece, and by modeling that process in front of our kids. When my daughter returned after 5 or 6 years, she said, “I want you to be best friends with Dad.” I was flummoxed, but said, “Would you prefer the Mom that used to hide in one closet whilst she hid in the other, or would you prefer the strong Mom that sits before you and tells you that I will never again be friends with your Dad?” She said, “I prefer this Mom I see now.” Well, that was my boundary, but it did not sit well with her. The closer we become our former selves again, (with savvy), the more the kids have to “split,” because the ex spouts lies, and the distance between the old family and the broken one is impossible for their psyches to handle. They literally have to become two people, one in front of Dad, one in front of Mom, especially if there are secrets of incest etc. In many ways, they want to save US, so they go along with things because they believe they have no choice but to be a martyr. Thing is: once they reach puberty, their brains tend to choose the familiar, the sense of safety they knew when they were little, the gauntlet that brings them a false sense of reality. My daughter said, shortly before she left, “My brain can’t handle the real world where my Daddy doesn’t love me. It can only live in the world where I can pretend that he does.” That was at age 11, less than 9 months before she was gone. I’m not saying that this is universal; my daughter was lured by the famous band of her half brother, (ex’s first marriage); without that, the ex would have had a very hard time luring her into the fire again.
So we must keep on fighting, because that shows we care. But try not to let spath know you care TOO much; try to create new, unexpected patterns of behavior he cannot predict. For me, in the end, once she was kidnapped, then came back for two weeks to threaten to kill me and Mom, she had reached the “age of reason.” I couldn’t keep her if she was threatening to kill us, pushing Mom down the stairs, screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night that we were all going to be murdered. I told her it would be impossible to get her back, and that if she wanted to, she would have to initiate contact with me (that was in the order). I would no longer let her be a football to be passed back and forth between two parents. I also found out that he only wanted to take her to force the restraining order to drop (after 4 years) and found documentation of that. It was a bitter pill for her to swallow when he wrote that to her, and I sent that documentation to the attorneys as proof of his intent; my child STILL decided to go. His coercion was far more effective than the truth because it was familiar- traumatic bonding.
As for therapeutic intervention, DBT helped a little, boundaries and putting her in a situation in which she started to make all her own choices as an adult really helped. Yes, she still splits, but she does good things for people, she has kept a job and works really hard at it, has a boyfriend, and is trying to live a simpler life, even if the house she lives in belongs to the ex’s best buddy. One small step at a time. My heart bleeds for everyone in the middle of this, for those who had spath parents, for those with babies. Thanks to Donna for this site, because it is the one watering hole in the desert. May it continue to grow and help others.
OH, one more thing- in many communities, the YWCA offers help for women/children going through DV and other issues- they are remarkable- they can even go to court with you- and often have other resources/support to guide people in varying crises. It was invaluable to me during those years.
Many blessings and hugs to all!