Editor’s note: Below is an email exchange that I had with a reader whom we’ll call “Vera.” Her ex-husband is a sociopath and a lawyer.
I am co-parenting with a sociopath and I am at my wits end. He is constantly using our son in his ongoing battle to torment me. The boy is still in elementary school and spends time with him alone at his mountain home. I am concerned that besides being emotionally abused as he is, he will be physically harmed. I am in a terrible bind though. Being a lawyer and a sociopath, he conned his way into custody by paying over $100,000 to hire the best divorce lawyer in town. Without a six-figure retainer or his manifest abuse of our son, I cannot amend the custody order. And even if I could, he will violate the order anyway.
He has given me 50/50 with my son for the past 7 months without court approval, and now he is claiming that because he is seeing evidence that I am trying to alienate the boy from him, he is forbidding me to see him. If I say, “let’s go back to the 5-year-old court order,” it means I only get to see my son 20 hours a week, no overnights. If I don’t say anything, he disregards the schedule we had in the past, emails me on occasion to criticize, berate, belittle me, and ask me to drive up 25 miles to have my son for a few hours, or at most 12 hours, after which I have to drive him back (that’s when he goes to court or needs to be rid of the boy). I cannot function not knowing in advance when I can be with him. This chaos is unbearable and is designed to unsettle both our son and I and damage our good relationship.
Please email me a few tips on how to handle this situation, as my family and friends don’t know how to handle pathological sociopathic behavior.
Thank you kindly,
Vera
This is the response that I sent to Vera:
I am so sorry for your situation. I think in your case, since you can’t afford to take him to court, you need to be an actress. Do not let him ever get any reaction out of you. Never get upset in your ex’s presence, never let him know that he is upsetting you. You should almost pretend to be disinterested in seeing your son.
Here is the reason: He is doing this to you because he gets a charge out of seeing you upset. Deny him the charge. Pretend that you are moving on with your life. Your response to him about seeing your son should be, “Whatever.”
Secondly, your ex will soon want to be off on his next adventure, and the child will probably “slow him down.” So he may want to “dump” your son off on you more and more—especially if he thinks you are not interested in caring for the boy.
Third, all sociopaths want to “win.” If he thinks he has won, because he is calling the shots, he may tire of the game.
When you are with your son, be as kind and loving to him as you can be. Let him know that you are always there for him. Eventually he will be able to make his own decisions.
In the meantime, keep meticulous records of everything that happens. If you ever see injuries on your son, take him to a doctor or photograph them. Communicate only via email, and save all of them. Eventually you may build enough of a case to make a change in the arrangements.
Best wishes,
Donna
The information that I provided to Vera comes from what I learned from all of you at Lovefraud. I did not have a child with the sociopath I married, so I did not experience the co-parenting issues first-hand.
Vera wrote back with more questions. I ask Lovefraud readers to respond to her, because many of you have dealt with these situations, whereas I have not.
The classic sociopath behavior would be that sooner or later if there is no fuel he will “dump” the child off on someone who’s not doing him a favor, and I’ve experienced that a few times. However, more frequently he will “dump” the boy off on unreliable babysitters, or whomever, instead of asking me, and he knows that’s how he gets me. If I don’t react, the boy could be harmed as he was in the past, and he will be told that I don’t care. Should I just sit back and play cool? I am certain he badly damaged his first wife by yanking her chain constantly, by keeping their daughter hostage at his house and showing crass indifference to her welfare so much so that the poor mother left for Peru, where she died shortly thereafter. The adult daughter is bipolar and a heroin addict. I was not aware of those facts prior to marrying him.
He spent $3,000 on a University Discovery Summer Program for two months running in order to have the boy away from me the entire summer. It is the first year he’s done that. The reason for it is that he is hoping to get the money back from me by taking me to court to get more child support on allegations of parental alienation. All he wants is for me to become indigent. Please advise.
In closing, he rarely packs lunches for our son, and peanut butter is disallowed at the program; the boy will end up starving every day until early evening when he takes him to McDonalds or Burger King. The boy is 54 pounds at the age of 8 ½, and the sociopath has no regard for his physical growth or emotional well being. This hurts me so keenly because I understand nutrition and I feed our son homemade natural/organic foods. Please advise.
Sincerely,
Vera
Do you have advice for Vera? If so, please post your comments.
MY prayers go out to every one of you mothers and fathers and grandparents who must “co-parent” with the psychopath or who are being abused by the court system. The strength it must take to be able to keep your cool when you know your children are being abused/manipulated by the psychopath is monumental and I applaud you for hanging in there for the sake of your children.
God bless you each and every one. My hat’s off to you!
Dear I commend you for hanging in there and keeping tabs on your son. You mentioned your son only weighs 54 lbs.
You may want to keep your eye on that despite your ex’s professional status.
Often times when a child is starved to death or caged up it’s done at the hands of a sociopath and a weak partner who goes along with it. Sometimes the condition can slowly deteriorate and worsen. Sometimes the sociopath controls a person’s diet telling them what they can and can’t eat.
He may only be feeding the boy once a day. Enough to sustain him and by controlling him this way the boy is under his power and does what he say’s.
Good Luck no matter what happens and realize when your son comes of age if he has free will he’ll come to you and see his father for what he is.
Vera –
My heart and prayers go out to you.
I too am concerned about your childs weight and pysical condition.
I don’t know if this possible, but the first thought that comes to mind would be to contact his school and voice your concern about his weight, maybe he could see the nurse there and she can check him out for malnutrition – and then document the visit.
Or, if you have the chance to have your son with you away from your XS, take him to a doctor to be checked for any signs of malnutrition or abuse.
The one lesson learned here on LF is Gray Rock – and as hard as I know it will be, to go against your motherly nurturing loving instince, it is the best thing you can do – the only thing you can do. I agree with everyone else that when you are alone w/ your boy – love him up!! but if the X happens to be around, be cool.
Another piece of advice that I agree w/ Zoey on is do not talk bad about his father while the boy is around – try not to talk about him at all and if your son brings him up, just say something like “that’s nice” “that’s good” then change the subject.
I know he’s only a baby in elementary school right now, but he will grow and he will learn and he will see the difference between mommy and deaddy…. then he will make choices of his own.
I will keep you in my prayers as I do everyone else here.
Good Luck!
Vera,
What is being advised to you on this post is true. Painful…but true. Dont give up. Stay strong and keep positive. Kids do figure it out eventually. The hardest thing to do is not react. to not respond. these people have mastered blame and diversional tactics. Sometimes it is very hard not to respond. If you do, it is not the end of the world…just pick yourself up and start over. Every day is a new beginning…remember that..Love, peace, and blessings to you and your family!
Zoey – GOOD FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!
ZOEY:
GIRL……you nailed it. You played it perfectly.
Unfortunately, it IS a game…..and unless we ‘go along’ with the ‘game’ process….we will NEVER going to get the outcome our children deserve.
You are a role model for other parents in this situation.
You DID NOT crumble. YOu DID NOT go away, but you appeared to.
I bow to you!!!
I remember after spath kidnapped the kids, months later when I ‘made contact’ with them….my mother was so pissed I thwarted their plan…..she said….you must take them NOW, we can’t handle them, they are NOT cooperating.
I said, well, I coulnt’ possibly do that, I wasn’t set up for their care and reintroduction into my home and community. She flipped…..she thougth i’d jump. Like you, my heart was jumping….but I knew I coulndn’t let her know this.
I left town, told the kids they had 2 weeks left in that school and they had to finish…..
A few days after I got home…I got an email saying the kids were on a flight to a city 3 hours from me and to pick them up at 1pm. WHY in the hell did she fly them into this airport? Whatever.
Her and spath farked with the kids minds so intensly.
I’ts all about power and control.
Once kids were home……it all unravelled for my parents and spath. The stories came out.
I got them into counselling right away and started dealing with the ‘cleanup’ process of my kids emotional and physical issues.
My parents, to this day blame the kids for not being cooperative and ‘doing’ their part when spath and granparnets kidnapped them.
WE have been NC. THey continue to play games.
It’s unbelievable how they think they can use kids as pawns and there is no repurcussions to the children. And I don’t think it ever crosses their minds that the kids will be angry for being lied to and abused and suffer severe consequences for these actions.
Thank you for sharing your strength with the LF community!
Kudo’s to you!!!
There are female operated detective agencies which specialize in cheating spouses. They would also cover this abuse of custody. They are expensive, but so is an on-going custody battle. You may think your done paying…but your not. That guy will make you pay and pay… These women detectives would snap pictures of him jumping naked out of a woman’s bed while he is ordering you to transport child…claiming he has court. I know he is wallowing in sex cause the mind of every male sociopath is entrenched in sex.
Also, I know how some attorneys think. My divorce attorney thought he could seduce me in his office! He tried to kiss me! Ewwwwww! My ex-husband-to-be was making me out to be a loose woman, and my attorney thought he would be first in line.
The family court system is entirely insulting and degrading to women. And, that is the intent, it’s a lot of double standards to put women in their place. Cause if the bitch woulda obeyed …the divorce never woulda happened…
Just my two cents. Good luck to you
I’ve read this article several times but haven’t posted until now. It speaks so directly to my current situation. I can talk all day about what has been done to me without getting upset anymore, but when it comes to my daughter, that’s a whole new thing. Which is exactly why spaths use the kids for manipulation. I just don’t want my daughter to be like her dad. He has drawn her into participating in manipulations against me, which is so much more painful than when he does it. When she has been with him, she is like a different person. It seems like it takes a day or two for this to “wear off”. I feel like there is a disconnect when I look into her eyes. She was never like this until this year. She just turned 13. She has always been such an affectionate, connected child. Now she is cold, doesn’t want to be touched, doesn’t want to be involved in activities with me or the family. It’s hard to differentiate this from just being a teenager, but I’ve already raised one daughter through that stage, and this seems different. Her willingness to throw me under the bus HURTS! I just want to know that she will be okay, that she won’t become like him. I’ve been careful not to say anything negative about him any further (did this recently thinking I would educate her as to why I didn’t want her to go live with him-a mistake), to provide her with a stable home grounded in reality when she is here, and above all to pray, pray, pray. My ex is so obviously enjoying it. Prior to this, I had successfully learned not to react to his manipulations. This is the only thing he has left to push my buttons, and he’s using it. Looking back I see how he’s been working at this for a while. I looked back at texts he’s been sending for months talking about how my daughter and I don’t get along. I would look at them and think, “huh?” Now I see that he was laying a trail of “proof”. He has also been talking to our daughter about this for months, convincing her that there is a problem where there was none. She and I had been so close. It hurts my heart so much that she feels disconnected from me now.
dear mustache,
I hear your pain, and I think that this must be the most painful thing that a psychopath can do to a parent, is to alienate the child, and at 13 your daughter is at the perfect age for him to start this carp! (((hugs)))) God bless you.
There is no guarantee that she won’t become like him, that is the terrible truth…My P son was a pretty good kid til he hit puberty, and I only saw 1 episode prior to that that was in any way a P indicator.
My only suggestion to you is that you NOT REACT to her thrusts and jabs, and keep your cool no matter what she does or says. Set good boundaries and rules and stick to them, and if possible get her into counseling now.
I would also go to Dr. Leedom’s blog “parenting the at-risk child” (there’s a link here on LF) and get all the information you can about it. The genetics may be there from him, but genetics ALONE CANNOT make a psychopath, so do the best you can and leave the rest in God’s hands. Your daughter has a choice, and though genetics may prod one way, they are not the totality. So love her, don’t react, and stay strong and pray. It is all we can do. (((hugs)) and God bless.
Dear Vera (and parents in similar circumstances)
First, my heart cries tears for you as a mother who loves her child. I am sad to hear your story and others who have posted on this blog.
Donna covered the three bases of focus. In the distraction of confusion set forth by the sociopath, keep focused on what’s ultimately important; your son and his future. Take every opportunity to simply love your son in ways that matter over time. It’s that love that will win the battles and war over the test of time. Love, overcomes all lies and trumps the manipulative confusion mounting in your son’s daily experience, thereby, grounding him to a healthy future of his own to embrace someday.
I too had a young son at the time I escaped. Court order after court order violated. My sociopathic spouse of over 25 years immediately partnered up with a millonaire female sociopath, also imbedded in our local courts. I felt defeated on every level, but in my heart of hearts knew the ultimate victim, would be my son if I did not guide, guard and protect him as only I could.
My son is now of legal age. He is going to be okay, ultimately. Children are innately wiser than any of us realize. Their survivor skills suite them well. It was/is the love bond that we both share, that got us through and is healing us now. We knew it was the ONE real truth in the socio-tornado of our experience. Through it my son learned he could always count on and trust me for food, clothing, school supplies, and phone contact. Basics, two sociopaths denied him.
Overtime, as always, they exposed their own lies in ways children see clearly. Sure, there’s a lot to still sort through, but my son can now openly sort through his ongoing experience with his friends and me while moving forward separating himself from his father’s life.
He is no longer fearful he will be like “him”, has a moral compass and conscience. I gave my son the gift of love and freedom of choice to make his own decisions. All I did after that was praise him for every positive decision he made. In those three things my son found courage to survive and knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, he was loved even when we disagreed on choices.
My encouragement to you is to consciously love your son, every moment of every day. He’ll find his wings and life will give him air to soar. You will uncover the beautiful you that has always been there burried deep beneath the debris of blood, sweat, and infinate tears. May you rise like a phoenix through it all!
Me2