LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: I am losing control as a parent

I brought up three kids totally on my own, I worked and raised them, without any support from their fathers. In Oz there was no enforcement. But I hear it is starting to change. It was a waste of time…If I had known how the two oldest would turn out I wouldn’t have bothered. Two of them are cluster B’s. The youngest is the only one capable of love. Now i only see him occasionally but I live for those days.

After weeks of researching having a narcissistic ex husband, I found your web site. I was married, to who I am quite certain was (and is) a narcissist, for 11 years and together with him for 17 years from the time I was 16 years old and abandoned by my father (a relationship that has since been repaired). It has always been about him, and I lost my own identity while with him serving his needs. I have been divorced from him for 8 years now and he still haunts me and my family. I’ll call him “George”.

At which point I had two very young children with George, I found this great need from within to find myself, and began to play my violin (my first love, before him) again after many years. I practiced and practiced in a desperate attempt to find myself. George did everything in his power to tell me how wrong I was to start playing again. Even though I only practiced early in the morning when the children were asleep (before going to work) and then in the afternoon (immediately following work) when they were napping at the sitter’s house, he was determined to make me feel horribly guilty and tell me constantly that I was taking time away and neglecting the children. He fought me tooth and nail over this, and eventually, I believe this was the beginning of the end. I quit the violin again because the punishment for playing was unbearable.

Early on in the relationship, I followed him to college to Northern California. He had chosen his school because of a full ride baseball scholarship, and I followed with a full ride music scholarship to a school near by. After one year of being up there, he decided that this was not the place to be for him and his baseball, so he then wanted to go down south. There I went down south to follow him again to Cal. State Fullerton where he wanted to play ball and had a full ride baseball scholarship.

My dreams of getting into UC Berkley with a full violin scholarship were crushed. It mattered not that my chances were high (I studied privately with the UC Berkley Symphony conductor who asked me to audition, telling me that this would all happen). My academics were also up to par, but George told me that if I stayed in Northern Ca. that it would not work between the two of us. So, off I went back to Vegas, and then down to Cal. State Fullerton where I had to pay out of state tuition and where I gave up my violin playing, mostly to work my butt off trying to cover tuition, room, and board, and to attend his baseball games which were almost every day. It’s funny, out of the hundreds of games that I attended at CSUF; George never acknowledged my presence, even when walking directly by me to the snack bar. Not once. But he sure did make me feel guilty and awful if I ever missed a game.

After finishing undergrad and grad. school at Cal. State Fullerton, I had a new dream. I wanted to go and get my Ph. D. in Speech Language Pathology and would have had a full ride/Fellowship almost anywhere I wanted to go. I had done much research in my undergrad years and presented at a national conference in my field already. I begged and pleaded and gave him a list of 20 programs in 20 different places that we could go to where I could study and do research. It clearly was not going to happen and was discarded like gum on the bottom of his shoe. He was going back to where his family lived and where he wanted to begin his Chiropractic practice.

I was so angry and hurt. I had worked three jobs during my undergrad. years all the way through, while we both took out the max in student loans to get by. I put us through our graduate and (his) doctoral programs by being hired early on an emergency credential to work full time in the school district through my graduate program. I worked all day until 3:15PM while my first class would begin at 4:00PM after my commute to CSUF from work. My last class would end at 10:00PM at which time I would eat dinner and study. I did this for three solid years, pulling so many “all-nighters,” that I cannot even tell you. I was highly exhausted and highly addicted to caffeine.

Sam worked briefly during our undergrad programs as a part time server at Red Robin three nights a week for about 9 months, but that was all. He quit and then went to Chiropractic school after being injured in baseball and not being able to play pro. ball, which was his dream. He was depressed and seemed to define himself through baseball only.

Looking for a way to help him, I filled out and completed all of his essays and admittance packets for entrance into Chiropractic school (as I had done for all of his college admittance packets also), and he ended up going. During this time, while I worked my butt off, he went to school most of the day, while playing the rest of the day. His car was known as the “fun car” with all of his friends because he had golf clubs, tennis rackets, ping pong rackets, fishing gear, boogie boards, etc, all in the car so that he (or they) could go and play after school. I only wish I had time for one ping pong game, but never would have. I was so secretly envious of his lifestyle.

When we finally made it through school, I so badly wanted to do something for me and go and get that Ph.D. It didn’t matter to him, so off to Vegas we went, where there was no Ph.D. program for me, but this was for him to begin his career. I began my profession as he studied for board exams, etc. I continued to work as a Speech Path. while he finally got a part time job for another Chiropractor and worked three days per week, fishing and golfing on the other two.

Because there was no Ph. D. program for Speech Pathology in Las Vegas, I decided to begin another master’s degree in School Administration. In retrospect, I did this to fulfill some kind of need I had to feel worthy of something, or to have something for myself that I could feel proud of. Going to school and working had been the only thing I did that made me feel worthy. Sam’s constant demeaning pushed me down so far in my personal life, that this was my life line. Even though he hated that I was going back to school, and began calling me a “professional student,” the program was only one night per week, not much work, and didn’t take much away from him. He had his own hobbies, like golf and a new fishing hole to hang out at. I fought like hell and begged and pleaded until he let me have my one night a week at school.

Finally, he started up his own practice. At first, we had some very hard times, but he finally started making a living and contributing after a while.

During this time, I came to a breaking point and wanted out so badly. I was afraid. I secretly got counseling (out of fear that if he knew about it he would use it against me), and then as a homework assignment for counseling, I tired to discuss the things in our marriage that I thought needed to change. I was frightened to have this discussion because of the consequences I knew he would impose on me. He told me to “go have my f’ing fairy-tale romance somewhere else,” and to go “f” myself. He told me that it was what it was and he wasn’t changing a thing.

A few days later, he went out of town with a friend to help him take his board exams. I went to a friend’s house in California for the weekend, and tried and tried to call him but could hardly reach him at all. The one time I did, I asked him why he wasn’t answering his phone in his hotel room that night (all night). He yelled at me and made me feel that I was the one who did something wrong.

The next night, I ended up in an unexpected situation with another man who was a friend of my friend. By the end of the night, I had kissed him. This was wrong on my part – the biggest mistake I have ever made I think in my life. Though there is no excuse for my behavior, I think the abuse that I had suffered emotionally finally caught up with me and I was so angry. I couldn’t take the “cut downs” and the constant demeaning. I couldn’t even verbalize what it was that I was hurting from. It was a systematic “one upmanship” and unraveling of my self-esteem and self-concept. I made a bad choice and rebelled. For one night, I couldn’t, and wasn’t any longer going to try and live up to his expectations he put on me which were so unrealistic. I was acting out. I was so tired of feeling like such a nothing of a person and being pushed down by him every time I thought I had something going for me.
After this happened, I sought counseling again. The counselor told me not to tell him. I did anyway. I didn’t tell him out of guilt because it was the first time I didn’t feel guilty toward him, only toward God. I felt as is I hated him and wanted out, and if I told him that he would let me out. He would leave me out of shame of me and would finally decide I wasn’t good enough! I even made the story worse than it was and told him it was more than a kiss.

I then quickly moved out to my mother’s house, and thought I was out. I have no idea what happened, but he reeled me back in. I moved back in and continued the marriage. Now, the emotional abuse was worse than ever. And finally, I felt horribly guilty for what I had done, and couldn’t take it back and couldn’t make it better. I can’t describe what I lived, and the things he yelled at me for three straight years following. I was never going to be done paying for this. Never, ever. He now had excuses to mistreat me even more. A free ticket to terrorize!

He did whatever he could and whatever he wanted to hurt and abuse now, and did it blatantly. He did other smaller things also, like staying out all night long sometimes without even telling me he was leaving, etc. It was bad. He spit in my face and doesn’t even remember doing it. He broke things constantly ”“ windshields, walls, etc. with his fist to scare me, or to “get things through my head.” One phrase he used all of the time was, “You’re never going to get it, are you?”

After dealing with years of being exposed to George’s pornography, at this point he didn’t even care anymore. He did what he was going to do, and almost put the pornography in my face. He knew that this hurt me, but didn’t care when I found it how it made me feel. There were videos, magazines of every sort, pay per view movies, all kinds of stuff on his computers, but there was never any real intimacy with me. He would never really look into my eyes and expose himself at all during any physical encounter with me. The times he did look into my eyes were not out of intimacy but out of control, or threat-like behavior. During this time, he wanted children and we had been trying for a while. We had difficulties getting pregnant, and he told me at one point that if I didn’t get pregnant, it would be acceptable grounds for divorce. I felt under the fire and knew that if I didn’t bear children soon he would leave me.

I also wanted children. After three years of trying, we had two children, 17 months apart. The first was a girl, the second a boy. Wow, did he ever glow! I thought this might be a new start. He appeared to love his children, and was very much a part of every single thing with the babies. He was so involved that even the motherly things that I shared with my children, he was a part of. It was almost as if I had a hard time sharing some of the mother/child things because he always seemed to be in the middle of every experience and every move I made. At times, I felt that I had to fight to have a moment with my children, but didn’t dare buck his authority. He dictated how I would do everything and how I would mother my children. If I did things my own way, I was a bad mother. It was as if he felt that I was incapable, or was trying to make me and those around me believe that.

I developed this thing where I think I was acting passively aggressive by not accepting his meaningless apologies when he wronged me, or verbally abused me anymore. It was like I was making a stand, but it was the only control I think I had. I would hold out for hours, sometimes a day or two. I was so tired of him reeling me back in with empty “I’m sorry’s” to serve his own needs just to do whatever it was to me again with no care or concern. At the same time, I stopped apologizing to him for many things. That was when I had this need to find myself and began to play my violin. And this was when he told me that he needed someone who “adored him.” He didn’t feel as if I did anymore. Actually, I idolized him for so many years, but now I was so confused as to what was happening to me and why I was feeling the way that I did. Why was I feeling so cheated? Why was I feeling like everything he said was a lie? How did I loose my self in this whole thing?

A couple of months later, when I was developing more skill on my violin and had gotten to the point where I was before I stopped playing, he began acting as if he was extra involved in something else – I had no idea what, but if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought it was drugs. It wasn’t drugs, but he was detaching himself and disengaging with me.

His behavior continued to change. I was used to him leaving in the middle of the night without telling me and being on his computer for hours on end into the late hours of the night. But he was distancing himself from me to the point where I told him that I was feeling like I was loosing my best friend. I still idolized him most of the time, and loved him very much, but he didn’t feel it was enough. He responded to me, that he was not interested in “being my friend” anymore and “didn’t have anymore patience” for me. If I wanted a “friend” I was to find that elsewhere. He had no patience for me at all. When I made a mistake of some kind or made him mad, he now would skip the whole degradation part and just put a fist through the wall and remain withdrawn, withholding every bit of “love” that I would be able to get from him previously after the degradation.

Shortly after that, I found him in the middle of the night, on his computer, where he would be every night, talking to another woman. I found out that he had been calling women on the phone, getting to know them, emailing them, instant messaging them, etc. He had pictures of himself on the computer that he was sending out to them. He had a web cam, and was having cyber sex with them over the web cam. There were four women who he was doing this with that I communicated with, and a whole bunch more that he had been corresponding with over the years of our marriage, some even from before the internet started when he would leave them messages on the pre-internet “message boards” and “social networks.” All of this was found in his computer.

It was as if I was the one who had done something wrong for catching him and finding this stuff. He felt that I drove him to it. He was the one angry at me, and I was just hurt. I believed I had driven him to this. He yelled at me because I was playing my violin now and taking time away from us and him. He told me that it was my fault that he was doing these things because of my mistake three years earlier.

One of the girls he had been corresponding with told me that he had told her that he was divorced for a year and taking care of his children on his own. She told me that he would call her in the evenings after work, and that he had plans of meeting physically and going out of town a couple of weeks from then. He had already been on many out of town trips with his friends, but this was his “fun” time and I wasn’t going to give him a hard time about it.

Then, I found an electronic eye in our bedroom, which he would set up to be on me at night. It would beep him downstairs and let him know if I had gotten out of bed. He would then get off of the computer so that he didn’t’ get caught with the other girls, but would tell the other women that he had to tend to one of his children who he was supposedly rearing by himself. One night his beeper thing didn’t work, and in I walked to the computer room while he was talking to a new girl. I tried for eight months after that to make it work, but he was so angry at me.

He became even more controlling and even harsher in his judgments of me. He was emotionally abusive to me and was doing it in front of our children. I was used to being harshly judged by him, but it became much worse. He made me feel like I was a real hussy – slut. As if I was going to cheat on him or was looking for an opportunity. I wasn’t, and wanted nothing but for the pain to stop. At the same time, my already low self-esteem was more crushed. I went and got implants and new clothes to try and feel better about myself. He twisted it into something where I was accused of trying to get the attention of other men, which was the last thing I wanted. I just wanted to be the one he wanted. I felt I was so lacking in every area. Maybe if I changed my physical appearance, I would be good enough.

My first mistake three years earlier, when I kissed the other man and told him it was more than that caused me enough pain and abuse for a lifetime, and there was no way that I was going to go through that again. I was definitely not an attention getter, and did not want any attention from anyone but him. Throughout our marriage though, if I ever tried to look nice, I was told that I was doing it for other men and made to feel like a prostitute. All I got out of the implants and new clothes, of course, was negative attention from George, and it all backfired.

After eight months of trying to make my marriage work again, I gave up and again began to look for a way out. The same person that helped me look through his computer to find out what all he had been doing ended up being my rock and my strength. Yes, it was a man. Barely even knowing him when he helped me look through the computer, I now clung to him as he made me feel like I might be worth something. Eventually, after a few months more of me begging for a divorce and pleading my case, George moved out of the house when I told him I was going to start seeing the other man. He was furious and told all of our friends that the reason we were getting a divorce was by my choice (which it was) and that it was because I was having an affair. Nothing physical ever happened with this other man until we were separated and the damage was done. I’m sure it helped me gain strength to leave George, but I didn’t leave George for the other man. I so badly needed to find my own identity and get out of prison and feel worthy. I so badly wanted to know that I was a good mother, but never could have felt that way with George constantly demeaning my every being. Nonetheless, it was wrong, again, for me to reach out to another man.

I took the blame of our divorce, I took the fall, and I signed the papers as he wanted them. There were no attorneys. George took his chiropractic practice free and clear, there was no alimony after 17 years of being together, and I got no financial settlements. His practice was thriving and worth a lot of money (in fact he took out a jumbo loan against the practice just in case right before our divorce to devalue it significantly in order to “expand his practice”). I would be responsible for five years of student loans that were taken out to pay for Sam’s chiropractic education, and I only got 50/50 custody of my children. I was afraid, and took the deal, and ran for the hills. I was just shocked that he was finally giving me a divorce. I paid severely, however. And still pay, as do my children. The other man was charming, but I knew I needed to find myself and I let him go shortly after.

I never knew what a good parent I was until Sam left, and I began to see other parents and other mothers parent their children. George became unbearable after the divorce. I was wishing I didn’t do it because of the new level of misery I had to live. It was a whole new hell, and he was going to make me regret my choices. It became so bad at points that I thought if we got back together, it would be easier. I was discarded though. He almost gave me a chance once, but he told me that I would have to chase after him and show him that I adored him more than I ever did when we were married. I physically ran to the bathroom and threw up after this and knew I couldn’t do it. I had come this far, had found myself, and couldn’t go back. Even through it was harder to be divorced from him than it was to be married, I didn’t have it in me to go through the abuse again. And I didn’t love him anymore, and would have never been able to pretend I did. I just so badly wanted peace for my kids, but didn’t know how to give it to them.

The new money he was coming into was his. The new homes were his. His new lifestyle was his. He had no compassion that I worked so hard to put him through school. It was o.k. because I had my freedom and knew that one day I would be able to break loose from his control. Having kids with him was what he used to control my every move, and he did it well. The need for us to have to talk about this or that just never seemed to end.

One day when my kids returned to my house for my custodial time, they told me they couldn’t kiss me anymore because I had too many germs crawling all over my mouth. “Daddy told us that you were kissing too many men and that they all have bad germs and that we can’t kiss you anymore because we will get them.” To this day, my son is still germ phobic. He rarely will kiss me on the lips and will not drink from my glass or eat from my utensils.

Now, it is 8 years later. After not dating anyone for almost a year, I met a wonderful man. We got married and pregnant shortly after. We have a beautiful baby who is 16 months old and are happy. We’ve been together for three years now and I love him very much. I know now what a real apology feels like. I know now that I don’t have a problem saying “I’m sorry” either. I still have not come to the conclusion that I’m not crazy, but I feel better about being a successful partner in a relationship than I ever did.

The process of me getting married was another thing to get through with George. He never had a girlfriend in all the eight years of our divorce, until after I married and became pregnant. Before this, I think he had commitment problems that he blamed on me. Nonetheless, he is now in a serious relationship and is supposedly going to get married soon. Of course, the new girlfriend benefits from all of my hard work earlier in his career and during his education. And of course she thinks I’m a raving psycho. ex wife. She has observed me spewing venom so many times, having no idea what I have lived, or some of the things he still does to me, usually purposefully. Sometimes, I wonder if I am a crazy psycho ex. wife when I don’t control my tongue and what I say to them. The last 8 years with him as a co-parent and ex have been worse than the 17 years I was with him prior in a bad relationship. Not in terms of my life, but in terms of having to deal with the cruel things that he does.

My biggest challenges have been that Sam does things that affect the kids, will not co-parent fairly, and will not follow any guidelines we set. I have had to continually set boundaries, and he has continually crossed them. At one point, I had to get a protective order (and he told all of our friends again, that I was lying). He, of course, violated it, and got right in my face. When I filed a police report, he again said I was lying and “set him up”. He saw me from 200 feet away, and could have walked the other direction, but instead walked right up to me and put his face in my face. I dropped the charges because of the threats from him and his attorneys, but the investigator did not and the city made him go to court. He made a plea.

Even after going to court for violating the protective order, one time he came over to my home on his birthday, and when I answered the door, he repeatedly shoved his sun glasses in my face, calling my a “whore” and yelling this at me about seven or eight times while the children were out in his truck. It’s been so awful, and although through mediation we have set different boundaries for exchanges, etc. and he would no longer be coming to my door for anything, he finds ways to intrude into my life and continually cross boundaries.

My husband wants this to stop and so do I. With George, however, the goose is never good for the gander. Nothing has ever been fair with him and I have lived a life with his double standards for years and years, and it is just worse now. He is all about power and control. He will use the smallest thing to control me, whether it be my time, my money, my kids, etc. I feel like this is never going to end and that he will never give up being cruel to me.

Now, with his new girlfriend (who is clueless and things he the greatest man alive), they together do things to get at me. The latest is that I showed up with my son at his all-star baseball game, and saw that all of the other parents had parent shirts to support the team. I was not told, of course, because George was (and still is) the coach. So, I walked up to the other parents in my regular shirt, and sat down, only to turn around and see his girlfriend wearing a mother’s shirt with my son’s name and number on it. She’s done this three times now, and it hurts. She has also started talking about me to other parents, and even called up my husband and told him a bunch of lies about how I am still stuck on my ex. I’m sure this is what he would like her to believe.

She tried to arrange to meet up with my husband to show him texts or emails that Sam told her about that were supposed “love poems” and stuff like that. I have never written him any love poems, ever. It turns out that my husband tried to make arrangements to meet with her, but she was never able to come up with the goods to show him. Probably because Sam didn’t have what he told her he had, and she was never provided with such stuff that George told her I wrote. But still this affected me because here was George’s girlfriend now, trying to get in the way of my marriage!

Sam controls my time with my son because he coaches his baseball teams (2 teams at a time which he plays on at the same time) and he ends up getting my son almost every night for either practice or a game. George is living his baseball dreams through my son. My son does not want to disappoint his father and would never admit it if he didn’t want to play baseball every day. I think he loves it, but I also think he’s been programmed to. There was one time in which he actually stated he only played baseball for his father, but then he took it back the next week after going over there.

My daughter wants desperately to live with me, and needs her mother right now being in middle school, but George would never allow that to happen. So, she goes over there for his week and makes the best of it. We have been to court and to mediation and the conflict never seems to end. This last time we went to mediation was at his (or more probably his girlfriend’s) request. He came to mediation with the new parenting agreement already written, and he pulled this off! He actually charmed the mediator (who was another male) into using his (and his girlfriend’s) agreement as the template. I felt this was SO biased and not fair, but wanted to go to parallel parenting, which is what the mediator suggested, and so I agreed to most of the terms and signed it.

The new girlfriend was pushing parallel parenting because she did not want him to have the ongoing communication with me that he had. I agreed with her, but, she, of course, thought that it was me that has been the initiator of all of this communication and conflict. My husband has been around longer than the girlfriend and can attest that most of the communication has been initiated by him. In fact, George loves to wait until he leaves for work in the morning and then start texting away. He creates conflicts that make me have to communicate with him constantly. I hate this. The sound on my phone that tells me there is a text message literally makes me physically ill, and I have to change it often because of the physical response I get from hearing it go off.

When I allow him to get to me, I get so fed up and can’t take it anymore, and am so very angry at him, that I just go off and start texting him mean things. I say horrible things to him and feel that I am acting out of control. My anger gets the better of me, and I catch myself giving him the very reaction that he wants from me, and enjoys the most. Following this, he loves to swoop in and play Superman to “make things better.” I hate him for this, and need to be able to give no reaction to his antics. He is very creative, however, and there always seems to be something.

Every week when I get my kids back, there is something. The baseball thing makes parallel parenting very difficult because of the ongoing need for communication and the ongoing interaction at my son’s games. George also controls my time with my son because he schedules practices and games on nearly every one of my days with my son. We have now tried to make a recent decision to keep my son out of his baseball activities with his father on my days. I feel that this eliminates the conflict, but at the same time makes my son pay. George is going nuts and will probably take me to court over this. However, I have given my son the choice to play baseball on my days in my neighborhood, and he is choosing to play golf instead on my days. He feels that without his father, he does not want to play on another team over at my house.

Because this affects my son, I am guilt ridden, and don’t want my son to suffer. I see the sadness when he misses his games while at my house, but at the same time, he seems moor at peace and is more expressive with us. Still, I know my son wants to be playing on George’s teams on my weeks with him and hate that this conflict has affected this for him. Should I try and set more boundaries, once again, and put my son back on his team, knowing that he will not stick to whatever we agree to in order to reduce the conflict, or should I stick to my guns to eliminate the conflict by not dealing with him on my days with my children? I want to do what’s in the best interest of my children. The level of conflict and contention during shared baseball games gets to my children. To use the words of my current husband, they are like fish out of water not knowing who to show loyalty to, who to kiss even, or who to sit by. It’s awful for them and for us.
My children hear all the rumors that are started by George and his girlfriends about me at my son’s baseball games, and they are affected by these. Where do I go from here? What is best for my kids? How can I stop reacting and loosing my composure over the things he does to me and my children? How can I stop him from getting to me? I can’t carry around this anger anymore, but I don’t know how to let it go when he is STILL affecting me so much, trying to exert his power and control in any way he can.

At times, I can’t contain my anger anymore when my children return to me and start to tell me all the things that they have said about me or that they have done to the children, etc. I have cried in front of my children and they should not be exposed to this. I know I have to stop reacting to all of this. How? Am I the one that is crazy? Is what I have described just a problematic relationship with two sides to it, or is it as bad as I have thought it has been? Am I overreacting to a bad relationship and somehow have some kind of anger problem over it that is coming from within? What things can I take responsibility for here that I can use to control my own life, and my happiness? What are the choices that I can make to improve the situation?