Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following e-mail from a reader in Australia who we’ll call “Lana.” All of the names below are pseudonyms.
Everything had been quite on the Spath front for a while. But I have worked out over the past 3 years there is always something lurking, ready to rear its ugly head especially when there are children involved.
Two weeks ago I received a call from Gary, a man that my ex-husband (Steve, the spath) worked for a year ago and ripped off. Gary knew where I was working, and being in the same industry, knew my boss. He asked my boss if I could call him a few months ago and we have been in touch since. Gary told me Steve had constantly made threats on my life etc, and he would be prepared to make a statement if I were to ever require a AVO which he advised, as he was very unnerved by Steve’s constant rants. Greg phoned me again two weeks ago he told me an acquaintance went to work for Steve and he had to leave because of the abuse the staff had to witness between Steve and the current girlfriend Nicole.
We have recently moved house and Jasmine, Steve’s eldest daughter, was going to come over and visit her half-sister Emme, now 3 1/2. Emme was not well and something in my gut kept stopping me from having Jasmine visit and giving her my address, which she asked for 3 times that morning. Being now 18 and with a car, Jasmine was looking forward to developing a relationship with Emme and I thought that it would be a wonderful idea as Emme is very close to Steve’s other daughter Ally.
Steve has had no contact with any of his three daughters for over 2 years.
Concern about Jasmine
A few days ago I received a message from Jasmine’s Aunty Lisa. She was really concerned as Jasmine has been in contact with her father, and her own mother was not even aware of this. Jasmine had not seen Steve for 2 years, the last time being when they were at the holiday cabin. He threw her against a wall and his then girlfriend stopped him from punching her in the face. He then locked her in the cabin for 2 days and the then girlfriend bought her in food and water before she was taken home for being disobedient. That was the last time she had spoken to him until recently.
Aunty Lisa is a acquaintance of mine but her sister Di, Jasmine’s Mother, is not, as she sided with Steve when we separated (Di has never been with another man for 18 years after Steve left her and has always been under his spell) until recently, I hear.
Lisa is very worried about Jasmine, as I am. When Lisa told me they were in contact, instantly all those old emotions of fear and anxiety came flooding back. I am fearful of Steve and have gone to every length to protect Emme from him. I have a close relationship with Ally and her mother, Jane, and both of us have gone to court to get full custody and to have the girls surnames changed. We have both moved and changed our numbers, all to protect the safety of our girls, and their safety is paramount. With Jasmine now seeing her father, sadly, we see as a direct threat. Jane deleted her off Facebook so Steve can’t see into her world through Jasmine, and I have also now done the same.
I wrote a message to Jasmine, which is below. The messages are hers and my responses. Although we were very close, I have not been particularly close to her since I left Steve; although we have been in constant contact, we have only physically seen her twice in 3 years. What surprised me most are her responses. It appeared like it is a game. I texted her Aunty Lisa and said I am concerned about her motives, and think she may have a bit of her father in her. Lisa’s response was:
Um hello Lana! She has been on Facebook for 3 years and Di still swears black and blue she isn’t. I luv Jasmine 2 pieces but she is a convincing liar and there is a lot of mischief she gets up too.
Jasmine and Lisa are very close and she is more honest with her than her own mother.
Email exchange
I have changed the names on the messages below but not the text. I wanted to highlight when there are children involved from a spath, you never feel free from them. My letters are in italics and Jasmine’s responses are in regular type.
Do I trust the eldest daughter???
Is she genetically disordered?????
Or am I being over the top because of my own fears??
My gut says, never give him the benefit of the doubt.
But is this about Jasmine or Steve or now both????
Hey J!
Dont be angry at Lisa but she had thought I knew you had seen your dad the way I made mention on the topic. Jaz I want you to know I dont know your reasons for this but understand your Dad is manipulative and could have ulterior motives for seeing you. He is not capable of love, as hard as it is to understand, it is all acting to get what he wants from people. Your Pa has desperately been trying to get Matt (Steve’s brother) to talk to him and I am sure he may have done the same to you. But your dad has lost everyone because he is evil and abusive and his sad stories are all lies to con people. Hunny he is dangerous and he will hurt you again. I worry about you so much. Your Dads mental condition cannot be fixed and I beg you to research what a Sociopath is so you can understand your father and your relationship with him better. I love you and I write this because I care about you. I also write it because I care about myself, Emme, Jane and Ally as well, and he could be getting close to you to find out where we are. Your Dad still makes threats on my life through people, and I cannot afford for you to know where I live, as he could manipulate this information from you. I am happy to catch up with you but maybe we can meet at a Park or somewhere else, I am not sure but I know knowing you are seeing him I don’t feel safe and I don’t think you are safe either. Your father has been screaming at Nicole and she is abused by your father, say co workers, his patterns will never change and I feel for her and for anyone that meets him. I beg you to not tell him anything about us, he has started paying maintenance for Emme & Ally and I don’t trust his motives, but one thing I know he will never see Emme because he is the sort of person that would kill her to get back at me for leaving him. I believe he is getting worse with age and I absolutely believe he is dangerous. Stay safe. Love Lana xxxx
well i saw him once”¦ At xmas eve and nothing comes up about you”¦ I dont mention anything and neither does he”¦ I keep it separate because i want to be in my sisters life”¦ And aunty Lisa has no right to talk about that and Im very angry”¦ Because she has just ruined my relationship that I may have with my little sister!! Never u mind”¦ I no my father and I no he doesnt love and i no i still dont tell him anything and i dont fall for what he says so im playing on that”¦”¦ And to b honest i dont believe anything in what goes on in anyones life”¦ I dont trust easy again soo im safe and i dont ever plan and spilling anything to him on u so”¦ Yeah ”¦ Yeah u to
jaz xo
Dear Jaz,
Thanks for getting back to me. You will always be part of Emme’s life if you choose too, she is your sister and she loves you even tho you have not played a large part in her life she knows exactly who you are and loves you as I do too. Lisa is really worried she didn’t mean to say anything! Steve hurts everyone that comes into his life and will continue to hurt the ones that keep giving him another chance. He will con you, promise you things and then let you down again and again. I am sorry if above read like I didn’t want you in our lives that is not what I meant. I trust that you wouldn’t say anything knowingly but I dont trust him at all. Myself and Jane included never want him to know where the girls are, were they will be going to school, anything… That cruel heartless bastard can rot in hell for all I care and he will never meet the daughter he so happily told everyone she wasn’t his so people would feel sorry for him the sick fark. I hate him for all the horrible things he has done to us all and I will never give him a chance to be in Emme’s life to con her or hurt her!
Jaz I have had someone from Werribee get in contact saying that I should put an AVO out on him as he wants to kill me because someone needs to bring up Emme, like he would do a much better job than me. Anyway I hope you understand why I need to be so protective of my privacy. The guy is a dead set loser and will only be in touch with you because he wants something. No normal man has nothing to do with his children and it is important that from the outside that he appears normal to con people less they will think he is not right in the head, that is why he could be trying to see you, so it makes him look better not because he loves you, misses you and cares for your well being. If you still want to catch up maybe next weekend that is fine! but you not knowing where we are is also to protect you too as if anything happened I would hate to know he found out through you. Just dont even leave your phone alone for 2 seconds near him or change my name in your phone just in case. Trust me he has ulterior motives to wanting to see you, like he did to Matt a couple of years ago because he wanted Pa and Gran to believe that he was normal to get more money off them and look how that turned out. I was there when he had a massive fight with Matt and it was sickening, it was also the same day he bashed me whilst holding Emme and was also the day I knew he was capable of anything and I had to run”¦ Dont be angry at Lisa because she hasnt ruined your relationship with your sister, she is just worried sick about you and for very good reason;
Love Lanaxxx
fair call”¦”¦ Well i wont trust him ever”¦”¦ And im playing the same game he is but on the other side putting it right back at him if u no what i mean lol!! Ahh yeah sure next weekend should be ok is it ok if Aiden my new boyfriend comes still?? Anyway i dont tell him anything about my life!!
Miss you xxxx
Would love to meet Aiden that would be great! I am sorry but the whole thing makes me want to vomit….
Miss you too xxxx
Oh BTW your dad wont ask anything yet as he needs to build his trust with you, that is always the game plan and you cant play the same game with him as he has 20 + years more of deception and he will already be 10 steps ahead of you. His number one priority in his normal game plan as to let you trust him and as soon as your guard is down that is when he starts to manipulate. Take care he is not after your best interests he is after something else! xxxxxxxxxx
i know….. Ppl say im playing with fire but im gonna play his own game and make sure i win”¦ Im always thinking ahead”¦ 🙂 im only looking out for myself 🙂 well shall we next week”¦”¦ At lilydale lake? If its fine? Xxxxx]
Hunny you cant play his game because he is mentally ill, you are not. He dosent have a conscience, you do. He does not love or have real feelings, you do. He uses everyone even family and does not care who he hurts, you do! You cant play games with him he is the master game player. He already has a miserable relationship with Nicole; she is financially and emotionally abused and trapped because he is winning the game with her. Steve will only have something to do with people that he can control. If he feels he has not got control or is losing the control the person is wiped it is as straight forward as that with him. You ‘are’ playing with fire and you will ‘never’ win.
He never bonded with you as a child when you needed him and loved him most and that is because he does not love, it is all acting to get what he wants. The only way you can win is by walking away as he does to everyone, that is the only thing that affects him because in his universe he thinks he is king and everyone is his servant and when he does not get his own way he walks.
Lilydale lake sounds great but I cant do Sunday now as I have a friends birthday xxx
End of messages!
I am starting to think that I do not know my stepdaughter anymore. There was no emotion in her responses to a father that continually abused her, other than being angry at her aunty for calling her out! Would appreciate some thoughts on my relationship with my 18-year-old stepdaughter. To cut a long story short, Steve is violent and I need to do everything to protect the younger children to him and the mothers, and feel although Jasmine swore she would never see her father again, I feel she will compromise our safety. I am now very confused about my relationship with her.
Oxy, I never thought I would convince you otherwise. LOL.
I’m just ruminating on the subject, as I tend to do when I’m making sense of the world. Peace.
🙂
Believe it or not, Sky, BloggerT has turned me around 180 degrees on some things, but he uses science-based evidence to do so, on opinions I’m pretty hard and fast on some of them…BEING KIND is one of those, especially with children and with demented and elderly or brain injured, retarded, or otherwise disabled people. Peace.
Hi Oxy & Sky ~
I read your responses carefully and reread mine and even Lana’s emails again. I totally understand what you are saying and I do agree with a lot of what you are saying. I am not trying to say lying to a child is ever the right thing to do. I think it is kind of like telling them about sex ~ tell them age appropriate information when you feel they can intellectually and emotionally handle it. Let them ask the questions. Don’t volunteer information that they haven’t asked for.
Lana submitted emails she sent to her step daughter. She called him a cruel, heartless bastard, a dead set looser. I stand by my statement that no child should have to hear things like that about a parent. She also told her that her father never loved her. Again, something along the lines of Dad is not capable of showing love in an appropriate way. I think she could have been truthful, without being cruel. I do think that many kids turn these type of statements inward and feel that they are no good also or that they aren’t worthy of love.
Oxy, you are right adults do have every right to know about what their biological parents are capable of. In your case, someone OWED it to you to tell you about your father. This girl however, does know her father and what he is capable of. How many mature people on this site know the truth about the S/P’s in their life and what they are capable of, but still have a hard time accepting it. Looking at it in that way, the truth doesn’t always set us free.
I should also say, I think some of what Lana told her step daughter showed love and care. I absolutely agree that she should not let her know anything personal. I commend her for wanting her to be part of her sister’s life.
I think that the most important thing is to teach these kids how to accept and handle their own personal situations and above all let them know it is not their fault that their parents are like this.
Hope this makes sense, I’m having a hard time putting two words together.
Oxy – just read your above post PLEASE be kind to me I am elderly (and brain impaired)
Makes perfect sense MiLo,
you are obviously not brain impaired.
Dear Milo, ROTFLMAO, of course I will be kind ot you dear, just sit right there, your husband’s bus is late, but I’ll get you a snack while you wait! LOL
Actually, working with the demented and brain injured gave me a whole different way of looking at people so afflicted. Just like my MIL that was one of my closest friends. She had some little strokes and began to be paranoid and become truly UNREASONABLE and frustrating, but it wasn’t “Her” that was that way, it was her injured brain! I couldn’t let her do a lot of the things she wanted to, but you know, at the same time….I didn’t hold “her” responsible for the things she did. Same with some of these brain injured patients that are combative, you can’t let them hurt you, you have to prevent that, but you can’t hold it against them either.
I know what you mean and I agree with you, “age appropriate” information….but this daughter (the older one) is an adult, not a child. While I agree that Lana’s terms are pretty “tough” in speaking to the adult daughter about her father, none-the-less, the girl is an adult.
Whether the girl is high in psychopathic traits or not (per the aunt’s information to Lana) I wouldn’t want her around my YOUNG daughter since she is associating with her father that has threatened to hurt me….I wouldn’t want my kids around anyone who is or might be a dupe of a psychopathic or violent person.
Part of this whole thing is that “taking sides” with or against a Psychopath….and people do get duped and even STAY duped for years, decades, a life time….been there myself, actually! LOL
But, now that I am a bit wiser (and a lot older) any “friend” of the Ps ain’t no friend of mine!
OX,
OMG!! I TOTALLY get your story about the little ole lady with dementia and it was RIGHT ON!!!!
I worked in a Skilled Nursing Facility for FIVE YEARS. We had a patient named Neal who had dementia in the most SEVERE form lol! I mean the dementia wasn’t funny but HE was….
He was FOREVER ruminating to his army buddies (who were long since dead from the war or beyond), about getting a pack o’beer out from under “There”….so anytime any of us would come into the room, he’d say “Hey Bob (Al, George-you name it) there’s some beer under there, think I’d like a cold one, won’t ya have one with me?>” LOL!!!
So LITERALLY, All of us just knew to pretend to get that beer out from under the bed and pop open the bottle of OJ next to his bed and hand it to him lol! Then grab a a chair and let him BS away. That’s wasn’t a LIE, that was a GIFT to a patient who was VERY ill. There is a fine line in when to tell the truth and when not too, but this is a gray area and there are many of those too.
I loved a lot of those old folks. And I never ONCE (unless they were remotely capable of it) told them the truth when they did something just like your little ole lady did. LOL< GOOD ON YOU For threatening to fire that Nurses ASS.
LL
I see merit in some of what MiLo said. I agree totally with Oxy’s form of “kindness” to those who will never know any differently and for whom those “kindnesses” will make or break their day….or their hearts. I agree with LL and with most of what Sky says.
Now I’m going to throw my hat into the ring and give my opinion.
I have worked for the past 18 years with kids (mostly 3 – 12 year-olds), many of whom come from severely dysfunctional, even abusive and neglectful, family situations.
Age appropriate information? A valid point (as is the use of age appropriate terminology) when dealing with normal kids in run of the mill circumstances. For example, when you 3 year old asks you how the baby gets into the mummy from the daddy, something along the lines of “the daddy and mummy love one another and each of their bodies make the ingredients for the baby; the mummy has the egg and the daddy has the seed which will make the baby grow inside the mummy until it is ready to be born”. This will hardly satisfy your average 10 year old! Individual kids mature at different rates too. I watched in astonishment a few years back when a friend’s very advanced 10 year old boy wanted to know about puberty. She explained the mechanics of boys and girls; he was not at all squeamish but kept coming back out of his room with the illustrated book she gave him and asking more questions about each diagram. He was totally nonplussed and took it all in his stride.
Where parents have parted company and child custody, property division and other related issues flare up, there is often an unfortunate tendency by usually otherwise well-mannered adults, to place their kids as the meat in the sandwich and use them as pawns in a bitter power struggle. These parents typically will denigrate the opposing parent to their kids – now THAT is definitely harmful and is emotionally and psychologically abusive. HOWEVER – what if there are real dangers present to the kids whilst in the opposing parent’s care (where they have joint custody or unsupervised visitation rights)? Surely then it is necessary to teach our kids how to self-protect?
For instance, I have a friend whose ex-husband (an alcoholic who drunk-drives with the kids in the car) has unsupervised access to their kids. All she can do is to teach them that they can call her anytime of day or night if they ever feel unsafe and she will come and get them. She has taught them to call the emergency police number and provided them with a cell phone. They have learned to refuse to get into a car with their father after he has been drinking. She never denigrates the father to the kids – but she does tell them in clinical terms that he has a disease called alcoholism and that it is not safe for them to be around him if he is drunk.
With kids who are facing potentially dangerous and even life-threatening situations, I believe explicit knowledge is critical. I have told children I have worked with that certain behaviours are not normal or acceptable from anyone in their lives and they do not have to be treated that way – that there are always people who can help them if they are frightened or in danger. One such discussion about what is normal in a family and what is dangerous and against the law (without specifying his mother and step-father or running them down to the child), with a 7 year old boy, resulted in his coming to school one day and asking for help for himself and his 2 younger siblings. Those 3 kids went into foster care (with good, kind people) and were spared further abuse, torture and neglect.
So – my point? There are many variables to take into account. While I might not have put things exactly the same way as Lana did to the 18 year old, I agree in principle with her reasons for doing so.
My advice Lana? I strongly feel that in your case, there is more to lose than could be gained by risking contact with this young woman. It may not be her fault, but if alarm bells are ringing (however softly) then they are ringing for a reason.
One idea for keeping in touch until the situation is less dangerous, could be to email one another and to have the emails relayed through a third party who is miles away and unconnected to any of it; I am also in Australia and would be happy to do this for you. That way, you could stay in touch safely, yet protect your privacy.
Listen to your gut over your heart – hearts can be talked around, guts cannot. I wish you peace and resolution.
Sky and Oxy, this discussion you two are having about the truth reminds me of Dostoyevski’s (sp?) “The Grand Inquesitor”.
I read it years ago, and just recently re-read it and got something completely different out of it.
Sky, it can be found on line, and in light of our mutual interest in God and Girard you might find it interesting and food for thought.
Kim,
I googled it, I only have time for the synopsis.
It seems to apply to our conversation, Thanks, Kim.
I’m sure I’m only getting the surface of it. I’ll have to do some searching and see what Girard thinks of that story.
🙂
Kim,
I found a link with Girard’s notes on it. I’m not done reading it yet. looks really good.
http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/04/07/rene-girard-on-dostoevsky%E2%80%99s-legend-of-the-grand-inquisitor/
take notes, there will be a quiz afterwards!
🙂