Sociopaths explain their own words

FooledByOne:

“HIS kids WILL because he’s ’told them everything'”
You can’t control what he says or does, but you CAN be pretty certain that most (if not all) of what he SAYS is a LIE and most of what he DOES is part of a scheme, right? So – don’t drain yourself trying to second-guess this. In all likelihood, he has told his other kids NOTHING that could hurt you. If he has told them anything, it will be lies, right? Prepare your daughter for this. I Don’t know how old she is, but kids can be prepped in age-appropriate steps, they are never too young to be aware of their safety – we teach toddlers and kindy kids about “Stranger Danger” don’t we, in ways that make them aware but not so that we petrify them. Just keep talking to your girl, make sure she knows that she can come to you with anything she’s not sure about or is uncomfortable with. That’s something you CAN do.

“to think that he would go to those lengths to hurt ME”.to destroy and poison his own daughter”
Remember, spaths do not see children – even their own – as having any special connection to them except that they are excellent leverage and ideal tools with which to play games. Any “normal daddy-looking” stuff he does with her or says to you has been carefully collected by his having watched how real daddies do things. It’s NOT REAL – even with their own flesh and blood. How many of us on this site are here because of BLOOD relatives (not just people we’ve been in a relationship with) – sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, siblings? The spath has NO BLOOD RELATIVES and NO FAMILIAL BOND with anyone. Not even those they dupe and seem to get along with happily. People are tools to use – nothing more and nothing less. You can not compare what a spath looks and sounds and smells and feels like with your experience (however trivial or seemingly insignificant) of how REAL people look and sound and smell and feel. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. EVER.

Hopeforjoy:
I’m an open book – ask away and don’t apologise.

J was sent to live with his spathdad and I when he was 8 1/2 – about a year before we married and after we had been together for almost 3 years. The story was that the mother couldn’t control him, he was stealing and vandalising and lying pathologically. She couldn’t cope and was trying to extricate herself from an abusive relationship in another state (where she and her children had moved some 3 years prior). Her plan was to save up enough $ to return here where she had a better support network. We were originally asked to keep J with us until the end of the school year (so, for 8 months) until she returned.

J was behind the 8-ball fromt he start. I was fed (by the spath) stories of abuse and neglect of J by the mother, told she was violent and volatile, told she wanted to abort when pregnant but he had talked her out of it by promising to look after the baby, told that even though he earned good money (the spath) she threw the baby into daycare at 6 weeks of age and went back to work fulltime herself to fund her materialistic lifestyle, her recreational drug-taking and to avoid too much “mothering” as she was not the maternal type. As someone whose dearest dream was motherhood and who had miscarried twice and been told I was unlikely to conceive again (and I haven’t) I could not comprehend such an attitude from a mum.

He arrived exhibiting behaviours that, from my many years of working with kids, I recognised as either extreme anxiety, or else some form of autism, or both. Spathdad told me he had ADHD and was on meds for that and to sleep at night, that the mum would “dope him to the eyeballs for school” and “drug him again at night to make him sleep” because she “couldn’t be bothered discipling him”. He had been off the meds for a week or so when he landed.

Spathdad took him to a paediatrician to review his meds and returned telling me he had got much better, slow-release meds that would keep J focused for school, but would wear off by hometime so that he was not dopey and suppressed the rest of the time.

Long story short – everything was hard with and for J. Learning disabled (I taught him to read at 8 1/2, using books suitable for 3 and 4 year-olds), anxious and easily distracted, a pathological liar, thief, vandal, cruel to animals (not a good combo when I do animal rescue and voluntary wildlife work…he actually killed one of my native rescues outright when he was 11 and would deliberately ride his bike at my hens and ducks and would bang on the avairies of disabled birds to make then fall from perches)

He was with me for 4 years (until 12 1/2). There was a strange correspondence between when the spathdad seemed more settled and “normal” – J would do better in school and was better behaved and less violent – and when the spathdad was hyped and agitated and stirring trouble at home and/or elsewhere. At 10 he told me he wanted to kill himself, repeating this cry periodically as he aged. I convinced that spath to take him to a counselor/psychologist. She taught him EFT and breathing exercises to alleviate stress and help him to focus. After a couple of months she asked to speak to the spath alone (we had done a couple of family sessions, followed by the spath and J together, followed by J on his own for 3 sessions). After the appointment he came home and announced that we were never going back to that mad woman and that J was not to see her again. He never gave a reason but I suspect she had worked him out – and had said so.

By the time the spath left me (J in tow, as I had no custodial rights over him and could not keep him with me), J had been sending pornography to his friends (I know that pre-pubescent boys will do this as a matter of course, but there were other bad things happening at the same time that made it not just unacceptable but alarming) and been caught out by one parent who confronted the spath who shifted the blame to the mother’s partner for allegedly supplying him. J had stolen several pairs of my underwear; I found them while cleaning his room out while he was visiting his mum during school holidays and the spath’s mother was coming to stay the weekend and was staying in J’s room. They were hidden underneath his bedroom drawers along with some porn mags. When J returned, I caught him spying on me while I showered – he had engineered a “peephole” and subsequently confessed to having watched me for many months.

Strangely, I was left by the spath to discuss these matters with his son and to resolve them. Shortly before they left, J had raised his fist to me after I grounded him over a misdemeanor and said that he “could get angry with you like dad does”. I was scared but didn’t let on – I stared straight back at him and told him that if he ever touched me I would call the police and have him arrested for assault. Knowing I never lied or said things I didn’t mean, he backed down. His aggression toward me had been building in direct relation to the spath’s aggression and cruelty. To this day I don’t know whether J was mirroring his dad out of self-preservation – if we split, he knew he would end up alone with the spath – or whether these were signs of a similar disorder in him. The animal cruelty screams alarm-bells at me.

Yet this was a child with whom I had no bother when we were alone together, which was often. We laughed together, joked, did his homework together, I read to him at bedtime, we hugged, he told me his problems – the dynamic only ever changed when spathdad was around.

The day after I had the police remove the spath from the house (he had left 4 months prior, taking J with him, but I let them stay for 4 weeks after the spath’s family evicted them from the elderly grandfather’s home. I did so out of concern for J – not the spath. I made the spath sign a written agreement that they were back on my terms, which covered the safety of me and my animals – before I would let him in the front door again. Included was a clause that if I felt threatened by either of them (J was now taller than me) I would ask them to leave and if they refused, the police would be called and a restraining order taken out. 4 weeks later, that’s what happened) – so, the day after that, the spath puts J on a plane back to his mum. She has since returned to this state and recently, she and I met to swap stories.

Without going into every detail, we each thought the other was a bunny-boiler who had abused J. Neither of us were and neither of us had. She never wanted to abort; did not want to return to work when J was a baby but was told by the spath that they could not afford her to not do so; spath did not look after J as a baby but in fact the only 2 times he was asked to collect him from daycare, forgot both times; IS maternal; does NOT do drugs; did NOT have J on wacked-out dopey drugs but on the slow-release stuff only for school (the stuff the spath had put him on was actually the wacked-out dopey drug); had always had Child Support taken directly from her wages and paid to the spath (He always said she didn’t pay which is why I ended up supporting J financially); had never beat J (but the spath had)..and on and on and on……right down to my supporting the spath’s successful application for custody of J (which is how the 8 months turned into 4 years) because I was convinced by the spath that she didn’t want him back (and she was convinced by the spath that the custody thing had been my idea, me pushing him, trying to snatch her child for my own.)

Outcomes? J lives with the mum and has little to do with the spath since he crashed the spath’s car some months ago. Kids here are not allowed to apply for a driver’s licence until after they turn 17; J stole the car and drove and crashed it at 16. Thankfully he was not hurt in the accident. The spath calls him abusive names, tells him he has s*** for brains and runs him down continually. J is one screwed up and sad boy. I have not seen him in 3 1/2 years.

If I had ever been in a position myself, to send J back to his mum years earlier I would have done so – but I was drowning under the spath-slime and couldn’t even get ME out of it; if I had know then what I know now (and continue to discover every day); if she and I had met and swapped stories before now; if we had known that we could….if, if, if…..

We are both determined now to do whatever we have to do to limit or stop J’s contact with the spath until he is an adult and can choose for himself (so, 2 more years). He keeps going back for more – as children will. She and I are working together on a plan to put an end to his abuse of J.

Bottom line – your son does not need the spathdad and is better off without him BUT you have to figure out how NOT to give the game away – just like we are trying to figure the same thing out over here.

I wish you a clear head and a calm heart in your efforts to do so. I know that’s what we are going to need here. If anything we do is successful, I will share it here. x