Advice: ggrr52 writes - We've Had Enough!

Having discovered this blog, I don't know whether I feel relief that other couples are having a similar experience to us, or dismay that you expect it to go on indefinitely... I recently married a man who has a "PEW." I have to tell you that I am a psychotherapist who chooses not to work with BPD if I can help it -- not for 50 minutes -- and not for pay -- and here I am dealing with it all the time.

My husband had been separated for 3 years, and divorced for one year when he met me. The moment his PEW sighted me on her radar, from 2000 miles away, the toxic phone calls and emails to my husband began and go on to this day (even during our honeymoon). The content of these, and the arguments, 'conversations' my husband recounts, are eerily similar to yours. If she did not have his two children, 9 and 11, he would certainly never see her again. He has tried to make boundaries many times: no communications about anything other than the children, but she always crosses them on some pretext and soon escalates into the same tired list of accusations of 'outrages'supposedly commited by my husband, and after Christmas when we had the children, by me, too.

We decided last week that we had had enough. We wanted to set up a new system of communication whereby we would appoint an intermediary who would handle it all, so we would never have to talk to her or read another email again. She would be told she could not contact us, except in extreme emergency regarding the childrens' health and safety. All professionals (teachers, doctors, therapists) would contact my husband directly. We would give a dedicated cell phone to the children so that they could talk to their dad. My husband contacted his attorney with this idea, and he told him that the court would take a dim view of using an intermediary, as it does not show good co-parenting. I am so very disappointed.

I wonder if you have any suggestions?

Thanks!
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ggrr52,

Welcome! It appears you've had the "lightbulb moment." No matter your experiences and expectations regarding your PEW, there is a great measure of relief in knowing that you are not alone.

While we will always say "listen to the advice of your attorney - he is a trained professional" - I will take exception to his assessment of your plan. However, know that he knows better than I just how the court may view your idea and we still make choices in our own situation with our mind on how the court will see things. It's a tightrope we walk almost daily. We don't respond to emails that have foul language, accusations, or anything else that has nothing to do with the children. If we receive emails with such viciousness, we ignore the viciousness and only respond, succinctly, to the matter affecting the children. We rarely talk with PEW on the phone, except on matters affecting the children. One cross word - we hang up the phone on her. If she goes off on a matter unrelated to the children - we hang up on her. At child-exchanges, there is no idle chit-chat, any discussion is related to the children only. We don't interfere with her parenting when she has custody of the children (extremely difficult) and we don't allow her to interfere with our parenting when we have custody of the children. The biggest key: DO NOT ENGAGE THE BORDERLINE on matters unrelated to the children.

What you're discussing is called Parallel Parenting. The link provides some wonderful insight into the differences between co-parenting and parallel parenting.

Ten Tips for Successful Parallel Parenting

1. Maintain an attitude for non-interference with your child’s other parent. Neither parent has influence or say over the actions of the other parent.


2. Carry on a business-like attitude; use common courtesy.


3. Do not plan activities for the children during the other parent’s time. It may be better for a child to miss an event than to witness conflict.


4. Stay focused on the present.


5. Stay oriented to the task at hand.


6. Keep your children’s best interests in mind.


7. Remember the goal is to keep conflict to a minimum.


8. Follow up in writing all agreements and discussions regarding the children.


9. When communication and/or negotiation is necessary, use a neutral third party to assist you.


10. Keep an open mind.

Unfortunately, it is simply impossible to co-parent with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder. I might suggest that sharing the article linked above with your attorney might give him a deeper insight into the struggles you face with the BPD ex-wife and how it can more effectively be managed, with the benefit of the children in mind. Many attorneys simply don't know about or fail to fully understand the disorder, so it is up to their client to educate them. Any successful efforts to reduce negative interaction with the borderline ex-wife will be beneficial to everyone.

Share the article with your attorney. In the meantime, try implementing certain portions of your plan that won't be looked upon unfavorably by the court while you work with your attorney to move in the direction of parallel parenting. For instance, have a third party read the e-mails and write out the things you should respond to, that way you don't have to see the name calling or viciousness, but can deal with the real issue at hand. No one has to know that the third party is the one reading the e-mails since you are responding to them appropriately. This will save you a ton of headache and frustration, but make sure the original e-mails are saved in case you can use them in court to show her true actions.

No family should have to put up with the terrorism that is put upon them by someone with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Our best wishes to you.

~LM

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Our Regular Advice Column

We're laughing as I’m writing this, thinking to myself, why would anyone want advice from us? Yet, I know sometimes it’s just nice to get another opinion from someone who has been there. Frankly, family and friends get tired of hearing about the drama.

So, here we are, beginning our advice column. We are not attorneys. We are not psychologists. Heck, sometimes, we aren’t even funny. All we have to offer is our shared experiences. We are here for you though and we will give our honest opinions, tough love, and humor when needed. We will also seek the help of experts if we believe a situation warrants it and can be helpful to our general audience.

So, please send us your situations, questions, e-mails that need a response (even if you’ve already responded), or any other scenario, and each week we will post our responses to one or more of them. Oftentimes, a fresh set of eyes can offer an "independent" view of your particular situation and give you some meaningful feedback.

Email us at thepsychoexwife@gmail.com. Also, when questions are posed in comments to our posts, we'll pull those out and address them in our advice column, too.

~DW & LM

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The Alcoholic, Abusive, Ex Father-In-Law: "EE" His Story

I remember the first night that I "met" the ex-FIL. PEW and I were out on a date, where and what we were doing is inconsequential because - I simply don't remember it. What I do remember, all-too-vividly was going back to her parent's house. It was late. She invited me in but, given her parents were likely home, I didn't intend to stay very long. Quietly, we opened the door. As we walked through the living room, there he was in all of his bloated glory... passed-out cold. He was retarded drunk. He was wearing a nice sweater the was form fitting around his monumental "30-pack" abs. The ensemble was completed with a pair of red slacks, which, at this point, were torn from his asshole to his crotch as his legs likely flopped open into the slouched, spread-eagle position as he fell back into the easy-chair. He had pissed himself.

This was another serious red-flag I ignored.

I'm not entirely sure his alcoholism is that of the methodical, daily drunk. He was more the uncontrollable binge drinker, much like PEW at that time in her life. He is what people call a "functional alcoholic." That moment should have been a sign among many, but the truth be told, it was the only time I ever saw him that shot-in-the-ass. I had seen him drunk from time-to-time, but he was little more than overbeearing, obnoxiously loud, and somewhat insulting in what he believes is a humorous way.

Yes, the grandfather of our children. He is an ex-police officer from a major metropolitan area. He has lots of friends in fairly high places still in that area. It's not like he hasn't accomplished anything in life. He really has done much good in life, just little, if anything, for his own family and their behavior and diagnoses reflect that. He heads up an organization that does a lot of good for people in an important sector of the community. He has managed to keep it going quite successfully for a long time and for that, he does deserve credit. (That's the "functional" part of him.) If only all of these people who see him as such a wonderful person knew what kind of a self-loathing, abusive, son-of-a-bitch he is in real-life.

Yes, I'm certain a bit the of the Napoleanic Complex is what drives his incessant compulsion to put down anyone and everyone - even his loved ones. Coming from a home with several siblings, I know what it is to poke fun at one another, even at our "advanced" ages. We still know how to bust on each other with the best of them. The difference is, there is a level of maliciousness within that family, and they all do it, that can only be described as making one quite uncomfortable. It cuts to the soul and can be too personal for an offspring and even a sibling. It also explains how she came to acquire such expertise in the field of verbal abuse viciousness.

- There is the story of EE freaking out on PEW when she pulled an all-nighter at a young age where he screamed at her about suspecting giving blow-jobs and swallowing cum.

- There was, in my presence, him methodically insulting and embarrassing PP in front of me and the rest of the family about the size of her tits and the fact that she was overweight or had changed her hair color again.

- His incessantly making fun of a son who was voluntarily hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder after nearly killing himself (and quite possibly others).

- He never hesitated to unleash verbal assaults on MM (the wife), even in front of my children which I would invariably have to put down.

- His teaching my children songs that were racist or spoke of killing their mother or making fun of some other family member. He would even deliberately teach them foul language.

- He would tickle my children incessantly (but never to this degree when I was present) - to the point where they would be crying or nearly throwing-up, and then justify it to PEW by telling her "they asked me to do that, they were enjoying it!"

- He would spare no one insulting or demeaning jokes - even would make fun of the children about some feature that caught his attention. That is, except me. The one time in all the years that he ever dared attempt to be that "humorous" with me, I gave it back to him. I don't even recall what he said to me, but without hesitation I retorted some crack about his physical condition where I coined the term "30-pack abs" which I deliberately put in the opening paragraph of this post. I do know, however, that he has joined the rest of the family in making fun of me since the marriage ended (coward that he is) even doing so in front of my children, which usually brought them to me full of interesting questions.

- Stories from their childhood about drunken rages, pulling guns on MM, verbally and physically abusing his children (which PEW would justify to her sister PP by telling her that she "deserved it" because she wouldn't keep her mouth shut). Things ultimately got so bad that the kids had to go live with an aunt & uncle for some stretch of time.

There is an unending list of mini-stories I could post about here but it would make this post endless, as interesting a read as it may be. He'll make some more stupid moves that I should have taken up a notch or ten, like the time he made a threatening phone call to our home, completely identifying himself, and then stammering like an idiot, blowing hot air much like he taught his children to do so well.

He is the root of all of this heartache and despair. Also, through stories, it is my understanding that he suffered a similar fate at the hands of his own parents. I guess he simply was unable to overcome the learned behaviors and/or genetics associated with whatever makes this picture of dysfunction so bleak.

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Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)

Parental alienation syndrome (PAS) is met with about as much disdain as "child support" when mentioned, even to attorneys. Our attorney was quick to tell us not to mention the phrase when on the stand as it would seem like we were told to use the phrase, yes, because clearly only attorneys are educated enough to know what parental alienation syndrome is *rolleyes*.

PAS was coined by Richard Gardner as "a disturbance in which children are obsessively preoccupied with depreciation and/or criticism of a parent. In other words, denigration that is unjustified and or exaggerated." The purpose of the criticism is to end the relationship between the child and other parent. It often works, even though most of the children can't even tell why they no longer love or want contact with the parent.

For instance, several weeks ago, S1 was talking to PEW on the phone, having an all out bitch-session about LM. We could hear every word. As with most of these calls, S1 says he is afraid of his father and goes on from there. After the call we had a sit down conversation during dinner where we asked him straight up, why are you afraid of Dad? His answer, "I don't know." Okay, well has he ever hit you? "No." Has he ever threatened you? "No." Do you think he would ever hurt you? "No." He suddenly thought for a second. "You know what, Mom is way more scary than Dad, she has hit me. She screams at me and chases me and threatens me. She sometimes hits me in the head and in the mouth." Still, every time Mom tells him to think something, he does. This has gone on for 4-years now and we have instances on tape where she compels him to begin to cry on the phone as she insists that he sounds unhappy, though he continually tells her that he's fine and is having a good time at Dad's... that is, until he is so worn down that he does what she wants, cries.

There are three different types of alienators according to Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation by Dr. Doug Darnall: naive alienators, active alienators and obsessed alienators.

Naive alienators are people that don't really mean to alienate another, an aspect that is present at least a little bit in all of us. Dr. Darnall uses the example where one parent tells their child to tell the other parent to buy something for them. They don't say anything like "because I don't have any money thanks to them," it's just something that is implied by what they said, which they don't realize. I will totally admit to this. My ex-husband has a bad habit of waiting for me to do things. This is not new since the divorce, I assure you, so I have told my kids that they need to have their father get their hair cut because I'm tired of having to do it all the time. Of course, I tell him nicely, too, but I can see where the kids could take this the wrong way.

Active alienators believe their children should have a relationship with the other parent, but they have a hard time controlling their anger or bitterness over the divorce. They mean well, but when they lose control they lash out. Active alienators feel bad about the alienation however and often try to make up for it.

Obsessed alienators have only one goal - to align the children with themselves and destroy the targeted parent. They believe no one can protect the children from the other parent other than themselves. They don't care what the court says, unless of course it's on their side. Dr. Darnell lists the traits of an obsessed alienator as:

• They are obsessed with destroying the children's relationship with the targeted parent.


• They have succeeded in enmeshing the children's personalities and beliefs about the other parent with their own.


• The children will parrot the obsessed alienator rather than express their own feelings from personal experience with the other parent.


• The targeted parent, and often the children, cannot tell you the reasons for their feelings.


• Their beliefs sometimes become delusional and irrational. No one, especially the court, can convince obsessed alienators that they are wrong. Anyone who tries is the enemy.


• They will often seek support from family members, quasi-political groups or friends that will share in their beliefs that they are victimized by the other parent and the system. The battle becomes "us against them." The obsessed alienator's supporters are often seen at the court hearings even though they haven't been subpoenaed.


• They have an unquenchable anger because they believe that the targeted parent has victimized them and whatever they do to protect the children is justified.


• They have a desire for the court to punish the other parent with court orders that would interfere or block the targeted parent from seeing the children. This confirms in the obsessed alienator's mind that he or she was right all the time.


• The court's authority does not intimidate them.


• The obsessed alienator believes in a higher cause, protecting the children at all cost.

I'm sure you can see even with the little we've posted so far, that we are dealing with an obsessed alienator in PEW. She will simply not stop. The court cannot stop her. No one can. At this time, there are no interventions that can stop PAS and help the children who are suffering. As we often say, "there are no laws against being a bitch." It doesn't matter to the court that the children are being emotionally abused.

We hope we can get this changed.

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Interesting Historical Discovery Today

I can now look up my historical litigation information online, much to my dismay.

Interestingly, I can search by name and get the necessary information to view all of the historical litigation back to who knows when. This prompted me to search for PEW by her previous married name and check her litigiousness with the 1st-husband. I've mentioned how money-centered she is despite her projections that it is I whose every move is based on some alleged financial advantage.

Her first marriage lasted a total of 3-years. Two of those years were separated, so they really only lived as husband and wife for 1-year, if that.

She actually filed a petition for alimony. Alimony for a one year marriage while gainfully employed and making a very nice wage for 1993/4.

I don't know whether to laugh or kick myself in the ass further for wishing I knew then what I know now!

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The Men's Experiences with Partner Aggression Project

The Men's Experiences with Partner Aggression Project is a research study at Clark University and is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Denise A. Hines, Ph.D., Clark University Department of Psychology, is the lead researcher on this project. She is conducting this project in conjunction with Emily M. Douglas, Ph.D., Bridgewater State College Department of Social Work, the Survey Center at the University of Southern Maine, and the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women.

Our goal is to better understand the experiences of men who are in relationships with women who use violence. Extensive research has shown that men are at risk for sustaining partner violence in their relationships, yet few studies have investigated their experiences, and there are few resources available to such men. This is an under-recognized problem in the United States, and by conducting this research project, we hope to provide much needed information on these men, their relationships, and their needs.

If you are a man between the ages of 18 and 59 and you have been physically assaulted at least one time in the last 12 months by a current or former intimate female partner you may be eligible to participate in this study. If you are interested in participating, please call the DAHMW at 1-888-743-5754 or email dahmwagency@gmail.com for information about the study and directions for participating. For more information about DAHMW visit their website: Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women.

Sincerely,

Jan Brown, Founder and Executive Director
http://www.dahmw.org
1-888-7HELPLINE (888-743-5754)
Bus: 207-683-5758

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Folks, this is a very important study (as have been those before it). The more you show a willingness to participate, the more likelihood the reality of this problem will be taken seriously and given the attention it needs. If you have had such an experience in the time-frame detailed above, I urge you to contribute.

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