Mrs. H writes: "I Only Wish My Husband Was Able to Benefit"

I have discovered your site. I am sorry that you are having to live this nightmare. I am also sorry that my husband did not have the benefit of information that you have included in your site...

Thank you for getting your message about mental illness and its effect on divorce, parenting, child support etc... I only wish that my husband had been able to benefit. Maybe there was this kind of info out there when we were trying to survive the chaos 15-years ago. We didn't know enough about the mental illness, not to mention the effects that it had in wake of divorce and trying to live a life outside of the ex...

Thank you for passing on the information and the example of your experience... God bless you in your endeavor to save your sons. I wish that we had been able to rescue his daughter from the result of all of this mess, but our ignorance and the courts always played into her hands...

Just want to encourage you to keep on doing what you are doing and thank you for being willing to share...

Our outcomes was devasting, but my husband is in the terminal stages of cancer. Our ability to care and carry-on has been diverted into surviving this disease... There is a part of me that believes his cancer is the result of all of the emotional trauma brought upon him by the struggles that his bipolar ex caused him and all of us... I had some documentation that supports this concept, but it doesn't do any good now...

Mrs. H

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Our sympathies are with you both for your experiences in family court and dealing with your medical crisis. I cannot begin to imagine the strain that this has put on you and your loved ones.

We understand how tough it is, especially on fathers. It has been for such a long time. We know that there are bad-dads out there, too, but so much goes unaddressed and the bias is heartbreaking. I only wish we had the information we now have before we started (we discovered BPD about a year after and then started studying about it in earnest). We could have done even better, I believe, but we'll continue to work with what we've got.

Thanks for visiting. Thanks for dropping us a line. Thank you for spreading the word. Again, our very best wishes to you and your family as you work through your troubles on the medical front. Thanks for sharing.



~LM & DW

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Snuggle Struggle Follow-Up - I Already Did Address It

In 2005!

While digging through the archives, I happened upon an email I sent to The PEW on June 30th, 2005. It very specifically address the issue of sleeping with the children (then 6 and 4), which was clearly of concern to me then. Obviously, it did no good. The more things change...

Now, before you think me an ogre who doesn't want the children to go to sleep happy or content or without fear, that's not it at all. Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of "co-sleeping." I'm not militant about it. I think my problem with it was rooted in the fact that she never was big on letting the children fall asleep on their own. Particularly with S1, it caused a great deal of disruption in our own sleep and ultimately our intimate relations, as infrequent as they were. She wasn't one to simply stay until they fell asleep. She would often just sleep in their room all night long and often in one of the boys' beds with them. I just didn't like it.

On the heels of a discussion with the children, I sent this:

PEW,

While I am certain that your anger towards me won't allow you to see this suggestion as meaningful, I am going to forge ahead anyway and hope that someday when you re-read this, you will see it as helpful.

During my chat with the boys last night, they spoke of how you continue to sleep with them (in S2's bed) until they fall asleep and that you allow them to come into your room in the middle of the night and sleep with you. While I was unable to discern how often this occurs, I got the distinct feeling that it is often. I suggest that you stop doing both. Here's why:

#1 - They don't do it here. They fall asleep on their own. They don't get up in the middle of the night and come in my room. I don't sleep with them.

#2 - I believe that is a big reason why they are as clingy and whiny as you so often describe them.

#3 - Sleeping with them and "babying" them to sleep doesn't help foster independence that they both so desperately need. I also think it's why they seem to be "afraid" to do things on their own sometimes.

I haven't had to dress either of them once since they've been here. At bedtime, other than helping S2 with his pull-up - no problems getting dressed. In the morning, they put their clothes in the hamper and dress themselves. They put on their own shoes and even their own socks. At meals, they assist in getting the table ready and they always clear their own dirty dishes from the table and bring them to the sink. We are working on the "whininess" by simply making them talk in a normal voice. I don't allow them to "fake" not being able to do something (like putting their shoes on) - I simply patiently wait until they do it for themselves. They are not permitted to talk fresh to one another or the grown-ups.

The boys won't change because you order them to. You will only be helping yourself if you work on these things consistently and at the same time I am. AND, if your family enforces the same expectations on them, I strongly believe you will find that they will behave much better and they won't be as "fresh" talking to everyone as you tell me that they are.

Finally, I know that you are, in some way, "proud" that one or the other, on occasion, cry to you to express that they miss you. I also know that, through our discussions, you enjoy bringing up that they don't "cry" when they express that they miss me. I don't know why that is, but you would be doing the boys a favor by helping to reassure them that everything will be just fine and that it's important that they spend meaningful time with both of us. That will help them, not doing little to discourage that behavior and continuing to treat them like babies, which will not help them build the confidence and independence to adjust to these changes in their lives. They cry their "show" to you because you feed it. Your reaction, the pleasure you take in hearing it, and validating that act is what perpetuates it. You do remember the times where S2 would act out when you dropped them off at [the marital residence] and when the door closed - he would be fine... remember how I used to walk out with him before you left to show you how it stops the moment you're out of view? They do it because they know it makes YOU feel good... it's not because they feel bad. They don't "cry" for me because they know that they don't have to do that to make me feel good. They know I miss them. I know they miss me. We discuss it and make it as happy as these circumstances allow. Take it, leave it, or just continue to be pissed off about it, but you would be doing us both a favor and more importantly - the children - if you would at least consider some of what I suggest.

The longer you treat them like helpless babies so that they maintain this babylike attachment to you... the longer they will act like babies and that won't help you, me, and it certainly won't help them.

~LM

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She never did reply to it. I think that it was either deliberately ignored or she just got so engrossed in the horrible series of events that wrecked that summer for us with the children that it just didn't get high enough on her radar screen. In fact, it was probably sent/received, etc. around the same time as the phone call with DW. That was clearly more important to her.

In any event, while continuing to monitor the situation and taking some appropriate level of action with the boys to stay on top of it, this simply helped me realize that not contacting her about it (for now) was probably the right call.

Pretty funny that I would coincidentally find this one while searching for something else.

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The PEW & DW Speak on the Phone!

It will be the only time they ever do. 'Twas June 30th, 2005.

The call was one of many early on which would degrade into one of the regular useless discussions we had. Obviously, this is way before we learned about low-contact methods. This was the first summer that DW and I were living together and the earliest part of our re-ignited custody battle. This argument centered around her changing her (alleged) plans at the 11th-hour that was going to upset a portion of our scheduled vacation. It was a vacation that had been planned more than 3-months earlier and for which we had agreement on when it would start and the exchange particulars.

Somewhere along the line she asked to speak with DW. I was initially against it and gave both of them several opportunities to say no. Neither did and, against my better judgement, I reluctantly handed over the phone to DW.

From here, the rest of the story will be DW's to tell.

~LM

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I wasn't exactly thrilled with PEW, as you can imagine, but frankly we needed to get it over with and the conversation began as "I just want to get things settled so we can start getting along." Okay - great! Haha, pulled me right in, didn't she?

So things start off with PEW saying she wants to settle the summer schedule so she never has to talk to LM again, I reply, "Well then sign the boys over for the summer like you know you should and then it's all done." She agrees and I tell her to have her attorney draw up the paperwork. The reason I said this is that she had a very long history of agreeing, then LM would pay to have the paperwork done, and of course she never would sign it. The prior day PEW had told us she had a new attorney (that would kick our ass of course *rolleyes*).

So, she surprises me when she says, "oh I don't have an attorney." I call her on the lie and she spins a story about not being able to afford to pay her, blah blah blah, and what does she do then? She ASKS ME to pay for her attorney. Yes, a woman whose ex-husband I am dating, asks me to pay for her attorney to keep his children away from him. Hello? Can you say psycho? I calmly decline and she begins the downward spiral starting with, "Well, LM is just using you for your money, and you only have money because your parents put you through school."

Here's another thing about BPD's - they try to go for what they perceive to be your weak points, but PEW really didn't know me. She literally had only seen me for 2 minutes at a time and done some research (stalking) about me online. She falsely assumed a lot of things which just made me laugh. My parents are dirt poor and I worked my way through my degree, but even if my parents had paid for it, I find it funny that she would think that was an insult to me.

From here on out PEW basically tries to throw anything and everything at me hoping something will stick. "Well I just want you to know that I am here for you when LM starts abusing you, because no one was there for me." First of all, she would have called her Daddy about .025 seconds after something happened if LM had actually abused her, so I didn't believe that line at all. Then she tries to go after my ex-husband saying she wants to talk to him to let him know "what kind of man [I'm] living with." Anytime she was met with facts like, "well PEW, we've been dating for 11-months now and he has yet to hit me or yell at me, when is this supposed to start?" - she would begin calling me names and telling me that I'm "just like him."

After a little while we get on the subject of how she introduced the kids to her (short-lived) boyfriend after only 3-weeks, this after arguing that the kids shouldn't meet me as we had only been dating for 6- or 7-months at the time. She had just lied to the custody evaluator telling her they had been together for 6-months and I called her on it. So what does she do? She asks me if I would like to talk to him because HE IS SITTING RIGHT THERE. Okay, this woman has been talking to her ex-husband's girlfriend for an hour with her boyfriend sitting there by himself? It's no wonder he dumped her ass shortly after the call. Anyway, he gets on the phone and I ask when they started dating. He verifies the exact timeline we had told the evaluator. So, PEW gets back on the phone and I call her on it. She starts backpeddling saying they "were dating but not telling anyone." I asked her if he was aware that they had been dating, she immediately began calling me names again. The more I laughed, the more undone she became.

So then she starts calling me on my education and company background. She apparently believes that she has "earned a psych degree because she worked with kids for 5-years!" (I explained to her that she works with kids because they are the only people who look up to her because they don't know better. This is supported by the types of problems she had when working with adults in a professional setting.) She went on saying that she has, and I quote, "lived psychology." I simply replied, "being mentally disturbed, and having 3 family members with bipolar disorder, doesn't in fact mean you have a psych degree."

I continually tried to steer the conversation back to the issues we were supposed to be discussing, such as the story she kept telling family members about how LM took the van and left her with the (allegedly) "shitty car." The reality? She had, in fact, chosen that car in the divorce settlement because it meant she got more money. I asked why she had wanted the marital home sold and the boys kicked out of the only home they had known, etc. She had no answers and would simply start calling me names like a 6-year old.

Since I wasn't believing her story, she agreed to do several things to prove it all to me. She was going to print all the e-mails she had from LM showing the abuse. They never materialized. Not a single one. She said if the evaluation came down indicating LM as the "better parent" she wouldn't go to court. Ha, she not only went that time, but again and again, and again. I made a $100 bet that no matter what the evaluation said she would say the counselor was snowed over by LM and that he needed psychological help - she lost, she never paid me. (Yes, CE #2 actually indicated that LM was the better equipped parent, but apparently not enough to give him primary custody. Her recommendation did increase his time, though.) PEW literally used that exact wording - "LM snowed her." Interestingly enough, I can remember the first thing that custody evaluator #2 said when LM and I went in for our joint session with her. "Well, what are we going to do about PEW?" I kid you not. What do you say to that?

One interesting thing PEW did admit in the conversation was that her parenting skills are poor. Yeah, I was as surprised as you are. I said, "Yes, the children are better behaved when they are not with you." What did she do? She turned that statement around the next day to everyone in her family and the police claiming that I said "the children were better off without you" and that she was threatened. This incident led to our first threatening phone calls from her family, police calls and visits, which we'll include at some point.

Believe it or not, I was nice throughout the conversation, never called her a name, never really put her down, until towards the end of the call. She ended up getting so frustrated that she kept repeating over and over that I was "nothing." I just told her if that makes her feel better to think so, whatever, I know the truth. So she tries to go for one more attack, her favorite: "So, can LM get it up?" Remember, her boyfriend is right there next to her! My response was calm and cool, "Actually yes, on demand, but that's probably because I take care of myself unlike you," *CLICK* She hung up just as I was about to add, "you fat pig." I just had to after listening to her ramblings for an hour and a half. I added a few more sentences that were vulgar just to see LM's reaction as he didn't know she had hung up. His mortified facial reaction was priceless - that was the highlight of the call.

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The Snuggle Struggle - What's Appropriate?

This is one those pieces of minutia which can cross me up when determining what is okay and what is not okay as it relates to a particular situation. Then, I struggle with making contact to voice my concerns or take a "wait and see" attitude and maintain low-contact. So, I was on the fence about contacting on this one, again, with the sole intent or end-result probably amounting to little more than having a nasty reply come back for the "file."

The boys are 6 & 9. During discussion at dinner the other night, they spoke of "snuggling in bed" - not only with The Psycho Ex-Wife, but on occasion with Psycho-SIL (PP) whose dreams of motherhood are realized vicariously through the boys.

This bothers me. I'm slightly conflicted. I'll pile on the sofa with the boys when watching a show or something and they'll be laying in each of my arms as we chill. At night, I'll give them a big squeeze and a kiss before wishing them a wonderful night's sleep. Nothing more than a few minutes of hanging out, sometimes on the bed. Every once in a while our chatting will carry on longer. Though he's getting too big for it, S2 will still occasionally fall asleep while laying on me as we watch a show on the sofa. This is something I've always cherished from when they were babies.

"Snuggling" (in my paranoid mind regarding PEW) is something more and not something I haven't read about many times before. Reality is, it might be nothing more than normal. However, in the places I frequent on the internet involving people in similar situations, not-so-normal results have occurred and that has poisoned my mind to some degree. It's gnawing at my soul. I don't like it. I asked the children a few questions but tempered them. I didn't want them to get the feeling that I was interrogating them.

I know that my emailing my concerns will accomplish nothing short of getting the reply I'm expecting, which is fine by me. I don't entirely know what constitutes "snuggling" in the boys' minds and I don't want to ask them to specifically describe it yet, for obvious reasons. I assure you that I asked enough of the right questions to surmise it's little more than laying together until they fall asleep, though I think that S2 may occasionally spend the entire night in PP's bed when she stays there periodically. More discussion with the children regarding inappropriate touching is in order.

I thought of sending a short blurb which will prompt a nasty reply defending her actions, perhaps even describing them as she sees it:

I think that your getting into bed with the boys and "snuggling" with them is highly inappropriate at their ages and could be harmful in the long term. You should consider being cautious about continuing with such behavior.

Of course, my other concern is that she'll freak on the kids or otherwise instruct them not to share such information in the future, putting them in the middle yet again.

When discussing it with DW, her thoughts were, "I think it has more to do with the "why" of what makes her want to sleep with the boys, and what they are learning from it. She can't be alone, ever. She always has to have someone with her and she is teaching the kids that they will always need her, and not in a healthy "I'm your Mom and I'll always be here for you," way. We are seeing the signs that the kids simply can't be alone either or away from family. They have no independence, and the sleeping thing is really the beginning of it. Of course it's also sick in our minds because the oldest is literally the size of a man, at only 9 years old, and it's literally like he is her boyfriend."

These are the issues when make us so conflicted. She wants to keep them infantilized for as long as possible. Truth be told, I'm probably more alarmed by PP than I am about PEW, though both are quite distressing. PP is off-the-chain freaky scary. I couldn't get a restraining order on her nor could I get the court to prevent her from potentially moving-in with them back a few years. So, I'm stuck with two highly disordered personalities heavily involved with raising my children when they are not with me - nevermind the rest of her family.

In response to the feedback and experiences of one, I indicated that my experience has been when she is approached with something that is considered "less than" acceptable or flat-out unacceptable by someone - she almost pathologically does the opposite. Some examples:

- When S1's weight exploded after the split, I regularly communicated my concerns. I even got the doctor involved who expressed concerns. The doctor even went so far as to say, "It's understandable that once in a while, fast-food will happen, but for all intents and purposes, the children should never eat fast food, particularly ones with weight issues." I kid you not, she started going more.

- When I expressed concern about her taking the children to PG-13 rated movies after S1 "demonstrated" for me how grown-ups kiss, she went more frequently to movies not appropriate for their ages. (This was a few years ago when they were 6 and 3.)

- The whole WWE debacle. Not only does she let them stay up later to watch it during the week, she'll take them to friends houses to watch the pay-per-view events (which I'm sure are more inappropriate for their ages than the 9PM stuff on USA).

- If I suggest to her that the children don't need to go to the doctor every single time they get a sniffle, she would start going more frequently.

- When S1 was in pre-K4, (when we were still together) - the teacher raved about his behavior. He was calm. He was engaging. He spoke well beyond his years. She even used him as a subject for her college child-development class. She said, "Almost every other child in here is uncontrollable in the morning. They all watch Power Rangers and they no sooner drop their bags and coats and they're chopping and kicking one another. But not S1!" I kid you not, it wasn't a week later that she went out and bought the first of many Power Rangers DVDs and guess whose kids were soon doing the same chopping and kicking?

It's confounding. It's like pathological sabotage of others.

Part of me hesitates knowing that she and her sister will likely do it more than they already do it should I choose to express my concerns.

I like the idea of easing into additional boundary setting in that regard with the boys, but what youngster doesn't want the attention/affections of someone they love? I think it would be less creepy to me if the two involved were less creepy.

As a separate issue to consider before your commentary - because a part of me wants to believe this is normal and acceptable - I want you to consider how you would feel if it was a father "snuggling in bed" with his 9-year old daughter. I'll bet the world that the feelings on the subject (generally) would be overwhelmingly negative and concerned for the daughter's developmental well-being. There is a substantial double-standard in that regard.

For now, I've decided not to make contact and choose to wait-and-see instead.

Follow-Up Post Link

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JX writes: "The Most Astounding Thing Happened"

Hi LM and DW:

I just spent the past 3 days reading your blog - it was linked at a Yahoo! group for stepmoms I participate in. Holy Mary Mother of God, do you have your hands full! I'm lucky in that SOBF's (my husband's) Egg Donor (I saw one of your other reader calls hers that too, so much for my originality) is a lot less involved than yours and doesn't have email, but boy I can sure relate on a lot of the other issues.

The main reason I wanted to email is your campaign to get people to see the inequities in the family court system, and how they invariably favor the mother in any given circumstance. We have experienced this, too. I firmly believe the only reason SOBF has residential custody of his boys is because ED didn't want custody at the time they filed and divorced. She didn't retain her own attorney, agreed to everything that SOBF's attorney drew up, and in fact didn't even testify at their divorce hearing. We know now that she had a new boyfriend (she brought him to court with her, in fact), was planning on moving 1,600 miles away, marrying him and starting a new family in another state, and thought that the care of three children would be too hard or cramp her slutty style with the new boy; she appears to be under the assumption that she can just get custody of them at any future time she chooses. The sad fact is that she has every reason to believe this.

The thing I wanted to tell you about our situation (and you can read all about if you're so inclined at my blog, the link is below) is that when it came time to determine child support, the most astounding thing happened. While SOBF was in the service and ED had taken the children (against his will) back to their home state to dump them off at her parents' house while she ran around with the boyfriend of the moment, his check was garnished for nearly $1,000/month (on an enlisted man's salary, you do the math). When he got out of the service and moved back here, he had the children almost half the time, but was still required to pay her support. This he did, in cash (over my strenuous objection and advice to leave a paper trail). When I moved here, the kids moved in with us three days later, and he stopped paying support, after enrolling them in school in our district (which was not the same as her legal residence at the time, her parents' house - where she was actually not even living). She made not so much as a peep in argument about them living with us, despite that she had never met me (and in fact WOULDN'T meet me for 4 more months). Shortly after our move, SOBF started receiving letters and paperwork from child services, asking for information about health insurance provided for the boys, their residential address, and how much child support was currently being paid by SOBF to ED. After answering the third of these letters, he made a call and was informed that ED had been receiving public assistance for nearly a year, claiming non-payment of child support and lack of health insurance; this despite the fact that they were living with SOBF more than half time for most of that year, full-time for the rest, he had paid support until they moved in, and they were covered at all times under his health insurance with his employer. When SOBF informed the caseworker of these facts, he actually caught a break: she told him to forward to her proof of their enrollment in our school district and she'd close the case. However, there was no talk of prosecuting ED for fraud or making her pay back the money she had obtained from the state under false claims of nonpayment of court-ordered support.

Of course, SOBF should have filed the proper paperwork to modify the temporary orders, but at that time they were merely separated, and he didn't follow all the changes from transititioning out of the service, etc. He was lucky it all worked out so well.

I only told you all of that as background to what happened at their divorce hearing 6-months later. He was ordered to attend mandatory "Effects of Divorce on Minor Children" classes with the kids, which he did (and we have the certificate to prove). She didn't show. He came to court solo; she brought her boyfriend. He took the stand and clearly stated that his main focus was to get custody of his children; she declined to take the stand. He made no petition for child support, because as he stated to the judge, he just wanted his children and he knew if he tried to obtain support she would fight him and he'd lose his kids. The judge asked him this on three separate occasions to make sure, and was clear about informing him that if he ever changed his mind, he could come back and file a modification at any time. After all of that, they were awarded joint physical and legal custody, with their primary residence with SOBF. Joint physical and legal, despite that they live with us and had done so for nearly a year at that point. Huh. But the real slap in the face was this: since SOBF did not request support, none was ordered, but it was noted in the separation agreement that if support HAD been ordered, due to the discrepancy in their incomes, ED would have been ordered to pay $36 PER MONTH, IN TOTAL, for all three children.

The thing that bothers me about that is the hypocrisy; let's say for the sake of argument SOBF was making $15k and ED was making $35k (which is pretty close to the opposite at the time). Is it even remotely possible that a judge would have awarded her custody and completely let SOBF off the hook for support; or, if ordering it, order him to pay only $36 a month? Not bloody likely. More likely is that he would have been ordered to pay even if she didn't request support, and he would have been ordered to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 a month, and told to go get another job if he couldn't afford that on his present salary. And THAT makes me sick to my stomach.

I have more and more and MORE stories, but I wanted to chime in and say I support 100% your efforts to point out that family law is a business, the courts and states are in it for themselves and not for the kids, and that fathers get the shaft more often than not. We were only lucky because ED is so stupid that it should be criminal, and she doesn't realize that by giving up custody, not paying support, moving out of state and remarrying she just gave up most rights to her kids - theoretically. All it would take, though, is for her to move back and present some kind of sob story to a sympathetic judge, and our whole lives would change. For that reason, I'm praying her new husband doesn't wise up any time soon.

Keep up the good fight, I'll be reading, as well as putting a link on my (insignificant, barely read, not often updated) little blog.

~JX

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JX,

A couple bits of unsolicited advice that you may have covered already. I preface this by saying that I am not an attorney and the following is not dispensing legal advice, simply my personal opinion on the matter:

- The financial paper-trail is so important and cannot be stressed enough. Cash payments are treated as a "gift" by the court unless your PEW actually writes a letter verifying the payments and the amounts. In an adversarial situation such as yours, that's highly unlikely and your SO would never get credit for any of those payments. ALWAYS by check and ALWAYS with "child support" in the memo field.

- I'm confused about the apparent fact above that the final order from the judge was joint physical and legal custody. If you're SO has sole custody, that's how the order should read and child support can be initiated at anytime, especially if she has moved out of state. Your state has and will keep jurisdiction and if a long-term status quo has established with whom the children are living, the order should read that way (and child support awarded accordingly).

- I'm not sure which state you're in, but many use the ludicrous "income shares model" which isn't about covering the basic needs of the children but about a redistribution of wealth from the higher earning parent (usually the father) to the lesser earning parent (usually the mother). The non-custodial parent, in all but the fewest states, always has to pay something based on custodial time and proportion of income. Perhaps your SO wants to leave well-enough alone or you could just clarify for me what the actual custody arrangement is. I'm curious.

Be confident in knowing that the longer the arrangement is in your favor, the harder it will be to get changed. That said, it's no guarantee, I read about countless mind-bending decisions made in family court every single day. It's just scary.

Thanks for the feedback and for spreading the word. It's much appreciated. Best wishes to you!

~LM

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