A Low-Contact Flowchart
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Step 1: Receive email from PEW that is important and relevant to the child/children. (7:48AM)
LM,
Will you please drop off the consent to Dr. Orthodontist’s office please?
~PEW
Step 2: In keeping with low-contact, acknowledge request appropriately. End.
PEW,
I expect to do so tomorrow.
~LM
Step 3: Receive typical, delusional, provocative email that over-exaggerates the child’s dental appearance and effectively denigrates how he looks. “Great job, Mom.” (3:46PM)
LM,
Thanks to you S1 gets to start out middle school with a huge gap between his teeth…..great job Dad
~PEW
Step 4: If ignore, return to Step 2. If doubt, please review low-contact posts, then proceed to Step 5.
Step 5: Receive another contact. (3:15PM)
LM,
Appointments that are available …this friday at 4:30 or Sat 4/10 at 9am to get things started….those are the two soonest appts and he’s with you both days….what do you want to do?
~PEW
Step 6: At work. Ignore notification until appropriate read and response can be sent. If doubt, return to Step 2. If no doubt, proceed to Step 7.
Step 7: Receive another communication with scary deadline words. (3:48PM)
LM,
I can take him on friday if you can’t….but [Receptionist] (at Dr. Orthodontist’s office) said if she doesn’t hear from you by tomorrow S1 can’t come
~PEW
Step 8: If still at work, return to Step 6. If asked and answered, continue.
Step 9: Receive another bizarre escalation email with false accusation and court threats. (7:04PM)
LM,
I personally don’t want to go to Dr. Orthodontist…because the letter you sent them made us sound like freaks….but he’s 2000 cheaper than everyone else so it’s kind of a “no brainer”….but thanks..again for the amunition for court…it’s all good
~PEW
Step 10: If ignore, return to Step 2. Hell, let’s be honest - it’s full ignore, go to step 2 or proceed because you couldn’t care less about her mindless rants. It doesn’t really matter either way.
Step 11: Receive another contact with a dramatic increase in hostility, containing her usual mastery of the foul language.
LM,
if you dont drop off the consent….we will lose the Appointments…you got that right? we’ve already lost a year….I fricken need to know if you CAN DO the appts cause if you cant we’re into May on my weeks???? Answer the emails asshole!!!!
~PEW
Step 12. If ignore, return to step 2. If asked and answered, return to step 2 or continue. Just don’t respond because the question has been answered. Not to mention, she’s being her usual vulgar self and therefore is not entitled to a response from any self-respecting human being.
Step 13: Wonder, briefly, when her reign of chaos and terror will end. File the 12 total emails received between 7AM and 8PM today (other “stream of unconsciousness” unrelated to the matter described above). Recognize successful acknowledgment of the important issue pertaining to the children.
12 total emails. 1 deserving of response. Others might have warranted a response until she became a filthy, vile, vulgar, threatening, and offensive verbal thug. You know how huge those email muscles can be.
This is low-contact. It’s not about changing the psycho ex-wife’s or psycho ex-husband’s behavior. It’s about changing how you react and respond. I replied clearly and concisely. She went off the deep-end (again). I had a great day at work and it remained stress-free due to low-contact. I read the balance, saw the increasing hostility, and put them away. Like a misbehaving, petulant child, she will not be rewarded until she can talk using her grown up voice… until she can play nice-nice.
See also: 10 Commandments of Low-Contact With High-Conflict Personalities.
Let’s be careful out there.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:20 am
Thanks for handing me a good laugh this morning!
It is hilarious to me how answering her relevant question with a straight answer sends her off the deep end.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:22 am
Of course, you also want to note that after Step 7, you did indeed respond appropriately. Not to the PEW, but directly to the Orthodontist’s office, in a timely manner.
Part of the power of LC is that you take the PE out of the role of “middleman”. Rather than waiting for the PE to make the appointment, you call and interact with the other party yourself (in this case, the orthodontist; in other cases, it would be the doctor, the coach, the teacher, the youth pastor, the scout leader, etc.).
In this case, since the PEW informed you that the orthodontist was awaiting a call by “tomorrow”, then it would be pro-active to call them and set up an appointment (this way, you can also make the appointment for a time that suits you).
I totally agree that ANY escalation warrants nothing but silence in return.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:32 am
Wow, what a horrible parent you are to allow your child to attend school without perfect teeth! I recently scheduled my two kids for the initial ortho appointment, and I have to wait 3 months for it! My kids will be 11 & 12 when the start braces. I was 12 when I started mine. Isn’t S1 younger than 12?
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:48 am
I’m just a little confused…did you ever answer her whether you could take the child to either of those appointments?
Personally, I would have made the appt with the child was with me to keep things simple.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:59 am
I get low contact. What I don’t get is how you manage not to get stressed out and pissed off when you get 12 nasty emails in a row.
Practice I guess.
I am so tired of my stomach being tied up in knots.
March 23rd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
I didn’t get braces until I was 29, and yet I somehow survived. Funnier yet, I didn’t even know S1 had a gap in his teeth! I’ve never seen it, so I somehow doubt everyone in middle school is going to notice and somehow wreck his life.
April - Laughing, seriously, the best way for me to get through it all. I have to laugh at how ridiculous the emails are, the text messages, the phone calls, all of it. Picturing it all coming from a 6 year old helps, because really, that is the mental maturity level it’s coming from.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:40 pm
April, after more than a decade of her endless, mindless rants… what’s the alternative to not getting completely annoyed or otherwise upset at her childish antics?
When you wipe away all of the angst, all of the court, all of her lies, vulgarity, anger, and deceit… the bottom line becomes we have a choice… be upset… or don’t.
I choose the latter. She can send 12 emails and I can opt to participate in the madness or… she can send 12 emails and I can opt not to.
From where I’m sitting, the choice is easy.
Smile! Happier days are ahead.
March 24th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
I find it very hard to choose not to be upset when our PEW’s emails are all full out assualts on one of us, usually containing exaggerated or completely untrue information from the 15 year old SD. It is hard to shrug off. I can’t bridge the gap from the pain and anger to the laughing. Her rants are childish and completely ridiculous, but they aim for the heart and my armor isn’t strong enough yet.
March 26th, 2010 at 12:44 am
April,
Think of it this way. I can say that George Bush is now my butler, Jessica Alba is my sex slave, and that I am Michael Phelps personal trainer. Of course none of that is true. You cannot control what other people say, only who and what you are. Use your logic instead of your heart.
I have been accused of starving my child, not spending money on his needs, not taking care of school issues and of being a generally useless parent. I can either choose to cry over it because she is mean, or I can remind myself that Son has nice clothes, always has food to eat (his psych medication has killed his appetite and I am working with doctors to help him), all his teachers know my name and face (in fact, just this week I shadowed him to every class), and that she sees him every other weekend by choice and that she is nuts.
March 28th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
The thing that I found the most humerous about LC is that they are having an agrument with themselves. SO will answer a simple question regarding the girls and if it’s not what PEW wants to hear then she revs up and starts throwing punches. Except now SO does not respond…AT ALL! When that happens the dialoge gets nastier and nastier and again she gets no response. When I’m typing it all up for our records, I just have to laugh because I know she gets nastier only in hopes of geting a response and I’m sure it makes her mad that she’s not getting one. She may get the last word in but we get the last laugh! Of course the next time you hear from her all is well in PEWville. Who gets raging mad and then acts like nothing ever happens the next day. I guess I’ll never get it LOL
March 29th, 2010 at 9:12 am
To Tim’s Girl, It hit me when you said, ‘She may get the last word in but we get the last laugh.” Our PEW ALWAYS has to get the last word! There would be nothing left to respond to or discuss and she’d find something to say to be attacking and insulting. It drove me nuts. I shouldn’t have let that bother me because you are right about the last laugh.
March 29th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
It takes a lot of self-control to keep it low-contact when you are used to either defending yourself or trying to point out the truth. Once we discovered once and for all that truth is completely, insanely irrelevant when dealing with the PEW, it became much easier. Ignore, ignore, ignore!
Choosing what is worthy of a response gives us power back (and may I say, 99.9% of her correspondence is to hear herself yap and doesn’t deserve a response.) And yes, sometimes it is rather amusing to watch her perform a one-woman, knock-em-down, scream-and-howl catfight all by herself.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
You know what, i dont really care if she has the last laugh. As long as i have peace.
March 30th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I really needed to hear some of this…especially about watching her perform a one-woman catfight. I’ll have to remember that when my SO’s PEW goes off the deep end…
March 31st, 2010 at 3:59 pm
April,
I totally empathize with how you feel.
I am tied up in knots all the time, too, when it’s her phone call visitation time (not knowing how she’ll intimidate the girls this time), when I check the mail (not knowing what stupid ideas her and her attorney have cooked up),or when there’s a stranger lurking around my home (yes, she sends internet boyfriends, even though she’s remarried, and private investigators to check us out).
I don’t know how to let go of the fear of what she’ll do next or the anger from all she has done to all of us, but mostly the girls.
Mr. M and wife says it comes down to a choice. Of course my brain chooses that I don’t let her get to me, but I can’t make my heart and brain put it in action. I hope I figure out how soon, because this constant state of extreme stress is upsetting my family and me, while I highly doubt she feels empathetic or stressed in the least. It doesn’t seem fair.
Hugs to you. This site proves that none of us has to suffer alone without any support.
April 21st, 2010 at 3:18 pm
unbelievable….what a huge waste of time and energy - i am exhaused just reading this stuff.