Should I push for more involvement or leave it be?

[needPeace]

Background:

dBPDexH and D13

I have primary custody, and we had agreed to every other weekend and one weeknight  per week in the final divorce.   That lasted less than a season - surprise surprise.

dBPDexH moved far away  contact with D is limited only by him.  He rarely visits, sometimes calls, and often makes plans only to cancel them last minute with some excuse or another.  This upsets D very much (as expected).  She feels very unloved and unimportant.

Even when she does get time with him, after she comes back from a visit with him, she is an emotional mess and has a melt down.  

I really try to do my best to support her.  I am certainly not perfect.  

A few days ago dBPDexH canceled Memorial Weekend plans with D.  Two months ago when she visited him, she came back insisting she was going to move in with him.  

Should I email dBPDexH to make him realize how much he hurts her? or just leave it alone?

Should I push for more involvement with him in her life? (a girl does need a father right?)    Or is it better we keep his contact limited (he does a good job all by himself).  

Any help is appreciated  

[Turkish]

13 is tough enough age, much less having to deal with an opposite sex parent's detachment and emotional unavailability (thanks a lot xFIL!)

I don't read any FOG on your part towards your dBPDexH (is your daughter aware of the dX?), but of course you hurt because your child is hurt. I'm about 10 years away from possibly(probably) having to deal with similar issues at that age, but my inclination is that:

Or is it better we keep his contact limited (he does a good job all by himself)

My T told me about my anger towards my uBPDx, "I sense a lot of it stems from you expecting her to be who she is not. Accept who she is." A lot of this had to do with the way she was with our kids... . What you can do is take care of your daughter on your side. Can you really control what happens when she is with him?

(a girl does need a father right?

A healthy father or parent. Witness the amount of grief and pain on the Healing and Coping Board from members coming here trying to understand the abuses of their PD'd parents (whether diagnosed or not). I really wonder if I would be here if I had had a healthy mother. Unlike your D, I didn't have a loving opposite parent to take care of me  

[mywifecrazy]

Why would you want to give away any of your primary custody time? He is UNHEALTHY! You already see that in the way he's acting. Sounds to me like he's not too interested in having a relationship with his daughter. You can't change him. Forget CO-parenting and look,at it as parallel parenting. Your daughter has a better chance of growing up HEALTHY if she is around the HEALTHY parent... . YOU!

My uBPDxw is the same way. She abandoned the kids to me and only sees them every other weekend. I am one of the few lucky Dads that has primary custody and I thank the good Lord above for that. I wouldn't change our custody agreement no matter what. She is so UNHEALTHY  that I worry about how she effects my kids negatively even though she is only with them every other weekend.

The best thing you can do is just love your daughter with everything you got. Provide her with the stability she needs. Her Dad sure as hell is NOT going to be the stabilizing parent that she needs.

DONT GIVE UP ANY OF YOUR CUSTODY!   

[livednlearned]

The healthiest thing you could do for D13 is help her process her disappointment and sadness in healthy ways. Sometimes we try to distract our kids from feeling the hurt they feel, or we buy things for them. You're thinking that having her father in her life might fix things.

But kids just grow up thinking that's what they should do to feel better -- numb themselves, distract themselves, avoid their feelings, find a guy who says they love them but doesn't pay attention to them.

I had a father in my life, and he taught me to love unavailable men.

The best thing you can give your D is a healthy you. 

[needPeace]

Thank you everyone!  I needed to hear this.

Its hard to see clearly sometimes, especially when so few around me really seem to understand how toxic and unhealthy he is and can be.   

Some of my friends, also divorced single moms, say I should send her to him for the summer, so they both get an idea of what its really like - but I am not willing to sacrifice my child to teach her a lesson (forget ever teaching my ex a lesson).

I have been very concerned that not having a father in her life would be a horrible thing but you are right having an emotionally chaotic person around her is no good at all.

[livednlearned]

Thank you everyone!  I needed to hear this.

Its hard to see clearly sometimes, especially when so few around me really seem to understand how toxic and unhealthy he is and can be.   

Some of my friends, also divorced single moms, say I should send her to him for the summer, so they both get an idea of what its really like - but I am not willing to sacrifice my child to teach her a lesson (forget ever teaching my ex a lesson).

I have been very concerned that not having a father in her life would be a horrible thing but you are right having an emotionally chaotic person around her is no good at all.

Your friends don't know. Your daughter, if you sent her to live with him for the summer, might learn that you can't be trusted to protect her. Sometimes the lessons our kids learn are different than what we expected.

When she comes back from visiting him and is an emotional mess and has a meltdown, how do you respond?

[mywifecrazy]

Some of my friends, also divorced single moms, say I should send her to him for the summer, so they both get an idea of what its really like

I'm sorry but that's HORRIBLE advice!

but I am not willing to sacrifice my child to teach her a lesson (forget ever teaching my ex a lesson).

You are right you don't sacrifice your child and put them in a situation to be hurt. The best lesson your child can learn is all the POSITIVE things they will learn being around the parent that LOVES THEM and WANTS THEM ... . You!

[Turkish]

Thank you everyone!  I needed to hear this.

Its hard to see clearly sometimes, especially when so few around me really seem to understand how toxic and unhealthy he is and can be.   

Some of my friends, also divorced single moms, say I should send her to him for the summer, so they both get an idea of what its really like - but I am not willing to sacrifice my child to teach her a lesson (forget ever teaching my ex a lesson).

I applaud you on your strength of character!

[needPeace]

Your friends don't know. Your daughter, if you sent her to live with him for the summer, might learn that you can't be trusted to protect her. Sometimes the lessons our kids learn are different than what we expected.

When she comes back from visiting him and is an emotional mess and has a meltdown, how do you respond?

So true - didn't even really consider that front of mind  

I do my best to comfort and validate her experience and also caution her with her dad's big promises and how they typically turn out.

Sadly I am not that consistent.  This past time I got very frustrated and expressed myself a bit too much on what I think of her father.

[livednlearned]

Sadly I am not that consistent.  This past time I got very frustrated and expressed myself a bit too much on what I think of her father.

This is so complex. I've been working with my therapist around this exact topic. How much to say, what to say. How to say it.

Tiptoeing around the truth really hurt my son. My ex sent forwarded some inappropriate emails to S12 (from me to N/BPDx). With coaching from my T, I had a heart to heart that gave my son something he really needed. It's one thing to validate, but there's another part -- confirming for them the reality of what is happening. I had to work closely with my T to figure out that language so that it was about S12's reality and not just me saying something about his dad. Because my son knew something was seriously wrong. I tiptoed so far around what the "it" was that S12 was getting angry with me, thinking he was on his own to sort it all out.

[Nope]

Tiptoeing around the truth really hurt my son. My ex sent forwarded some inappropriate emails to S12 (from me to N/BPDx). With coaching from my T, I had a heart to heart that gave my son something he really needed. It's one thing to validate, but there's another part -- confirming for them the reality of what is happening. I had to work closely with my T to figure out that language so that it was about S12's reality and not just me saying something about his dad. Because my son knew something was seriously wrong. I tiptoed so far around what the "it" was that S12 was getting angry with me, thinking he was on his own to sort it all out.

We have not said so much as one word to the kids about their mom or court. Over Christmas SS9 saw my DF texting his BPD mom about something and while reading one of the texts my DF said, in a bewildered and aggravated tone, "What?" SS9, from where he was playing soldiers under the dining room table suddenly pipes in with, "Mommy lies sometimes." My DF looked at me in a panic not knowing how to respond. So I just calmly said, "We know, kiddo." That's really the first time he's ever given us something specific to validate for him.

In hindsight now, finding out from his teachers that this little boy actually knows every single nuance of what is going on with court, I'm realizing that sitting down with him and at least telling him he wasn't alone in dealing with this would have been in his best interests. But we literally had no idea what he knew or what he was seeing and didn't want to do anything to poison him against his mother.

I think it's very important to be age-appropriate in our conversations. But I don't think pretending to be blind does our kids any favors. And the sooner they realize the disordered parent's behavior is not their fault and no reflection on them the better,

[livednlearned]

Tiptoeing around the truth really hurt my son. My ex sent forwarded some inappropriate emails to S12 (from me to N/BPDx). With coaching from my T, I had a heart to heart that gave my son something he really needed. It's one thing to validate, but there's another part -- confirming for them the reality of what is happening. I had to work closely with my T to figure out that language so that it was about S12's reality and not just me saying something about his dad. Because my son knew something was seriously wrong. I tiptoed so far around what the "it" was that S12 was getting angry with me, thinking he was on his own to sort it all out.

We have not said so much as one word to the kids about their mom or court. Over Christmas SS9 saw my DF texting his BPD mom about something and while reading one of the texts my DF said, in a bewildered and aggravated tone, "What?" SS9, from where he was playing soldiers under the dining room table suddenly pipes in with, "Mommy lies sometimes." My DF looked at me in a panic not knowing how to respond. So I just calmly said, "We know, kiddo." That's really the first time he's ever given us something specific to validate for him.

In hindsight now, finding out from his teachers that this little boy actually knows every single nuance of what is going on with court, I'm realizing that sitting down with him and at least telling him he wasn't alone in dealing with this would have been in his best interests. But we literally had no idea what he knew or what he was seeing and didn't want to do anything to poison him against his mother.

I think it's very important to be age-appropriate in our conversations. But I don't think pretending to be blind does our kids any favors. And the sooner they realize the disordered parent's behavior is not their fault and no reflection on them the better,

It's good that you confirmed for SS9 that you knew about the lying.

Sometimes I think my own stunted emotions -- growing up in a home where no one talked about feelings -- makes me underestimate how much emotional language is circling around, regardless of whether anything is being said aloud. When S12 and I finally talked, he was hurting because he "learned" from me that we don't talk about his dad. So he clammed up and had no one to talk to -- to say, "Tonight dad said something really strange, and I didn't want him to get mad at me so I just said what he wanted to hear. But I felt bad because I was lying, and one point I felt scared because I thought he was going to find out it was a lie."

I also messed him up about trust -- he could tell we weren't talking about something important, and that made him think I wasn't someone he could trust. Now that we've talked, it's like he's a new kid. Yesterday he brought up the topic of trust half a dozen times. "You must trust me if you let me stay home alone." "Some kids aren't allowed to take their cellphones to school but you let me because you trust me." I think he's processing how trust is about having confidence in someone who can handle the responsibility.

I don't know if this is helpful to anyone else because we all have our own specific circumstances, particularly around court proceedings, custody arrangements, and our kids' relationships with their BPD parent, but for me what really mattered was having the right intentions when I talked to S12.

I had to really be focused on seeing things through his eyes. The email N/BPDx forwarded S12 was really a betrayal for me, but I had to set those feelings aside and let S12 process why his dad would involve him and see things from his perspective. I could feel in our conversation (it went almost 3 hours) when I shifted to the conversation being about me, it was like the connection broke.

Asking him questions instead of telling him things helped reconnect us. When we were connected, I could talk about his dad in very straightforward terms. It didn't feel like "poison" because S12 and I were in the same emotional place. He was explaining what he felt about his dad and their interactions, and I was giving him language and context.

For example, in the emails I sent N/BPDx, I had been trying to appease him. N/BPDx had been very drunk and mean to me and S12 one night. It was the first night I ever said, "walking on eggshells" to describe to N/BPDx how it felt living with him. He became abusive and then gave us the silent treatment for 5 days. In my email, I was begging for him to talk to me, asking him to forgive me, apologizing for getting angry. The usual drill.  

When I asked S12 what he thought was going on in the email, he said he didn't know what to believe because his dad lied a lot. He didn't know whether to believe the emails were even real. I told them they were. He wanted to know why his dad would send emails from 4 years ago. I asked him if he had any ideas, based on what he knows about his dad. He said he thought it was to get him to hate me. I asked him why his dad would want that. S12 said "Because he thinks if I love only him, I can't love you. Then you'll feel as bad as he does."

needPeace, my situation is a little different than yours because n/BPDx claimed to want to spend time seeing S12 and spent a lot of time in court saying so. But he did so many things to sabotage himself he kept losing time. He was down to 16 hours a month when I suspended visitation. The judge reinstated it. N/BPDx never contacted me to set up the schedule. My T coached me on telling S12 this. She felt it was important that S12 process this as a kid, that it was more important he trusted me and dealt with his feelings now than grow up into an adult who felt confused about his relationship with a complicated dad. She said S12 would end up angry with me if I sugar coated it.

It wasn't hard for S12 to hear. He already knows his dad is sick. I just confirmed his reality. He told me it didn't make him sad because he already knew there was something wrong with his dad -- and that's the part that really counts. He knew it was his dad who has issues, not S12. He said he feels pity for his dad, because he's all alone and only has alcohol.

I hope I haven't hijacked your post, needPeace. I just see similarities between your desire to give D what I wanted to give S, which is the illusion that their BPD parent was somehow ok.

Kids know something is wrong. They might not know what it is, but they know. We have to figure out a way to let them know they're right, that it isn't them. And let them feel bad if that's how they feel -- it's appropriate to feel bad. That's what I had to learn.