We cannot eliminate those toxic people from our children’s lives

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

I just finished reading a thread and some articles about disengage fathers, goodness how sad. Divorce is never easy no matter how smoothly it goes, throw in a high conflict ex and man the roller coaster never stops. One thing I have learned in my own divorce experience and standing by my current husband and dealing with his uBPDxw is that:

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.

This goes for whoever is having a hard time dealing with an ex.

The ex-spouse may badmouth you and tell your kids that (daddy doesn’t love you anymore he has a new family, yep my DH’s ex said that to their kids) or other horrible things. In the beginning the kids may believe it but If our actions are completely opposite than the bull they are hearing from the BPDs and NPs eventually they will understand and see those people for who they are. And sometimes the kids might even believe the bull but eventually our good, healthy actions will outshine the bad vomit they the BPDs and NPs are spewing. And it can be so hard and sad to watch your children suffer from it but in the end they will be healthier and deal with things in a much healthier way. But if we give in to the toxic bull, live up to it and/or disengage from the kids, they are only left to assume that bull might have been true

Much of what I learned in therapy is that we cannot eliminate those toxic people from our children’s lives, we can only keep the focus on the kids and help them learn to deal with the parent they have. In some cases you can push to have the kids taken from the toxic parent but that is only a short term fix for a long term problem. Maybe they stop seeing mom/dad and grow up in a healthy way but one day they will start to wonder why that parent so easily walked away or maybe they blame us for making it happen, then it is just another set of problems that are much harder to deal with as an adult than learning to deal and cope as a child in a healthy, non-destructive way.

I posted this in another thread but felt like it might be a positive on its own posts. I say this and truly believe as I’ve seen it with my kids and my step-kids but sometimes I have say or read it to remember it when things get really hard.

Swiggle

[Swiggle]

I just finished reading a thread and some articles about disengage fathers, goodness how sad. Divorce is never easy no matter how smoothly it goes, throw in a high conflict ex and man the roller coaster never stops. One thing I have learned in my own divorce experience and standing by my current husband and dealing with his uBPDxw is that:

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.

This goes for whoever is having a hard time dealing with an ex.

The ex-spouse may badmouth you and tell your kids that (daddy doesn’t love you anymore he has a new family, yep my DH’s ex said that to their kids) or other horrible things. In the beginning the kids may believe it but If our actions are completely opposite than the bull they are hearing from the BPDs and NPs eventually they will understand and see those people for who they are. And sometimes the kids might even believe the bull but eventually our good, healthy actions will outshine the bad vomit they the BPDs and NPs are spewing. And it can be so hard and sad to watch your children suffer from it but in the end they will be healthier and deal with things in a much healthier way. But if we give in to the toxic bull, live up to it and/or disengage from the kids, they are only left to assume that bull might have been true

Much of what I learned in therapy is that we cannot eliminate those toxic people from our children’s lives, we can only keep the focus on the kids and help them learn to deal with the parent they have. In some cases you can push to have the kids taken from the toxic parent but that is only a short term fix for a long term problem. Maybe they stop seeing mom/dad and grow up in a healthy way but one day they will start to wonder why that parent so easily walked away or maybe they blame us for making it happen, then it is just another set of problems that are much harder to deal with as an adult than learning to deal and cope as a child in a healthy, non-destructive way.

I posted this in another thread but felt like it might be a positive on its own posts. I say this and truly believe as I’ve seen it with my kids and my step-kids but sometimes I have say or read it to remember it when things get really hard.

Swiggle

[livednlearned]

I struggle with this a lot. Court terminated visitation, so S13 no longer sees his dad. But I'm the one who filed the motion to have it terminated. Even though I filed the order, I was actually in some shock when the judge ruled the way he did. And I didn't feel a sense of "winning" after the hearing. It just felt incredibly sad, although as to be expected, also some relief.

I know S13 will one day be angry at me, although I suspect he will feel conflicted too, because he's so bonded to me, and on some level knows that I kept him safe.

One thing I will say: while terminating visitation made things easier for me, it did not make all of S13's emotional issues go away. My boss, who was in a long-term marriage with someone who had a PD, said that it's likely S13 feels responsible for his dad going away, because on some level, kids are still self-centered and think they cause events in the family despite evidence to the contrary.

It's hard to unpack. It's not common, even here on the boards, for the court to terminate visitation. I'm trying to make sure that we talk about N/BPDx in normal ways, so that there isn't some kind of revisionist history as though he didn't exist. This morning, S13 told a funny story about something that happened when he was with N/BPDx. Just a normal story. I have those stories too -- when times were normal, because there were those times.

I'm hopeful that S13 will heal, not just from his dad not being in his life, but in general. From all the hurts, going all the way back.