Don’t know how to respond to my ex’s accusations

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

Hi everyone,

I have received an email from my ex and mother of my children, who exhibits cluster B traits. Responding to her emails is often emotionally challenging. The advice I’ve received here has really helped me stay more grounded.

I probably need to set the stage beforehand by describing two significant events that happened prior to the email in question.

The first one happened just before summer break. My eldest daughter (14) had to take this big exam they have here at the end of middle school. She asked me if she could go at her mom’s for a few days to study without her siblings around to disturb her. I said OK, but discovered that she and her mother had arranged to tell the school that she was sick so that she could study at home. I told my ex that I never allowed this kind of arrangement and that I wanted my daughter to come back to my place. She refused, arguing that it was almost a kidnapping. My daughter came home 2 days later and we’ve since cleared the air between us.

The second thing still relates to my eldest daughter. She had been seeing a therapist regularly for a few years now. Her mother and I took turns taking her there. Her mother regularly assigns new psychological/cognitive diagnoses to my daughter: dyslexia, high potential, autism and the last one is anorexia. My ex described my daughter as not eating anything, just drinking water. My daughter said was an exaggeration and, as far as I’m concerned, it was certainly not a behavior that I have observed at my place. I mean she is sometimes concerned about the number of calories that she should eat and she sometimes complains that she’s not as thin as her friends, but on the other hand she can’t resist cookies, popcorn and burgers. There was for sure some anxiety related to food, so I did think it was a good idea to discuss this with her therapist. But my ex decided that my daughter needed to see someone specialized in teenagers and just cancelled her appointments and went to a new psychologist. I wasn’t involved in this decision in any way, and she started taking our daughter to this new therapist by herself. This happened around the same time the first event occurred.
Ten days ago or so, she just sent me the bills and said that she really wished that I could see that our daughter needs help, and that I weren’t in denial about it. So I asked for clarification: I was excluded from the process of changing my daughter’s therapist; did her message mean that she thinks I should once again be included in my daughter’s psychological care? I said that I would be glad if it happened, and that it was probably a good thing for everyone. I also said that the fact that I didn’t observe the same behavior at my place wasn’t denial, it was just a fact, maybe a relevant one.

Now, her response to that is the email I want to talk about. So my email (although I had my partner read it before sending it etc.) apparently struck a nerve, cause she replied by going back to the first incident I described (the one in which I asked my daughter to come back to my place) for no reason, saying that it was unacceptable of me to "come to [her] apartment to threaten [her] with lawsuits" and that if I ever showed up at her place again "threatening to take the children by force", she would call the police.
The problem is that I never showed up at her place at all, let alone to threaten her. It was all dealt with by texts and a phone call.

Now, that’s the part I don’t know how to deal with. She has lied before in her mail, but it was usually about unspecific things like me being violent, being controlling, neglecting our children, etc. I usually ignore those accusations because responding to them never led to a favorable outcome. But here, it’s different: there is a specific situation that she is describing that she and I know never happened.
What is she trying to achieve, here? Should I respond? If so how?

I might be overthinking this, as usual, but I really want to do right: I don’t want to aggravate her in any way, but I also don’t want to somehow validate the narrative she’s creating. Any advice is welcome!

For info, the rest of her email roughly says that she is tired of me being violent, threatening, unempathetic and controlling, that saying that our kids' behaviors are different at my place is sterile and that she doesn’t want to hear about it, that she went to a new therapist because it was an emergency, and that I wasn’t involved enough in our daughter’s wellbeing anyway. All of these are common complaints that I just intend to ignore as usual.

Thank you all!

[BKDamon]

Hi everyone,

I have received an email from my ex and mother of my children, who exhibits cluster B traits. Responding to her emails is often emotionally challenging. The advice I’ve received here has really helped me stay more grounded.

I probably need to set the stage beforehand by describing two significant events that happened prior to the email in question.

The first one happened just before summer break. My eldest daughter (14) had to take this big exam they have here at the end of middle school. She asked me if she could go at her mom’s for a few days to study without her siblings around to disturb her. I said OK, but discovered that she and her mother had arranged to tell the school that she was sick so that she could study at home. I told my ex that I never allowed this kind of arrangement and that I wanted my daughter to come back to my place. She refused, arguing that it was almost a kidnapping. My daughter came home 2 days later and we’ve since cleared the air between us.

The second thing still relates to my eldest daughter. She had been seeing a therapist regularly for a few years now. Her mother and I took turns taking her there. Her mother regularly assigns new psychological/cognitive diagnoses to my daughter: dyslexia, high potential, autism and the last one is anorexia. My ex described my daughter as not eating anything, just drinking water. My daughter said was an exaggeration and, as far as I’m concerned, it was certainly not a behavior that I have observed at my place. I mean she is sometimes concerned about the number of calories that she should eat and she sometimes complains that she’s not as thin as her friends, but on the other hand she can’t resist cookies, popcorn and burgers. There was for sure some anxiety related to food, so I did think it was a good idea to discuss this with her therapist. But my ex decided that my daughter needed to see someone specialized in teenagers and just cancelled her appointments and went to a new psychologist. I wasn’t involved in this decision in any way, and she started taking our daughter to this new therapist by herself. This happened around the same time the first event occurred.
Ten days ago or so, she just sent me the bills and said that she really wished that I could see that our daughter needs help, and that I weren’t in denial about it. So I asked for clarification: I was excluded from the process of changing my daughter’s therapist; did her message mean that she thinks I should once again be included in my daughter’s psychological care? I said that I would be glad if it happened, and that it was probably a good thing for everyone. I also said that the fact that I didn’t observe the same behavior at my place wasn’t denial, it was just a fact, maybe a relevant one.

Now, her response to that is the email I want to talk about. So my email (although I had my partner read it before sending it etc.) apparently struck a nerve, cause she replied by going back to the first incident I described (the one in which I asked my daughter to come back to my place) for no reason, saying that it was unacceptable of me to "come to [her] apartment to threaten [her] with lawsuits" and that if I ever showed up at her place again "threatening to take the children by force", she would call the police.
The problem is that I never showed up at her place at all, let alone to threaten her. It was all dealt with by texts and a phone call.

Now, that’s the part I don’t know how to deal with. She has lied before in her mail, but it was usually about unspecific things like me being violent, being controlling, neglecting our children, etc. I usually ignore those accusations because responding to them never led to a favorable outcome. But here, it’s different: there is a specific situation that she is describing that she and I know never happened.
What is she trying to achieve, here? Should I respond? If so how?

I might be overthinking this, as usual, but I really want to do right: I don’t want to aggravate her in any way, but I also don’t want to somehow validate the narrative she’s creating. Any advice is welcome!

For info, the rest of her email roughly says that she is tired of me being violent, threatening, unempathetic and controlling, that saying that our kids' behaviors are different at my place is sterile and that she doesn’t want to hear about it, that she went to a new therapist because it was an emergency, and that I wasn’t involved enough in our daughter’s wellbeing anyway. All of these are common complaints that I just intend to ignore as usual.

Thank you all!

[Pinkcamellias]

No advice to offer apart from I wouldn’t respond . She sounds delusional .

[GaGrl]

How frustrating that must be.  Do you think the ex's Cluster B behaviors are escalating? That is, the members of events is delusional?

If you have a text exchange that shows you resolved the situation without face-to-face contact, it's probably best to refrain from replying.

Do you have the ability to meet with the new therapist?

[PeteWitsend]

...
What is she trying to achieve, here? Should I respond? If so how?

...

The acronym (I think it's from Bill Eddy's book on dealing with "High Conflict" people) is B-I-F-F, which stands for Brief Informative Friendly Firm. 

The obvious falsehoods or editorials are intended to knock you off the actual issue and divert to side arguments where the pwBPD can wrestle in the proverbial mud.

Here you might say something like:

"Thanks for your email.  You are perhaps misremembering things, as I never actually went to your apartment on XYZ date. 

Let's focus on the issue at hand, which is why I reached out in the first place.  As you know ABC... and therefore [state your position clearly]."

Refuting an obvious falsehood is always a little fraught with peril.  Sometimes I ignore it completely when I respond, and sometimes that's the better decision.  Sometimes I do state "that is not true" but the risk is then getting dragged into an argument.  You could take the position that you'll refute something once for the record, and then ignore further attempts to get into it. 

When things are getting contentious, maybe remember to keep your phone on record for face-to-face interactions.  I remember one time - and things had been cordial for a while when this happened - BPDxw drove to my place to drop off some antibiotics our daughter was on.  We literally maybe said 12 words to eachother.  She handed me the bag and said I should return it, but I said we'd use up the remaining doses over the weekend, because it was a 3 day weekend.  She said "oh, right." and drove away.

A week later, I got an email saying that in all further face to face meetings between us, she wanted her BF there because I "behaved aggressively" toward her.  I was taken aback by that, and wanted to respond, but just ignored it.  I think over time, while you may feel the urge to refute nonsense like that, you see one party constantly prodding the other with emailed  complaints and insults and the other party not responding and that starts to look bad for the one constantly spewing negativity. 

[PeteWitsend]

I'll add, sometimes I do refute some nonsense if there's an objective way to explain why it wasn't true without getting into "he said/she said."

For example... "I was aggressive?  That's news to me.  I recorded the whole exchange, based on some of your prior false accusations, which you can listen to and refresh your memory" [and attach the audio file]

[BKDamon]

Thanks a lot to all of you,

I did also think about delusion but frankly, it feels more like she's trying to "rewrite history" and paint herself as rhetorical victim, whatever it takes.

@GaGrl: thank you, it is so frustrating! I would say that her cluster B behavior has been increasingly obvious since our separation 4 years ago, but she was rather nice recently in her messages. Not really in the content, but at least in the form. Besides our "little spat" at the beginning of summer, I mean. And even then, maybe an hour after she wrote her accusatory email, she texted to know when I was gonna pick up the kids and her tone was really friendly, almost bubbly. The couple of messages she had sent me since are of the same kind.

I don't know if our text exchange definitely shows that things were resolved without us meeting face-to-face, but I was always with someone during that period (my kids, my partner, my colleagues...) so I could easily disprove her claim.

And yes, fortunately, I'll be taking our daughter to her new therapist on the next appointment. So things have improved on this topic.

@PeteWitsend: thanks for your input. I've read about the BIFF "method", I like it too and it's usually how I try to respond. I completely understand your habit of recording conversations, I have done it in the past and should do it more often. If I were to refute her lie, she would probably change her version of the story and say that I was violent and threatening over the phone, and I'd have no easy way of refuting this claim.

But as you said, and as GaGrl and PinkCamellias advised too, the best solution here is probably to ignore the obvious falsehoods and the email altogether. Plus it'll save me the hassle.

Thanks again to you all!

[ForeverDad]

If you have a text exchange that shows you resolved the situation without face-to-face contact, it's probably best to refrain from replying.

When the other is running on perceptions and factual fumes then usually a reply with facts will not have an impact.  However, as already noted, you would want to have some documentation of what really happened.  Otherwise, a minimal reply similar to "That is not what I remember" may be appropriate, then you make sure you keep copies of what she sent and what you replied (or your documentation).

Typically, if "he said... she said..." without documentation ever makes it to court, the likely result is it may be heard but then set aside as unsubstantiated or secondhand hearsay.

Do you have the ability to meet with the new therapist?

You really ought to have the right to have access to all children's professional and medical records, test results, teachers, counselors, etc.  If need be, that should be a part of the court order.

My ex knew I recorded some of our interactions, typically her ranting and raging, but I never sent her copies.  I was in and out of court for several years, during and after the final decree, but it wasn't until our last hearing when finally I played several episodes of disparagement and playing games with exchanges.

Besides our "little spat" at the beginning of summer, I mean. And even then, maybe an hour after she wrote her accusatory email, she texted to know when I was gonna pick up the kids and her tone was really friendly, almost bubbly. The couple of messages she had sent me since are of the same kind.

She was likely "triggered" by something in her life, perhaps not specifically concerning you?

And yes, fortunately, I'll be taking our daughter to her new therapist on the next appointment. So things have improved on this topic.

Hopefully, you should be able to briefly share (1) that your ex's claims - history and children's issues - are different than yours and (2) you are very involved as a father and are receptive to any insights that benefit your children.  My son's therapist used to spend a couple minutes with me before and/or after my son's sessions.  Hearing from both parents helped his counselors to determine what was really happening.

[PeteWitsend]

...

@PeteWitsend: thanks for your input. I've read about the BIFF "method", I like it too and it's usually how I try to respond. ...

The other advice I received is "ignore the editorial."  Only respond to anything that requires a response.

So, for example, she sends you an email like:
"What time are you picking up the kids?  You better be on time.  It's so unfair to them that you're always showing up late.  Please try to put their needs first and consider someone else's feelings for once other than your own."

You may be tempted to refute all the falsehoods there, but the best response is something simply like "Hi, thanks for your message.  I'll be there at 6."

The benefits of this build up over time.  You might be concerned that leaving these accusations hanging without addressing them lends credence to them, but when someone is looking back over these, they see one partner as argumentative and confrontational, and the other refusing to take the obvious bait in order to maintain peace.  It becomes clear to third parties who is the bitter & unhappy one and who the problem in the relationship is or was. 

[BKDamon]

Hi ForeverDad,

Thank you for your post. Indeed, even though it does still feel very frustrating some times, especially when the content of her emails/messages is so far from the truth, I have internalized the idea that replying with facts doesn't do much, unfortunately.
I used to disprove every single falsehood in her messages while staying BIFF as much as possible. It took me days to refine my replies, for no real benefit. Now I just want to be sure that I don't do me a disservice by not responding to her accusations. So just in case I'll respond that I don't remember ever showing up at here place at that time but there isn't more that he said/she said here.

I don't think my ex ever wanted to permanently exclude me from my daughter's psychological care, she probably just had her idea about our daughter's needs and since neither her former therapist nor I really shared it, she imposed her view.
But yeah, I'm happy that I'll be able to share how my daughter behaves at my place, it's essential as you said to help the therapist determine what's going on.

The other advice I received is "ignore the editorial."  Only respond to anything that requires a response.

This is a good, practical rule that's I'm going to implement from now on, thanks!

I agree with you (and that's exactly what I was thinking a couple of weeks ago): my emails are (to the best I can) simple, factual and have a clear purpose, while hers are negative at best, often demeaning and sometimes even nasty; if a third party were to read of our emails, she wouldn't look too good.