D8 doesn't want to see dad

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Hello everyone  ,

it's been a very long time since I've posted here and it has been a long and hard journey. It's been 7 years since my relationship with BPD and narcissistic traits partner ended. We have a daughter together and my stepdaughter (daughter from his previous marriage) remained living with me after he left, she is now 20. At the moment she has no contact with her dad.

Our D8 use to spend every other weekend with dad but since last summer also started to refuse. I've been managing this situation for some months but now he sent me an e-mail saying he is going to pick her up at school one of these days whether she wants to or not.

This situation causes enourmous anxiety in my daughter and her dad does not seem to understand. He blames my family for what is happening and never takes any responsability in the fact that our D8 doesn't want to be with him beacuse of his own beahviour. Which is exactly what happens with his older daugther and most of his family with whom he has mostly no contact.

D8 has been seeing a therapist but due to her age I'm afraid the court will force her to have visits with her father.

Thank you for taking the time to read.
MiaP

[MiaP]

Hello everyone  ,

it's been a very long time since I've posted here and it has been a long and hard journey. It's been 7 years since my relationship with BPD and narcissistic traits partner ended. We have a daughter together and my stepdaughter (daughter from his previous marriage) remained living with me after he left, she is now 20. At the moment she has no contact with her dad.

Our D8 use to spend every other weekend with dad but since last summer also started to refuse. I've been managing this situation for some months but now he sent me an e-mail saying he is going to pick her up at school one of these days whether she wants to or not.

This situation causes enourmous anxiety in my daughter and her dad does not seem to understand. He blames my family for what is happening and never takes any responsability in the fact that our D8 doesn't want to be with him beacuse of his own beahviour. Which is exactly what happens with his older daugther and most of his family with whom he has mostly no contact.

D8 has been seeing a therapist but due to her age I'm afraid the court will force her to have visits with her father.

Thank you for taking the time to read.
MiaP

[kells76]

Hi MiaP, welcome back, though sorry for what brings you back here 

It's good that you have your D8 in therapy. How long has that been going on? Do you have opportunities to meet with her T on your own?

I think I'm seeing in your last posts that there is no official custody agreement or parenting plan between you and D8's dad. Is that still the case?

Either way, has the parenting schedule been consistent (like "his time is every other Wednesday 4-7pm and every other Saturday 10am-7pm, or whatever it is)? If so, is that documented somewhere (on a calendar, in an email...)? And, if the schedule is consistent, how is his adherence to the schedule? 100%? 50%? Other?

In the past, when he has "threatened" to do something, how often did he follow through, and how often did he not follow through?

I know it's a lot of questions -- getting a feel for what options you have right now.

[PearlsBefore]

Stepping outside for a moment, realistically it's been shown time and time again that the best prognosis for a child's success in life is whether they have both parents in their life - so even if your daughter doesn't want to hang out with Dad, it's almost certainly going to be good for her to do so "in some fashion" and know she HAS a Mom and a Dad who both love her (even if one of them is in a really weird histrionic way).

Now that might be supervised, it might just be that you offer you'd love if he'd take her to the playground for some running around while you sit in your car and watch, or asking him to "babysit" her at the local mall while you pretend you have some errand...but in SOME way it's almost certainly in her interests to see her other parent in as "normal" a setting as possible for a pwBPD parent. (Is it also possible to just arrange webcam time for them to chat for a few minutes before dinner every day or something?)

As for the other issue, leaving his daughter from a previous marriage with you when he split...I mean I'm glad you took on the responsibility and hope it all worked out well, but yikes I know a family friend who did that...ended up with their kid, their spouse's kid from a previous marriage AND the spouse's new-fling's kid...raised all three alone. Sympathy, prayers and thoughts.

[MiaP]

Hi there kells76 and  PearlsBefore,

bad reasons bring me here but it's a confort to see that there is always someone willing to take the time and help. It makes me feel less alone navigating this situation.

My daughter started theraphy last summer when she first started saying she didn't want to be with her dad. She had contact with him until November and since then has refused spending time with him completely. I'm the one who takes her to see her T and I do have the opportunity to speak to the T on my own. There was only one appointment that it was her dad who took her and he also had the chance to speak to the terapist on his own. He is always very suspicious that I'm keeping things from him or saying things behind his back so it good that he also has direct access to the T. He would happilly take her there every time but on that occasion D8 complained that she only got to be with T for 10 minutes because dad used up all the time of the apointment.

For a long time there was no official custody arrangement but we now do have a court defined parenting schedule and we make arrangements by e-mail so everything is documented (e-mail is the only form of contact I have with him, we do not even meet each other when picking up or dropping off D8). Before the custody arrangement there was a long period when the situation was exactly the reverse: D8 wanted to be with dad and he simply refused; that is also documented because I would send him e-mails begging him to come spend time with D8, who at the time didn't understand and missed him and he wouldn't. It is actually also documented in the court papers that come with the parenting schedule.

From the time the court papers came out we have stuck consistently with what's defined. I find that he functions better with clear outside imposed rules and guidelines and that works for me too.

Just to give you some background, I do agree that a child is better having both parents in their life. From the moment when we first separated I did everything in my power to ensure our daughter would have us both in her life. It took me a very long time to realise and accept that she would never haver the father I imagined she would. My efforts included (wrongly I now realise) standing psychological abuse, being controlled and even attempts to isolate me from my family. My life at that time was a living hell, I have no other way to describe it. It got to a point where he would showup ar my door, my workplace, calling me at my office. I had to involve the police and change my phone number. All the while having to report to him that the two kids were allright and having to take care of both on my own. At that time I still would take our youngest daughter to see him but it was when I started refusing to stay that he just replied: if you're not staying don't bother to come. To make this clear, he refused to be with his daughter on his own, he wanted to force me to be with him. 

To be honest he does a lot of threats and not always follows through. However, I do always try to work around and diffuse the situations, give alternatives, try to make him understand that D8 is very getting anxious and affected by all of this; I have managed to do that so far but we got to a point where I now believe he wil come and try to pick her up from school against her will. 
   

[Notwendy]

I have a different response to the idea that a child needs to have contact with both parents. Yes, that is the ideal, but included in this ideal is that both parents are not abusive.

Emotional and verbal abuse is not easily discovered or obvious. I think, if a child states they don't want to see a disordered parent on their own- and they have not been subjected to parental alienation, why not consider their reasons?

I grew up with a BPD mother and nobody from outside the family would have any idea what went on in our family. By all appearances, we looked as if we were just a regular family. If we said anything about our mother that suggested otherwise, we were invalidated. People would think we were terrible children to say such a thing about our mother. Of course, don't be silly, your mother loves you.

We eventually learned to not say anything. People didn't believe us if we did. Then, there was the message "of course your mother loves you" "you should love your mother". Actually we were afraid of her and we learned to tolerate her behavior.

You may have no idea what actually goes on when your D is alone with her father. I also think that her anxiety being around him is something to consider.

I don't know what is going on with your D when she's alone with her father but her distress over it shows that she has boundaries. If her feelings and boundaries are dismissed, she will learn to dismiss them as well. If she is told she has to be with her father because he loves her and she should love him, she will learn that his behavior is love and tolerating this is love. This could put her at risk for marrying someone just like him in the future.

Even if there is no proof that your D is being harmed by her father - something is going on that she doesn't feel safe with him. Forcing her to have contact with him will teach her that nobody will stand up for her or protect her. If being with him was not a comfortable situation for you, as an adult, how can one expect an 8 year old to be able to deal with this? I think this needs to be looked into more.

[MiaP]

Notwendy,

I could not agree with you more. Thank you so much for your insight.

Even if she is 8 and can't point out a specific reason why she doesn't want to be with her dad I know him and understand perfectly the pressure he puts on everyone and how he drives everyone away. I knew this would happen sooner or latter but I did not expect it to happen so soon, I have to be honest. I do not want to force her to be with her dad; in fact, all I've done is trying to reason with him and make him understand that this is not good for her, it's not in her interest to force her if she doesn't want to go.

My only concern is that this situation will escalate to a point where she will be forced by the court to have visits with him because as you say, emotional abuse is not obvious and it's very hard to prove as I unfortunately realised when I filed a complaint with the police.

[ForeverDad]

Kells and Notwendy wrote from solid experience.  It is great that your D8 has regular time with her counselor.  Counseling is a good thing.  Counselor will log her concerns about her dad and if necessary be exceedingly useful should you need to go back to court to resolve issues.

D should not be forced to have visits with a problem parent.  That is a potentially conflictual matter.  Counselor input will be helpful to document you are not pressuring or poisoning the child's wishes.

My son had counselors from age 3.5 to about 11 when he 'graduated'.  The counselors had thought he needed counselors only until the divorce was completed but he needed it until mother's overt antics, including disparagement of me, reduced.

At first I was not allowed to speak with the agency because mother claimed I was abusive and since she had temp custody (my county's default assignment) they felt obligated to listen only to her.  This despite I had "dad standard" alternate weekends in the temp order.  Once we had a final decree a couple years later it was made clear to all I could bring my son in his counseling sessions.  As I gained more parenting time, mother lost interest in sessions on her time.

I am an advocate for the problem parent not being pushed to have his/her time, including with the child's counselor.  Remember, this is for the child's counseling, I remember being limited in my summary comments at the start of each session so that my son's time was not cut short.

On the other hand, it would be best for dad to have his own therapy sessions and then the professionals able to share observations amongst themselves, such as when there is a Guardian ad Litem (GAL) or parenting coordinator.

[Notwendy]

It may be something bad or subtle. Actually, I was about 8 when I had the sense that something was different about my family. I don't think I could articulate it. We had a house, and clothing, and food, it wasn't neglect. There were also possibly some subtle things like day dreaming a lot in school, but I still made good grades. Nothing anyone might identify. By age 12, I had an odd feeling that I was "more mature" than my mother, by looking at her behavior. As a teen, it was obvious, but I didn't express it in adult terms.

Although her behavior was overt, (emotional and verbal abuse, anger outbursts, trashing the house) other aspects of it that were not so obvious. She began to enlist me as her emotional caretaker, confiding in me as if I was her peer, not her daughter, and sharing TMI with me and also triangulating me in issues with my father. Trying to get me on "her side" and in addition, triangulating with him when she was angry at me and also blaming me for their issues.

I still wanted a relationship with my father and visited as a family with my own children. I never left my mother alone with my children. I felt OK with visiting as a family as the most disordered behaviors were when she was alone with us as kids. At about the time my kids approached adolescence, I noticed her beginning to also enlist them as her emotional caretakers like she did with me- attempting to get them alone so she would be able to talk to them alone and also triangulate them against me. They started to feel "creepy" around her. It was subtle. She didn't outwardly abuse them. I know she didn't verbally, physically, or emotionally abuse them. She crossed their personal emotional boundaries, enlisting them to meet her own emotional needs.

I have had to have boundaries with her and I allowed my kids to have them too. I wanted to respect their boundaries. They are adults now and know how to manage themselves with her. They are not disrespectful to her- that was important to me as well- but they also know they can respect their own boundaries. Your D does not have to be experiencing overt physical abuse in order to intervene. If she doesn't feel comfortable or safe, that means something.