Divorce Support Forums: Mind games

Geez, JBar, don't pretend that you have any experience in anything involving children. You're doing more harm than good here.

Please be aware that JBar has a political agenda. He wants to change community property laws in the state of Texas because he believes, after having scared his wife into leaving the country, (threatening to falsely swear out a warrant against her to get her committed to a mental institition and claiming to her that she'd never find a lawyer to represent her against him if she dared to file for divorce)... he's afraid that if he divorced her, he might lose some little bit of his disability payment. He's been not working and receiving full disability for the past 17 years.

They have no children, but because no lawyer will be willing to promise him the sun, moon & stars (actually, no ethical lawyer will ever PROMISE anything at all), he's afraid to file for divorce, so he has a proposal he wants ot make to the Texas legislature to fix the laws so that he believes he would be guranteed to not lose what HE has. He is off his psychiatric meds. He has never mentioned any education in any of the relevent issues of any sort, other than his own personal research (and resulting fear of the community property laws which has spurred him into this bizarre campaign), or any education, whatsoever, which would give him any basis from which to form the opinions he's given. He claims "some experience in these matters", so I thought I'd better let you konw about the source of his experience.

He ahs admitted all this on another website, and when I once got concerned about the advice he'd given to someone else, I asked him about his background to give us some basis of whether to agree or not with what he was claiming.

He & his wife have no kids, and have been living separate for years even before she fled the country.

OK... your question had to do with kids.

You've already got a lawyer, you're already separated, and I assume you're already dealing with the financial issues that are at the forefront of JBar's agenda. Your top priority has to be the well being of those children, particularly since you've got one who was already dealing with serious issues of depression and self-mutilation (not for "fashion" purposes like so many kids do these days, but as a result of depression).

You know that all the kids, the whole family, probably, needs counseling, especially this one with the cutting behaviors.

Your underlying question was whether you should hire a specialized therapist to provide enough information to help your lawyer in any custody issues. That is probably a wise idea. A wiser idea would be to ask your lawyer for referrals. They'll have a good idea of who might be an appropriate court-appointed custody evaluator.

Something needs to be done immediately about their mother's attempt to alienate you. Google (or Ask Jeeves, or whatever) "Parental Alienation Syndrome", and "Malicious Mothering Syndrome" (sometimes also called "divorce related malicious mothering syndrome"). You'll have a better idea of what you're dealing with.

My husband had to deal with this with his ex as she fed all kinds of nastiness ot the kids. Luckily, their therapist says there is no hint of "parental alienation syndrome", which he seems to define as being all based upon whether the CHILDREN feel alienated more than any normal child (in our case also, teens). Yes, these teens are closer to my husband than most, but he was always thier primary parent. She's their sports promoter & stage mother, but he was always the one who fed & clothed them & kept them warm & safe & clean. After work, she'd be lying on the sofa or schlepping them around town for the various activities she scheduled for them, while my husband had to do the "second shift" stuff that most working mothers complain about... the cooking, cleaning, homework, and real parenting duties. So of course, the kids were not alienated from him, but given what they'd had with him before, they were more reserved then they SHOULD have been, which is frustrating for him. And of course, the fact that they aren't alienated had nothing to do with their mother not TRYING to accomplish that. In a full year & a half of influence over them (6 months where she let them have zero contact at all and even kidnapped them for a while), she was not able to alienate them... THANK GOD.

OK, in our research on the issue, we've discovered a few things. First, there is something called a "high conflict" divorce, and this is rare. It will result in repeated returns to court over custody issues & etc. It's recognizeable by many characteristics. One... the high conflict partner is going through lawyers like kleenex... (my husband's ex had 4 lawyers in one year). Second, they don't agree to anything, even reasonable things (my husband's ex turned down real generous offers of settlement, insisting they weren't enough & she needed a court determination of the issues... she ended up with less than half of what my husband had offered her in property settlement). Then, they make false claims of various things... violence, non-support, etc (my husband went through this and is still going through it even though the divorce is over & he's re-married... I think you've seen this part, already, from your stbx). Also, they seem to have 3 different personality disorders... narcissistic, Sociopathic, or borderline. These are diagnoseable with the current version of the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic & statistical manual, but a non-professional shouldn't try to diagnose and treat it... still, a self-assesment in order to try to UNDERSTAND and PREDICT the seemingly unpredictable behavior, even if there's no way YOU can TREAT it, is a great thing.

We had kind of looked up my husband's ex's behavior in these books & on the internet, and were stunned to see how much she did that was classic narcissist behavior. It was amazing, and then when we got the formal diagnosis, it was not a surprise.

BUT looking it up on the internet, reading a few books about narcissists, narcissistic families (and we've also read the "stop walking on eggshells" book about helpng family members of borderline personality disordered people, and "the sociopath next door",... which helped us understand the differences between my husband's ex and some of the other types who are impossible to live with)... well, it's helped us learn to deal with it.

One of teh best tips we ever got was to NOT let tehse people, who lie like it's second nature and don't even seem to think it's wrong... was to never let them have a SHORT hearing or meeting... becasue in a SHORT span of time, their true colors don't show. It takes a little while of letting them rant & rave before a rational listener realizes there are some holes in thier story, and starts asking questions that they can't or won't answer.

My husband has learned to simply stay quiet during hearings and let her go "off". Sooner or later, if the judge gives the case enough time, she hangs herself. Every hearing, the judges (oh yeah, she's insulted a few so much that they took themselves off the case... so we've not only seen a multiple change of lawyer thing goign on, but also a multiple change of judge thing as well)... will give an indication of what they intend to do. IF she sees it going partly her way, she'll push for more, and the judges see what's up and realize their initial inclination was wrong, and end up asking her for details of why she wants MORE, and they end u pchanging their minds in my husband's direction... OR they'll have an initial inclination in any one area that's not favorable to her, and ask her to defend her position, and rather than letting her lawyer speak (wonderful narcissistic characteristic, she doesn't believe anyone else can be an authority better than her, so she can't shut up in court and overtalks her own lawyer!)... she will speak up, with that nasty tone of voice like no one in the world would dare defy her, and the judge of the moment will decide that's exactly what he or she is going to do!

It's been great, but only after a year & a half worth of heartbreak, because in the first several hearings, my hsuband hadn't tried to figure it out & was relying on his lawyer to do it, and so the short, sweet hearings repeatedly came up with nonsense... the judges deferred rulings on temporary custody arrangements, which allowed the ex to withhold more & more time with the kids until she finally kidnapped them. Even the psychotherapist had no idea how to fix it, becasue she ahd the kids convinced that they'd die if they didn't live with her in the family house.

They were not "officially" alienated from him, but they sure didn't want to LIVE with him, even though they had no idea how his house was other than through his ex's reports to them of how living with him would be awful for them.

So... I guess you can see that my husband (and now I) have been through some very similar things. Being accused of being a deadbeat, being accused of being violent, being accused of all kinds of things. The mother is now telling the boys that they are her "man of the house", and they have way more responsibility for taking care of her than any teen shoudl ever feel for anything, let alone takign care of their mothers.

You need to figure out how to get that self-mutilating teen out of her household and into a normal environment where therapy might not be undone every time he comes home and hears more nonsense about how half of his DNA is evil, and the burden of being the man of the house is placed upon his shoulders. You need to get the other one out of there so that she doesn't put a guilt trip on.

So yes, hire a custody evaluator. Better yet, for the best interests of these boys, and to give them a voice in court, hire a guardian ad litem.

Even if you were together with her, dealing with a child who was clinically depressed, threatening suicide and self-mutilating, would be really heartbreaking and tough, so being apart, battling with her and dealing with it at the same time is awful.

My husband felt guilty about leaving before the kids were adults becasue tehre were things (thank god, not mental illness for them, but other really vital things) about them becoming adults that she really turned into something wrong... but every time he brought up this concern, he & I would talk and he'd remember that being together in that household was not doing any good any more, and teh ONLY hope these kids had of anythign normal going on in their lives was for him to escape from the household where she had organized them into the stage family from hell... and engage in this battle with her to get some reasonable amount of contact with them, so that they'd have a normal place to come to, a safe haven, where they could learn how the world really works once the disney-esque gravy train of sports & stage accolades stops and the real work of learnign to be an adult starts (sorry... our own problem involves their understanding of priorities, budgets, money, and that the rest of the world does NOT live for the sole purpose of sinking the perfect basket or winning Miss Teen whatever... I know your problems with the kids are much deeper and more troubling ... but when you're looking into the future and watching someone really mess with your kids, it doesn't matter whether it's a LITTLE messing or a HUGE messing, it's STILL wrong and it's STILL somethign that brings out the lion in you).

You need to work to protect those kids of yours from the maliciosu stuff she's doing right now. They know that you are not bad or evil, becasue they grew up with you. And if she convinced them otherwise, then she is also convincing them that THEY are half bad or evil, becasue half their DNA comes from you, half their BEING is from YOU. It's simply evil for another person to work to alienate the kids from the other parent this way, but the trick seems to be not to engage in the fight and use the kids as a rope in a tug of war... don't fight this war, or play this game... wahtever analogy you choose... on HER battlefield, with HER game rules. HER rules of engagement are what is the problem.

So figure her out, and figure out how to counteract her nastiness without retailating with nastiness of your own. It's really tough, and maybe a counselor can help with that.

I can tell you, my husband was instructed to spend a little while being a Disney Dad, coming up with an exciting activity for every stupid minute they spent together rather than doing the studying, talking abotu their futures, etc, that he was used to doing and wanted to do. He was told NOT to be a "real" father, but to be a "disney dad", becasue that was what this woman was forcing him to be. It's sad, but it worked. Now the kids like him, realize that he didn't go nuts when he walked out on the family house, and all kinds of good things are happening... not the least of which is that they're craving the REAL dad time with him again, and ASKING for his help with homework and future plans and learning to drive and deciding their class schedule and talking about thier college budgets & etc.

After a year & a half of near total estrangement, it only took a half a year to get back to normal... or really, BETTER than what was considered normal in their family when their parents were together. Sadly, they couldn't have a "real" normal existence when thier parents were together.

You don't have a year & a half to dilly-dally over wehther or not the courts will force the kids to spend time with you or force her to stop talking to them abotu inappropriate issues. Your depressed son might not have that much time for his parents ot work it out and teh court to dither around with not making a decision, so you tak ethe bull by the horns and ask your attorney to get the court to REQUIRE a custody evaluation, REQUIRE intervention on the depressed child, REQUIRE significant time in your house for the child who thinks he needs to be his mother's "man of the house" now, and REQUIRE a GAL, if that's what it will take for those kids to have a voice in the decisions taht are being made about thier lives.

Good luck and keep us up to date on what happens with your family.