So this evening was a tough one. I was talking to my 5 year old on the phone, since she's with her dad until the end of Winter Break, and she had me on speaker, and she was telling me how they were just heading back to her dad's house from dinner, and I asked her if her [half] brother was with them, or was he with his other mom? She said he was there with him in the car, and I heard him scoff/mumble to my ex in the background, "Other mom?" As in...he only had one mom, I was crazy, and I clearly wasn't one of the moms. Oh man, did that hurt.
Thing is, for nearly 10 years, I was his "other mom." I did all of the mom things, and he used to even make Mother's Day gifts, or parent gifts, at school for me, and rarely anyone else. Yet since I filed for divorce from his dad, the kid doesn't want anything to do with me. All of my parenting tactics (like, limiting video games and insisting I know about all of his online accounts, and monitoring his phone since I paid for it) were suddenly considered "abusive and controlling" by him, as parroted from my ex's rhetoric. I was accused of "yelling at him all of the time" and of "having a horrible temper that I directed at him alone" when my ex wasn't around. The strong bond we had was no match for parental alienation.
Yes, parental alienation. That thing that stepparents aren't supposed to be able to be subjected to because we're not "real parents" yet...we have to do all of the "real parent" things when the "real parents" can't or just won't. We form real connections, and feel real love for these kids we care for. But when our marriages break up (because approximately 70% of all second marriages -- which this was for my ex -- do), we're expected to just let the kids go, as if they were only ours on loan from the assholes who gave birth to them. And often, the kids are turned against us, because that's what insecure people with diagnosed (came later to find out) personality disorders do. It's horrible. It's damaging. The psychological community consider it worse than child abuse or neglect. Yet it happens. Often. I never thought it would happen to me, but it did.
When my stepkids came to live with my now-ex-husband and myself, my stepson was a few weeks away from turning 6. His older sister was 10 and a few months away from her next birthday, and the kids had been through trauma. Being uprooted from their mom, and having witnessed what they witnessed that led to them being ordered not to live with her anymore, left some damage. But it wasn't the obvious kind. It was the kind that manifested itself in aggression and anxiety in my stepdaughter, and shyness with a touch of cling, from my stepson.
My stepdaughter, despite what she'd been through, was always enmeshed with her mom, and remains that way. She was such a tough kid during the nearly 9 years I raised her. Lots of emotional issues, depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, aggression, and problems keeping friends. My stepson, on the other hand, was just shy and a little sensitive. He had a generally affable personality, and was actually really funny! He seemed well-liked by his peers, made friends easily, and seemed pretty comfortable in the life we were providing for him.
I loved those kids, and especially my stepson, with my whole heart. It's why, even when I started waking up to their dad's issues and abusive treatment toward me, I stayed in my marriage. By the time their dad and I married, I'd been looking after those kids, nearly by myself (and I wish I were exaggerating that, but I'm not) for 4 years. I felt like they were so much mine. I stepped in as their mom because I needed to, and after multiple opportunities to do so, their other parents just weren't stepping up to the plate. I was the only parent at their parent-teacher conferences. I handled all of their doctor's appointments, braces, therapy, emergency room visits, emergency room follow-ups, dentists, eye doctors, playdates, birthday parties, invites to birthday parties, and anything academic. Alllll of the mom stuff. My ex never seemed to be able to make time for those things, and their bio mom seemed un-interested because she had lost physical custody (yet retained joint legal, and just never seemed to exercise it from what I saw).
My stepson started calling me "mom," sometimes, when no one else was around. Whenever someone saw me volunteering in his classroom, or for his Pop Warner football team, or for the Board of his baseball team, or dropping him off at school, or taking him for a med visit, they always just referred to me as his mom and he never corrected them. We had our own jokes, our own routines, and in the last few years when he lived with me, after I'd given birth to his little sister and before I filed for divorce, we felt close. By that time, my ex was constantly traveling for work, and when he was home, he was often drunk, or at the bar drunk. My stepdaughter had moved out the moment she turned 18, in the middle of her senior year, so it was just me, the kids, and 50% of the time, the drunk and abusive husband.
When I started calling my then-husband out on his behavior, I tried to do it in private...or in writing...as much as possible, but sometimes he'd be so verbally abusive to me in front of the kids that I'd simply tell him, also in front of them, that his behavior was unacceptable and I wouldn't tolerate being disrespected. He literally just scoffed at me and threw out more verbal abuse. Then he'd sidebar with my stepson when they both thought I couldn't hear them. He'd tell my stepson that he was planning to get a divorce and move them back to the state they all used to live in, before my ex and I got together and he moved -- the state where the kids' bio-mom still lived and where my ex still had a lot of ties with friends and, turned out, his mistress/high school girlfriend.
Gradually, my stepson started pushing the boundaries at home more and more. Finding loopholes in my parental controls on his video games and phone, which he used to download apps he shouldn't have been looking at at 13, and open additional email addresses that he'd use to make more online profiles so that I couldn't monitor his activity. When I found out, and brought it up to my now-ex, he said, and this is a quote, "You're too hard on him. [The boy] needs some room to breathe without you controlling his every move. He wants to hang out with his friends, talk about girls...maybe smash a little pussie." o.O Yeah. My ex thought it was perfectly acceptable for a 13 year old to be out having sex! Of course, he also sent that to me when he was drunk, at the bar, instead of home, with his family. Fucking mind-boggling. And since I was in the role of "parent" and my ex was in the role of "friend so I can win over this kid and make everyone hate my soon-to-be-ex-wife," well, I lost. Bigtime.
I haven't had a real conversation that didn't include my stepson accusing me shortly of things I didn't do, demanding stuff from me, or saying I was ruining his little sister, in about 18 months. The sweet kid I taught to tie his shoes, throw a football, catch a baseball, and played soccer with, turned to hate me. His dad twisted his reality, made him a victim, sympathized with my stepson when he was frustrated with being parented, and turned my exasperated breaking points, which came on after several, calm requests, in to weak spots that showed just how "unhinged" I was deep down.
I did try and sue for custody of my stepson. I, unsurprisingly, lost spectacularly because while I tried my best, I needed representation and I couldn't afford it. My ex's alcohol abuse and mental instability had been questioned by the court, but because he hadn't gotten in legal trouble, it wasn't strongly considered. Since it had been two years since my stepson's bio-mom had last had a boyfriend beat her up, and the Court really didn't care about her history and saw her as a poor victim of repeated domestic violence, but she was single and living with a long-time friend at the time, the Court thought she was reformed and fine. I knew the burden of proof I was trying to meet was high, but I felt in my gut that as shitty as it felt to be doing what I was doing, and as incredibly stressful as it was, I had to try so that maybe someday my stepson will look back and realize how much I love him.
So now, the boy absolutely won't talk to me. My ex insists it's the boy's decision, but really? I'm pretty sure that if he were to reach out to me, or consider my point of view, not only would he face the wrath of his bio-parents for refusing to subscribe to their narrative that I'm crazy and controlling, but his view of the world would come crashing down.
Still, I'm really, really hopeful that someday he'll come around. I've read a ton of books, and research studies, and listened to seminars, and podcasts, about parental alienation, it's causes, the methods used to encourage it, and how to handle it when you're a "targeted parent" and it's helped some. But this is a long road. It can take years for alienated kids to wake up. So I'll keep sending the holiday presents that I do. And keep occasionally sending a postcard or a text or a voicemail, just to say hi, and check in and leave him a message that says I love him. Maybe one of these days they'll get through.
I'm so, so grateful for my daughter, and a majority of the time, my focus is on her. She's an incredible gift, and I have primary custody of her now that my ex and I are completely divorced. But I still miss "my" son and one day, I hope we'll all be reunited.
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