Stepparent Parental Alienation?
I have posted before about my situation. Basically, the mom has some kind of personality disorder that I think is either BPD or narcissist or something. There is a whole story I already posted about how she ruined her first husband's life, attempted to ruin my DH's life, and when that failed, she alienated his adopted daughter (he adoped her because she drove the original man entirely out of her life) completely out of his life and she has poisoned her son against me.
People like this have no logic or common sense. It was okay for her to snag a new man (new supply), get seriously involved with him and everyone knew it, have DH move out, and simply be waiting out the time period to file for divorce...but it wasn't okay that once she started dating someone, he met me. She decided she was the victim, tried and failed to convince everyone of this narrative but they didn't buy it, and although she was dating this new man (who was perfect supply: a wealthy doctor with a million dollar mansion) she literally went around trying to convince people that him meeting and getting to know me in the last few months of their separation (after they had already moved out and had esablished separate everything, separate lives) was the cause of their marriage ending, it was all perfect and wonderful until me (again, no. They already had a legal separation notarized in the court, separate residences and bank accounts and all of the above, and she was the first one to go out and find someone new). Complete batshit insanity. She married her rich doctor by the way not two months after the papers were signed, in an elaborate wedding that rivaled royalty, that clearly took a long time to plan. DH and I meanwhile dated for two years before we got married.
She has completely turned her son (15) against me. I've described his behavior in earlier posts. He won't speak to me, have anyhing to do with me, ignores me, and is obsessively fixated on his dad. I use the word fixated because in studying things further, I feel as a teacher who has worked with all kinds of children of all ages for over a decade and as a mother with an intuition that his behavior is unhealthy and in some ways, resembles quiet BPD. His pissy, snobby, disdainful "I can't believe I have to dignify these peasants with my presence" attitude is like an aura. He really is I think carrying on, based on his behavior, splitting: everything is all good, or all bad. And I happen to fall into the latter category.
The biggest part is how after a lot of study and consideration, his behavior is beyond age-inappropriate. It would be more expected for a young child to cling to their parent, but even young children have some moments where they go off on their own. He is both clingy like a very young child, but on a whole other level. From the moment he arrives, to the moment he leaves, he has to have his dad's 100% undivided attention. I am not exaggerating when I say he expects, demands his father to sit next to him on that couch from the time he arrives until the time he leaves, save going to sleep and waking up.
It is draining just to observe. It is very much in line with what I know about how BPD causes people to fixate intensely on one person and attach themselves to this person and absolutely feed off their attention and energy until they are a withered husk. Even if he is playing on his phone or texting a friend, his dad is required to sit right. fucking. there. If I go into the room and ask DH a question, the boy adopts this pinched "I just smelled dog poop" expression to passive aggressively cue his dad to return his attention to him at once. This will be followed by a sigh if the first hint isn't taken. Then, he will simply just start talking over me as if I am not there. Even from other rooms, I can hear the boy, though he is three years away from being old enough to serve in the armed forces, crying out, "Dad! Dad! Dad!" with every sentence he starts to command maximum attention, in the same way a toddler grabs your face and pulls it into your face. If DH gets up to go to the bathroom, the boy will often follow him, wait by the door anxiously until he finishes, to resume crying out, "Dad! Dad!" and doing everything he can to keep his attention.
He has rejected me completely. He has rejected my daughters via that pissy "I smell dog poop" expression, the dramatic sigh, and DH's rushing in to scold the children for bothering him and sending them away.
I am SO resentful over the weekends because when the boy arrives here, it isn't just a teenage boy visiting his dad. It is BPD entering ino my home. It is the toxic, baffling, opportunistic grasp of his sick in the head mother entering into my home. And he is here by the way every weekend. From Saturday morning until Sunday night, DH ignores me so he can give his 100% uninterrupted focus to his son. I am so unwelcome and unwanted and alienated that I feel like a stranger in my own home, that I might as well be at a hotel.
DH is horribly codependent, which is how he ended up with a psycho in the first place. For him, bowling down to and enabling psychologically pathological behaviors is second nature. I've talked to him about this as gently as possible and the first thing he does is deny any of it is true, what i'm sharing that I've observed. Then he will grudgingly admit that some of it MAY be true. But then comes the endless flow of rationalizations, justifications. Then back into denial. I have explained to him, if he sits back and chooses to enable instead of lead and re-teach and help the boy heal and get free of his mother's pathological behaviors, then the fella is being set up to have an incredibly difficult life. But he won't. He is frozen in a pattern after having experienced abuse for so many years. In a healthy situation, like our occasional disagreements or stuff arises with my daughter he is also raising, he will assert himself, lead, and re-teach. But when it comes to maladaptive behavior? He lapses into freeze mode, survival mode. It is an instinct. Just let them be where they are, let them do what they are doing, it is better to keep the peace than rock the boat because rocking the boat means attack, hurt, damage, abuse. And for him, his main concern is giving his son everything he wants, even if it isn't healthy, because if he doens't give him what he wants, then this may cause him to be disliked and have the boy turn away from him.
this is beginning to really challenge our marriage and this is really frustrating because that is exactly what the ex wants...she has groomed and conditioned her son to come over here, have a snobby, rotten attitude, alienate me, come between me and my husband by sucking the life out of him and pushing me away. There just isn't a scenario where the ex doesn't win and continue to visit her abuse and pathological behavior upon us.
i just needed to vent. If anyone has any insight into this or has experienced this, please feel free to share. I am grateful and i thank you so much for reading this.
Just something to add... even
Just something to add... even during summers when he is here for a week, two weeks, at a time, the same obsessive fixated behavior for 100% attention still remains. And I have tried to suggest to DH that we try to get him on a 50/50 schedule so with a prolonged period of time we can try to reteach and undo some of the damage inflicted by his mother. But DH won't have it. He doesn't want to upset and set off his ex's insanity because that would be asking her to give up some measure of control and this would cause her to fly into an episode and hurt him and the child.
So of course I have no
So of course I have no authority and I don't know this person, but given your other post, she absolutely will not change. And as a person who had a BPD mother, I have to say I think it gets worse over time, or did in that case. The best case scenario is when they do find somebody else to suck dry and leave you out of the drama for a bit. I'll also repeat to you with somebody said to me about my YSD: you cannot care more than the bio parents care. And if they don't take it seriously and work to change it, it will never be changed. I don't think 50-50 would even solve it. He's right that she probably would fly off the handle. And her going nuts about that would also further and trench behaviors in your SS. And even if you could get him to learn a few things, it's way more likely that he would just mirror some behaviors for you rather than really change. You can't be the driving force of change in this family. If your DH is not willing to see his behaviors contributing to the dynamic it really won't ever change. Best case scenario, IMO, is that your DHC is his SS outside the home. Or you get super into camping and are gone on the weekends that SS is there. But yeah, these dynamics tend not to change. People are their patterns.
I can commisserate. The BM in
I can commisserate. The BM in my life has "borderline tendencies" as identified by four different counselors I have seen. She also has many classic hallmarks of BPD - violent mood swings, excessive spending, excessing gambling, binge eating, prescription drug abuse, constantly feeling that people are out to get her, being super close with people and then totally discarding them over some perceived slight. She also has a completely enmeshed relationship with one of my SSs...to the point where they looked like boyfriend and girlfriend in photos with one another, rather than mother and son.
She went nuts when DH and I got engaged and we went to a couples counselor who told me that I should seriously consider walking away because "she won't change, she will only get worse."
She filed for divorce after she met ex husband #2 (she also filed for divorce from ex husband #2 after she met her current boyfriend, future husband #3), but despite that, she told overly dramatic SS that DH "caused the divorce" after DH and I got married and provided a comfortable home for SSs.
My DH isn't co-dependent, I don't think, but he is a passive, people pleaser. I think MIL has narc tendencies, so he was almost trained to believe that personality disordered people are normal.
The only advise I have is to avoid any contact with BM and disengage from your stepson. It makes for a less than ideal experience when your SS is around, but you won't change BM, so the best you can do is avoid her. You also have to have a heart-to-heart with your husband about creating strong boundaries with BM and on the things you absolutely can't tolerate. This is his issue to manage and he should keep it as far away from you as possible, if he wants to stay married to you.
In my case, BM pretty successfully alienated SKids from DH. They still have a relationship with him, but it's defintely not a parental relationship. They come and spend time with him, but also tell him all the things he's doing wrong, and demand he spend more money on them. We also know nothing about what goes on at their home with BM...meaning we know very little about them. They don't feel like part of my family. DH and I now have a daughter and Skids like her, but they definitely do not make any effort with her, other than the four days a month they are with us. Her birthday was last week and both Skids knew it was her birthday, but neither reached out to DH. We're having cake for her with them this weekend and I'm sure MIL and BIL will make the discussion all about skids.
That's my biggest annoyance right now, that MIL and BIL feel the need to meddle and tell DH that he "doesn't love his children enough". Both BIL and MIL took them on vacation this year...without telling DH about it, because they "felt bad" that BM got divorced for a second time. They also both love to tell DH all the things he "should" be doing to make sure SSs "feel loved".
It's definitely not the life I envisioned for myself, but everyone's dysfunction will make it all that much easier for me to totally ignore them when we ultimately move out of state when SSs are 18...I'm counting down the days.
I started calling the BM in
I started calling the BM in my life NPD BM quite early on, when I found StepTalk. She undoubtedly has narcissistic personality disorder and her daughters most probably as well. Even DH is convinced that SD26 has a personality disorder, and he tends to see her and SD24 through rose tinted spectacles most of the time. NPD BM embarked on an extreme program of alienation very soon after DH met me - like you - they had been separated for some time - he was living in his own flat - although by the way she carried on, you would have thought I had gone in and swiped DH from under her very long nose.
I don't know if our relationship could have survived having the SDs every weekend - we only had them for the weekend every 2 weeks and that was bad enough. NPD BM pretty much ruined my life for well over a decade. I blessed the time that the SDs stopped coming regularly - probably when they were about 15 and 17. My life really changed for the better at that point. I still have a lot of anger about how they and their mother treated me - and that during the early years, DH was so afraid of losing them that he never had my back. That has changed now and he acknowledges that I got a very rough deal at their hands.
My husband’s exwife played the whole victim
Single mother card in court and to friends to paint hubby as the bad person for divorcing her. The reality was she was an abusive conwoman and batshit crazy.
barely a week after divorce finalised in court and she recieved the divorce papers, she married her ex high school sweetheart whom she'd secretly been having an affair with whilst still married to my husband before they even separated, she got married while my skids were in school who didn't know their mum was slutting around and they come from school and she says "i got married, you have a new dad"
hubby married me 5.5 yrs post divorce but hypocritically sd's now aged 26 & 16 called hubby with a sob story of how he abandoned them to marry me and have 2 kids with me when our kids were 1 & 2. Exwife claimed i was a half naked christian whore and hubby had converged to christianity and she needed to protect her girls.
When the daughters confronted their mum over the lies that clearly I was born and raised muslim just like them, she claimed she was a born again religious woman.
sd's cut off contact 5.5 yrs with my husband and expected he put his life on hold for them. The first day sd called daddy to reconnect after disappearing, she told hubby that bio mums marriage wasn't gonna last long and end up in divorce (yeah bio mum had eldest sd tell hubby this) apparently my husband already remarried with a much younger wife and 2 young kids was supposed to care even remotely for the exwife, my husband eventually told eldest sd that buomum was her current husbands problem and he had no care or concern for her, that his care and concern was to me and our 2 young kids
My XW was bat shit crazy but
My XW was bat shit crazy but fortunately she bared her own ass in front of the Judge during the divorce hearing and he gave me the house.
She was already pregnant before we divorced. Not mine. She miscarried that one and three mos post divorce hearing called me in tears crying that she was pregnant and asking me what she should do. I advised her to have the baby. She and her family are Cathelic, her family devout, her not so much. After all she is an adulterous whore who bred out of wedlock three different times and never had our marriage annuled. Which to this day devastates my XFIL.
Bat shit crazy is actually a good thing to have in the blended family opposition. It gives you a whole lot of control.
IMHO of course.
I'm a long time poster here
Your story definitely resonated with me. North Korea, the BM of my Stepdaughters, has borderline personality disorder. She is very high conflict and while she didn't land a doctor, she is definitely a gold digge and a big time alienator. My SD is now 20 and one is 22. The 22 year old is somehow ok. I really don't know how but she is a college kid and is decent. my 20 year old stepdaughter is a broken person. She completely ruined her. She's a stripper and falls for men on felony probation. As I posted all this past decade about BM and her crazy BPD antics and what she was doing to SD, everyone on here , while sad and I am sad too, predicted with 100 percent accuracy that path she was going to go down. So my advice is strong boundaries with the high conflict ex and guard your heart. Keep your distance from SS.
Our stories are very similar.
Our stories are very similar. Satan has never been officially diagnosed but she is HPD/NPD and is also a Pyschopath, imo. And I know what all that means and I don't take it lightly.
All I can tell you is bide your time and limit your exposure. These people are already damaged and you cannot fix them. Believe me, I tried.
Your SO is the real problem
Your SO is the real problem here. You can make excuses for his behavior but he's allowing his son to make your life miserable and mistreat you. If he set some limits and stopped allowing the nonsense things would be better for you.
I agree with this, 100
I agree with this, 100 percent!
It's ridiculous that he enables his 15 yo son to continue with the shitty behavior and princely attitude. When I read that the son follows his father to the toilet and waits outside, I nearly puked. Toddler behavior.
Yet your H has no problem disciplining YOUR daughters?
Hypocrite. And don't make excuses for him by saying that he's afraid he'll lose his son or the son will turn out like his mum.
I mean, this is all so disrespectful to you and your girls. Honestly I don't know how you put up with it....
In the whole time I was with
In the whole time I was with the ex I never allowed his daughter/wife into my home, or any of my family members homes.
I wasn't going to have madam with her snooty entitled attitude in any of my safe spaces.
I don't know if you would consider staying married but living separately? Then when the kid visits his dad you don't have to witness this sickening situation.
Definately alienation here, also...
BM left BF for a married man and had the NERVE to ask BF to protect her/SS by having nothing to do with the man’s wife when she tried to warn him, even asking BF to threaten to have the man’s wife arrested for stalking; which he did…The poor woman went away in shame….
I met BF years after their divorce, yet BM has tried to break us up several times and using SS to do her dirty work. She has told the court she has/had no problem letting BF have SS (She wouldn’t let him see his son until the “skank” was dumped), just as long as I am gone. She said they co-parented well until BIG BAD CHRISTY came along. Called 911 on BF and told cops I am stealing drugs from my patients and using them…She had SS facetime BF while with me and demanding he break up with me, with her in the background telling BF that SS hates me and if he had any common decency he would leave me.
The only thing that has worked is the court (He has great attorneys) and strict boundaries. BM was told by judge and her new lawyer to stop talking about me since I am not part of the custody case; which is still going on.
I have not seen SS in a very long time. In my other post we had plans to go away this week and BM dumped SS off to BF out of the blue (Shocking since she has refused to let him see BF). SS refuses to have anything to do with me, so I went without them. It s*cks…