Example Statements of an Obsessed Alienator

I don’t intend to beat this subject to death, but I feel that now that the horrific genie is out of the bottle it needs to be properly addressed. Writing this out is also a type of psychic cleansing for me since I feel this has polluted our otherwise stellar life. 

Example Statements of an Obsessed Alienator 

• I love my children. If the court can’t protect them from their abusive father, I will. 

• Even though he’s never abused the children, I know it’s a matter of time. 

• The children are frightened of their father. 

• If they don’t want to see him, I’m not going to force them. 

• They are old enough to make up their own minds.

 This is the last email I received from my ex-wife on February 25, 2008.  

Jim,  

Maddy does not want to go with you. I know Wednesday night is your time and I am fully aware of our custody agreement, I have told Maddy that she is supposed to go with you when it is your time to have with her. She is just not going to be forced anymore. Now that she is getting older she is being more assertive of how she feels and I can’t take the kid and drag her against her will. I really don’t know what else to tell you right now.

  

I have not seen or heard from either of my daughters since receiving this message.

 

So far this year my birthday (actually second year in a row), Father’s Day (actually second year in a row as well - with my ex-wife intentionally planning a barbecue at her house on this day last year, and I only know this because I had minimal contact with my daughters at that time), and finally my daughter’s high school graduation have passed and I did NOT receive any form of communication from any of them. I am forced to ASSUME my daughter graduated since no one in my family received any form of announcement or invitation to the event.

 

I think the facts speak for themselves.

 

 

While we are getting it out there…..

Now that you have read the post on parental alienation syndrome, we welcome any comments that you have on the syndrome itself or on your own experience. However please do not tell us what we needed to do, what we should have done. The situation is painful enough and to be honest we tried so many different avenues, James is right you can’t possibly speak on it unless you have lived through it.

Though I want to encourage people to handle divorce and children properly.  Children should not hear the other parent bad mouth the other parent. I have women who say to me that they don’t do this, but maybe your not saying that the other person is a jerk, but maybe your letting off subtle cues to your kids that make them believe that you don’t feel the other person is worthy.  You need to understand:

1.  Everyone loves differently. Just because you might express your love in a shopping spree, there are many people that don’t equate love with possessions.  The relationship and love that your child shares with the other parent is important and special and should never be degraded.  The other parent may do things differently from you and you may have an issue with it, but the child should not be placed in the middle.

2. Children should not be messengers.  Children should not be calling the other parent and then putting the other parent on the phone.  If you have a problem with your ex, you need to deal with it. You need to talk to that person while your child is out of earshot.  Likewise letters, emails, comments dealing with the other parent should not be shared with the child.

3. Remember the other person. If your child is not with that parent on their birthday, father’s day , mother’s day, etc, make it a point to call that person and have your child wish them well. Don’t have your child show up empty handed at christmas or even thanksgiving. Letting them contribute will make them feel special and feel like it is ugh … not my time to be away from mom or dad.

4. Be an adult about things. Yes you were hurt, yes are angry.  Trust me all of us that have been divorced have been there, just don’t let it show in front of your kids.  Talk with a girlfriend while your kids are away, go to a support group.

5. Don’t let family members talk bad about the other parent either, or friends for that matter.  I have had many conversations about my family on this one.   Some of my family members have been guilty of trying to alienate.  Family members may seem like they are helping you out by jumping to your side, but really it is the child that gets lost.

6. Contact your local court, they may have a co-parenting class. Encourage your ex to attend it.

7.  Make sure your child is safe, but don’t pry and don’t keep calling while they are away.  Ask important questions but it is not your job to inquire about every single detail while they were away.  Please don’t text them constantly while they are away.

8. Sometimes you have to just accept what the court says. Even if you are unhappy about a decision the court has made, it is not your place to comment on it in front of the children.  Children of all ages should never be allowed to read court documents , nor should they be involved in making them.

9.  If you are going to claim abuse, you better have the evidence to back it up.

10. Remember its ok to move on with your life. It will be better for everyone if you do.

This needs to be added:

Parental Alienation is not a term Becky or I have made up to conveniently describe the impact of my daughter’s behavior (and more importantly my ex-wife’s behavior, since she is the “ADULT” on that side of the equation) towards us. It is a well-documented issue:

“There are no effective treatment protocols that have been validated for either the obsessed alienator or the PAS children. The courts and mental health professionals are sincere in wanting to help these families but their efforts frequently fail.

The best hope for children affected by an obsessed alienator is early identification of the symptoms and prevention. After the alienation is entrenched and the children become “true believers” in the parent’s cause, the children may be lost to the other parent for years to come. I realize this is a sad statement, but I have yet to find an effective intervention, by anyone, including the courts that can rehabilitate the alienating parent and child. There can still be hope in that spontaneous reunification can occur, usually in response to a crisis that causes the alienated child to reach out to the rejected parent.”

Copyright 1997 by Douglas Darnall, Ph.D.

A PA licensed psychologist told us that there was little hope in this situation ever getting better.

Trust me…it took a long time to come to grips with this concept. I refused to believe that this could be happening, that any real kind of rift could be forming between my daughters and me, but at this time I would have to be a blind, ignorant fool to continue in my refusal of what reality has presented me.

I am hurt, angry, and disappointed, but do not confuse my personal feelings and our recent decisions with the belief that I do not LOVE MY DAUGHTERS. Quite to the contrary, like any rational parent the concept of NOT loving them is as foreign to me as breathing under water.

I just refuse to allow the pain and anguish that we have suffered through all of this to continue.

It is easy to supply a “fix” to this situation when you are living outside of the circumstances. Trust me…we have tried it. Even to the point of allowing a temporary custody agreement, which limited the amount of time the girls were in the presence of both Becky and Max. Even though this agreement sickened me, I allowed it to happen (with the caveat included that it WOULD only be a temporary agreement). Unfortunately, even this did NOTHING to improve the situation.

No one can understand this type of situation until they have lived it and believe me…I wish this on no one.

Every day I live with the hurt, anger, and confusion that this has created. I push it down and I go on. All I can do at this time is apologize for their actions to anyone that may be affected.

To Becky, Max, Mom, and all the rest of my family.

I am sorry.

This should not be pushed under the rug…..

I was unsure if I was going to write about this here. At first I didn’t want this to cloud up my blog, but the more and more I thought about it, I want people to know at least part of the story. There is not enough space to possibly talk about everything here in this blog. After thinking about it there are things in life that people push under the rug and don’t talk about . They conveniently ignore and if they are not ignoring it they are blaming you for what happened. I wanted to put it all out there so there are no longer questions of us. There should be questions of the other party involved and they should be held accountable. So after reading this if you have any sort of confusion, anger, etc, you probaby should talk to the other party involved. They have yet to be held accountable.

1. I met James in 2005. Yes we met online. When you think of it is not such a scary place because you could go home with someone in a bar and they be corrupt. People are always scared of what they don’t know and unless your meeting someone in church, then I guess anything is up for debate. Anyway like most online relationships you get to know the person before you decide anything. When James and I formally met , in both our minds we had already loved eachother. Our relationship is and still is great and I really feel like we are best friends.

2. We both had kids, we waited awhile before we started introductions. Max had never met anyone that I had dated before intentionally. Max was very young ( just 3) and very impressionable. His adoptive dad Jason was in and out of his life. He didn’t see a male figure on a regular basis. I didn’t want him attached to someone and then that relationship end and he suffered another lost. James had two girls, one a teenager and one a pre-teen at the time. He too was cautious, wanted to wait until the right time to introduce everyone.

3. However the relationship progressed and we knew that there were some life altering changes that were going to happen. I was going to move and we were going to get married. We got married for the following reasons

A. We love eachother and we wanted to make the commitment

B. LIVING TOGETHER IS NOT THE BEST EXAMPLE WE WANTED TO SHOW THE CHILDREN.

C. We wanted to make the commitment formal. For us living together is not a formal commitment.

I was excited about gaining stepdaughters, max was excited about gaining stepsisters. The girls on the other hand weren’t so excited and issued their father an ultimatum: Either lose us or don’t get married and keep us. James was distraught. He never saw this coming, he never felt the girls would be like this. We read lots of books when this started to happened and consulted a therapist on how best to set up our home. The worst thing to happen that the therapist said was to let the children have control. If we let them dictate our life, we are creating monsters.

It has almost been two years that we have been married…let me give you a quick snynopsis in list form.

1. The girls have tried every possible way to pit themselves between their father and me. I think the girls actually believed that if they acted as unhappy as they possibly could be, their dad would change his mind and get a divorce.

2. The girls have become master manipulators. They would issue demands and when their demands were not met, they would use those as excuses for not coming over. One of the demands inlcuded that we did not buy their mechanical pencils when asked.

3. The girls do not live in reality. They refuse to accept that I am in their life or that Max exists in their life. I have never said anything negative to the girls. I am a teacher and understand teenagers more than most and to be honest only wanted to have a great relationship with the girls.

4. They have lied, taken without asking, etc. They lied in a court document stating that our four year old son at the time was physically and verbally abusive. They said that I was abusive, and that their father was bipolar. They believed these accusations so much that they refused for me to be in their presence for a while and we went along with it in an attempt to smooth the situation.

5. They have reaped the benefits. We have given them gifts, trips, etc. Many times without thank you and in return telling us that none of the things we offered were ever good enough.

6. They refuse to get help to deal with their feelings.

7. They have estranged their father completely and family. The oldest one graduated high school and there was no invitation to her dad or her 75 year old grandmother. They would show up for Christmases in years past, accept the gifts and then run off. Their father had emergency surgery this year and they were aware of it, but never called to ask why or if he was ok. Many father’s days and birthdays have gone by without even a hiccup. We haven’t seen the oldest in five months, almost seven months since she voluntarily came over, the youngest left in February. We probably will never see them again. The excuse in February was that we don’t do enough fun things in our house, and it doesn’t feel like a home.

6. The last time we tried to pick up the youngest, we had to call the police beforehand, because we were honestly worried about a confrontation.

7. We were not even allowed to talk, or parent in our home. The girls held themselves hostage any time we wanted to have an opinion or even said no.

For the past two years we have seen a therapist who pretty much told us that we had to be strong, that our parenting wasn’t coroporal punishment ( even though we have been accused of not kissing the girls’ asses by many different people), and that these girls are snakes and have been brainwashed.
We have:

1. Tried to fight through the legal system to no avail. We have wasted time and money doing this.

2. We have talked to the girls directly… they run away (literally)

3. We have tried to make things positive in our household and everytime it was turned around into something it was not. They have even set traps for us and waited for us to try to walk into them so they would have something else to accuse.

4. Never stopped caring about them or loving them. This has been hard for all of us but especially for their Dad who spent a lot of time not really understanding to being really hurt that his own flesh and blood would do the things they have done. ( You are reading just really the tip of the iceberg)
There is a term for what we have been through……

Parental Alienation: Here is the definition

1. Form of Relational agression from one parent to the other parent using the children. Though it is not limited to just parents ( friends, other family members can be just as guilty of this)

Here’s an example:

1. Why does your dad do that? That is so stupid, I am so glad I am not with him.

2. You don’t really want to be away from me and spend extra time with your dad. Come on its more fun over here.

3. Do you want to spend Easter with you dad or do you want it to be exactly the same way as last year?

4. Hurry home because we are going to order Chinese food when you get here.

Those are just some verbal examples that the alienator might say, there are a ton of ways to alienate that don’t include being verbal, like scheduling birthday parties on the other parents’ time. Purposely not making the child available for their time with the other parent.

Some other symptoms

1. brain washing

2. character assassination ( your dad is really sick, he’s bipolar, he doesn’t know what he is doing by getting married to another woman and leaving you)

3. false inducement of fear.

4. unconscious alliances with the children against the target parent. ( I cannot support you in your decision to marry Becky, I can’t let you hurt the children).

5. Using the children as spies.

There are many different types of alienation but in our situation it was the obessed alienator ( the worst type)

1.have a fervent cause to destroy the targeted parent. Frequently a parent can be a blend between two types of alienators, usually a combination between the naïve and active alienator. Rarely does the obsessed alienator have enough self-control or insight to blend with the other types. These three patterns of alienating behaviors are not intended to be used as a diagnosis. Wait this describes it better:

“I love my children. If the court can’t protect them from their abusive father, I will. Even though he’s never abused the children, I know it’s a matter of time. The children are frightened of their father. If they don’t want to see him, I’m not going to force them. They are old enough to make up their own minds.”

Last time we tried to pick up the youngest, their mother said….. I understand it is your time to be with her, but I’m not going to force her to come see you anymore, no one is going to force her. I understand what being in contempt of the court order means but not even the court is going to force her to see you.

If you are still not convinced I suggest you read more on the topic of parental alienation…though some of what happened was also due to permissive parenting.

This type of parent simply wants the child to like him or her at the end of the day and will do anything the child requests to do. The resulting children are rarely (if ever) punished and are generally immature. They seldom assume responsibility for their actions.

We had a parent who and still does support whatever the decision the kids make even if they know it is wrong. In fact this parent believes if they get an F in math it really is the math teacher’s fault even if the math teacher says the reason they are failing is because of not paying attention, lack of trying, etc. For some reason the child is not liked by the math teacher.

Deep down…. the mother of this situation knew it was deeply wrong to let the kids make their own custody agreement or estrange themselves from their other side of their family, but not only did she allow this to happen, she encourages it and I think to be honest it makes her happy.

What is required of you:

1. To understand and sympathasize with the situation.

2. Not to comment on what we should have done or what we are doing wrong.

A. I have been working with adolescents for five years ( some who have had horrible hands dealt to them like losing both their parents to violence). I think I have an inkling of what I am talking about.

3. Respect my husband and I’s decision:

a. To no longer chase the girls. We have stopped calling and emailing because they told him to, but also because it opened us up for the hurt that we would feel when they refuse to return calls, the attitude they give us when they call, and the ransom demands.

b. To no longer put ourselves in an immediate position of getting hurt or hurting Max. ( we started seeing a family therapist because he was hurt by the lack of acceptance he felt by the girls.)

c. If the girls decide to come back the only way we will accept them back is in front of a therapist. The trust has been 100% completely broken .

d. To no longer waste money through the court system. The girls and their mother do not mind being in contempt of court and have made it perfectly clear that they will be in contempt of court if there is an order to see their father.

e. If you talk to the girls, tell them what they are doing is wrong. This is something they need to hear. They will never hear it from their permissive mother. Tell them they should talk to their dad, their grandmother, that they need to accept reality. Encourage them to stop what they are doing.

We are moving past all of this and starting our life and good things will happen. We try not to think about it, but it is always there. Please don’t take this as an attitude that it does not bother us or upset us. It most certainly does but we have reached a point as a family where we are moving on. There is too much life to waste here.