AIBU regarding DH's lack of boundaries with DD

[Livid66]

I have name changed because I'm so ashamed that this is my DH I'm talking about. My DC is 12 years old and she shares a room with our 10 year old DD. As you would expect, DD1 is becoming more self conscious over the changes in her body and I have now started to knock on their bedroom door before entering, especially at night or in the mornings when they're likely to be changing. DD mentioned to me two days ago that she feels uncomfortable because DH just barges in without knocking. So, around the dinner table that day, DD asked her father to knock first in future. He half- heartedly agreed to do it.
This evening, DD1 came into my room upset because DH had once again barged in and she was changing into her bedclothes at the time. When DH joined us, he explained that he had gone in to say goodnight to the girls as he will be starting a job tomorrow in another city and won't see her until Friday. He said he expected her to have changed clothes by then. When she reiterated her discomfort he was completely dismissive of her feelings, stating that it wasn't as if she was naked. She became more upset because she had expected an apology but instead had her feelings completely dismissed. Although I tried, he would not accept that she needs privacy but also that he was insensitive to her feelings. He went as far to say that he has no interest in empathising with children's feelings as it is not important. He feels that she should accept his right to go in without knocking. It disturbs me that I am married to an otherwise very intelligent man with who is also so fucking ignorant. How can I convince him that he's hurting our DD? I have no suspicions of any sexual intent btw. His attitude is similar in other contexts concerning our DC.

CodyKing, good point, schools do raise this. It might ring alarm bells, rightly so.

OP you are making a lot of excuses for your bullying DH Yes, she is ... but there may be good reason for that. If he is this disrespectful of his children, then there may be abuse of some description towards the op.

If my dad had done this to me and my mother hadn't protected me from it despite knowing it was going on I suspect I would grow up to be very resentful. He doesn't like the lock? Tough shit, I don't like being walked in on. At that age there's a lot of exploring to be done, intimate stuff I did in my bedroom not just sexual but just normal bodily exploring. The thought of my dad barging in because he felt the right to would make me feel sick.

This sort of stuff goes one of two ways, she will be scared or she will rebel.

He is teaching your daughter that her boundaries don't matter and that she should put her feelings aside for men who don't respect them.

I wouldn't have that.

Tell him that and also tell him that your daughter will start seeing him as as a threat to her privacy in a most disturbing way. Hopefully this will make him uncomfortable (it should make him uncomfortable)

Having lived with a stepdad who insists 'his house, his rules', expects everyone to do as he says and can become physically not just verbally angry at being challenged or resisted - this whole thread has really affected me.

OP, nothing you say or do will change your husband's beliefs.

OP, if you don't act to protect and support your daughter, she will never feel the same way about you - or herself - again.

OP, you know that this isn't ok, and that it doesn't matter if your husband doesn't have sexual intent - that your DD can still be scarred by all of this.

Why should your DCs need to take steps to protect themselves - locks on their doors, change in the bathroom - because their dad won't change his attitudes and behaviours? Why should the victims have to protect themselves? It's the perpetrator who needs to stop, and the parents who need to protect their children.

Please for the love of the children you brought into the world - don't just say that you are concerned about this, prove that you know it's your husband's problem and not your daughter's.

I very much doubt this man has emotional intelligence of the kind that serves the needs of others.

My take on him is that he likes to be treated as if he is some sort of oracle, looked up to, seen as wise, giving, generous with his time, and yes 'emotionally intelligent', etc.

He probably is a very good reader of other people. Narcissists tend to be.

They read other people well so that they can fine tune their attack strategy. Everything in their interactions with other people is designed to feed their bottomless pit of ego need. They will find the buttons to press and they will press them. In the case of your DH, you are wrong to think he is 'clueless about inappropriate behaviour'. This is all calculated. He has found the button to use against your DD, and no doubt he knows what button to use against your DS too. His emotional intelligence is used in the service of evil. I don't use the word evil lightly.

But there's something about him that either refuses to, or is unable to, acknowledge the feelings of children. It's as if he regards them as an extension of him, rather than individuals in their own right.
Bingo.
To acknowledge their rights would be to see his entire conception of himself crumble into small pieces at his feet.

What he has been getting from family life, from fatherhood, is the feeling that he can do as he pleases, that nobody matters except him, that he is a sort of godlike figure among the adoring lilliputians if you will.

Naturally, when children are small they don't notice their rights being trampled. What they experience is all they are used to - they have nothing to compare their lives to, no prior life in a family other than their own. They don't notice that they are being used to provide reflected glory (golden child) or to be the repository of everything a narcissist parent rejects in him or herself (the scapegoat or black sheep). They don't notice the games their narcissist parent is playing.

As they get to their teens they develop a concept of themselves as individuals - a healthy and normal growth of the personality - and suddenly the narcissist parent has no satellites in orbit around him. Their normal development in intellect, emotional and social fronts is an affront to him. It is experienced as a deep insult that these beings (whom he now considers worthless, in a cycle of pedestal to dustbin/devaluation) are letting him know that they are separate beings. The children are now seen by him as adversaries. As NotYoda remarked, they will stoop as low as fighting bitterly with their own children.
It's just become more apparent as the kids have got older and he has failed to adjust his parenting approach to their developing needs.

Please don't discount the element of nakedness or partial undress in this. That part may not be overtly sexual. It may not indicate the desire to molest his daughter.
BUT - it indicates a desire to demonstrate to himself and to her that he can be powerful in a situation that he in entirely in control of, a situation where the other person is caught on the back foot, vulnerable and surprised because of various possible factors associated with the scene that he has engineered (DD could be naked, half naked, checking out her breasts or examining her vulva. Or she could just be doing her nails or brushing her hair or reading a book, whatever) whereas he is fully clothed, not surprised, and in control.

The points he is trying to make to DD are:
(1) He is powerful and she is vulnerable, weak, at his mercy;
(2) She must always have him front and centre in her mind. If she won't give him that impression in her teenage demeanour that she may have inadvertently given him as a child then he is going to see to it that she is forced to remember that she is his satellite because he will intrude on her and make sure she always keeps an ear peeled for his footsteps, and she can't ever block out his presence. Or he will exact revenge for 'turning on him' as he sees it. Either way, he knows what button to press for the effect he wants to achieve.

Your DH has built an emotional fortress around himself consisting of outrageous, aggressive, unreasonable refusal to listen to anyone's objections to his behaviour, and fierce insistence on his 'rights'. Every transgression of the boundaries of others is another brick in his fortress, another reaffirmation to himself of how great he is. What he is saying to himself in all of this is extremely important.

To surrender (i.e. to agree that he is wrong and that others have rights and that he must listen to others and change) would therefore be unthinkable. It would be worth more than his life.
A lock would just cause more problems. I can see him demanding to be let in if it is locked which would escalate tensions further.
You are right to predict this.
This is what narcissists do when they sense resistance. He will not confine his defence to demands to be let in though. He will find other avenues of attack, and there will be lots of rage.

There is no parenting course that will cure this.

And wrt his new job working away a few days per week - is he expecting to be greeted like the conquering hero when he gets back every week?

I would bet the farm that he has a narrative in his mind along those lines, and if something like The Railway Children isn't evident he will become quite angry and resentful.

OP, just to make clear what you are dealing with here - your DH is willing to sacrifice not just your DCs' wellbeing but even his own relationship with them both in the present and in the future just to give himself the jollies he seeks in family life on a daily basis.

You are not going to make a dent in his personality, or change his pov, or get him down from the position he has assumed by use of reasonable and rational arguments. That is work for a psychiatrist.

I doubt the OP will be back. Her poor DD 😟

Agreed Calmit. In places this thread has sounded as if it is blaming her, which I think was really inappropriate when she was seeking our help and support.

I am appalled by this thread. This individual is a narcissist, pure and simple. The OP makes excuses for him saying he has emotional intelligence - laughable. He only appears to have it when it does not involve him - then he can sit and listen and analyse and advise to your heart's content. When it comes to him and his actions there is no emotional intelligence to be found - and the sooner the OP realises this the better it will be for her children.

Easy to say when it isn't your life and your family Morse. Don't you think these kinds of comments are going to drive the OP away just when she needs a safe, supportive space to talk?

On the contrary ocelot I am hoping it helps the OP see the woods for the trees. It is indeed hard to make sense of an individual's behaviour and all too easy to make excuses for them if you are in the thick of it all.

I would suggest, ocelot , that it is the OP's children who are more in need of a safe, supportive space at the moment.

I was out for dinner with my hubby the other day. Chatting about various things and the subject if my 11 yr old daughter's bedroom came up. She wants its decorated but she's so messy that we agreed not to go anything until she has a clear out and shows she can keep it tidy. At the end of that convo I mentioned that he should probably start knocking before he goes into her bedroom now she's getting to 'that age'. He looked at me for a sec and then said " yes, you're right. I'll start doing that". That's how a reasonable and responsible father responds to a simple request to respect his daughters privacy and feelings. OP, please stand up for your daughter. She needs a safe space and a bit of respect and consideration. Maybe talk to hubby away from her?

I think everyone on this thread agrees that this is of paramount importance Morse. The question is how best to help the OP achieve this - it is clearly something which worries her deeply, otherwise she wouldn't have posted here. She also mentions namechanging as she feels so ashamed. She works in safeguarding, she knows how important this is. She is struggling to know how to deal with it in her own home - and thats understandable and normal, given the horrible situation she finds herself in.

I can understand the anger on this thread, but if I were the OP I would be feeling quite alienated by now. So I am going to bow out of this thread.

Good luck OP - more power to you in protecting your DC and yourself. You have a tough, painful road ahead of you. Well done on taking the first steps in voicing your concerns here. I hope you find the RL help and support you and your DC deserve. Please keep going.

Very true ocelot.
Sorry op I think for many of us on this thread it strikes a chord. Some of us have been in the position of your daughter and instead of being able to vocalise those concerns like your daughter has we felt "trapped".

Spot on Fishface. I have been that daughter too and get the rage. But shaming someone who already feels so ashamed is not empowering. It is probably telling that the OP hasn't been back.

OP did come back several times and as recently as ~ 9pm last night.

This was a difficult thread to read for me. I haven't read it all yet but I intend to. My Dad was like this. I am currently having therapy as I have no concept of emotional boundaries and I am in my 30s. It is not ok to invade children's boundaries in this way, they stop feeling safe. Mostly my Dad is a charming, engaging, ok bloke, but that man trampled all over me. There was no intent behind his actions beyond control. Please, please consider the wellbeing of your children. My Dad always came first.

This thread is just so sad I hope the op can put things in place so that her dd doesn't have these terrible memories in her future like others have shared here. to those posters who went through this as children

Superb posts this morning, math.

Congrats on approaching your boundary issues through therapy, Meemolly :) The great thing is, therapy definitely works in this area and it's one of the few where you start seeing changes very quickly. Hope you're enjoying your assertive experiments!

For anybody else thinking about this work, here's the Shark cage metaphor (pdf), which explains how we're affected by poor boundaries and how to strengthen our 'shark cage'.

The Freedom Programme's always worth doing. Info here.

livid you said it disturbs you, I would trust your instincts and protect your daughter

I've read the whole thread with a rising sense of panic and nausea. I recognise some of what I suspect the OP is feeling, albeit for different reasons.

The situation is untenable. But I don't know the solution. I'm so sorry.

OP if you are still reading I understand life isn't as simple as LTB. A person isn't 100% narcissistic or good or evil. Some relationships are more complex than totally healthy/entirely toxic. Some relationships bring a myriad ways of being wonderful, enriching, loving - and then they fail in gut wrenching ways that seem or are impossible to fix. We each have our own lines that we feel once breached there is no return. Affairs, abuse, violence, control. But before those lines are breached we each decide for ourselves to what extent we think we can salvage, change, improve.
I can acknowledge my own flaws and see the ways I fail as a parent and resolve to do better, then why would I imagine that everyone else's character is immutable, beyond change? I agree with every poster that this sense of entitlement, this controlling behaviour and dismissal of other people's rights is unacceptable, unforgiveable. I don't think I agree that this act in itself characterises an entire character, that we readers can Know from a few lines of your post that he is beyond changing. You know him. You know whether he is capable of comprehending and changing. You are the one choosing if you should jettison all the good alongside the bad. Each of us makes decisions constantly over what is the best possible outcome.

I will make no excuses for your husband. His dismissal of your dd's rights is beyond defence.

But I understand if you are desperate to find the outcome that makes him see this. Makes him regret and step away from this damaging, controlling behaviour and allows you to be a healthier family.

Maybe that isn't possible. I suspect though that you think it still is, which is why you are posting here for help.
And, possibly, you may be thinking that ending a marriage may place your children at greater risk.
It's well-intentioned but hopelessly naive of posters to imagine that you should simply end your marriage without a second thought - LTB - and deny your husband access to your children and that you will be supported in this by SS and the law.

Perhaps you don't think this way, but I would be terrified that I might be plunging my children into a shared residency future where I was not even present to protect them for sustained periods of time. None of this is a reason for staying in an abusive relationship of course.
But not every choice will have a happy ending.

This is the internet. People will fall over themselves to tell you they wouldn't stand for it, and why are you? But those people will offer nothing more useful than platitudes if you find yourself in a worse situation as a result of taking the nuclear option. There are plenty of heartbreaking threads where mothers are forced to hand children over to abusive fathers for unsupervised contact on a regular basis. If posters are recommending you avoid this exact outcome they need to give you very specific advice on how to ensure that doesn't happen.

Who here can guarantee the OP that leaving the marriage won't result in her husband being granted unsupervised access to assert himself without any resistance?

I hope you get help that gives you and your children the outcome you want. Which, I imagine, involves your husband realising he's behaving like a controlling despot and taking the opportunity to save his relationship with you and the children before he destroys everything.

I support your post, Poet. There's one factor I would change: the potential threat to children of unsupervised access with the controlling parent. While narcissistic non-resident parents can and do get worse post divorce, separation grants the saner adult more opportunity to educate and inform her children - to teach them about boundaries, how to defend them, and how to evaluate other people's behaviour. It isn't easy. It's even harder if, while teaching these life skills, we also keep the children in a situation where they depend on their aggressor for survival. That's one hell of a mixed message.

HairyLittlePoet, What a thoughtful, measured post.