Do you believe the dads who say ‘she stopped me from seeing my kids for NO reason’?

[thecherryfox]

long story short, when I was pregnant I had to flee my abuser as he was making threats on my life. I had to seek help from multiple professions - all of which including the police told me to not allow my newborn to have contact with this dangerous individual.

My abuser went full force with his smear campaign against me, he told everyone I didn’t allow contact with our baby ‘for no reason’ and I was bitter among lots of awful horrible lies about me. He also started a go fund me called ‘daddy’s matter’ where he victimised himself and claimed he was a victim of alienation. During the relationship, he isolated me from my own family and friends so I had to rely on his family and friends. During his smear campaign, he ensured I lost those family and friends so I had no one.

it broke me watching these people believing I wasn’t letting him see his child because I was this horrible monster and no one questioned why I didn’t allow him. I’ve heard so many experiences from other victims of abuse where they have also experienced this and because we protect our children - our abusers get treated like they’re the victims. Everyone believing their lies helps abuse their victim further.

so I guess my question is, do you believe men when they say that their ex is ‘bitter’ and stopped them for no reason - or do you question why don’t let them. Because I can assure you, the parents who ARE ‘bitter’ are such a small percentage and the truth is that us parents have to do it to protect us and our children.

Like so many people on this thread already, I have seen this played out from both sides.

i will say through, in the case of the three men I know who have been prevented by their exes from seeing their kids at varying stages of their lives, they do not go around shouting about their “psycho ex”.

Of the three men I know, if asked about their kids they talk about them and not their ex, and when going through the worst of their difficulties with the children’s mothers, they talk(ed) about the situation with sadness and frustration, not anger. In the situation I’m most familiar with, I’ve seen it for myself when the ex tried to rope in me and other family members into punishing the husband for wanting to leave the marriage, and now we’re banned from seeing the kids too for declining to get involved in the details of their break up. The youngest has never even met their paternal grandparents, because the father’s access is so conditional on the exes demands and he’s terrified of disrupting the access he does have by the kids reporting back to their mum that they did something “unacceptable” to her during their stay. The children have never met their fathers second wife even though they’ve been married over five years (not the OW and their mother remarried within a year of divorce).

TL;DR - no I don’t tend to believe a man saying his psycho ex stops him seeing the kids for no reason. IME, “good men” fight to the limit of their mental health and bank balance to maintain a relationship with their children.

Actually statistically children are more likely to be abused by a step parent than a parent, so if we’re looking to say that children shouldn’t see their fathers because of the potential for abuse, then maybe we ought to be saying that women shouldn’t have relationships after divorce because of the risk to the children.

It’s vanishingly rare.

I am however the product of a relationship where my Mother just wanted to pretend my Dad had never existed and she admitted he did nothing wrong. She was however married 4 times and a soul eater.

If someone was going to these lengths and it was impacting my other children, hard decisions have to be made.

No.
But I do believe children are used as pawns in upheaval that is divorce.

I think the phrase I'm not allowed to see my children for no good reason is a red flag. I do believe some women stop fathers from seeing their children however I think a father using that phrase is a red flag because there is always more to situations, it says nothing about what they've tried, steps taken, things done. It's a shut down comment. It's that particular phrase that I don't believe but I do very much believe that some men are prevented needlessly by bitter exes.

I think that is a fair assessment.

No I wouldn't. Most mothers do no want their DC suffering the emotional stress of parental abandonment.
If a man said that to me I would ask why he hasn't been to court.

No, but I don't think you'll get a representative sample on MN.

I think many people who don't know how common DV/emotional abuse is would take someone at face value, because why wouldn't you? And then unfortunately there are so many blokes who trot out this line that it seems like a common occurance.

So I do think the average person probably thinks DV/EA is rare, and vindictive exes withholding contact is common, so they are more primed to assume that he's telling the truth.

I think DV or at least EA is common, and vindictive exes are rare. So would assume that way around in the absence of other evidence. Not saying it never happens, but I'd be sceptical.

I'm an IDVA so I'm generally sceptical, but it does occasionally happen. In my experience, it's rare though.

More often than not (again, in my line of work), it's an absent parent claiming (usually all over social media) that the parent with care is guilty of parental alienation because they've 'stopped contact' when actually they've just said no to unreasonable demands. Such as seeing the children at the home at any time of day with no notice. I've had so many cases where the absent parent has voluntarily stopped seeing the children and claimed parental alienation because the parent with care has said 'we need to stick to these time and dates'. I've had absent parents in these situations even start up campaign groups to fight the evils of parental alienation. Many just want to bully their way to their own terms while refusing to make a court application for those cases where an agreement can't be reached.

There are a tiny handful of cases where that hasn't been the situation, but then in my job I am going to only see it through the perspective of DV which isn't really generalisable.

to everyone saying ‘I know a woman who weaponised her children’ because so and so said so - this is the entire point. Why are you believing one side of the story when you don’t know if there’s another truth

Well in my example, because the woman was perfectly open and told me about what she was doing. She was actively proud of her deceit, and of the appalling false accusation that she had up her sleeve if all else failed. She wanted to take her kids with her to the US to join her new bloke, and would stop at nothing.

It still preys on my mind. There are evil people around, and some of them are women.
If she did go ahead with that last sexual abuse grenade, there's a man out there whose innocence no-one will believe. And if she didn't need to use it, he'll still have lost his child.

Agree, every situation is probably different, I would need to know a lot more before making a decision, I wouldn’t automatically believe them and I would certainally be asking a lot of questions if I was considering getting into a relationship with them or having children together

But also if a man said this to me I would probably not be interested in taking a relationship further with them as even if it was the truth it spells a lot of drama ahead which I would not want to be dragged into.

People who have a lot of drama in their lives are rarely capable of making calm rational, logical decisions and that’s more than likely why there is a lot of drama in their lives in the first place

You would abandon your own dc to be soley cared for by someone exhibiting this psychotic behaviour to make life easier for yourself?

I do because I have seen the end result with my own eyes. Male relative with a girl who already had a child. Got pg and once pg male relative as told to move out of shared bedroom into spare bedroom and was given a rent book which she signed when she took his rent from him. Baby born, he gets in from work every evening and dirty nappies all over the place, no dinner made for 1st child etc. He had to make dinner ever night and was then handed a list of chores that needed to be completed before he was "allowed" go to bed. She would stand over him whilst he did him criticizing as he worked. She wouldn't let him take their child to see his parents etc.

Male relative finally left and has been to court on many occasions for access to his child. She doesn't follow court directions and her Dad is ex police so she gets away with a lot of shit. Male relative is in a new relationship (7 years) with a lovely girl from South America and he as a family with her.. Despite his ex making things so difficult for him he goes every week to see his child and sits in his car for the full hour without contact with her in anyway as her mother has told her numerous lies about her. She has told her child that if she was to go in the car with her daddy that he would take her away on a plane to SA and she would never see her mammy again. The child told her Daddy this on one of the few occasions he did get to engage with her which was over 2 years ago. Child is afraid to see her daddy.

He is currently back in the court system trying to get things changed but no matter what he seems to do she doesn't care and doesn't follow through. And yes he pays maintenance on time and whenever she asks for extra say for shoes etc he pays his share there and then.

So yes there are genuine men out there whose ex's are C U Next Tuesdays.

It used to be the case that if a couple divorced, the mother got sole custody and her new husband became the default Dad. Edith Wharton in her book, Customs of the Country describes it well.
I saw this happen with my niece. She met someone new, Initiated a divorce then had another baby and prevented her son from seeing his dad regularly. Her son was mysteriously always ill when he had time with his Dad and she cancelled constantly. She never referred to him as Dad to her son but called him 'The Wet Blanket' to everyone.
She thinks she is a nice person.

TBH though, if someone doesn’t see their existing kids, regardless of the reasons, then they have no business having more.

People need to look out for the family they already have before creating a new one, so the “it affects my other children” line doesn’t wash with me. If you were that committed to seeing your kids, and it has been costly to date, then you shouldn’t be having more children which you then are going to use as a justification for stopping the court involvement.

No. For 2 reasons

1.Men's rights activists have been so successful that no matter how abusive you are you're still get contact with your child and the courts will bend over backwards to enable contact even in the face of proven abuse. The idea that a woman can get away with denying reasonable contact with children is for the birds. Even when denying contact is in the best interest of a child, a court will usually not allow it.

1. Most people are now aware that children benefit from having a relationship with both parents in most cases. Most people love their children and want to put their welfare first. Women bend over backwards to try and facilitate contact even with really useless uninterested men who don't bother to try and see their children as much as they could. Most mothers are capable of putting their child's welfare above their own dislike of their ex.

If a mother hasn't achieved that, it's possible that that's because she's a psycho b, but the more likely explanation is either that the man has been such a terrible influence on his children's lives that she's made the decision that that's a better course for her children in terms of their health and welfare or just that he's lying and he's too lazy or too unreasonable to make sensible and consistent contact arrangements. (Phoning up from the pub half drunk at 10:30 at night demanding that you have the right to come and see your kids now, when they have both been asleep since 8 o'clock, is not a good example of sensible and consistent contact. But the father involved took this as an example of being denied access to his children and told everybody who would listen that his ex was denying him contact).

No I would never believe them

Would you do absolutely everything you could to see your child. I would as would vast majority of mothers I know

As for the ex is a psycho line as soon as you hear that move on

My Ex told everyone that I stopped him from seeing DS and how much money, time and stress he was spending fighting me for access. It was a total lie. He saw DS twice a week with one overnight since he left. No "fighting needed", not a single solicitor letter sent.

6 years later he still sees DS twice a week with 1 overnight, but after a couple of drinks he still tells this lie. And don't get me started on the lies he tells about maintenance.🙄

I never used to but after being with my DP I do, his ex stops contact for any reason she feels like,
If she's had a bad day, something doesn't go her way, he's working his set rota shift and she calls that day asking for him to look after DC. Some women are really horrible

I wouldn’t automatically believe it no, however, very occasionally the reasons are more to do with the mother and can be about control. This is something I have witnessed directly with a relative.

I never believe that mothers withhold contact from fathers with no reason.

No.

For every 100 fathers that say they don't see their children because of the mother, 1 is probably telling the absolute truth.

Even if the mother said no contact, any decent father, would fight with all his being to get access however small that access may be.

However, alot of mothers use their children as pawns in some kind of game and the fathers walk away rather than playing it.

Mothers version fathers verson, truth somewhere inbetween.

Unfortunately, it never seems to be black and white.

I know more mothers who let their children go to irresponsible fathers to enable a relationship than those who point blank refuse.

Read this thread then!

Oh and my male relative had to leave their home because of threats she made against him and on more than one occasion he found her standing in his bedroom with a pillow in her hands in the middle of the night. It was only when his father went over to the house (after a terrifying text and not being able to get hold of male relative) that the truth came out. She was mentally abusing him. That's when male relative finally left.