Recovery from dysfunctional step families support thread

[SnowWhitesSM]

This thread is for anyone seeking support and wanting to share their WTF moments now they're out of the dysfunctional dynamics of step families where there's the classics of - Disney dadding, dad guilt, over compensating, exes on power trips, not being able to share a bed with your husband, loyalty binds, feeling guilty about your own dc.

Please post any articles you want to share, any insights, any thoughts you've had now you've reclaimed your power and voice in your own home again.

We did not deserve to be in the middle of their dysfunction. We did not deserve to be the scapegoat for their mess of a family. We did not deserve to be painted as a monster for wanting basic boundaries and house rules. We are no longer the unpaid nanny 👊

You are absolutely right @sassbott.

My H would never have signed anything. He’d have said it meant I didn’t ‘trust’ him.

I was stupid and naive. I’d been through a break up of a cohabitation relationship and separated finances. And I stupidly assumed it’d be fair like that. My ex (for all his many faults) was at least utterly fair in the finances split. We split the large amount of equity in the house 50-50. And went out separate ways with a maintenance agreement and a contact schedule that was based around our son’s needs and preferences. It had all been remarkably drama free.

Sadly, I didn’t anticipate the law being really bloody stupid and unfair.

@BurntToastAgain ahh burnt I'm so so sorry love. Reading your posts makes me incredibly sad and angry at same time.

So I know most of you will have read pretty much everything known to man about step parenting, but I think given the subject of this thread, the below books/websites I recommend (hand out) in some of my other work might help (or maybe not) which helped me out when in a dark space.

• "gift of fear" gavin de beck. I bang on about this one a lot and it covers a variety of topics but in essence it's about trusting your instincts and how we essentially train our brains to avoid danger signs, and how to restore that element of our brains

• confessions of a sociopath (I'm not calling anyone's partners sociopathic but more laterally it's interesting to see how the "other side thinks")

• https://captainawkward.com basically a really decent advice/ask page that really insightful posts, which for when dealing with your own issues can seem like a welcome break. Favourite and most horrifying letter was the one about DH not letting LW clean up broken glass in house due to eco issues or something else as barking. You can search for topics and my recommendations is to look under - dearth Vader search term.

• the charming man - Marian Keyes (tw: it's a fictional book which is incredibly funny but dark but really cuts to the heart of emotional abuse/ DV) all of her other books from the Walsh family line are good esp Rachel's holiday (covers addiction v well). You have to have a slightly dark sense of humour for these bar that in mind when reading. They look light at fluffy but aren't.

I'm sure I have more but they are escaping my brain rn I will do some digging from colleagues who are far more experienced and better qualified to give book recommendations but these helped me.

Hopefully they will help someone else too ❤️

@BurntToastAgain yup, that is language I was on the receiving end of, time and again.

‘You’re obsessed with money’
‘You’re not normal’
‘Why don’t you trust me? I would never screw you over’
‘I can’t believe you don’t trust me, I’ve never ever screwed anyone over financially.’
‘Why would we waste more money on lawyers?’
‘Partners support one another’
‘For gods sake, this is all you care about’
‘This isn’t love’
Etc

These conversations would happen on loop, a cyclical thing. I’d hold my boundaries, he’d back off and then take another run at them a few months later.

Eventually I was just so blunt. And I told him that I would no longer entertain any conversations about anything joined at any level. And that I was even removing the option of seeing lawyers as I at no level was interested in any form of ‘joint’ when he couldn’t have healthy adult financial planning conversations that anyone should be able to have by our stage in life.

I told him as far as I was concerned, I was going back to simply ‘dating’ him and was interested in nothing more for a longer term basis.

I think I blew a few brain circuits that night. 😂😂

You’re not stupid @BurntToastAgain. You trusted him. And if he exploits that trust, that’s on him.

Honestly? My lawyer saved me. Categorically told me, do nothing without an agreement. Otherwise we cannot help you in the event of a split/ separation. When I asked him how commonplace these conversations were, he gave me some interesting stats, based on just his clients he worked with. And he has an interesting vantage point because he is retained to help these clients on an ongoing basis. So he sees who remarries etc.

He said it was about 50/50 as to whether clients came back for prenups etc before their second marriage.

So post divorce, half tried to get agreements before marrying a second time. Half did not.
Of the half that tried to put agreements in place prior to a remarriage/ cohabiting, about half of those negotiations collapsed and the couples broke up. Because one party was not prepared to sign an equitable agreement protecting the assets of the person who clearly were bringing more to the marital table financially.

By the time it came to marriage number 3, virtually every client insisted on agreements. 🤷🏽‍♀️.

It’s not just you. There are a lot of people who even after divorce, don’t get prenups etc in place.

You are definitely not stupid @BurntToastAgain you've seen through his shit for proof of that.

I guess I just have to forgive myself for making such a mistake. I had good intentions and it did not pay off.

I’m so fed up with it all. Really beyond the end of my tether.

The fact is he genuinely will not see that his actions communicate a great deal about his priorities and intentions. The things he chooses to do are not just random. Or he won’t admit that. Either way, it makes no difference. It’s an insurmountable obstacle and there could be no possible relationship where he just isn’t interested in my experience or feelings (if that isn’t convenient to him and supporting his actions).

He keeps saying he just did what his therapist said to do something for himself and not feel he has to justifying himself. And he chose to arrange additional contact with his other children rather than seeing our DS or me. I don’t need him to justify himself. Or want justification. He knew that he was sending me a clear message about where we are in his priorities and it would upset me. And he did it anyway. Because it’s what he wanted to do.

Ultimately his values do not align with mine. And it means he will never meet my needs. In so many ways. That is just the tiny example that broke it all (or that forced my realisation). I’ve been doing some therapeutic work to understand exactly what needs I have (which, when unmet, manifest as anger and resentment) and what it would take to meet them. I’ve realised that he will never meet many of them because he has such a different values base and intentions.

For example, the awfulness with his children’s mealtime behaviours. I have realised that a really core part of my sense of self - how I relate to people, how I show love, how I do family, how I find joy in my wet day life - is in cooking really nice food and eating it with people. I need this or I am abjectly miserable.

But he let his children show utter contempt for me and my efforts and to behave in ways that made every mealtime fraught and miserable. The anticipation of trying to feed them anything was hideously stressful. And his contempt for me was expressed in dismissing me when I told him it was making me miserable. And in scapegoating me for his children’s behaviour.

His ex does not eat with them, hands them snacks if chocolate and crisps all day and generally doesn’t care that they behave dreadfully about meals. She reinforces her values to them. And they bring them here. Their father encouraged that behaviour in various ways and made it a way for them to exclude me and upset me. Then got angry about me because he couldn’t pretend they were perfect.

The problem here is a difference in values. He doesn’t care about something that is fundamentally important to me. He didn’t care that it was destroying my sense of self and had me feeling hopeless and almost suicidal. What he cared about was not triggering his divorced dad guilt.

There was loads he could do to make this better. But he chose to keep making it all dreadful for me. Knowing what it was doing to me. And blaming me for not being delighted at being smirked at by a child knew she was going to get me in trouble by eating extremely slowly through a meal I’d tried really hard with.

He used his children to torture me. All because it made him feel better about having left their mother.

That same problem reoccurred in every aspect of anything that matters to me. He wouldn’t protect DS from their behaviour, preferring to claim I was overprotective, crazy and obsessed with the baby. The baby didn’t sleep. And he let his children scream and poke him and wake him up whenever I finally got him to nap. And he didn’t care. He let his son throw wooden bricks at the baby, terrifying him. And drive ride on cars aggressively at the crying baby. And then lied about his son’s behaviour and said I was overprotective and obsessed (I had bruises from deflecting the wooden bricks). I couldn’t tell them off - because then I was being cruel. I couldn’t take the baby away - because then I was denying him a relationship with his half siblings.

He was just torturing me. He is not a nice person.

I think the thing that resonates with me about your posts @SnowWhitesSM is the feeling that I am a terrible person.

I’d get angry and resentful and sometimes shout at H. But actually that was me desperately trying to protect myself and my son against the hostile environment he created. I really dislike his children. But that’s not because I’m an awful person. It’s because he used them to torture me. The children I experienced were really unpleasant. They treated me, my children, my house with utter contempt. Because they were encouraged to do so. Of course I don’t like them. He engineered the whole thing for his own twisted purposes.

What I need to do is find myself again. To have a lovely, stable home where my basic needs can be met. Where I’m not scared for my baby. Where I’m not the household scapegoat.

I third that @BurntToastAgain.
We're fed a diet of marriage being a unit, a bond, an expression of trust etc. and most people head into their marriages trusting their partner to have their best interests at heart. We (as a society) have romanticised the whole process & when it tanks there's such a loss of hope & expectation on both sides that things (almost always) get nasty & money is the scapegoat through which so much disappointment gets channelled.
Emotionally health adults don't go down that road so much as they know money is no signifier of love & care. But, as we see on here time & time again, and as we know from our own experiences, there's a dearth of emotionally healthy adults out there.
I honestly would have been sooo loose around exdp financially if I hadn't already been through financial hell with my exh.
It really is a learning curve & even at that I was financially more generous with exdp than I should have been as I was so determined not to be embittered by my divorce!

I'm eye rolling mightily at myself as I type!

@BurntToastAgain yes it's that feeling of - how can I have all these feelings that woosh up inside me when his ds is mentioned in something that has taken away a need of mine. Or maybe it's not that as I obviously meet my own dcs core needs even when I'd rather be led on an adults only beach drinking cocktails without resentment. I meet my friends dcs needs if I babysit without resentment, or if I'm out with a friend and she has a younger dc that constantly interupts I don't resent that dc, but I resented my ss constant bad manners and interruptions. Maybe it's because any of my friends would roll their eyes and either tell their dc to wait or apologise to me. H expected me to look at ss with adoration when he interrupted. I know it sounds so crass but he really did treat him like he was going to die in 6 months time.

I've been doing research for my diploma and it's delving into neuroscience trauma and attachment, it's really interesting. One of the most interesting things I discovered today was children who are very sick suffer parental trauma in the nervous system just like children who suffer neglect and abuse. So I don't really feel bad for my crass comment, I actually feel clever that I called it before I read it!

I've always said dss was a likeable child when h wasn't around. He acted 'normally'. Shame his parents made him an unlikeable person when around them.

I still wonder whether it was just pure jealousy and spite on my part and if I'm actually a horrible person. But even if it was and I am I still wasn't happy.

It’s not pure jealousy or spite. You’re not a bad person.

It is your partner letting you down. Repeatedly. Prioritising his need to feel like superdad over your right to be treated decently. Its your partner, via that child, making their lack of care and respect for you clear. Because that’s a very effective cover for it.

What happens is you see the unlikeable behaviour and attitude in the child. And you dislike that. Then you feel guilty about not liking the child. And you feel like a monster.

Meanwhile, you aren’t recognising that it’s the parenting that’s the problem. The total unwilllingness to insist that you are treated well. From the only person able to influence the child’s behaviour in the household.

What makes it worse is that it happens in your home. There’s no escape. Home stops being a safe place of respite and becomes a place where you are treated with contempt. That really destroys you.

Thank you @BurntToastAgain

I've had a phonecall of xh. He had his first CBT class. He told me it was great as it was looking forward to the future rather than back. Then he said I've got to work on my parenting issues and that he's a good dad and I was the one who gave him anxiety and dad guilt. I said cool beans and hung up the phone. But it gets in my head I am now back questioning my parenting and what I did and do wrong even though I know i didn't cause that ffs.

Oh god @SnowWhitesSM. Good for you saying good bye and hanging up.

Mine is doing CBT too. I think he’s getting the same kind of things from it.

I'm feeling quite overwhelmed tbh toast. I had a tiny dot of hope that when he said he could see his shit and he was going to work on it he actually was. Instead he rang me and told me that I'm the issue yet again.

I'm now reading divorce advice.

I'm sure it must have been hard for him coming in to my own with my dynamics. I'm not a perfect parent and my dc aren't perfect. My dd likes a bit of 'woe is me' for attention and ds can be a nause when winding her up. But they listen to me, if they don't they have a natural consequence. They don't spend masses of time with me, they have their electronics, dd likes baking, they have clubs to go to, friends to go out with ect. But dd always chats to me when she comes home from school and ds likes a chat before bed. We laugh a lot and I know what is going on in their lives. I don't even know why I'm justifying my parenting tbh. I think because I had them young I've always felt a bit like an imposter parent and not quite good enough. The power imbalance isn't off though. I am the parent and my no is final. I've always had boundaries and consistency. Argh

Don’t question yourself.

He is in therapy and isn’t questioning himself. Yet you are questioning yourself and feeling guilty as a default. That is a huge difference between the two of you.

His therapy won’t work unless he actually takes responsibility for his behaviour. Blaming you and framing it in therapy speak is just abuse. And why going to counselling with him would not work.

I know because I was daft enough to try counselling with mine. And he enlisted the counsellor and her supervisor as his allies in further scapegoating me. The counsellor was awful. And the experience has traumatised me.

The first session was awful. He transparently was using it to make me the bad guy and get the counsellor on his side. He even admitted that his intention was to prove I was the problem and he was right. I raised this in the next session and explained I didn’t feel safe.

In the one to one session I had with her I explained that I’m so angry with him. And that it’s because he’s been abusing me and using his children as tools to do so. I explained that he was financially abusing me. That his scapegoating of me over his children’s eating behaviour had made me seek therapy for such deep depression I was starting to dwell on suicide. That the outcome of that therapy was that I understood I needed to have firm boundaries and not put myself in that situation.

And she ignored all of that and in the last session she started telling me that I must eat with them (their bloody mother doesn’t!). And trying to lecture us on how to make them the priority. This was our relationship counselling! I had told her that he used their mealtimes to abuse and scapegoat me and was financially abusing me to punish me for putting boundaries in place to protect myself and my children. I’d told her the situation had made me suicidal.

I said I wanted the session to stop immediately. She wouldn’t stop it. He wouldn’t stop it. I got more and more upset. I was pacing the kitchen panicking. So I did what she had told me to do to help get anger and fear out. I went into the yard, in controlled circumstances smashed a case of wine bottles, and then cleaned it all up. Washing the patio, clearing the glass.

Yet she continued the session and the two of them worked together to claim I was violent and abusive. I left with the baby (getting my ex to pick our DS up). He threatened to not let me leave. I walked out the house with the baby - utterly distressed and with no where to go, no car, and no access to any money - walked around the corner and realised I had no choice but to call 999. So the police came, told me that I could leave and take the baby, that I should go to my mum’s a long way away. He pretended to be oh so nice and confused. Played the victim. But the officers said that the abusive ones always do that. But I was the one sobbing my heart out in the back of a police van with my baby with nowhere to go and no money to get there. The baby and I waited for my mum to drive 3 hours to pick us up at the police station.

Which is a digression. But the point is, therapy is just a tool for people like this. Normal people go to therapy because they want to fix themselves or a relationship dynamic. They don’t go to use the counsellor or the therapeutic concepts as a weapon.

Interestingly, it turns out that the relate counselling my H had with his ex also ended up with her getting incredibly upset and angry, asking for it to end and storming out (she could because it wasn’t a bloody zoom session in her living room). And him sitting with the counsellor agreeing he was a poor victim of her abuse.

I made a complaint to relate. But I don’t believe they took it at all seriously.

There’s more to that story… worse stuff.

But I let him get back in my head… and now we are here.

A social worker I had some support from (because the baby and I ended up in homeless family accommodation for a weekend) told me to hold on to the feeling I had there because there worn their way back in and convince you that it was all you that was the problem. I got there and puked my guts up with the horror of what had happened to us. Horror at the fact that he chose to make us homeless rather than move out himself or just see his other children elsewhere until he’s sorted a place for him to live.

Specifically he made it clear that it was more important that he had two bedrooms in the house for EOW contact and that he could just let his children behave as dreadfully as they liked than for his baby to have a home. Never mind a room in a house.

And stupidly I didn’t hold on to that. I need to remind myself. And continue the therapy that’s helping me to stop blaming myself. And letting him blame me.

His account is that I forced him out of the house because he moved out. The writing was on the wall and my solicitor - with evidence from the police and the local authority - would have got me an emergency occupation order. He’s tried to rewrite history so that there was no him making us homeless. And choosing empty bedrooms for children who live with their mother - and share a room there - over our baby having a home.

It’s useful writing this down actually. I am really traumatised because it has been traumatic. Of course I’ve been angry and resentful. I’ve been running in fight or flight for 18 months.

And of course him choosing extra contact with the SC was the thing that tipped the scales. It simply reawakened this trauma. Of course I reacted angrily. He basically reminded me that he doesn’t even prioritise our baby having a home.

Toast that is completely traumatic and I'm so glad you've got counselling of your own. I'm not sure what area you live but please feel free to inbox me, I will have a chat anytime and a coffee if we're local

You're very right thank you - here I am questioning myself when he's the one who's had a type of therapy this evening and is putting it all on me! What the fuck!

I think we should plan things that calm and sooth us when we're feeling like this. Our brains don't work when we feel under attack. Hiphop music and rocking can get through to the survival part of our brain. Make a playlist Toast that you can put on when you have to read his msgs.

I am going to listen to music and do some journalling before I go to sleep. I need to get my thoughts out.

Toast I’m so sorry your therapy ended like that. You would think therapists would be able to spot abuse, never mind be able to listen when you tell them about it!!

I went with my ex once too. I told the therapist about the time XP had kicked things around my house in a rage and refused to leave, forcing me to call the police in an absolute panic. Then about the time when ai was younger that a previous partner had strangled me and bitten me, after having smashed my things up etc His reply - why hadn’t I called the police on previous BF and didn’t I realise that by calling 999 on DP I had “escalated ridiculously”. You can imagine how often that was quoted back at me afterwards.

Snow you don’t need to explain or justify your parenting here. We all know how this goes - it gets twisted back onto us. Classic DARVO. Having read your previous threads it’s so clear where the issue lies to everyone except him by the sound of it!!

It’s useful writing this down actually. I am really traumatised because it has been traumatic. Of course I’ve been angry and resentful. I’ve been running in fight or flight for 18 months

It’s quite cathartic isn’t it. Thanks for the thread Snow and all who have contributed so far.

That is a good suggestion thanks. I will make a playlist.

I’ve been distracting myself by learning a language have no call to use on Duolingo. And trying to teach myself to play the piano.

I hope you feel better and sleep well.

@SnowWhitesSM my first question is in his first CBT session, what is he doing talking about you?
And your parenting? Vs himself and his own struggles?

I have been in a similar position when my exp went to therapy. And subsequently came out and hammered me. He used therapy to talk about his trauma and I was isolated as the main cause of it. He was the abused and I was the abuser. I paid zero attention to it and knew at that point that he wasn’t using therapy to try and work on himself. He didn’t see that he was the problem. He used therapy to validate that I was the problem.

No one here is the perfect parent. But based on everything you’ve posted? You’re doing just fine. He just can’t here any critique of him or his extension of him, his son. So to make it better, he needs to make you the problem.

Morning all

Thank you @RoyKentsChestHair

@sassbott I really questioned myself last night. I actually went back through all my old threads and the name change ones asking for support it really isn't me. He's been an absolute knob to me and my dc. Utterly selfish.

I don't know if he talked about me or not. He didn't say - I've talked about you and you're the problem. He started off saying the first session was helpful and they just got to know each other and put forward what they wanted help with. Then he said about CBT being a moving forward and not a delving deep therapy that will help him overcome his challenges. Then he said when we've both worked on our shit in a years time we can be back together and live together again. Then he said wait what you didn't think you were perfect did you, I've got some things you need to work on if you want me back... then he came out with the parenting bullshit. He also said that my dc have more issues than his ds and his ds issues are only surface issues that are really common in 8yr olds.

Anyway, I'm looking at consent orders for my pension and divorce before I start work. T

An inability to separate his son from himself is a huge problem. To see him as an actual person not an extension of himself. It’s a problem in so many ways.

Even worse when there’s a refusal to separate the behaviour you are finding intolerable from the child. You are not ‘rejecting the child’, you are rejecting unpleasant behaviours that child is displaying. That is trickier because arguably all the self is is a collection of habits and behaviours - if all you get is contemptuous behaviour, then at some point that becomes then personality of the person consistently displaying it. And it becomes harder to shift.

There’s a huge amount of that here. Perfectly legitimate boundaries about what you will not allow yourself to be subjected to are taken as attacks in his core being. It’s made worse when he makes his children the centre of everything so you can’t talk about anything without them being the primary consideration. The thing is, doing that makes their behaviour the main issue and he sees that as a slight on him.

For example, we wouldn’t be able to talk about taking our son for a day trip without him making it about his children (why won’t you just ‘accept them’, you awful SM?). In doing so, the issue becomes the behaviour that made it intolerable for me to go on a day trip with them. And his unwillingness to do anything about that behaviour.

But it was totally unnecessary because we could just have gone while they were with their mother. It wasn’t necessary to make them part of the discussion, never mind the centre of it. He made it about them and then took my boundaries around their behaviour as a criticism of him.

If someone tells me that my son has been rude to them, I don’t take it as a personal criticism. They’re commenting on his behaviour. He is separate to me. And I will raise it with him. If they tell me he’s consistently rude to them, I would recognise that I probably need to do something different as a parent because my son is not behaving in a way I think is acceptable.

But that’s not how these men take it. They take it deeply personally and start accusing you of ‘rejecting’ and ‘hating’ their children because you’ve said that you aren’t willing to tolerate being treated in an intolerable way.

Tbh, you see this weird dynamic in loads of the posters who respond to any discussion of behaviour with ‘you sound horrible. Your poor SC’. It’s an inability to see that it’s perfectly legitimate to have a problem with behaviours. Or that, when a parent fails to do anything to improve those behaviours, then ultimately you will end up not wanting to spend any time with the child who is being allowed to behave that way. Especially when it’s not a case of they are trying but it’s hard to achieve, but one where he simply won’t do anything about it and just expects you to put up with it. No matter how disruptive and upsetting it is for you. Or the damage it might be doing to your children.

It definitely isn’t you @SnowWhitesSM.

Do you know… I bet that the first session actually did make him feel uncomfortable. So he did what he often does in that situation and decided to displace that feeling of discomfort by having a go at you instead. That is not the sign of a nice person.

Apparently yesterday was divorce day. I seem to have been on trend with this week being the week I had had enough. And you’re looking at consent orders too. Hopefully you’re in a better position than I am.

@BurntToastAgain I agree about it being an uncomfortable feeling so he displaced it on to me. That's his whole pattern throughout our marriage.

How you feeling today? I completely agree about not being able to seperate behaviour and the child for the nrp. Any of my annoyances were taken so personally and now they being framed as anxiety inducing for him

I’m feeling exhausted today.

I’m trying to concentrate on work. Except that what I’ve had to do this morning involved talking to people about his line of work, and having to draw upon what I know via him to provide advice. So that was not what I needed really.

@BurntToastAgain that feeling of trying to work when your head is so full up