Help? Need brutal honest advice.

[Chel14]

Daughter is 14.

just us for 10 years. Good life.

i was in abusive relationship, destroyed me, her, us. Changed our life.

long story short, I was in mental hospital, she had to stay with maternal grandmother, when we reconnected I wasn’t me. She didn’t receive the same love affection care effort as before.

•appreciate massively how fucking horrific this must have been for a 10 year old. Do not diminish this statement•

however

2 years, 1 relationship, mounds of professionals throwing help her way, school transfers, allowance of poor behaviour, to extreme levels later, I am unable to cope. She is literally ruining any remaining salvageable part of our relationship, ruining her entire life, ruining my relationship with my genuine love of my life, any chance she or I have at happiness. Can’t even ask how did ur day go without it ending in literal tears on my part because of the hatred, brutality and lack of respect or empathy for anyone she displays!
she treats everyone and everyone like less than, unworthy pieces of shit! Treats my partners children like shit, has recorded herself talking to teachers in school in a way I am still shocked about. Complete lack of any good quality right now. No joke. It’s THAT bad. Wish I could tell you it all.

caught her on FaceTime vaping once. Still denies it to this day. I saw it? Close enough to see the flavour? Still denies to my face.

we live alone. Things will go missing or be left out and she will try manipulate my mental health to make me believe it has nothing to do with her. It is scary. Makes up stories to other people that are nowhere near true. Scary.

i recovered so well. Went back to college, got a job. New relationship. New lease on life. Not me again, but better.

she is driving me into the ground. Hates me. Accepts to me it wasn’t my fault what happened in that relationship. Admits she has resentment towards me for various acceptable reasons ie lack of effort when seriously unwell, emotional outbursts etc. understandable. However says it isn’t our fault and doesn’t blame me?

she has adhd (on diagnosis pathway) and what I truly believe to be ODD, possible BPD (I have this)

I have exhausted every avenue tried every approach repeated everything for months day in day out 45 minute deep hearted chats before school she seems to take in. She returns that day from being suspended, to then after 2 hours - be suspended! So what was that mornings heart felt chat and agreement about?

I cannot do it anymore. I have no help.
dad useless. No1 to take her. Social are involved however they have not much advice to help in the immediate future other than wait 16 weeks for a measly parenting course and nowhere to even temporarily accommodate her as even a worst case.

someone please give me realistic advice.

I am not joking when I say I don’t know if I’ll survive this.
everyone who truly knows her agrees she is unbelievable. Deceitful. Has no empathy. Doesn’t care for consequences. Manipulates. Will use my mental health against me eg if I’m talking to her about something she’s done and she doesn’t want to admit it or is trying to twist how it happened she will say so calmly and seeming concerned ‘mum have you took your meds today? Are you ok I’m worried your going insane’

please hear the desperation of how severe this is. If needed I will give more examples. Just please need help.

im afraid for my life and afraid she’s ruined her own.

I am begging for help.

The OP was responsible for failing to safeguard her daughter. Every woman who doesn't live under a rock knows how risky it is to move an unrelated male into their child's life. And OP appears to be making the very same choices all over again, despite the obvious extreme psychological impact on her child. It's not a zero sum game. The fact that the abuser is responsible for his actions does not absolve OP of her responsibility to keep her daughter safe by making safe choices.

And the stuff she describes as evil!

"She has got worse. will purposely wait until I’m on the phone to him and burst into the room with an obnoxious loud comment knowing full well would piss us both off. Wish I could think of an example. So evil."

I mean, yes, this is irritating and dickish, but evil? And as further evidence of her evil, OP complains that her daughter - a traumatised child who didn't make any of the choices that led to her situation - isn't accepting enough of her relationship even though OP has been fantasising about weddings and babies. Can these people really not think of any reason why the traumatised child might not see her mother's new relationship as a good thing and what she's afraid might happen? From her perspective, she'll be shunted aside again at best and abused at worst. But a miserable, traumatised teenager doesn't prioritise her distant mother's boyfriend and that makes her evil?

It's hard to read, isn't it?

I hope the OP is just a troll and this isn't real. It beggars belief.

And the poster who thinks it's not a big deal unless she's been stabbed, raped and thrown in a cellar! And has the actual nerve to complain that it's everyone else who has no sense of perspective!

So many people who expect their children, who are still literally children, to do the parenting and the regulating and to be more resilient, mature and selfless than they are.

Value judgements are what they are, personal to each person.

My wife suffered 20 years of abuse from her first husband which included, beatings, strangulation, being deprived of food to say nothing of his sexual abuse and philandering. She could not leave because every time she tried he picked up a child and held a knife to its throat. No such thing as refuges back then and to the police it was just "a domestic" .
Once she finally got rid of him and made her own life he still stalked and pursued her, on one occasion chasing her in his Landrover smashing into the back of her car until she drove up my drive. He then banged on my door!
THAT was a hard time.
I don't get the impression anything like this happened to OPs daughter. She'll have to tell us. As I said upthread, you have to have LIVED through abuse, or been directly affected by it before you can judge others.

I'm sorry for what your wife went through, but it seems that you are projecting, as I can't find any other reason why you would seek to minimise this poor child's suffering. Did you have a difficult relationship with your step kids? Or does your wife have a difficult relationship with her children?

@StanleySteamer have you experienced a parent going through a psychotic break or a mental health break? Because it strikes me as if that is the bit you neither understand or are missing completely.

and trust me it is relevant.

But it terms of the OP and her relationship it is moot anyway because from the sounds of the posts she isn’t in the right place for it either

Also you seem to actually dismiss the trauma of your stepchildren being held at knife point as well

None of that has anything to do with OP and her situation. It's actually quite appalling that what you take from your wife's terrible experience is the idea that it somehow gives you a right to trivialise another child's trauma and make her responsible, because something even worse happened elsewhere, and use it as an opportunity to centre yourself.

Some women were murdered by their husbands and their children too, does that mean your wife just had a bit of a bad time?

"She is literally ruining any remaining salvageable part of our relationship, ruining her entire life, ruining my relationship with my genuine love of my life, any chance she or I have at happiness. "

Her chance of happiness is YOU, her mental health, and HER future relationships.

Your love life is of no benefit to her, if anything it is a barrier between you and her.

She loves her to bits, but not enough to even try to see things from her perspective. She also loves some man to bits who she met about a year ago. Her ‘loving someone to bits’ doesn’t necessarily look the same as other people’s.

‘Mixed messages’ are indicative of the whole problem here. Lots of overblown language underpinned by God knows what going on emotionally and functionally underneath.

I don’t disagree that they might need a break from each other, and I think the best thing for DD could be a return to living with grandparents.

Second best option is getting mum a bit more stable, and as many safe and sane and reasonable people in this girl’s life as possible so she can see what normal life looks like.

I can’t see how it would help at all to keep her home to stew in the juices of her mother’s severe, untreated mental health issues.

Was your wife a child of 10 when this all happened?

As so often happens people need to read other peopls's posts more thoroughly.
And as an aside I had to know about and practise safeguarding of children for my job.
My wife's children love her and she loves them.
I am also lucky in that even as a step-parent they have enormous affection for me as I do for them.
When I first came on the scene her son, the youngest, 18 years old, acted up very much like OP's DD. Boundaries were set and adhered to, he tried manipulation, theft, physical damage to the house etc but it didn't work for him, in the end we had to make him leave. No sweat he went and lived with his mother's abuser!
He rapidly came to his senses. Redid A levels, (coincidentally living with his gran 100 miles away) did a degree and a PGCE and along the way, the night Lady Di died, realised it was time to make it up with his mum. Life was too short. He came round and, to make a long story short, has been a decent human being ever since.
Her eldest daughter also could be very difficult, trying to be manipulative, she lived away from home anyway, things were a little strained for a while, but in the end she too realised that her mum was entitled to a life.
All our three are married with two kids each, none were traumatised too much by their parents fighting and split, despite what I have mentioned. Their mother made sure they knew she always cared about them first. And she hid as much of the abuse from them as she could.
I think this is/was OP's problem as others have mentioned.
So yes, the road was rocky at times but came good in the end which is the point I am trying to make.
OP needs to take control OF HERSELF, maybe I should have made that clearer, AND take control of her daughter. If her new bloke really is decent then he deserves a chance but it'll be up to the daughter to realise that her mum deserves a chance of love too.

I really do hope he is a decent guy and gets a decent life, but yep I do get other posters fears that he is a chancer. HOWEVER if he too has kids I think that is a lot less likely.
It is obvious she has mental health difficulties as no one in her situation should be thinking about having babies with anyone in anything like the near future.

It takes a long time for actual love to build, except with your own children. I met my (now) husband when I was 16 and I wasn't ready to love anyone (too young). It took me two years of messing him about and having other relationships to actually realise that I did, in fact, love him. Thankfully he waited for me to realise it. My youngest son has been with his partner for 14 years - he's now 29. I didn't love her within a year or two, I liked her a lot but I didn't love her. I started loving her after about 4 years when she was going through a difficult time with him (He's DT1) as were we, as he was railing against his diabetes, and was a complete nightmare to everyone who loved him. But she stuck by him and one day I realised I actually loved the girl who loved my son as much as we did. Same with my MIL. I liked her, but it took time for me to love her.

It's obvious that what you think as "love" for your daughter is just being there for you. IMO, it's far too early in your relationship for him to love her.

Asinine comment.
Of course not.
But her children were around when all this was going on and all of them would have gone through the age of ten at some point in it all.
She kept the nature of the abuse hidden from them as far as possible but they knew what was going on. He did physically abuse them sometimes too, but not systematically, more an outburst of temper that resulted in one being hit, kicked, having their hair pulled, etc.

As I thought. You had problems with your stepchildren when you got together with your wife. You say that none of them were "too traumatised" by what they had witnessed, despite having had their father hold a knife to their throat on multiple occasions?

Really?

You said that he repeatedly held a knife to their throats.

I initially wrote this and then deleted it, but I suspected that Stanley was coming at this the way he was because he was motivated by not wanting children's trauma to spoil the adults' relationships. I quite frankly didn't expect him to be quite so open about it. Here it is, he goes into great detail about the horrendous abuse suffered by his wife, and apparently the children had knives held to their throats too (and would have witnessed the other abuse) and yet somehow, somehow, this ceases to matter much once it comes to the new step parent.

The trauma is all real and terrible as long as it affects the adults (and it is, no sarcasm), but it's the children who have to toughen up and be glad it wasn't worse and do all the regulating and repair.

Yes, my father suffered with his mental health all his life. So yes, he did have to spend time in a mental hospital where I visited him.
I don't dismiss the being held at knifepoint issue at all, yes, it was very, very frightening, as were a few other things that happened to them. But the point you, and others seem to be missing is that all three of her children GOT OVER IT.

The word "trauma" is massively missused here and on many other forums, or fora if you are being pedantic.

Fuck me. How could this thread get even more horrific.

I am relived that your safeguarding role was historical @StanleySteamer because fuck me your standards are so far removed from what children need to be kept safe.

I have kept reading the thread because the strength of others (not that twit) sharing their stories is incredible. I can’t even remember the poster’s but so many of you have gone through hell and back in your childhood / living with BPD and I am in awe of your ability to share your stories to help others.

I keep thinking of the lady saying how the phone call of her mums suicide attempt changed her life. One phone call. Forever. I can’t even comprehend it. What a human you are to share your heartbreak to try to help others…

the power of your words are going to stay with me personally and professionally.

Well even by your own account, they didn't GET OVER it until they were older than OP's child is now. So your laying into a 14 year old girl because she hasn't GOT OVER her abusive background, her mother's psychotic break and permanent ongoing damage since while she's still too young to watch The Matrix is still highly off, to say the least.

And the fact that you think your experiences are the benchmark of trauma, so that you think what's going on here isn't very much, is a very strong sign that you haven't GOT OVER it yourself, despite telling us what trauma is. I actually recognise this from my own father. His trauma was the minimum for anything that could be described as traumatising, and anyone who suffered less in his estimation, even if it was properly appalling, didn't have it that bad and should all GET OVER it even when they were children and he demonstrated by the day that he hadn't GOT OVER it at all.

Some people, once they reach adulthood and have the power and authority, think it's a reason to dictate to the children how damaged they are allowed to be, and astonishingly enough, the line always comes short of requiring anything of them.

By these standards then single mothers should never, ever date. Everything we do carries some level of risk, even putting children into sports clubs or attending church etc. So what exactly makes a 'safe' choice? I agree this child needs to be kept away from ops current partner and his existence is likely to be highly triggering for her, but my post was aimed at the posters who are saying things like op is responsible for ruining her dds life which are unacceptable things to say to a victim of domestic abuse. Op left. She did it in the safest way she could. She's parented through something horrific and probably did the best she could at the time with what was available to her.

We don't know the circumstances of the abuse. We don't know the circumstances of how op managed to get them both safely away from the ex who was abusive, but you could also look at the fact OP did leave and did get her DD out as protective parenting and safeguarding, so saying that op failed to safeguard is not actually appropriate. We know it's very difficult for women to leave abusive relationships safely which is why so many don't ever leave so this is no small thing to have done. Any of us can be abused, there are not always clear red flags and abusers are highly manipulative. Anyone who's saying op should have looked into her crystal ball and known better is throwing stones from a glass house.

How do you know they did? Or given your and potentially your wife’s attitude did they just stop bothering. Because you seem to think your wife’s trauma was worse even though she had agency they didn’t

your background has clearly shaped you, you have to believe that trauma doesn’t exist becuase I suspect if you really delved into it that might not be the case

and she is 14 and still living the trauma with the OP who is clearly not recovered

But @Lavender14 it isn’t about unrealistic standards

it’s about this case - where u have a mother with long standing very serious mental illness - borderline personality disorder/ EUPD,

a teenage daughter who has experienced very high levels of trauma over an extended period of time -
domestic violence, mother sectioned into hospital, displaced to live with grandparent,

add to that mum’s ongoing instability, men being introduced as ‘the saviour’ is BAD news on top of a highly chaotic, unstable, volitile situation that OP needs to get a grip on, albeit with a lot of support, rather than adding another man into the mix

I understand all of that which is why I said I agree that the op needs to keep this guy away from her dd. But she's also received some really disgusting victim blaming comments on this thread in the process. This is a vulnerable person who's experienced really significant trauma asking for help and guidance and I understand why people are (rightly) concerned for her dd, the way this information is being delivered in some cases is really not ok.

Yes op needs to take accountability for the decisions she makes moving forwards, but we should not be blaming women for the abuse they've suffered. Because that's what's happening here. And those are two very separate issues.

For her sake and her recovery @Lavender14 I think she isn’t ready for a relationship either - BPD and saviour complex are common and the way she talks about this man is so unrealistic it is impossible for it to be real