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Abuse Support Community
This patient support community is for discussions relating to emotional, physical, sexual, social, spiritual, spousal, and verbal abuse.
Is it her or is it me?
by lindamcd, Mar 03, 2008 03:09PM
Let me start by saying that I probably should be going to some professional counseling for this problem, but I would like a second opinion of whether I need the counseling or my daughter does. (Or both). I am open to any criticisms you need to give me. I just want some peace of mind.
A brief overview of our relationship starts at her birth, when her father “SWORE” that I smacked my daughter when she was just a new born because she wouldn’t stop crying. First of all, I never smacked my daughter when she was a newborn, and second, he was coming down off of speed and heroin when he was SURE that what he saw was what he saw. Bad part is, he TOLD her this after we were divorced. I could not believe that he would do something like that, but now as an adult, she feels that she is “armed” with this information, and of course would never betray her father’s trust in not telling me that he told her this.
So onward and forward we go, trying to build a relationship, with her having this in her head.
Anyway, her youth, prior to our divorce, was filled with good things…. family trips, she did well in school, lots of extra-curricular activities (piano lessons, ice skating lessons, sports in school, scuba diving lessons, swimming lessons, tap/jazz…I could go on and on).
After she grew up, she said she FORGOT all that, when I attempted to remind her. After my divorce, we moved to Texas when she was 16, so she had to finish school in Splendora, Texas. She would not even entertain the idea of moving with me unless she could bring her “boyfriend”. He had graduated from high school already, and was going to come to Texas to get a job, on and on. There was no sense in kidding myself, they were already sleeping together. This was not her first boyfriend. Her first one was when she was 13. She called the doctor one day and went to the doctor on her own and got some birth control pills at 13….unreal (we lived in Canada at the time). Well, apparently Splendora wasn’t for her, because she and he decided to hike it back to Niagara Falls, NY, where my mother agreed to let her live with her until she graduated, but then she would have to come to live with me in Texas.
My ex-husband was supposed to provide support for her while she was in NF, but never did. He never paid child support for her at all after we were divorced. My mother did most of it, because by then, I had a job and was working in Splendora, BUT, I could not support her there, and me here. I had bought a house by then, also.
So, when she graduated, I traveled back to NF, gave her a huge graduation party there, and she returned to Texas with me with yet ANOTHER boyfriend. She and he lived with me in my new house at that point, for a while….then she decided that she was sick of him, too, and sent him on his merry way back to Niagara Falls, because she was into dating “cowboys” and she didn’t want him anymore.
So, she ended up having a relationship with a local boy, and having a beautiful baby daughter. The apple of everyone’s eye….They got along ok for a couple years, but then she got sick of him too, and divorced him (only after cheating on him with someone she worked with). She moved herself and her beautiful daughter into a shack on a side road in Splendora, and lived there with a very very abusive man, until he was put in jail for violence.
During my relationship with my first husband, he was a very very abusive man. She blames me for her relationships with abusive men because I stayed with her father… of course she blames nothing on her father. He is perfect.
After dating several worthless men, during her singledom, she ultimately set her sights on her ex husband’s brother, who had just been released from jail in Louisiana having spent 3 years there for identity theft. She proceeded to sleep with him, and again became pregnant, so that her daughters are now more cousins than sisters. Very very sad. My new husband had a very bad reaction to this arrangement , and had several loud conversations with my daughter trying to knock some sense into her, but to no avail. She proceeded to marry this man, and did not want me at the wedding. Well, I ended up being there, because my mother (her grandmother) flew in for the event. Anyway, onward and forward we go, her convincing these men that I am just the wicked witch of the North….And this is pretty much the beginning of her alienation of me.
She ultimately became sick of the second husband, after she met someone at work that caught her attention, and proceeded to divorce the second husband and move in the co- worker. This makes my first granddaughter’s 4th man in her life. She was just 5 years old. My youngest granddaughter was no more than 6 months of age and was already on her second man. She and he decided they needed a 4 bedroom home, so they ultimately moved 35 miles from me to a bigger home in the area where they both worked. My first granddaughter was yanked from her comfortable home/school/daycare, and transplanted into a new environment. Not bad, if it all stopped there.
But it didn’t.
She ultimately got sick of the boyfriend, kicked him out of the house, took a lot of their debts on herself, and all the while, is not receiving reliable child support from the girls’ fathers. She stayed alone for about 3 weeks……
She met many men online, and in the end, decided on a man that she had chemistry with….who had custody of his two children. She knew nothing about him, or at least not enough to move him in with her children, but, yes you guessed it, he and his children moved into her house. This is now my first granddaughter’s 5th man, and my second granddaughters’ 3rd. So, she has this big blowout wedding, all the kids were in it (again she didn’t want me to have anything to do with it but threw me a bone by letting me see her wedding dress). Oh, but I was allowed to cook all the food for it. This is now her 3rd wedding, and she was mad at me because I didn’t offer to give her a shower as well.
The marriage proved to be a horrible mistake, with him being mentally abusive to the extreme, and she would spend the majority of her weekends at my house with me, saying my house was her sanctuary, to get away from him. Yes, you guessed it again…She divorced him, after he had already moved his children out of their school district and into hers, and at that point, causing a lot of pain for everyone, but most of all for my first granddaughter. She felt sure that this man was good for her mother, but apparently she hasn’t figured it out yet….no one is good ENOUGH for her mother. Her mother has Whims and reacts to all of them. It is just so unstable!
After that abusive relationship, she SWORE off men. Oh, it was just going to be her and her girls and they would live in the house….it was “SO nice” to have those “other people” out of there, on and on.
Guess what. That lasted 3 weeks. Apparently there was some man that saw her one time in a school auditorium (his son was in the same grade as my first granddaughter and they were at some school function). He set his sights on her that day, and waited 2 years until she divorced the 3rd husband, and then zoomed in. Now he has the proud title of my first granddaughters’ 6TH man, and yes, lives with my daughter in her house.
Now this guy is into some sort of “church”, which I say is made up of a bunch of OLD HIPPIES, but he protests the war, he has distinct demands of the girls and how they live, and is just pretty much a control freak. It’s his way or the highway. Now I get to the best part of my story, and the problem that I just cannot get over. (Watch for the second part....too long)
A brief overview of our relationship starts at her birth, when her father “SWORE” that I smacked my daughter when she was just a new born because she wouldn’t stop crying. First of all, I never smacked my daughter when she was a newborn, and second, he was coming down off of speed and heroin when he was SURE that what he saw was what he saw. Bad part is, he TOLD her this after we were divorced. I could not believe that he would do something like that, but now as an adult, she feels that she is “armed” with this information, and of course would never betray her father’s trust in not telling me that he told her this.
So onward and forward we go, trying to build a relationship, with her having this in her head.
Anyway, her youth, prior to our divorce, was filled with good things…. family trips, she did well in school, lots of extra-curricular activities (piano lessons, ice skating lessons, sports in school, scuba diving lessons, swimming lessons, tap/jazz…I could go on and on).
After she grew up, she said she FORGOT all that, when I attempted to remind her. After my divorce, we moved to Texas when she was 16, so she had to finish school in Splendora, Texas. She would not even entertain the idea of moving with me unless she could bring her “boyfriend”. He had graduated from high school already, and was going to come to Texas to get a job, on and on. There was no sense in kidding myself, they were already sleeping together. This was not her first boyfriend. Her first one was when she was 13. She called the doctor one day and went to the doctor on her own and got some birth control pills at 13….unreal (we lived in Canada at the time). Well, apparently Splendora wasn’t for her, because she and he decided to hike it back to Niagara Falls, NY, where my mother agreed to let her live with her until she graduated, but then she would have to come to live with me in Texas.
My ex-husband was supposed to provide support for her while she was in NF, but never did. He never paid child support for her at all after we were divorced. My mother did most of it, because by then, I had a job and was working in Splendora, BUT, I could not support her there, and me here. I had bought a house by then, also.
So, when she graduated, I traveled back to NF, gave her a huge graduation party there, and she returned to Texas with me with yet ANOTHER boyfriend. She and he lived with me in my new house at that point, for a while….then she decided that she was sick of him, too, and sent him on his merry way back to Niagara Falls, because she was into dating “cowboys” and she didn’t want him anymore.
So, she ended up having a relationship with a local boy, and having a beautiful baby daughter. The apple of everyone’s eye….They got along ok for a couple years, but then she got sick of him too, and divorced him (only after cheating on him with someone she worked with). She moved herself and her beautiful daughter into a shack on a side road in Splendora, and lived there with a very very abusive man, until he was put in jail for violence.
During my relationship with my first husband, he was a very very abusive man. She blames me for her relationships with abusive men because I stayed with her father… of course she blames nothing on her father. He is perfect.
After dating several worthless men, during her singledom, she ultimately set her sights on her ex husband’s brother, who had just been released from jail in Louisiana having spent 3 years there for identity theft. She proceeded to sleep with him, and again became pregnant, so that her daughters are now more cousins than sisters. Very very sad. My new husband had a very bad reaction to this arrangement , and had several loud conversations with my daughter trying to knock some sense into her, but to no avail. She proceeded to marry this man, and did not want me at the wedding. Well, I ended up being there, because my mother (her grandmother) flew in for the event. Anyway, onward and forward we go, her convincing these men that I am just the wicked witch of the North….And this is pretty much the beginning of her alienation of me.
She ultimately became sick of the second husband, after she met someone at work that caught her attention, and proceeded to divorce the second husband and move in the co- worker. This makes my first granddaughter’s 4th man in her life. She was just 5 years old. My youngest granddaughter was no more than 6 months of age and was already on her second man. She and he decided they needed a 4 bedroom home, so they ultimately moved 35 miles from me to a bigger home in the area where they both worked. My first granddaughter was yanked from her comfortable home/school/daycare, and transplanted into a new environment. Not bad, if it all stopped there.
But it didn’t.
She ultimately got sick of the boyfriend, kicked him out of the house, took a lot of their debts on herself, and all the while, is not receiving reliable child support from the girls’ fathers. She stayed alone for about 3 weeks……
She met many men online, and in the end, decided on a man that she had chemistry with….who had custody of his two children. She knew nothing about him, or at least not enough to move him in with her children, but, yes you guessed it, he and his children moved into her house. This is now my first granddaughter’s 5th man, and my second granddaughters’ 3rd. So, she has this big blowout wedding, all the kids were in it (again she didn’t want me to have anything to do with it but threw me a bone by letting me see her wedding dress). Oh, but I was allowed to cook all the food for it. This is now her 3rd wedding, and she was mad at me because I didn’t offer to give her a shower as well.
The marriage proved to be a horrible mistake, with him being mentally abusive to the extreme, and she would spend the majority of her weekends at my house with me, saying my house was her sanctuary, to get away from him. Yes, you guessed it again…She divorced him, after he had already moved his children out of their school district and into hers, and at that point, causing a lot of pain for everyone, but most of all for my first granddaughter. She felt sure that this man was good for her mother, but apparently she hasn’t figured it out yet….no one is good ENOUGH for her mother. Her mother has Whims and reacts to all of them. It is just so unstable!
After that abusive relationship, she SWORE off men. Oh, it was just going to be her and her girls and they would live in the house….it was “SO nice” to have those “other people” out of there, on and on.
Guess what. That lasted 3 weeks. Apparently there was some man that saw her one time in a school auditorium (his son was in the same grade as my first granddaughter and they were at some school function). He set his sights on her that day, and waited 2 years until she divorced the 3rd husband, and then zoomed in. Now he has the proud title of my first granddaughters’ 6TH man, and yes, lives with my daughter in her house.
Now this guy is into some sort of “church”, which I say is made up of a bunch of OLD HIPPIES, but he protests the war, he has distinct demands of the girls and how they live, and is just pretty much a control freak. It’s his way or the highway. Now I get to the best part of my story, and the problem that I just cannot get over. (Watch for the second part....too long)
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Sometimes we can try our best and our kids still rebel and go their own way. It's true, I wouldn't push myself on her but if I were in her position, I'd at least try to see the grandchildren on a regular basis and the mother when she lets her. I believe there's always hope to mend relationships but I also think that this young woman should consider counseling and try and figure out who she is before she jumps into another relationship. Women who jump from relationship to relationship are looking for love and affection but tend to have a low sel-esteem. It sounds like she's afraid of committment and she also doesn't seem to think she deserves better than some of these losers she's hooked up with. I hope she will consider counseling for her sake and the sake of those little girls or this will be a cycle that will continue on with them when they grow up. I wish you all the best.
My granddaughters are the same way! It wasn't until THEY were diagnosed with their problem that I absolutely knew that they got that from ME! My daughter thougbht it was from their father.s..it might well have been...but it was ALSO, if not soley, from me. They are in classes for it, and I just go on, and ometimes, I LIKE my affflication, because I can Multitask and finish every one of hem! LOL