UNDERMINING

Right away my ex began his crusade to play on my emotions to get me back. He sent big bouquet of roses to my office which I either gave away or tossed in the dumpster. He called to plead that he was a pitiful victim and "what was I trying to do kill him?" My counselor had forewarned me about this and cautioned me not to talk to him or agree to discuss any issues with him because he would misinterpret them to mean that I wanted reconciliation. Either that or he would get angry with my answers, so I just said I can't talk right now and hung up every time he called. This provoked nuisance calling all night long and into the early morning. I finally unplugged the phone when we went to bed. I must have changed my phone number a dozen times over the next eight years until I gave up. Eventually he was so disturbed by the rejection that he adopted punishing and terrorizing me as his only option. How did he figure that I was hurting him when he was the one that dished out every kind of rejection toward me for 17 years? Did he not remember his cocky self, ruler of the roost diatribes, not to mentions his violence against me?
My parents had come over for the weekend of my dad's birthday to help me with the repairs I needed to do on the house. It was a hard trip for my dad because of his stroke but he tried. My mom was exhausted but she knew I needed support and some carpentry skills that my dad had so she drove him over. We were sitting in the living room when my ex pulled up in a rage and his headlights were right up to picture window. Mom and I froze for a minute because we weren't quite sure what to expect. Was he going to crash through the window and try to hurt us? My daughter immediately jumped up displaying an attempt to save the day. She was headed outside when I told her, "Stop "No, You can't go out there!" She ignored my warning with a defiant stance that I hadn't seen before. She was taking control of this whether I liked it or not. This was my clue that there was a hidden agenda between them but I was too startled to really grasp that he was indoctrinating her and she was a willing participant in my overthrow as her mother. This was a curve ball I hadn't considered. She strutted back into the house with the arrogance of a conqueror while he drove off. Mom and I looked at each other in disbelief while she smugly disappeared into her bedroom. I was hurt and angry and I had been devalued and humiliated right in front of my parents. She and her father would double team me from this day forward and would add my son to the mix in a rather obtuse way. His vague and non- conformist ways, which would escalate into delinquency and dodgy behaviors, made him the perfect scapegoat. I was the perfect target. My daughter was the perfect pawn. The two of them together(my ex and my daughter), however, were nature's perfect match for a demented duo of hate and dominance. Why me, why her brother and his son, what did we have that they wanted so desperately to destroy? I wouldn't be able to answer this for years to come and never fully, much to my disappointment. My semi conclusion was that he was playing a game of keep-away. He had to keep me away from anyone or anything that made me happy, He had to keep me away from my children. To achieve this he had to undermine me and mislead and confuse the children. High levels of undermining would carry with it low levels of support from family members and directly impact my ability to cope.  If he could make them believe that I was not who they had believed I was, I would lose my credibility as their mother, nurturer and provider. There would be no healthy close family relationships for any of us to fall back on. This tactic would ensure his victimization of all three of us, as a group and as individuals. He would continue this approach for years. He was obsessed with the need to defile. These attacks escalated in their degree of harm. Would we survive?