HOLDING ON

I held onto my children by a thread. I kept hoping for a better outcome, the one where they didn't become narcissists and drug addicts themselves. The one where they didn't betray me, dupe me and use me: The one where they didn't drink and use drugs and abuse their spouses: The one where they didn't abandon their children and families by disappearing so no one could find them: The one where they didn't steal and cheat me or try to contest my inheritance for their own benefit: The one where they didn't bait their spouse into reacting to nude photos on their phone and then follow it up with malign cunning to get their spouse arrested for domestic violence: The one where they didn't carry tales to my ex who was only crazy enough to kill me one day because of it: I held on hoping that my influence would rise above the evil that surrounded us. You know, the one where love finally wins. Alas, I arrived at the point of refusing to hold on any longer. Not because I don't have love for them but because it is impossible to allow them anywhere near me or my life for fear of what they can and will do. They have shown me, in no uncertain terms who they are and what they will do to me if I give them any means of return. They are like a pack of wolves running me down into complete exhaustion before they strike to kill and rip the flesh from my bones as if to devour my spirit completely. It is as if my eradication is necessary for their survival.
So in 2014 when one of my son's very angry girlfriends didn't mind telling me the truth about him (that truth that nobody else would ever tell me) that I began my journey of recovery and detachment from their malignancy of hate. I had to face some horrible truths about them and I had to harden my heart against them. My creator would not want me to devalue my life for theirs, I am sure of that. 
Forgiveness is now left up to God because every time I reached out with compassion and love and forgiveness they took advantage and used it to further their contemptuous advantages over me. "Sorry "can never be enough and neither can "please forgive me" because repentance and amends have not been given. I don't think there is anything they can do to erase the malice that they intended. Breaking trust is the straw that just hurts too much, leaving reconciliation out of the question. Forgiveness is too much to ask for and so forgiveness is now reserved for myself. I forgive myself for staying too long in a marriage that damaged everyone it touched. I forgive myself for marrying him in the first place. May God forgive me, also.  I believed I was doing the right thing by keeping the family together and standing up as a *Stoic Force amidst the chaos and degradation. I had no idea that I was trying to make a family by myself while evil was working against it. 
*Stoic forces = wisdom, morality, courage, and moderation
There was a time that I doubted the existence of evil in my life; I thought it was like Cain and Abel or Hitler in Nazi Germany or Pol Pot or al-Qaeda or the butcher of Bagdad. Evil is not always so out in the open or identifiable. It creeps into your life wearing a disguise and now I know its disguises. It is underhanded and sneaky. It presents as a victim or a lover or a cause. It is always right. It has many faces each one for a different purpose: the main one is to obliterate or cripple you and take whatever is left for themselves. I stared it in the face for years. It is definitely frightening and can drain the life out of you. It is something that is hard to define and recognize until it has captured you, put its claws into you, and starts to rip away at your life force. Then you will know it and you will never doubt it again. 
2014 was also the years that I landed on the Psychiatrists couch, thank heavens! I am forever grateful to this kind physician who walked me through this.  After the girlfriend had told me that addiction to methamphetamines was an issue with my son along with lying constantly and stealing and emotional cruelty, I fell into shock. The fact that my daughter was supporting her brother's newer relationship and admitting that she was glad he had come to her when I rejected him further alarmed me. I had to see someone about this. I decided to tell the Dr. all of the examples of what I had been through with my family for years. In one sentence he solved the mystery. He told me that all three of them were psychopaths. I was relieved that I wasn't crazy but I didn't know it would take a few more years to fully accept that diagnosis. That was a hard pill to swallow after all the love and dedication I had poured into these people. How could I have missed this? Well, I didn't miss it; I felt every blow and brow beating. I was just afraid to call it what it was for fear of mis-judging someone, especially my children. When children cross the line into adulthood carrying these traits with them, they are no longer children, They are adults with an incurable disorder: INCURABLE being the key word here. Love, compassion, forgiveness and understanding and mercy will never bring about the desired outcome. Neither will reasoning, common sense, correction or punishment or well intention consequences. They are immune to these restraints. They can't recognize or decipher the need to adapt and change. They only value reward and will use any means to get it. This is a hard acceptance for the parent since we know if we want the best for them we cannot reward bad behavior.
Catch 22
Stay tuned for my next post Fading Out

The Bridges and Triangles of Parental Alienation and Psychopathy

Remembering that this is from my experiences only: It is time now to investigate two triangles: “The Perverse Triangle"”The Cross-Generation Coalition” and “The Triangulation Bridge”. I could continue to reveal to you many accounts of the mistreatment I received from my ex-husband and our two children. I have done some of that in my past posts. What this has led up to, however, is the triangles and bridges. When  a child crosses the rickety, swaying ,dangerous triangulation bridge and turns to look back after reaching the so-called safety on the other side, he/she all too often sees that this bridge has fallen into the water and he can no longer use it to go back to what was. The child can only be a disenfranchised off spring transformed into a sub-agent to act on behalf of the offending parent to try to further his position in the family.  He or she is now trapped in the cross generation coalition of being rewarded to be defiant, disrespectful, selfish, rude, judgmental, haughty, ungrateful, and hateful toward the once loving parent. He is held hostage in an unknown territory of lies and deceit and mind games of disobedience and disrespect and he is empowered to be dishonest and duplicitous and scheming. He cannot admit his part in this so he keeps up the behavior as if it were a sporting competition that he is winning. The elevation to the role of a partner and adult with the offending parent is exciting and pays very good dividends. Together they share secrets of the malicious kind to undermine the other parent’s authority and to restore control to the offending parent over his ex-spouse. The treacherous liaison revels and delights in the crest fallen reactions of the loving and concerned parent.  The deliberate assault on the psyche of a vilified, confused and terrified parent is further motivation to keep delivering blows until the loving parent has no choice but to look like an ineffective fool or worse yet a “crazy” while trying to maintain the high road of a stable and reliable co-parent. 

A Coalition has been formed on the back and heart of a child. The emotionally unstable parent has become so obsessed with his rejection by the other parent that he will use anyone he can to make himself look innocent including his children who in blind obedience kindle the pain and sufferings of the other parent. 

The Coalition forms at the hands of the emotionally unbalanced ex-partner and is orchestrated willfully. What better resource than someone who lives with the other parent and can avail themselves of critical information to use against that parent. You may not recognize that this is happening until it is too late. The relationship you had with your child has changed almost overnight. One day you were super mom or dad and now you are defiled and you cannot figure out why. This is a diabolical plan to destroy you, Why? Because you divorced him and he hates you for it. No matter what he says, he really does hate you. His cries of Love for you to all who will listen are not true.

The Coalition

Formation

• It is created by recruiting the child away from the other parent by slowly tearing down the credibility of the other parent through lies if necessary. 
• Puts a relationship with the abuser as the most desirable and most beneficial.(rewards of money, privileges, praise and adult status)
• Paints a vision for a common goal which is to be together excluding the other parent or on a false mission to reunify the family or correct the other parents “bad decisions”.  
• Elevates the child to a superior role as a type of pseudo spouse or “parentify” them so they are willing to sit in judgment of the other parent. 
• Strokes their Ego Incentivizes them by making them a subagent with a job to do and creating for them a stake in the outcome. 
• Establish the abuser as the leader and benefactor the only one worthy of their devotion and loyalty.

Building 

• The abuser decides which child is most likely to be supportive of his plan and who might be the easiest to manipulate into this scheme.
• He will use a pity ploy to get the child on his side claiming to be a victim of the ruthless ex who destroyed him by doing all these made up bad things when it was really him who was ruthless and cruel during the marriage.
• He will decide which child might be an obstacle to his success and make that child a scapegoat and a target of his wrath. He will tell this child that this divorce is his fault. He will ostracize this child until he/she caves under the constant oppression and gives into the abuser and his sub-agent or the child may get involved in drugs and alcohol to cope. Eventually this child may figure out that he would do better if he gave into the abuser and defy the other parent. 
• The abuser will also figure out which family members he can draw into his circle by casting doubt in them about the other parent. He begins an outward campaign including neighbors and friends, coworkers and families to smear the other parent in their eyes.
• He will expand his network of denigration and he will check it often to see if his potential candidates are still listening to him or if he has to up his game. He is out to convince anyone that you are a terrible person and remember his is extremely convincing. He will strengthen his position by making up allegations that even the devil hasn’t thought of.

The Pact

• Trust is accomplished through mutual dishonesty. In any alliance trust is a foundation. In a toxic alliance the trust is formed by their mutual dishonesty. The abuser convinces the child to violate boundaries, lie, and disrespect authority in order to further his agenda which is based on the lies he has told the child about the other parent. They are now in a commitment of cross generational coalition. They are bound by a dishonest agreement that neither can break for fear of being held accountable for the breach. The double edged sword.
• Dissolve all boundaries and limits. Circumvent laws or rules for co- parenting by devious means. Go to court repeatedly accusing the other parent of maliciousness. This assures that the abuser is still in your life forever.
• The truth is the abuser’s enemy so he has to make sure it never comes out. He tells fantastic lies over and over again until the truth gets lost forever. Lies and exaggerations are the cement that holds things together. Nobody believes that anyone would make up such garbage if it weren’t true. Nobody can fathom that a parent would tell a child such horrible accounts of another person unless it was pf the utmost importance to the child’s safety. People never dreamed you could be capable of such things but now they believe them hook, line, and sinker because your ex is so convincing.

The Tools and Methods

• The Power of Suggestion is used to sway the child into his camp. The offending parent shares some information he has about the other parent which is either false or a twist on the truth and presents it to the child as evidence. He explains that the other parent is hiding something or up to no good and needs to be monitored so this can be stopped from ruining their lives. He needs the help of the child to restore peace. He will lie about the other parent’s sanity or ability to lead and take care of them.
• Next he introduces the child into how to obtain this information for him so he can change the situation back to what is used to be or so he says. He really just wants to see you in ruins. He says he will reward the child for bringing him information. He/she will get special favors. He tells the child how to snoop through drawers and personal belonging, mail and even the household finances. He wants lists of friends and their phone numbers. He wants the child to listen in on phone calls and talks with their friends to garner what or where the other parent will be at certain times. He wants to know where the targeted parent goes on her dates and what activates she participates in. He begins to know everything about the other parent and shows up at the most unexpected places. The child is his informant. This is their secret. It is very damaging to the target parent and child as well.
• Following this he allows the child into the adult world by extracting opinions on all this from her or him. He helps her to form opinions of the other parent from the information she has confiscated. The child is now placed in an exalted position over the other parent and is set up to judge the actions and worthiness of the other parent: to criticize and condemn as the need arises, to use and abuse as he has instructed. In the child’s mind he or she is now the head of the family and leader of the group because the abuser has told her as much. He strengthens the child’s influence over other family members and friends until he/she turns completely against the loving parent and becomes totally enmeshed in the perverse triangle. The more the child uncovers in the information stealing the more he is able to twist her/his loyalty by evidence mongering. He now has proof, whatever that is, and says “See, I told you so”. The other parent now has no privacy in life whatsoever and has lost the love and respect of her children. I will add here that this time in my life was one of the darkest and dreadful times of my life and it was all based on false allegations and scrutiny like I have never experienced before or since. Everything was made to look like something other than what it was. I thought that my phone was tapped, my home was bugged and that my friends were my traitors when it was really my children operating in the shadows.
• The challenge won’t be complete until the child is completely indoctrinated into his sadistic and hate filled world of revenge and retaliation. The child has to reach a point at which he/she can carry out what he has taught her/him on her own without his encouragement or coercion. The child has to completely buy into his belief system and never question or critically examine what he has encouraged her/him to do against the other parent. They now have totally shared values and secret information that is only between the two of them. The child has crossed the triangulation bridge and will never return. The tactics learned from him will be employed by the child to be used almost unconsciously into all of her future relationships because the character traits of honesty integrity and honor were negated in her life by the exclusion of the targeted parent. It is now an automatic life skill to secure the child’s needs.

To Be Continued