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

IF ONLY

When I began this blog over a year ago I was under the impression that there wasn't much out there on the traumas that I had experienced. There was clinical information on Narcissism but that didn't tell the human story of how much it hurt and why it hurt to endure these things. What I wanted to talk about were the attacks and the callous and heinous ways that these marauders of my soul acted toward me. 
I was also on a healing journey of my own. I had been told many times before writing this that writing it down would help me to heal and bring me some peace. Sometimes it did and other times it was a painful process of discovery of the maliciousness of the people that I had loved and their disregard for me. I had put so much into my marriage and had invested my entirety into my children only to come away with wounds and scars that may never be erased and comforted because of who they are. As I wrote it became apparent that these people, my family, did not fit into a mold or a certain grouping of symptoms. And so , I was solving a mystery of sort. What had caused this and what was it? 
As I researched my experiences and their behaviors I think I was hoping that it was "only alcoholism" or "only drug addiction "or only "narcissism" or maybe, " just simple parental alienation". What became obvious was that there were no "onlys". All of these conditions had worked together to form a whole. It had morphed into a gang mentality of three that had nearly destroyed me emotionally, financially, mentally and physically. I had been a loving and giving mother and wife working from a disadvantaged position because I had no idea what they were up to. When I tried harder and they would come up with new ways to throw me off. They were enjoying the game of cat and mouse while I was trying to understand why everything was always going wrong. 
I tried to be strong in the face of teenage rebellion but I would find out later that this was not their problem either. After they reached the age of 20 and their father had died they were still a problem to me. They liked to confuse and humiliate me with their recklessness and lies. OMG The lying! I blamed myself for years thinking I must have done something terrible for them to be so wayward and so full of hate toward me. After considerable soul searching I knew that I had been a dedicated mom and the only thing I had done was to stay too long in a marriage with a man who was absolutely deviously crazy. 
I began to unravel his family tree and look at what they all held in common. Through this lens I saw a link of inherited behaviors or legacies of mental and emotional traits that were the same in all cases. They drank and/or did drugs, They had sexual immorality (his mother being a barmaid and a madam), they were criminals and con artists, they took advantage of people to line their pockets, they ignored their children or put them in less than advantageous situation, they had rage attacks and fought each other not only with words but with fists, they seemed to fit the definition of crazy. I thought that since we lived 900 miles way from them and only visited them occasionally, we were safe from this horror story. But that is not the case. Miles don't matter here. It was carried in their hearts, minds and souls. It was in the DNA of their offspring. It can be planted there at conception and it can be nurtured there in their environment, most likely both, although I can't say how. 
When I was young and getting married I thought it was right not to judge someone on the merits of their parents and family, now I say, take a hard look at what your intended was raised under because it may be served on your plate for the rest of your life. Even if you divorce, having children with this person raises the chance that your children will inherit or emulate this caustic group of cells called a person. You will find yourself in a position of having to leave your family behind so you can live a healthier and more stable life. This is not a natural occurrence for a parent. We bond with our child at birth, but it is not to say that they bond with us, especially if they have this set of genes. 
It is a difficult road as it plays our mile after mile until years have gone by. We face detours, construction and deconstruction, getting lost, no road maps and running out of gas, and broken parts but we press on with love trying to find the destination of family. We may find that this family doesn't work no matter what we do. You know the song, "You Can't Make Someone Love You" and there is a truth in that. If you have followed my blog since the beginning you will remember that I told you that I had attended AA when I was fist married and found that it didn't quite fit. Yes, he drank to excess but there was something else, that something else was what I needed to discover and uncover to fully recover from the seventeen years of a loveless marriage and thirty more years of repercussions of this lunacy through my children. Locked into this reprehensible code of life is the secret of how this is transferred and how this dominant condition prevails against all goodness and love in spite of itself. It can be horrifying. We must dare to look at it and investigate it for ourselves because if we don't we might repeat it. Heaven forbid.
What I will uncover is not what I wished for. Realizing what I had been through was heartbreaking. There is more to it.