Lastly, give your DH an extra hug and kiss. He sounds like a really special guy.
Absolutely.
When my dad got all "my dad-ish" in the presence of my mom and first stepdad, step blew up so out of control that I tried to run away. It was horrible. He was trying to protect her, but my dad wasn't doing anything threatening at that time; stepdad was a couple years too late for the violence. Stepdad made it so so so so much worse, but then the story made it to second stepdad (good solid guy at long last for my mom) and he treated my dad even worse, if possible, over things LONG since done, than first stepdad.
My dad wasn't in the right at all. He felt that he should have a say in where child support went or he wasn't going to pay it...he wanted it to go to college fund...my mom explained that stepdad shouldn't
have to pay for a father's share of things, and that we needed shoes and clothes and such NOW, and that's where child support went...ended up, after the blow up, with NO money. No child support, no college fund. Yay.
What was it about this jerk that attracted you to him in the first place? I never understand when I read these stories about awful ex-husbands... were they sterling, upstanding men before the wedding? Did they turn into ******** only afterwards? How can I help my daughters choose husbands wisely?
Just my answer, ignore if you only wanted OP's...Freud had something with the electra, looking for daddy, stuff. I looked for the feeling of mom and dad's, and later mom and first stepdad's, relationships (if you can call it that) for years. It wasn't a relationship if it wasn't *charged*. If I wasn't unsure at ALL times if he liked me (forget love!). If we weren't routinely breaking up and making up. "Nice guys" always adored me...I ignored them. Or I wouldn't talk about feelings with the nice guys until it was too late, they thought I wasn't serious, and they'd moved on to the next girl who did like them and would tell them they liked them. wash, rinse, repeat.
And even after I figured that out (reading Adult Children of Alcoholics helped IMMENSELY) it took a good while for my habits to change. And when I finally found a good nice guy, I stuck around! And talked feelings etc, and all those really uncomfortable things.
My dad...stood up my mom on their first date. They were, oh, 15 and 17 at the time, I believe. My dad looked like James Dean (who was already dead by that time) and was ridiculously good looking. He had this sort of tucked in, but strong (not weasely), chin that my brother had (and orthodontists tried to correct it) that caused swooning in women of his age. They met and were separated by fate, and fought to get back to each other. (seriously, there's a reason why Romeo and Juliet end up dead...15 year olds in way over their heads...) My mom, at the time, just wanted to get out of the house...her father woudln't let her do so alone...he and my dad had a closed-door meeting where it was decided that he and my mom would marry. So they did, and moved to SF in the early 60s. She was 17, dad was 19 (they had me 8 years later) A few years after they married, he got mean. And it got worse and worse. My mom said she should have known, since he had stood her up.
In the years before she died, she had some memories come to the surface. My aunt, her sister, refused to believe them, saying that someone had planted them in her head. My mom hadn't had any therapy; she believed them firmly. Memories of her father being extremely abusive to her in the relatively short time she lived at home. I mean, really really abusive.
Again, searching for daddy by marrying who she married.
So IMO if you don't have a dad like that to begin with, and I'm going by the patterns of my girlfriends (most of whom were from nice, calm, intact homes) too here, there's not as much to worry about. But if there's a live-wire dad around...it can get weird.
Lesson learned at long last....Nice guys are nice.
Fl state guidelines determine the support amount and we can NOT lower it because it is for the children and Fl state wants to make sure they get what the girls need, not make life easier for the parents. We have been to court over twenty times in the last three years regarding his wanting to lower child support and it is dismissed every time.
I have had both girls in therapy several years (since the beginning of the divorce) but it doesn't seem to be able to make headway with that fear.
I know it sounds stupid but I grew up in an abusive household with a single mom and a series of stepdads and my moms boyfriends that werent the nicest ppl and didn't think the ex was like this until after we were married and had Remy...by that time I felt stuck and didn't see how I could get out of the situation..I actually left for over a year when Remy was two, but somehow got sucked back in thinking he had changed..which he did for a year or two...then when he was deployed several times he became really bad and had me convinced I was worthless, stupid, and that he would get custody of the girls if I left since I had no job at that time and no resourses...it took a long time (and therapy) to see I was a capable woman and was NOT worthless...now I can't understand how I was so dumb..hindsight I guess.
It's so sad he can't see that it's the law and that's it. He's banging his head against the wall trying to get it lowered...that's just so awful.
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Fear of being in trouble from absent (no matter how good a reason for the absence!) father is a big big fear. It was so deep set in me that on one trip to my mom and second stepdad's home, when I was in grad school, my mom and I started bickering (as we had always done), I said something that ticked off my stepdad (he had never seen us bicker, I guess), and he started "talking loud" to me...I ran upstairs and became hysterical, hyperventilating for WAY too long...just b/c I was yelled at by a father-figure. I can't take it.
Even now, if hubby and I have some stupid argument (and this was especially so in the year leading up to blood sugar problems were diagnosed and he changed his diet to keep them lower and more level) and he raises his voice, I will start freaking out. Thankfully I don't just let whatever it was go, but I do communicate the fear I'm feeling, and we can continue on working through the problem instead of just yelling at the problem.
Anyway, fear of loss of father's love is a big one. I lost that after 30 (when my mom died), and especially lost it back in '07 when I had it out with him about use of certain language in front of my son. That is WAY too long; I encourage trying to help them through that by a much younger age!
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It doesn't sound stupid at all, hon. It sounds very common, and it happens often.
My MIL never did leave her husband, even after her 3 children got old enough to start *begging* her to leave their father. But she didn't have citizenship (b/c she wanted to make sure she could flee quickly back to Korea, just in case...the logic fails there with what comes next in the story, but that was her story), not until she was nearly 70, and FIL would threaten her with taking and keeping the children, and that she would NEVER see them again. He would gather them together and tell them to say goodbye to their mother...that she was leaving them...that she loved Korea more than them... She never left him. And I should mention that my BIL is 9 years older than my DH (who is 2 years older than their sister), so it's not like he was only doing this with infants.
She finally started thinking about divorce...just as he got sick for the last time...and now she feels she caused his death b/c she told him she was going to leave him.
So what you went through isn't stupid. You got out. You were strong, even if strength took awhile to get fully instilled.
I agree empowering is a good thing. I don't agree with having the kids tell their father that Mom will call back or isn't available. That should be out of the adults mouth.
But if he is saying these things to his daughters...what are they to do? Give her the phone? If so, then he says "tell your mother to get her butt on the phone", and...she does it. That is NOT good. It's not good for him to feel he's gotten his way, it's not good for the OP to maybe feel she's given in, and it's absolutely not good for what her daughters might take away from it.
So what should their daughters say to him?
It took me to my mid/late 20s to stop being a go-between. It took longer to stop being a go-between between dad and my brother. These girls are far younger than that. It might be beyond them to say "I'm not a go-between, I can't talk about this with you."
Then again, perhaps they could just not hear him and end the call as they would normally..."bye, love you (if they say that...I said it to my dad while never saying it to my mom even though I felt it for my mom), school day tomorrow, goodnight!"...then just hang up. Might be a solution. Maybe.
But, if he would do so to end the child support, then couldn't you still encourage the girls to maintain a relationship with him since they know he's their real dad, etc., and yet you'd be in the position to limit it if it got abusive for them?
If he's willing to sign away his rights, though, you *can* ensure that the rest of Remy and Holly's childhoods are free from the anxiety and tears that these interactions with him cause.
When first stepdad was around, before he showed his own true colors to my mom, there was discussion of this in our household. So from my very shaky knowledge of it, giving up parental rights means walking away. It means opening the door for OP's current husband to adopt the girls. It's not just a way to stop the money flow.
And...as someone who, as a kid, wouldn't have mind having the stepdad as a dad...if my dad had agreed...it would have devastated my already routinely broken heart. It would have killed a part of me, to have him agree.
But I am often much more sensitive than others so that might just be me.
Though my brother, at my wedding, heard our dad introduce one of our half-brothers, his third child and second son, as his oldest son. What's worse, it was to people that knew better. And my brother, at 31, finally, at long last, emotionally wrote off my dad entirely. What he heard was not so different than signing papers giving up rights...
OP I feel for you! I wish my mom were still around, she might have words for you to help. She watched my dad play me like a top for years. It was only distance and age that started to help. But then again, she was mired in simply surviving for SO long that there was no money, no help, for any sort of counseling.
...interestingly, it was my own dad who paid for my anger management counseling which morphed into general counseling, when I tried to beat up a boyfriend who was being horrible to me...it was as close to an apology, for setting up those responses, as I feel I'll ever get from him.... Since your girls have been in counseling, I think they stand a really good chance at dealing with all of this and being as minimally a/effected (?) as possible.
Now go relax!
