My children are 9 and 11.5, and I “single parented” them for nearly 10 years before going through the divorce. My ex’s involvement was taking my oldest out for hikes on the weekends, and that was essentially it. Perhaps helping with the youngest’s care, but only when begged and offering some compromise so he would feel it was “fair.” Any time, and I literally mean any time, I tried to talk with him about parenting issues, something my oldest was dealing with at school, or something my youngest was being unfairly treated for at his school, he would brush me off, dismiss my concerns, and/or vehemently disagree on a parenting decision. This looked like disagreeing with my oldest’s food texture sensitivities, treating him like he just needed to learn how to tolerate things that were viscerally making him gag and throw up every time he tried to eat them. Or it looked like constantly and consistently belittling my concern about my oldest’s neurodivergence and inability to stay focused or push through things that challenged him.
Those things were a constant over the 10 years I tried to co-parent with him, and the years I managed the kids’ care solely by myself. He never went to doctors’ appointments, never went to parent teacher conferences, and was barely involved in the kids lives other than merely being a physical presence in the house. Maybe I was missing things because of how overwhelmed I was all the time with my youngest’s care, making sure my oldest didn’t get left in the dust, and constantly begging my ex to help me. He often let me know that I wasn’t doing enough for the kids, I wasn’t spending enough quality time with them. I’m not entirely sure how he expected me to do even more than I was doing because I was already dangerously teetering on the edge of severe burn out. When he staged his su1c*de attempt, the letter he wrote to me was empty platitudes about how much I did for the kids and wishing he could have done more. The ludicrous part is that yeah he could have and should have been doing more, and then nothing changed after he staged that pathetic event.
In the first 9 months after I told him I was leaving him, he suddenly became the model parent. After literal YEARS of begging and pleading with him to help me with the kids, help with their school work, help with keeping the house in order and not overwhelmingly dirty and messy, he never stepped up and never helped without costs/consequences to me. As I struggled to maintain a certain facade, I watched with intense resentment and bitterness as he became [outwardly-the public facing persona] a perfect dad and the one everyone at the kids’ school started looking at with awe while they began to shut me out and no longer let me know information about the kids. I was in school already, rushing through classes to get my associates so I could transfer to the 4 year university and finish my bachelors as quickly as possible. Through his actions, he began to make me look like the neglectful parent because he was intentionally pushing me out from the kids’ lives as well. However, it is impossible to keep incompetence covered up, especially when he fucked up badly with a doctor’s appointment for my youngest because I wasn’t able to attend it.
I have had to purposefully talk myself through letting my children go because they exist within his disgustingly incompetent hands. Do you know how painful it is to watch your children be treated like tools to improve someone’s image and their basic emotional needs are either ignored or are layered with their dad’s internalized ablest projections? Every. Single. Time. I have tried to bring up a concern about the kids, he strikes back like I am personally attacking him. Does he even take any time to evaluate that maybe a concern I have about the kids maybe might be valid? It sure doesn’t seem like it, he immediately dismisses it and takes the time to completely invalidate anything I say. The biggest example was actively contradicting everything I said about my youngest when there were severe behavioral (indicative of severe anxiety causing him to spiral) issues happening and myself and my youngest were physically being harmed because of my youngest’s spiraling. My ex? contradicted every single thing I expressed concerns and thoughts about in front of an important medical professional. Every medical professional listening to us has chosen his perspective and that single handedly is the reason my youngest’s care was so delayed and he suffered immensely. Does my ex just love to hear himself talk and purposefully exist to twist everything I say so it sounds like I’m delusional? Yeah, I think he does. He certainly puts more effort into blocking me and sabotaging my intent to care for my children. He’s so successful that the kids have had significantly delayed care, my youngest was forced to stay on a medication that was making him horribly ill, and it wasn’t until I chewed out the psychiatrist that she realized I knew was I was talking about and HE did not know what he was talking about.
The latest debacle? Walking away from my oldest’s parent teacher conference and hearing how every teacher expressed concern over my oldest’s behavior, specifically the “things are easy for him right now because he’s so smart, but that wall is coming where things aren’t going to be so easy, and we’re concerned about his unwillingness to push through challenging circumstances.” My ex’s interpretation of those concerns? My oldest just needs to learn discipline and build good habits. Oh yeah, because that’s what helped my ex when he was my oldest’s age, definitely not the medication he was on. His mother often complained that her son was so difficult to educate. Just habits and discipline! That’ll do it! I wrote out a list of detailed concerns that I have had about my oldest since he was about 5 years old, and my ex’s response was to outright dismiss and invalidate every single one. I have no idea what I’m talking about apparently, because a year and a half of him living with the kids solo makes him more of an expert on them than me who raised them for 9 years…at least according to his highness.
He gaslights me every single time I try to express concerns, thoughts, or opinions on what I think would help the kids. So what am I supposed to do to care for my children? Do I walk away? He’s already forced me into a corner when he was using the parenting plan as a weapon to keep me in line and to restrict my attempts to care for the kids. That corner he forced me into with his gaslighting, weaponizing of his power and control, was killing me. That’s not figuratively, I was dying. I don’t think I still am fully aware of how bad things got despite being the one living through it. But every time he did something to further manipulate me, gaslight me, and force control and power over me, the more I shattered. He is absolutely impossible to work with, in fact there is no working with him. There is absolutely no co-parenting. There is his belief of what is “good parenting” and that is what he believes he is doing and he is not doing anything wrong or that should be considered concerning. And then there is my perspective, which is always wrong according to him, especially when I bring up a concern about the kids because I noticed something or the kids said something to me.
The kids’ doctor is a misandrist, and both of my children are assigned male at birth. She has made inappropriate comments about both kids and I have become increasingly uncomfortable with him over the past 5 years. But I also struggle with trying to find new doctors, especially with having had horrific experiences with medical professionals – both for myself and my kids’ doctors. And now? My ex has wormed his way into her good graces, and I am the one she looks at with disgust and disdain. My ex most likely implied that I am the neglectful parent because I passed physical custody to him. I’m pathetic and selfish, at least according to him. I just want to be with my partner and have selfishly walked away from the kids…he’s said those things about me before we legally divorced. Maybe, just maybe shithead, it was me trying to protect myself from your childish tantrums and projections and gaslighting towards me. A person’s brain and body can only take so much, and I am beyond being done with his actions and asshole behaviors. After having spent almost 20 years dealing with my parents doing the same things, and then another 13 years of his selfish, misogynistic, and narcissistic type behaviors, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t say how many times I’ve collapsed before my therapist or my partner saying “I’m done, i’m done. I can’t do this anymore.”
I love my children. I will do anything I can to protect them. But I will not die for them, not when the reason I’m being pushed towards death is because their dad is intent on sabotaging and gaslighting and manipulating me away from being able to care for them. I don’t have any power and in that attempt to keep myself alive by transferring physical custody to him, I gave him an astounding level of control, knowing I would never get that back. I did it for the kids, I did it so they could have a stable place to live that wasn’t being constantly affected by his sabotage. I hate that man with everything within me, I hate everyone who has chosen his side, despite having heard for years what he was doing to me. I know the position I’m in now gives me very little if any power or say over the kids’ lives. I still am having his manipulating affect me because he is still saying I don’t spend enough time with the kids, but then he sabotages anything I try to do to care for them. Unless it is what he wants me to do, then he opens the door wide and looks so accommodating.
Have I explained what happened with the person I thought was my best friend? She had been and most likely still is, dealing with an extraordinarily horrific ex, especially when it came to her kids. He was constantly taking her to court to try to gain custody of them, sabotaging her all the time. I watched that for years when we were friends. And I often mentioned to her what my ex was doing to me. If she completely missed that I was swiftly moving towards leaving that mother fucker then she was abysmally ignorant. I used to be in a group chat with her and another person, who had also gone through a divorce with kids, and when I started moving towards divorce and things were getting even worse, that other person actively blocked me and said she could no longer hear anything about my situation because it was too triggering for her. My ex-best friend started dismissing me and gaslighting me with saying that I was a fool to even think about leaving my ex because I had a stable income to rely on. I am still floored that she said that, that I should stay with someone because it meant I technically had access to a large income (even though I had frequently told her how much my ex was so stingy with money and often blamed me for overspending on groceries when he was spending hundreds a month on alcohol). She also told me that I have no idea what I’m doing with thinking about leaving my ex.
What I had at that point was a partner who was abusing me, emotionally manipulating me, and sabotaging our relationship because he wasn’t getting what he wanted. What he wanted was access to my body, and to use it how he saw fit and said he needed. There was no pleasing him unless I gave him access to what he wanted. The majority of those last months was him trying to guilt trip, gaslight, and manipulate me into having sex with him, despite him knowing that I was 1000% queer and sapphic and had told him I was no longer able to service him like that. There was no respect or honoring of who I am, or what I needed, just the manipulation of his needs and weaponizing them against me. Then there was all the parenting stuff too. He even attempted to try to become queer and is still playacting that, even tried to act like if he transitioned then maybe I would like him and have sex with him. Perhaps that’s an over simplification, but his actions were indeed intolerable, inappropriate, and frankly disturbing to me. I couldn’t hide the feelings of disgust and rejection anymore that I had felt towards him for a very long time.
The fact my ex-best friend either couldn’t see or hear any of that, or maybe she intentionally ignored those things, is beyond saddening to me. Was she ever even a real friend? Did she live in a fantasy world? Or had she been so manipulated by my ex by that point that she couldn’t hear or see anything I said or did without viewing it through the filter of his delusions? Because yeah, that was a thing. She was “counseling” him behind my back and that was a betrayal that I cannot forgive. Especially knowing what she went through and is still most likely going through. She chose to back the abuser and kicked me to the corner and beat me while I was down. What a *great* friend. I’m sure her reaction now would be that I asked for everything I’ve gone through and to victim blame me for my ex. If she ever reached out to me again, my first question would be if she’s still talking with him. She broke my trust and love for her so thoroughly.
I wonder if she ever knew about how pathetic my ex thought she was. I never told her the things he said about her behind her back. The fact that I was to give what I could to help her needs made him disgusted. I always tried to keep some money from my limited income set aside so that if she desperately needed gas money or something else, I could send her something. I deeply cared for her and wished I could have been closer physically so I could help support her more. I never felt any obligation, just that I wanted to support and care like what I believe a friend should do. That was all me, my ex was so tight fisted about his money that the idea of helping ANYONE out financially was a big hell no to him. He thought she wasn’t working hard enough and it was her fault for being in the position she was. He didn’t believe the things about her ex that I would exclaim in horror about. I mean, why would he when he was essentially doing similar things to me? He is the most non compassionate and most non understanding person I’ve ever met. He has no empathy, and if he expresses empathy, it is an act, there is no genuine feelings behind any of that. He can’t even be compassionate to himself.
If he can’t even be compassionate towards himself, how the hell is he supposed to be able to compassionately care for his children? Yeah, I know that being compassionate towards oneself doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be compassionate to someone else. However, he can’t even be compassionate to someone else, so the kids aren’t going to get empathy or compassion from him. He treats them so condescendingly when trying to explain something to them. I hope the kids get to see who he really is when they’re old enough. They won’t hear it from me, but his true self will come out one day. Until then, I guess I have to try to keep myself together, try to get this schooling finished and hopefully get a capitalist position in society that will pay for my living costs and keep my partner and I secure.
Profligate Truth 
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