I’m doing a bit of work and volunteering at the moment and thought about this topic.
Everybody from friends, family to the authorities will tell you just to get along and play nicely.
What happens when one party doesn’t want to play nicely?
What happens when the only means they have of controlling you is through your children?
Unfortunately for some people co- parenting is not an option. Yet family courts and police aren’t well versed enough to spot coercion and narcissistic behaviours nor do they have the adequate resources to tackle it.
I’m working alongside a couple of people at the moment who have had their children taken away and primary parenting now sits with the abuser.
How can that happen I hear the general population ask?
Now most of my blogs I keep gender neutral but this one I won’t.
All of these cases are women who have fought hard against a system to keep their kids and most cases the abuser is better off financially, better connected and highly charming and therefore highly manipulative.
These people (the abusers) have little or no empathy and use children as pawns in their sick controlling games but they present as caring, in control and able to offer a more stable family environment.
They will go to great lengths to appear to have a stable environment- they re-marry and create nuclear families, they hold down secure employment. They remain stable in their environment and keep a lid on anything dodgy they are doing.
The create mayhem for the victim and have them running around, they start smear campaigns to make them look unstable and even engineer them losing their jobs or income.
It is isolating for a victim. Most people including family courts can’t comprehend the idea of how callous someone can be at their children’s expense. They won’t even entertain the idea that the dad who is always at the school gates, always at parents evening and always there at their children’s hobbies; is actually manipulating everyone in order to isolate the victim parent. Social grooming which I often refer to.
Most sane adults would ask why?
Why would someone go to such lengths?
The answer is unclear but here are some reasons;
⁃ to get back at the other parent for leaving them and denting their ego. A sociopathic ego is mega and despotic. It’s the thing that drives serial killers to kill and then drives them to suicide once they are caught. A dented ego is worse than murdering someone. They have Hitler syndrome and we know how he ended up.
⁃ Blatant disregard for anyone else- they want something they must have it. Children are their possessions.
⁃ Because they need ultimate control and with one parent going rougue who knows what they are doing while their back is turned. You can’t control an ex partner other than with the one thing they have left- their children
⁃ Jealousy
⁃ Because they are hiding criminal activity or a big secret they don’t want to get out
⁃ Because they have abandonment issues and losing their children full time sparks that
Dealing with this only hurts the children but an abusive parent is so self centered they don’t care. In fact they don’t care about anything or anyone. The most disturbing thing about these people is they present so well.
Anyone facing this needs to see a good therapist who understands this type of abuse and instruct a good legal adviser who is versed in coercive control.
The midlife illness tour 