To parental alienators and alienated parents ... here's what I'm laughing about

I have just realised this. It's what I'm sat here laughing hysterically about. In the end, the alienator lost. It may have taken decades, but he failed.

No matter what you alienators do, your kids will love the other parent forever.

They may not act like it but you will NEVER erase their love for their other parent. No matter how much you manipulate them or lie to them or deceive yourself, you will not win. They may be angrier than a ticked off bee for years, decades, even but deep down, that child of yours LOVES their other parent! Even if you cut them off from the target parent and move across the world/country, whatever. Even if your children never see their other parent again, they will still love them!

You will never stop them loving their other parent, even when you make them think that parent is evil.

NEVER!!!!!!!!

ALIENATED KIDS LOVE THE TARGET PARENT!

And I know that because I am one of those kids.

How much I actually loved my alienated parent

But you know what? Even underneath ALL THIS CRAP, I loved my mother like no one else on Earth and I still do. I would never have admitted it in a million years. I remember being 13 years old and crying at school, in the corner, because I wanted to go home and be with my mummy and cuddle her. Like a little child. I knew/thought I knew that this wish was pointless and would never be fulfilled because she did not love me at all, that she loved nothing better than to reprimand me and hit me.
I felt like a dog: no matter how much you mistreat a dog, it will still come to you the moment you show it a smidgeon of kindness. I LIVED for any compliment she gave me, any moment when she might show me kindness (but not love because I had been told never to expect that), any positive act - a gift she had found in some random shop in town, when none of the other children received anything, being allowed to stay up ten minutes/half an hour later than the other kids, even being spoken to as if my opinion was worth something.
She could laugh at one of my jokes and I was in heaven for the rest of the day. I loved her so much but couldn't show it. I never expected her to love me back but hung on almost every word from her in the hope that she might like me.

Don't bitch about the ex

No matter how much you want to. You may feel like taking a hit out on the ex or running a front page article telling the world what an evil sob/bitch your ex is, but please don't. Blog it or diarize it secretly and securely or rant at your mother/sister/best friend/brother, but don't let it get back to your kids.

NEVER tell them how much you hate your ex, even if you wish them dead.

Your kids just do not want to hear it. End of story. They don't. Your divorce is not theirs. YOU are splitting with their other parent, not them. They love their other parent. Deal with it.

It's so hard to keep quiet about how your ex has done you wrong, believe me, I know (and I'm not saying I have a perfect score, either) but your feelings have nothing to do with your kids feelings for their parent and you have no right to try and change them.

I have never and will never allow my offspring to become alienated from their father. There have been occasions when, after an argument with the father, I have yelled "He's such an idiot!" or "He really does my head in", or words to that effect, but I have gone back to the offspring afterwards and reassured them that a) I was stinking mad when I said those things because daddy and I don't agree on this and that at the moment, b) that he's not actually an idiot, I just said that because I was stinking mad, c) that I shouldn't have said it and d) that daddy loves them tonnes and tonnes and no matter what happens between daddy and me, we will both always love them more than the universe.

It's been a hard slog for the other parent and me but we have a pretty wonderful relationship now as things go. The break up was bad for while - can they be anything but? - but throughout it all, he saw the offspring, spoke to the offspring every day, and with his wife we are a parenting team. We're not best buddies and never will be, not least because that's inappropriate, but our mutual offspring knows we are a unit and want what's best.

I've been tense for thirty one years

Going back to my social skills and lack thereof: I realised yesterday while I wrote that post that I have had a knot in my stomach for as long as I can remember. It's a tenseness, a feeling of stress, one that increases whenever I leave the house and that grows exponentially when I'm around people. It's a foreboding when I meet someone knew because I know without a shadow of a doubt that they will eventually realise they dislike me, despite us getting on well at first.

THIS is the feeling I mentioned - the not feeling normal. I can remember it not being present before a certain point and then sitting in my stomach ever since.

The feeling in my stomach began the moment he first told me she didn't love me anymore and intensified every time he told me things this:

My mother told a lie - or so I thought. She told me that we were returning to our home country for a holiday and that we'd being going back again after two weeks. We never left. We returned to this country with only a suitcase or two - and as I mentioned previously, male parent kept EVERYTHING including our clothes and toys. Male parent told me that she had lied to us, that she had never intended to go back, that she had known all along that we would not be going back abroad. "She lied to you." She also didn't love me, according to him. Was just using me. Only wanted control over me. Thought I was her toy and possession. Didn't actually want me at all. Just wanted to keep me away from him to hurt him.

I worry so much, all the time. My ex affectionately once said to me that if I didn't have something to worry about, I'd worry about that. I was a worried child. I was - and still am - permanently afraid of upsetting people and, even now, at the age of 37, if I think I've made someone angry or upset, I'll cry. When I used to get hauled into the boss's office at my last job for making mistakes, I'd cry. I couldn't help it. It used to drive me mad! I'm too old to be crying about raps at work!

But now I know where it comes from: a worried, disturbed, scared, unsettled, traumatized little girl who thinks that she's so bad, evil, unloveable that even her mother cannot love her. I have felt shame for who I am since the age of six.

This situation was brought about by the one man in the entire universe I should have been able to depend on and trust in. Parents are all flawed, I know that. I don't expect him to be perfect, not for a minute. I'm a horribly imperfect parent, but that man hurt me on purpose. With deliberate intent, he said evil things to me that have affected my entire life, my entire personality, all my relationships, my self-esteem, my mental and physical health, made me ashamed of myself, EVERYTHING. I have no friends (at the moment) because of what he did. I'm incapable of normal adult social interaction (at the moment). My stomach is in permanent knots because of what he did.

BUT today I woke up feeling hopeful about myself for the first time. The knot is still there and still almost as big as yesterday, but today I know I can get rid of it. I know that I'm not damaged beyond repair, that I'm not autistic, or insane. I just have a broken part or two - and broken parts can be fixed.

I went around my normal social interactions today watching myself as if in the third person. I was less tense than normal and less ashamed of myself. I spoke less today and felt good about it. The only time I feel relaxed and unembarrassed about myself is on the days I don't leave the house.

She did love me, no matter what he said. Nothing can change that. Nothing he says can change the fact that the person she didn't love was him, not me, and that's not my fault or my problem. I didn't do anything wrong. He abused me - parental alienation is child abuse. I have a lot of negative imprinting to alter in my mind - but now I know I'm permitted to do that and I'm allowed to do that and that I should and must do that, that I CAN do that. I have no need to feel shame, though it's not going to vanish overnight, but I actually feel better about who I am today than I did yesterday. This may not sound like a big deal but this is HUGE!!! I don't want to tell total strangers that my mum didn't want me - because I know now that it's not true. I don't have to feel worthless because I'm not, no matter what he said. She did love me and in fact loved me so much that, though the silly woman was incapable of hugging her kids even when they were in desperate need, she kept me and took care of me in the face of my hatred for her (and believe me, I wasn't nice to her).

My mum used to tell me that you have to think up nasty things before you can say them, and that to think them up means you'd carry them out. "You'd only say that if you had done it first". Now I know that everything he said, like the old saying "Many a true word spoken in jest", was true about himself, not her.

He, the alienator, lied, did and does not love me, used me, saw/sees me as a toy/possession/object, does not see me as a person with any individual worth, used me to control and hurt his ex-wife, my mother. At the moment I don't feel a thing towards him other than anger. It's odd. After he disowned me, the shock was intense: I had to understand the kind of person he was then showing himself to be. I then spent two years crying as I realised what he had done to my mother and me (and to my sister to some extent), getting into trouble at work because I couldn't keep my emotional state outside, alienating people all on my own by being so tearful and down and depressed. Today, two and a half years after he disowned me, is the first time I've felt good about things in any shape or form. My counsellor has helped me make a real breakthrough in understanding the alienation. I was all kinds of upset for a while but now I feel very little towards him beyond anger.

I'd rage at him if I met him but at this point in time, I feel like I've never had a father and am grieving for that loss. For him personally - that's who I feel little for, to clarify. I don't care if he lives or dies. It's VERY odd to say that about the parent I thought mattered most but it's true. My uncle tried to patch things up but I couldn't raise any interest, not least because male parent is a dirty pervert, but besides that, I couldn't care less about him. I don't wish him ill. I just don't care. Maybe this is numbness, who knows. Time will tell.

I'll never speak to him again, that's for damn sure, and neither will my offspring.

Comments. Questions.

I'm getting panicky about continuing the previous train of thought so I'm going to hold off for a few days. Deborah's lovely comment here sums up the purpose of this blog: cleansing.

If you want to ask me anything, fire away. My email address is on my profile, plus you can leave comments.

I appreciate all the comments so much, as well as the increasing number of visitors this blog is receiving and the referring links which provide half the traffic (I'm considering reciprocating. Leave it with me). As I said at the start, my posts are about catharsis but also about warning potential/current parental alienators off carrying out their attacks on the other parent. I know that someone reading this may splutter indignantly that they have every reason to make their children hate their other parent or "see them for what they are", but believe me, you're hurting your children (and yourself because one day they'll suss you out, I guarantee), not helping them. Deep down you know what you are doing. Please stop.

I have spent much of my life trying to find out what is wrong with me. Turns out it's nothing that a good dose of counselling and catharsis can't heal. I remember sitting at a train station in my country writing in my diary when I was eighteen. I wrote: "Will someone please help me?". I did not know what I meant. It took nineteen years to find out. All through my childhood and adolescence, I knew something was wrong somewhere but I couldn't put my finger on it. The mental signals I received from each of my parents was wrong. I believed my male parent to be the greatest person on Earth - and yet he abandoned me three times, called my mother a slut, my aunt a slag, my grandmother and a second aunt lunatics, and also felt me up. My mother cared for me and tried to be my friend, but smacked me when she lost her temper from frustration and tiredness (and a second husband who cheated on her and admitted to never having been faithful to any woman, and treated her like a doormat).

I thought the problems were all my fault: that I was the screw up. When one parent does their best to care for you, and the other one is acidic and merciless in their attack of that parent, causing you to doubt your own mind, your own memories and experience of that parent, what the hell are you supposed to do? I felt like I was out of my mind sometimes.

But I never was.

A counsellor told me the following: you're not unstable, you were around unstable people.

NOW I know she was right, but I waited thirty years for those words. I thought I was evil and worthless and useless and ugly because of the words/lack of words of my parents. As I said previously, the alienator used every single situation he could find to denigrate my mother. She almost never said a word about him - so I believed him, not her. He said she was wicked, she never said she was not, so therefore my child's mind believed him.

He thought it was hilarious.

The purpose of this blog: to parents and children

This blog has multiple purposes. The main one is to try and get the attention of any parents (or indeed anyone else trying to manipulate and alienate) trying to alienate their children from their other parent (or grandparent or aunts or uncles etc).

If the other parent is a REAL abuser of any kind, then go ahead. Do what you need to do to protect your kids and yourself.

However, if the other parents is NOT a real abuser, then read on. If you find fault with your ex and talk about it in front of your kids, you're hurting your kids. If you discuss your ex's faults with your children in a "serious" tone, saying that you're "just being honest", you're hurting your kids.

It's up to parents to be the mature ones, not to put any single thought about their ex into their child's head that wasn't put there by the child's own experience and interactions with that parent.

Don't bad mouth your ex on any level. I know it's hard when you hate them, but you love your kids more, right?

Your kids deserve healthy relationships with both parents. If you're trying to alienate your child from your ex for revenge or to make yourself the favourite parent, you're hurting your child. You're denying them healthy relationships with both parents.

And get this:

YOU WILL GET FOUND OUT.

YOU WON'T GET WAY WITH IT FOREVER.

Let me say this again: one day, your child will REALIZE what you have done. TRUST ME. They will know. It may take years, as with me, but they will work it out. Life experience will show them as they grow up watching interactions between people outside your family.

AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.

You will get caught out.

If you're lucky, they'll forgive you but your relationship will never be the same again. They won't trust YOU or love YOU in the same way ever again. If you've been rotten enough, you'll never see them again.

At the very least, THEY'LL BE CLOSER TO THE OTHER PARENT!!! You will MAKE this happen yourself! By attempting to alienate them from your ex (or whoever), you will drive them into their arms in the end.

Take this from someone who knows. ME. I will never speak to my male parent again.