It’s really scary to think that the partner we choose: has no idea of how to be a partner; has no intention of behaving like a partner in a mutually supportive relationship; and puts the children’s needs for a stable loving family SECOND to her wants and her need to be in control.

And you know you are in that situatin when any challenge to her—when you remind her of how unpartnerlike she’s being, or how bad her bahavior is, or how bad for the kids it all is—is met with manipulation and gaslighting, or even violence and legal intimidation (threats of police, courts, etc).

My wife started doing all sorts of awful things in late 2015, including threatening to have CPS take my daughter taken away (her stepdaughter), and inflicting all sorts of abuse and violence on me and my daughter.

Even ten years ago, right after we got married, she worked hard and diligently to carve away other people in my life—casual friends, old friends, work friends, colleagues from work, very slowly trying to increase the control she had over me.

It was despicable. But I’m out now, legally, emotionally, physically. I hope you can develop a meaningful relationship with your children despite the awful constraints.