My ex came to the house

Do you have chronic anger? I am not seeing it in any of your threads that I have seen and interacted with you in.

Chronic anger

No

I would be provoked, name called, cussed out, threatened with divorce, quietly behind closed doors for hours

I’ve never retaliated

The end of our marriage was precipitated by our oldest entering counselling for cptsd for hearing his mom’s endless anger at me through the bedroom wall.

I told her I’d chalked it all up to depression and illness. I wasn’t looking for an apology. But she had to validate to him that this stuff happened

No. It never did. It was him hearing ME yelling. It was MY endless anger at night. It had been me keeping her up night after night since years and even waking her to fight. She even told our youngest that she had to be protected from my chronic anger.

So. That’s the narrative

My husband has been sober for 34 years now. He has been very active in AA and has sponsored many different people. Saying “I practically stopped drinking” is uttered by those who want to keep using alcohol and all these people that have uttered that end up abusing alcohol again. People who have substance abuse problems must commit to living their life one day at a time without alcohol period. I have seen enough over a lot of years. Many die of the damages alcohol has caused and developed brain challenges that caused permenant damage.

I am wondering if you wife is trying to get diagnosed where she can get disability and not work. That said, hopefully she does get sober and therapy and becomes financially secure. In what I witnessed some commit and improve and some are on and then start abusing drugs again.

Holy

Smokes

She was just here again

To drop off a bag of gifts for DD.

I had a feeling she would try it again. She is trying to push territory and intrude.

What did your daughter say?

DD is a kid and gifts are exciting.

You want it to be true for yourself.

My dad took my crazy mother's side too.

You are acting as though you are powerless in this. Is that really the message you want to give your kids? If your son didn't have your number before, he does now.

I hope youre trolling us. This is so abusive to your daughter. I need to step away.

My wife has charged or alleged in court that her relationship with the kids is damaged because of the alienation I’ve caused between her and the kids.

The court order states I am supposed to support and foster a relationship between her and the kids.

Because of their ages IF THE KIDS REQUEST no contact, she has to respect that.

Otherwise, I’m supposed to be fostering these relationships.

She caught my daughter by surprise yesterday. She pulled the “alienation” card on me and asked past me if DD would speak to her

DD agreed.

With that, I am not allowed to intervene or block contact. I have to respect their time and not interfere with the visit.

I can’t withhold or block attempts at contact or gifts.

I guarantee you. This is causing me more distress than it’s causing you.

Yes, your daughter is probably too young to really understand. Your wife is trying to buy her affection and upset you. Narcissists are all about power and control. I had to learn to understand that about my sister.

It’s good that you have therapy tomorrow. I hope this therapist can give you tools you can use. It’s especially hard when the toxic involves children. Do your best to stay calm. Do a lot of humming as I read that reduces stress.

Quote:

How has it been in the past 24 hours? And who was the source of that? I’m not giving up my peace. Eventually you’ll see who she really is again. Good luck with where you land when that happens.”

Your son is wise beyond his age. You truly have a son to be proud of

As tough as it is, you're doing a good job balancing on that line of required civility.

I don't know what else to say, but wanted to offer hugs and prayers.

You need to document that she’s alienating the kids from you by telling them that you were abusive to her. That needs to be addressed in court.

Yes you are supposed to foster a relationship by getting your kid ready for visitation time (if the kid is interested) to be picked up for scheduled visitation and you don’t supposed to speak poorly of her.

All this other stuff isn’t falling into required fostering.

Tell your ex to petition courts for visitation (in amicable divorces parties could decide on their own visitation schedules but in general it’s better to go through courts). And then when visitation is established, you have to let kids go with her if they want to.

All these other things like her coming unannounced or drop off things unannounced need to stop and isn’t something you are required to allow. Do not open the door. Your kids aren’t supposed to let her in either. She doesn’t live there. It’s wrong. Let her get court ordered visitations. And even then she’d not be coming inside your house to pick up the kids

You keep saying you can’t block visits. You can’t block “established” visits. No court will require you to allow exes to drop unannounced in your home. You can’t foster visits that interfere with your life. No judge would ever put anything in custody order (temporary or permanent) that allows visits happen haphazardly whenever other person wants and that visits must happen in your house. That is simply never ever happening.

omg!

thank you!

Your oldest knows his mother has a substance abuse problem and can be abusive.

The fact that you and your children lived your lives around her substance abuse as well as whatever her mental illness makes her unpredictable has traumatized you. Your children deserve to have boundaries and feel safe. It’s not right that you only get to enjoy a kind of normal at your wife’s whim.

Her showing up with promises reminds me of bipolar mania tbh. Then she gets depressive and mean?

Exactly what Divine said.

I just wanted to check in.

My work has mental health counselling available by phone. That’s who I booked the short notice appointment with

HOLEY SMOKES she was good.

I gave my brief history in about 20 minutes then this lady just connected the dots.

“This was scripted and planned, with witnesses present, so that she looked her best and you were caught stumbling and flat footed

She probably hit you with multiple jabs and jumped around topics to unsettle you and acted affronted or victimized when you tried to speak. (She did)

This played two roles. It gave her a means to navigate her image to flying monkeys, daughter, and herself.

And it gave her a means to unload emotions she can’t show her new friends onto you. She’s conditioned you to bend your boundaries all the time and you’ve been conditioned to keep peace and roll with her emotions. She WILL keep bringing strong negative emotions to you.

Your house is a boundary. Don’t feel the need to open the door or receive an unscheduled visit. That’s a common courtesy that the court won’t blink at.

Next, we start working on ways to get you off your heels and thinking. She flurries you with jabs and you flood with emotion. No. We need to break that pattern. She’s smart and better at this than you. You being emotional makes that worse and makes you think slower.

As soon as you can stop mirroring her emotions she will have to find someone else to direct them toward.

We need you cognitively strong before you go to court. We need to shut off the flood response and put up boundaries she can’t cross.”

This therapist sounds like she knows what you need and your wife’s tactics. Your wife knows how to disable you. This falls in line with covert narcissism.

I agree that your wife just showing up expecting to take control has got to be stopped because she will just keep on invading. This gives toxic people a high and they feel empowered. Yet the therapist is right in that they set it up where they have a witness that they have convinced to believe they are the victim. This is what my older sister did and she manipulated my elderly parents like your wife is doing with your daughter.

It’s good to have a therapist that gets this because it can get disabling. I’m sorry ((RD)) unfortunately I know it all too well and had to have help with it myself.

I can’t believe the emotional pain, sickness, and turmoil I’ve felt in the last 48 hours.

And I know what I’m experiencing is less than a lot of people go through.

My heart is with you all.

Thank you for your support. I really needed to talk through this and keep my emotions out of the house.

I know that feeling. This is what narcs do - the surprise attack can come months, a year, or even years later.

I too, am learning how to strengthen my boundaries. It can be really hard, especially when you may secretly want to keep hoping for change in a person or some kind of epiphany. Narcs do not change nor do they have sudden eye-opening epiphanies. Their entire M.O. is to seek and maintain power and control - months later, even years later. Narcs hate being dumped and they will stop at absolutely nothing to regain control and/or to get revenge.

The sickness you describe feeling is a result of this surprise attack. Next time, you will know what you need to do to protect yourself and the kids from another surprise attack.

Please don’t compare in a way that is self shaming with the hurt you are feeling. It’s better to just talk it out as you are doing here. This helps you lay things out so you can analyze and problem solve.

My oldest is becoming a beast of a man.

He’s 5” taller than me and 40lbs heavier. 17” arms and still placing good times in all his running PT in the army.

He’ll hug me and say “Don’t let go. Don’t think I don’t need this just because I got big.”

I talked to him about someone who was just tortured by a narcissist ex and I said it was worse than I experienced.

He said “Don’t think someone else’s experience was worse just because they broke from it. Maybe you’re stronger. I’ve never seen anyone as solid as you ever.”

His validation has meant the world to me.

Thank you all for seeing me and validating me.

I think many times we are actually stronger than we give ourselves credit for because we see the stuff we struggle with. However in reality those struggles are what continues to help us grow stronger & build on the strength we actually have. Outsiders don't see that struggle like we do. They blink & miss it while we are there to feel it.

I think for me, DBT's Mindfulness was my best help to balance emotions with logic. My mom made emotions look bad from thw time I can remember so I turned off all but anger & life was basically neutral till I had to deal with her emotions. Then I would throw out defiant anger. Didn't work well as an adult & I needed to learn what other emotions were but to balance them well with my logic.

You have both logic & emotion.....learning a working balance is what this whole mess is teaching you & you are learning very well even if it doesn't "feel like it" to you. Learning is all about learning to navigate through things we have never experienced before & your son is absolutely correct.

I feel like there is too much immediacy in my emotions.

I have a very very hard time “putting a pin” in something and returning to it later.

I’ve felt utterly overwhelmed in the last few years. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve felt this deep peace

Maybe not surprisingly that’s when she showed up.

But anyway….. Immediacy. It’s almost a panic where I want someone else to see, hear, and validate me.

It’s not fair to the kids that I’ve asked them at times about things, but I’ve been so gaslit for so long I haven’t trusted myself.

I’ve denied reality for so long that it makes me question it to face it.

I’m not strong enough in my mind to quell these immediate emotional needs and responses.

You're not alone. In fact, you're probably pretty normal for someone who's been through the things you have. Disordered people affect us at the core, and the longer we're around them, the longer we've done the dance with them, the more you lose yourself and your confidence.

Codependency work has helped me A LOT in that regard. You learn to emotionally detach from people who have come to cause you distress. Then you start staying in your own body/space, rather than allowing them to repeatedly pull you into theirs, and activate a response from you. You start really taking care of yourself, knowing yourself, and trusting/validating yourself more--- which leads to a calmness in you, and rather natural boundaries with other people. When what the other person/people do no longer matters to you, then it no longer matters at all. It's a little like being set free. Even when there are setbacks, they aren't as bad, and don't last as long.

The counselor you spoke with sounds very knowledgeable - that's awesome that you happened upon such a good resource. It sounds like you'll take advantage of more appointments with her?

Thank you @ArmorPlate108

You’d mentioned the Codependent No More book to me before but I always kinda thought

Well…. She’s gone now.

So I didn’t get the point of it.

I got myself a copy of it.