One of my biggest fears.
You described my feelings perfectly. Coincidentally, like Philip Dick, my daughter, since age 13 has shared her obsession about the divorce/me, through her school papers, several times through public speaking exercises, as well… so, in that respect, she’s crucified me plenty… when I first learned about it (she was always proud to show me her papers or tell me about her school speeches–including teachers suggestions she should find other subjects to write about), it hurt me, but conditioned myself to dismiss it, always hoping she’d mature through it, or her therapy would help, most importantly, she’d stop and recognize all the goodness still existing in her family. Additionally, like in the past, I have to pick my battles carefully, and if writing helped my daughter, I had to consider her well-being, not mine.
Exactly. And once we’re engaged in the pointless discussion, I find myself saying, “uhh wait a minute, did I say this already?” … and she’ll say, “what are you talking about?”
True. True. But right now, weighing my own feelings about all this, I’m definitely leaning towards, “enough already!”
Well, unfortunately, my ex adores this therapist too, and since I’ve expressed my feelings long ago about the conflict of interest, the lack of progress in daguhter/therapist relationship, I stopped contributing financially… my ex thinks it’s all been great, so I’d be up against all three (therapist, ex, daughter), and know I’d never win that battle… didn’t win it in the past. I don’t think either of them cares about boundaries, my daughter has babysitted for therapist, they go into chicago together, movies… I’m not an authority on professional ethics but this has always screamed out, “wrong! wrong!” but, as ex and daughter clarified to me, “well, you’re not the victim.” End of discussion.
Y’know, I’d love it if my daughter would take responsibility for her own life and stop living in this constant-dead-end state of, “I’m in so much pain!!! You ruined my life!!!” I have told her as sensitively as I could, that she needs to grow up, move on, or change the subject… neither of those options have been acceptable to her, so do I anticipate the same, or go through the “exercise” again, and hope she’ll be different this time?
You’re the exception (and I hope there are many many others like you), you’re patient/therapist relationship has been working for you–it hasn’t worked for my daughter. Thanks for the book suggestion, i’ll google it this afternoon… maybe i’ll get a set (one for me, one for my daughter), and hope that’ll allow us the opportunity to point to the book, and not at eachother.
She’s been seeing the same therapist for 13 years? If I was you I’d talk to some other therapists about this and get some other professional opinions. I saw a therapist for a while {a year maybe more} and it was helpful but after a while my therapist said it was time to be dine and move on. I know it varies from person to person.
It feels bad as a parent to look back and see the mistakes you made and realize how that may have hurt your kids and affected how they relate to life and love. I know all about it. A big part of the healing process is forgiveness and moving on. That doesn’t happen in one moment and is a process but if the process is working okay it gets better. Forgiveness is forgiving yourself as well and yes, not letting yourself be continually blamed.
There came a time when I had to look at myself and acknowledge who I was and how I got there {my parents} and honestly ask “Now where do I go?” Where do I want to go?" It also means taking personal responsibility for my choices and doing the internal work that helps me make better choices. It sounds like your daughter isn’t willing to take responsibility for her own life and direction.
It’s not an easy road. Good luck.
I don’t buy it.
I have apologized, profusely. There were many times I apologized and wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for, but wanted my daughter to feel like she got what she needed from me and that was most important. Last ngiht, I asked my ex, “maybe she wants me to fall on the ground, crying pleading at her feet for forgiveness?? Is that the kind of apology she’ll feel satisfied with? Cause honestly, I must be doing something wrong.”
Lookign back, after the blame/apology engagements, sometimes she did seem to be better, we’d start talking about other things, find something funny to laugh about, make arrangements to do things together, but I always felt like I was walking on egg shells, and underneath her seemingly happier demeanor, was a look in her eyes that reminded me of her ever-present-deeply-embedded hatred towards me. Even knowing that or believing that, I was still grateful to SEE her laughing or takling about something different, however short-lived it was. But truth be told, right now, today, however guilty I’m feeling about it–I WANT to consider my emotional health as priority, not hers, not this time.
Which is probably the only thing enumerated here that ain’t the girl’s fault. I’d suggest that therapist is either an incompetent quack, or an outright huckster. Thirteen friggin’ years? That’s absurd.
I’d wager you can never satisfy her. She wants you to suffer, and she wants to be able to use you to absolve herself of all responsibility for her life.
IMHO of course.
But it doesn’t look like there’s common ground for talk or compromise.
I’ve known plenty of good parents who have tried their best, but have ended up having to severely limit their relationships with certain of their children, because the only thing they got out of the relationship was grief.
Which is why I don’t buy it. Everything that isn’t the girl’s fault is the ex’s fault or the therapist’s fault. I bet if we went further, things would be the new husband’s fault and the boyfriend’s fault, and maybe then the new husband’s ex-wife’s fault, etc etc.
Frankly, I’ve heard songs and seen dances like this before, and the guy talking is usually low to the ground from the weight of his own enomous Asshole Issues he’s refusing to face. It’s easier to focus on other people’s problems, which he then makes into the source of all his own, thus neatly dodging responsibility for them.
Maybe pace is actually a real saint beseiged by these sarcastic bitches who just want to make him feel bad about himself, but he’d be a rare find if so. And bullshit like “oh, she’s been indulged by hoity toity psychobabble and that’s why she still has bad feelings” and so on tips the scales way in the Asshole direction. It is possible that the kid and the ex are actually Genuine Assholes too, but I do not for a second buy this poor-innocent-me routine. For my money it’s either a case of an Asshole Triangle assholishily assholing away at each other, or he’s distorting the truth heavily.
It sounds like there are huge qualitative and quantitative differences between your therapy situation and pace’s daughter’s. You’re making about ten visits a year mostly as maintenance in conjunction with medication. From the sounds of it, the daughter and her boundary-crossing therapist are getting together for weekly bitch sessions with no end in sight. Your long-term therapy is doing what it’s supposed to do. The daughter’s isn’t, and I put most of the blame for that on the therapist, who ought to know better.
I’m not an authority either, but I know for sure that this ethically a huge problem. Get the bum thrown out of the APA, if she is in fact a member. Her license should and can be revoked, if indeed she has one at all.
The bum therapist may not be able to set boundries, but you can. You can tell your daughter under no uncertain terms that she’ll need to move on or there will be no more relationship. Period. And then follow through.
Yes, this will be the most painful thing you’ll ever do in your life. Hopefully the pain will be short lived.
I think it’s OK to entertain the idea that pace is an asshole, but I wouldn’t make the automatic assumption that he is. To do otherwise is pretty irresponsible. For now, I’ll take him at his word.
My sister recently went though a bunch of bad therapy. Including Recovered Memory Therapy. While some psychotherapy is good, I think that too much of it starts with the premise that everything that is wrong with you can be traced to something that happened in your childhood, and until that is resolved, you can’t be “fixed.” However, resolving something that happened in the past satisfactorily is pretty much impossible, so it turns into a huge blame game.
And I know what you mean about family therapy. When we got in we’d hoped for an opportunity for open, facilitated communication. What we got was dumped on by a spoiled brat who’d been convinced all her problems were because her family somehow abused her. When we tried to say “hey, kiddo, you were the one who went off skiing with your friends rather than stay home for Christmas day” we were shut down by the therapist. Her choices had nothing to do with where she ended up.
Things are MUCH better. She crashed after recovery (she was in for chemdep - alcoholism, although she’d never admitted to being diagnosed as a alcoholic - we aren’t sure if she doesn’t really meet the diagnostic criteria, or she lies like a rug when they ask her “have you ever blacked out?”), ended up in outpatient living with my sister, went back home, and started to realize therapy was as bad for her as anything. And get this, actually said “you know, I should have left the abusive bastard sooner” rather than blaming her family for teaching her abuse was OK (which we didn’t).
My recommendation would be that you and your daughter need your own family therapist - not you going to her therapy sessions, but an uninterested third party. Failing that, you can live with her, or without her, but since she seems to be important enough to put up with her shit, set healthy boundries and, if you need to, get your own therapist.
Your daughter is an adult now herself. She knows that even well-meaning adults can make mistakes, fail to see unintended consequences, blah, blah, blah. Youve apologized for whatever mistakes you made and tried your level best to reach out to her. There isn’t a damned thing more you can do, pace, because your adult daughter has decided she’s most comfortable whining and throwing tantrums. That’s her adult decision.
Her good buddy therapist-for-life is validating all the ancient baggage rather than making your daughter do the hard work needed to actually get better. You Ex may regret her former blame-game (unintended consequences again) but she just compounds the fracture by embracing the useless therapist who encourages the recreational solution of Evil You. It’s familiar, it’s easy, and it neatly deflects any nasty responsiblility away from your daughter. Your Ex is still screwing up, big time, by enabling the same old shit. But her adult mistakes, and the therapist’s, suit your daughter just fine because being infantile is a helluva lot easier than the heavy lifting need to actually grow the hell up.
This is a no-win situation for everyone, pace. Your daughter is determined to view the world, and you, entirely through the lens of her ‘feelings’. And her precious feelings are the only reality she values. You’ve never had any separate reality for her. You’re not a normal, fallible human being who screws up occassionally. She’s set you up as a cardboard cutout Perfect Father. Then she rants and raves when her comfy construct morphs into just an ordinary human being. She apparently savors being a victim, because only a monster expects much from someone so patently persecuted and miserable. Too bad she’s an adult now. And she’s flunking it, badly.
Serving as her default excuse and whipping boy is damaging you, pace,and her as well. My suggestion is about as valuable as any total stranger’s (i.e. not at all) but seems to me you’d be better off to severely limit contact with her. Painful, but since the situation now harms everyone concerned, why keep on doing it? You can still love her but deny her the sick pleasure of navel-gazing and endlessly chewing over ancient history.
“Irresponsible”? What responsibility would I be shirking if I thought pace an asshole? Anyway, I didn’t “make the automatic assumption” that he is. I outlined the reasons for my statement that he might be in my post. I didn’t say “and he definitely is 100% surely bc I can see inside his brain from here”. Just because I also didn’t say “and this is just my widdle opinion and I’m probably wrong and I know it’s ever so mean to think some stranger on the internet is making himself look good and his ex-wife and contentious daughter look bad, but I just think maybe possibly…” doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned all reason and now think myself to be psychic.
Most of the people in this thread are taking him at his word, because they feel they have no reason not to. I feel I have some reason not to, which is mostly down to experience with men who complain about their daughters and exes and insist that they’ve done everything perfectly but the bitches just won’t stop torturing them.
I think it’s fucked up that everyone is jumping on the daughter when we all know very well that there are at least three sides to every story.
Pace, she’s only 25, don’t give up on your relationship with her. In my life that’s just never been an option with family. I don’t know how important family is to you though, that’s what you’ll have to decide.
Actually, you didn’t. All you did was talk about “in my experience” and “it’s my opinion.” The only thing you outlined was the hoity toity psychobabble bit. A girl spends half her life in therapy with a therapist who breaks the first rule of the therapy relationship, and makes zero progress. How else would you assess that?
#1, I wouldn’t have posted this thread if I meant to give up on my daughter–I’ll always love her, want to be there for her when she needs me to be… I just want some of that to be able to help her move forward, not stay in a time warp 13 years in her past.
#2, I have stated that I’ve apologized to my daughter for the divorce, and for any pain I may have caused her during the divorce or because of the divorce… I didn’t want to bore everyone with a list, but trust me or not, I HAVE conveyed to her directly (in person, phone, email), that if I could erase that part of our past, I’d do it in a heartbeat, I made mistakes, I’m incredibly sorry, and the biggest pain for me, is living with the fact that she can’t get over hers.
I appreciate everyone’s responses, they’ve been great. I do plan to reply to my daughter’s email and followup with a call few days afterwards… so any suggestions as to how I should phrase things differently this time would be greatly appreciated.
btw, I’m my daughter’s mom, not her dad.