Reply #11: My ex did basically the same thing... [View All]

[Mythsaje]

For five years I had no contact with my boys, until I heard through the grapevine that she was divorcing the asshole she left me for. When we split, she left the oldest with me, then snatched him back six months later. Then initiated the worst kind of custody fight, one that I had no resources to fight.

Five years. She claimed--still claims, in fact that she took them to protect them. Except her husband was a verbal and emotionally abusive control freak who lost custody of his own son soon after they got together. Then the next boyfriend molested our oldest.

He's had anger issues since she first took him, and he says straight out that it had pissed him off. He was just a little over four at the time, but he remembers it. He knew his alphabet and how to count to thirty or forty and I was beginning to teach him to read. When she got him over there, he refused to do any of it. As I told her at the time, when she said that he couldn't do his alphabet or numbers, was that he probably resented being treated like a trained monkey. He's since verified the accuracy of this observation. I understand the boy better than anyone, given that he's a bit like a mini-me.

He's fifteen now, and we're close as we can be considering he lives all the way across the state and I usually only see him and his brother twice a year when they come over to visit.

She's unapologetic about it, though she hurt me and our oldest deeply. Our youngest wasn't really affected by it the same way, since he was only 1 when we split. The first thing he ever said to me was that his stepdad wouldn't let him eat seconds. The oldest has been diagnosed with PTSD and both have been diagnosed with A.D.D. With the younger, I can believe the latter, but I've never gotten that impression from the elder.

Last time I talked to her, she told me she'd started going to therapy, and that she'd been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She started explaining what it was and I had to laugh quietly and shake my head, telling her that I knew what it was. Especially given that I'd figured that out right after we'd split up.

Neither of my sons will ever join the military. My oldest is most likely 4-F, given that he has only one functional kidney because of polycystic kidney disease. He doesn't participate in sports because it's believed that a good blow might kill him. I think he's probably more resilient than that, but it's not something I'd want to test either.

That whole custody battle gave me a rather dark view of lawyers for a long time. No one would touch my case without a thousand dollar retainer and the Guardian Ad Lidem basically told me that if I couldn't get a lawyer, I was screwed. He threw his weight against me because I didn't have the money and had no one I could borrow it from. He said he believed that it proved I didn't care enough.

To make matters worse, I deliberately avoided going back to confront my ex and her new husband after she took him, knowing it would simply result in a brawl on the front doorstep. So to pay me back for this exercise of wisdom and self-control, the judge berated me for not going there anyway, and laid a five year restraining order on me.

The minute I heard that she and her husband had split, I called her. Within five minutes her suspicion had vanished and we were chatting like old friends. She had a new arch-enemy, you see, and that was all it took. But she has never admitted to screwing up, to doing the wrong thing for, maybe, the right reasons (I don't doubt that she believed that she was protecting the boys--even though I was never a threat to either of them, nor to her. Though I REALLY wanted to kick her husband's ass. I knew better, though, and never did anything at all in that direction).

So suffice it to say that I know your pain in this regard.