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This weekend, I unexpectedly heard a little of what my STBXW is saying to my young teenager. (Keeping this general, in case she's reading -- weirder things have happened!) Just was putting some laundry in the wash, and overheard. Ye gods. In that brief little 30 seconds or so, I found out that the parental alienation that's happening is many times worse than I thought. She said things about me that were breathtaking, malevolent, and just plain false. It was character assassination of the highest order, and this has gone on for ta long time. I knew that beyond doubt, I just didn't know it was this severe.

STBXW is a serial cheater, and a seriously audacious liar. I asked for a divorce and moved out over two years ago. We have a trial date down the road, but are near an agreement now with lawyer help. Long story short, as part of the alienation, my ex has done a fine job of hoodwinking my kid's therapist, too. According to my attorney, the therapist believes me to be some sort of slovenly monster, based largely on what my ex tells her. And the therapist is supposed to be a witness (against me) if we go to trial.

I am already at less than 50/50 custody, and based on the above about the therapist, who knows what would happen if it goes to trial?

But all of this is just to say -- my kid has no idea what my ex did (cheating, the ongoing falsehoods and campaign to undermine me). I feel utterly powerless and exhausted. I have no idea what to do. This alienation thing is the unexpected icing on the cake. Marrying this woman is turning out to be the mistake that will never stop delivering pain and suffering.

What on earth can you do about parental alienation?I feel like I can't take this to court under the circumstances. And every day that passes this gets worse, and the kid's manipulated voice regarding custody gets more weight. I want to do something. But what?!? Has anyone had success trying to counter this stuff? It is a new kind of awful.

[This message edited by Slanted at 2:41 PM, Monday, April 4th]

Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with parental alienation.

I have done a ton of reading and I have tried a lot of different stuff. I have failed on all of it. Family law pretty much focuses on physical abuse and largely ignores emotional abuse, which is what parental alienation is.

The best advice would be to get your child into see a therapist who has experience and training with parental alienation. Most therapists have no such training... you specifically want someone who focuses on "family systems." I talked to my older daughter's therapist about parental alienation and she responded that she literally knew nothing about it. Most of psychology is about the psychology of an individual, not about interactions... so any-old-therapist is probably not going to be good enough.

If your divorce is not already final, then I would do this immediately if you can. My divorce agreement supposedly gives me rights to make medical decisions, but I can't take my younger daughter to a therapist unless my ex-wife agrees and my daughter agrees. I can usually get one or the other to agree, but not both.

To learn about parental alienation, I recommend a YouTube search for "Craig Childress." There are also online parental alienation groups that you can join. Again, I haven't found anything actually useful...

Beyond that, about the best advice that I can give you is to just ignore the parental alienation and to be a great parent. I don't think that's very effective, but at least you won't be making the situation worse.

She said things about me that were breathtaking, malevolent, and just plain false. It was character assassination of the highest order, and this has gone on for ta long time.

My XWW was/is the same - utterly shameless lying POS.

I’ve been divorced for nine years now with 50/50 custody although, because of my work schedule, they spend a bit more time with her than me.

Your STBXWW is lying to your children.

Count on this though: The truth will indeed prevail in the end.

Your children, as they get older, come of age, and become more aware of themselves, other people, and the world, will be able to tell the difference between what your STBXWW has told them and the truth.

No matter how shitty she is, don’t ever bash their mother to them.

You don’t have to say anything about her at all - just be completely neutral about it.

When a parent criticizes a child’s other parent, it’s hurtful for them to hear and makes them feel fear.

They will feel safer in the place where they don’t have to hear such things - like with you.

Live by a good moral compass, uphold your integrity, and be the best father you can be.

Eventually, they will see the truth and it will likely not end well for her.

[This message edited by keptmyword at 10:25 PM, Monday, April 4th]

My GF is now doing a deep dive into parental alienation after my daughter's recent decision to stop coming to our house during my parenting time.

One thing that I learned yesterday that I thought was interesting is that kids do not, ever, cut off ties with an abusive parent. In fact, the opposite is true... they will usually defend the abusive parent... and it's not until they are adults with their own kids that they realize that they were abused.

Conversely, a lot of the reason why they yell, argue, and (sometimes literally) spit at the targeted parent is because they know they are safe in doing that. The targeted parent does not retaliate... so you should view some of the symptoms of parental alienation as a compliment to you. You are the good/safe parent, as ironic as that is to say.

Also, you REALLY need to be careful when dealing with therapists who don't have any actual knowledge or expertise in parental alienation.

I'll give you a very frustrating example from my life.

It was Summer 2019 and I was trying to get my son (age 7) to do something. My ex-wife decided to intervene and she started asking him in front of me if he was afraid of me. He basically ignored her. I proceeded to send her a text message at that moment saying something like "You are asking him if he is afraid of me. You are literally telling him that he should be afraid of me. How can you do that to a 7 year old boy? Karma will get you for this!"

A few months later, my ex and I did a full-on custody evaluation with a nationally-known child psychologist (and I am not making this up) who happens to live in my metro area. How did this so-called "expert" respond to reading these texts and discussing this incident? She scolded me for telling my ex-wife that karma would get her for doing this. There was no discussion of parental alienation... I was told that I was being abusive by suggesting that karma would eventually catch up to my ex wife for emotionally abusing her own son while in front of me.

[This message edited by barcher144 at 5:37 PM, Tuesday, April 5th]

Wow, barcher144. You raise some good points about the psychologist part. I know several psychologists fairly well, so I can be careful.

All of this is so weird. You're right about being the safe parent. And that's the weirdest part of all. The relationship seems good 90% of the time. We have troubles like any teenager and parent, but it's almost always followed by complaint sessions with Mom, who basically uses that as the teeing-off point for flights of character assassination and amplification of any fault, real or not. That's why she wants lopsided custody so much. She gets a captive audience and doesn't have to maintain the "dad is bad" story at a distance.

Luckily, this time I have had more than one opportunity to directly contradict STBX's lies. I try to maintain the long view, and figure that things will come back around in the end based on the actual relationship instead of the constant reminders from mom that this fairly good relationship is actually terrible. But I get really upset now, realizing that first may come years of awful. It feels so just simply unfair.

I just find it remarkable that anyone is willing to deprive a kid of their relationship with the other parent, instead of working to make that relationship as good as possible. She doesn't seem to understand at all that she's harming her own child.

[This message edited by Slanted at 5:09 PM, Tuesday, April 5th]

I try to maintain the long view, and figure that things will come back around in the end based on the actual relationship instead of the constant reminders from mom that this fairly good relationship is actually terrible. But I get really upset now, realizing that first may come years of awful.

My motto in all of this is that I want my kids to love me when they are 22 years old. I am also trying to take the long view. However, if the parental alienation is sufficiently severe, then there is a good chance that my child will never speak to me again.... so in that sense, taking the long view is not helpful.

It feels so just simply unfair.

Of course it's unfair but you almost have to ignore that. You have to focus on doing the right thing and making the right decisions.

I just find it remarkable that anyone is willing to deprive a kid of their relationship with the other parent, instead of working to make that relationship as good as possible. She doesn't seem to understand at all that she's harming her own child.

I think most people think that parental alienation is performed to harm the targeted parent without regards to the consequences to the child.

I am guessing that if you asked my ex-WW, she would say that I am such a terrible parent that doing whatever she can do to keep me away from her kids is only for their benefit.

In my opinion, my ex-WW is performing parental alienation for the purpose of seeking revenge on me for divorcing her (even though she had the affair and she initially made the decision to get divorced)... and because she is simultaneously exceptionally insecure that she is the worse parent of the two of us (i.e., narcissists are often exceptionally insecure about themselves... which leads to them portraying themselves as exceptionally confident to mask their insecurities).

At trial for the divorce, for some stupid reason she testified that I told our custody evaluator that I believed that she was a terrible parent who was emotionally abusing her kids. This was the only moment during her 5 hours on the witness stand where she cried. I interpreted her tears to mean that she knows that I would not make such a claim without justification. Simply put, in that moment, she basically admitted to me that I was right.

In my opinion, my ex-WW is performing parental alienation for the purpose of seeking revenge on me for divorcing her (even though she had the affair and she initially made the decision to get divorced)

That is exactly what I am dealing with. There is a ferocious blowback on me any time she learns that someone knows about her affairs. I must be punished for revealing who she is. The picture she paints of me is carefully crafted by taking small truths and spinning them into tornadoes.

This was the only moment during her 5 hours on the witness stand where she cried. I interpreted her tears to mean that she knows that I would not make such a claim without justification.

That's really powerful. That had to feel like some small part of justice.

To me moments like those are remarkable. I've seen a few, but they are of a different kind. No tears with mine. But what gets her is when her anger torques up and she thinks she's coming across in righteous indignation and having a big Perry Mason moment. In reality, she just looks like somebody who can't control her anger. Which is exactly what she is.

To me moments like those are remarkable. I've seen a few, but they are of a different kind.

There are about a half-dozen of those moments for me.

Two more that come to mind was mediation in January 2019.

1. We spent about 30 minutes quibbling back-and-forth about where I was going at night when it was her parenting time. This literally had zero to do with the divorce. We were getting divorced and my state has no laws that restricted either of us from dating at that moment (that is, I was staying at my GF's house). Simply put, she was jealous that I might be dating someone other than her. I knew this was petty at the time, in part because I knew (then) that she was dating her current boyfriend and likely seeing another guy. I also discovered, a few months after that, that she was also sleeping with a co-worker and sleeping with one of her friend's husbands.

The moral of this story is no matter what they do... they are exceptionally insecure about you moving on from them. Don't forget that.

2. This would have been April-June 2019. We had a rare moment of the both of us being at home at the same time. I asked her why she was making the divorce so difficult and slow, since she was the one who wanted the divorce in the first place (i.e., she asked for the divorce and then I realized, 2-3 weeks later, that a divorce was best). She responded, again, with tears streaming down her face: You want a divorce too!

Again, they are exceptionally insecure about you moving on from them. She had a boyfriend and at least three other part-time lovers. And she was caught having an affair. And she was still hurt that I wanted to divorce her.

Wow. That's really interesting.

So much resonance, and brings up several questions. Do you do PMs? Is that my computer, or your setting? :)

My xWS is trying to alienate my two as well and they have been caught up in his triangulating them and myself. I try not to give my x any information about my life. He still uses what he finds (i.e. going out with my girlfriends on a weekend) and uses it as a smear campaign. His latest is that I am a 50 year old bar floozy and left the marriage to hang out with other 50 year olds drinking in bars. I mean really???? Lol

My kids are older teenagers and luckily a shift is starting to take place and it is this...

Your children, as they get older, come of age, and become more aware of themselves, other people, and the world, will be able to tell the difference between what your STBXWW has told them and the truth.

They are starting to see through my X's bullcrap

He still uses what he finds (i.e. going out with my girlfriends on a weekend) and uses it as a smear campaign.

I know what you mean. STBXW does the same. Any small complaint from my teenager gets reinforced and amplified, with tales of past "misbehavior" of mine that may not have happened at all. She is spinning tales to friends, but even worse ones here.

I am endlessly amazed at the truth that cheaters pretty much always act the same way, while there's plenty of variation among chumps. And yet- it's so successful. Breaking rules and violating norms seems to almost never come back to bite these people in a way that they notice and understand. I mean, my ex's smear campaigns have removed possibly one or two people from my orbit. That's all. And she doesn't know about the mutual friends who have told me they see through her completely. She is oblivious. And just as oblivious that her distortions are yet farther from reality now that I have been through hell and learned and grown and changed for years.

They are starting to see through my X's bullcrap

I keep hearing that this is the likely outcome. And I try to remain hopeful, like barcher144's focus on when they're 22. It's the smart way. But it is hard. In the meantime, I absorb it all like a gut punch every time there's a new round. I am mulling over the next move. THinking that I may now have an old enough teenager that I can say basically that any time mom's answer to complaints about me is anything negative, she's breaking the rules and getting in the way of our getting along. And that is not cool. Ever. Maybe prevent just a little bit of her crap from sinking in.