Mates that trash the other parnter in front of the children

by frankiespeakin 26 Replies latest jw friends

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  frankiespeakin

  You make a lot of sense to me Brooke.
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  Seeking Knowledge

  That's the trouble I'm having with my ex....only it's his wife that is doing most of the bad talking, including encouraging my son to call her Mom...pisses me off. I try really really hard to explain to the 4 year old that she's not his mommy and not to call her that, but he doesn't really get it. I know my ex is in there too, and for what?? All I can do is ensure my son that his parents love him (even if they don't get along). Maybe one day, when she's going thru the same thing THEN she'll understand...and maybe one day my ex will find his balls & put a stop to it as he should.

  It is pretty sad, we had a relationship that produced a child and are reduced to this...

  SK
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  delilah

  My brother never spoke an evil word about his ex-wife, in front of his children. She , on the other hand ,never had anything nice to say about my brother, and said it all, then some, in front of the children. However, it is all coming full circle, and the children are seeing exactly what kind of a woman their mother is, and that she told a lot of un-truths about their father. I once told her to be very careful, that one day it would all come home to roost......and it has begun...I'm almost ashamed to say it, but "I told her so"!!!! And she professes to be a good christian, while telling the kids their father is going to die at armaggeddon.....rotten so-and-so.

  Delilah
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  frankiespeakin

  Brooke,

  I think it is good that you can relive some of those moments even though they hurt, don't be afraid of the pain,,and just let it happen until it wears itself out,,I think you will feel much better as you do.
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  lonelysheep

  I hate it!!
  Background: Mom walked out on us when I was 7. Dad raised my brother and I.

  Anytime I visited with my mom, she was always bad mouthing my dad. From 10 right up until the last time we spoke. And although not as much, Dad also talked bad about mom and still tells me to this day that I'm just like her.

  Because of this, I don't talk to either of them (on top of all the other isht I've dealt w/from them)!

  It just showed me how selfish and hateful they really are.

  This will f*$# w/your kid for a long time.
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  frankiespeakin

  Lonely,

  What I have found in dealling with this,, is to remember that both your mother and your father were a product of thier circumstances , just like every single one of us are. When you see that very clearly you loose all negative judgement of mom and dad, the more profoundly you understand this. In my case I have some pretty terrible memories but they have lost a lot of thier ill effect by just letting them become conscious when ever they want to and pretty soon they don't effect you hardly at all in a bad way.
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  Markfromcali

  Sometimes the children out matures the parents...
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  frankiespeakin

  Mark,

  I think many parents are so blinded by hurt feelings that they can not see how irrational they are acting. There consciousness is very restricted and oblivious a great deal that goes on around them because of a consuming desire to make the other person really hurt in the maximum way possible.

  I think the egocentrisity of the person is the main cause of this grief, and its neurotic tendancy to keep recalling painful feelings to maintain a gudge of long lasting until revenge is some how complete.
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  LouBelle

  Parents who do this should get a tight slap whether what they say is true or not because at the end of the day they are hurting the KID. Just because they are bitter about the split they should pour that bitterness on to the lil one.
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  frankiespeakin

  Lou,

  I think if the hurt parent can get to some group where people just talk about it, or if they can write out thier thoughts, that may do a lot of good, just to honestly examine one's self and feelings.

  I'm the oldest of 4 children I'm 2 years older than my sister, 12 years older than my brother and 16 years older than my youngest sister. When my sister and I were growing up, our parents used to have some pretty big fights ( they were a very young couple). My mother and father would shout and say terrible things about each other. My mom would go on and on and on complaining about how my father treated her, and then start on us kids and tell us we were just like our father, and start complaining about us both. This caused us to develope bad feelings and loss of respect for our father, and didn't really draw us closer to our mother. When growing up, I hardly ever enjoyed my parents company, and never confided in them because I had very little respect for thier judgements, thier fightings just made me sure I didn't want any of thier viewpoints about life.

  Later after I have grown and my younger siblings tell me they used to have to listen for hours as my mother would rant away in front of them about thier father(they got divorced after 26 years of marriage) and eventually these rants about thier father would eventually lead to a rant about how they were just as bad as thier father.

  I appreciated that emotionally my mother and father faced a lot of challanges that they had very little skills to understand and fell into predictable paterns, so I have no lingering bad feelings about how they acted, I would have done the same, given the exact same situation and emotional temperment.

  I think being in this situation has given me some insight into how destructive jealousy, anger, hate, and revenge are, and the need to avoid letting these control you.