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Q - Dear Annabelle,
I am 26 years old and the mother of a 5 year old little girl. She is the product of a
physically/mentally/sexually abusive relationship. Her bio father has not seen her since she was 18 months old, which is best, since he is a real nutcase.
Three and a half years ago I started dating a man who I thought was an angel. He was
respectful, kind, loving, and wonderful to my daughter. He has never given me any reason to doubt him, and about two years ago, we moved in together. Since then, he took the responsibility on to be my daughter's father.
Everything was wonderful, until about a month ago I came home and he announced that he needed to "find himself," and that he no longer wanted to be responsible for my daughter and me (he's 25). He moved out, and says he, and I quote, "wanted to be her father before, but now has changed his mind." He says he wants to be like her big brother or uncle now, but that he wants no responsibility and will make no commitment to be there for her. He's been coming by when it suits him to visit her and play with her, but I don't know what to do. Would it be more damaging to her if I just tell him to stay away and never see her again, or do I let him continue to show up when he feels like it, knowing he will probably eventually completely abandon her anyway?
Please help me, it's like a horrible alien has taken over his body. I don't want my daughter hurt any further by his immature, selfish behavior, but I want to do what is right for her.
A - Dear Stacie,
For one thing, if you Îdonât want your daughter hurt any furtherâ, please stop referring to her as Îthe product ofâ...........she is the total innocent in all of this and is at the mercy of irresponsible adults over whom she has no control and who seem not to care that they are destroying a young life.
Think how the world must look to a child who, by this age, should have already had her first Îlove affairâ with a loving daddy........someone whose knees she should have been able to hug and look up with shining eyes saying, ăDaddy I love you SO and when I grow up Iâ;m going to MARRY with you!ä She somehow missed that, didnât she? She doesnât have the kind of dad who can give her a big hug and tell her, ăPrincess, I love you too and mommy and I are going to take very good care of you, so when you grow up you can find JUST the right man who will love you as much as WE do!ä.....nope........you married (?) young, had a child, have lived with yet another guy who has now left, and now you....and your daughter .........sit with the wreckage of what IS......instead of that other......(but then, thatâs why you wrote.)
What SHOULD you do? Well, for one thing, quit shacking up with guys to whom you arenât married......or you daughterâs fate is going to be no better, and possibly worse than your own. She needs stability .....and she has chaos. How many times should a childâs heart break before she learns Înot to go thereâ (love) again? What if she becomes one of the teenagers who, not having a stable and loving childhood, looks for love in the back seats of cars..........and other places?
You needed to have a man in your bed more than you cared to provide a stable life for your child. Whether or no itâs to late to repair the damage is not the point.....NOW is all you have. Look into your daughterâs eyes and determine to have the strength to provide her with the constancy of knowing that mom doesnât have people living there to whom sheâs not married.......a man who will marry you and take on the legal responsibility for a child IS a man.
What should you do with THIS fellow? Well, children donât understand logic.....but everything that happens in their lives is self referential. She didnât Îcauseâ him to leave....she is NOT Îbadâ...and I guarantee you that, in her heart, she feels that she is being abandoned by these males because of something that she did........and she doesnât want to be a grownup, (like mommy), and have men leave. (This, by the way, is EXACTLY where our psychiatric patients come from). She MUST grow up believing that SHE IS lovable, that whatever happens is not her fault and that people, both men and women, DO care for her. Donât bad mouth this guy, or the biodad......keep YOUR pain to yourself. Youâre a mother now, and you no longer have the luxury of self indulgence.
Gee, aren'tâ you glad you asked that question??
- Annabelle
Q - Dear Annabelle,
I wrote you a letter a few days ago as a request for help with the fact that my fiance decided to walk out on my daughter and I. I am writing back to you due to the response you gave me. I don't particularly feel so much that I need to justify myself, as I am concerned that you did not understand the context of my original letter and believe that your response was insensitive.
First of all, I do NOT have a parade of men coming in and out of my
daughter's life. I believed in my heart that my fiance and I were going to
get married as soon as we graduated college, (which would be this May). HE convinced me that it would be best for my daughter if we lived together, so that he would be there as a permanent father figure. He ALWAYS told her and me that he loved her and that he would ALWAYS be there for her. This is why this is SO horrible. He completely deceived us both. Yes, in hindsight I was probably wrong to move in with someone I was not married to, but at the time,
I received only encouragement from my family and friends, because they too were deceived by him. He appeared EXTREMELY devoted to us, and frequently called me his "wife" and ALWAYS referred to my child as his daughter. I don't believe it would have mattered if we were legally married, because the commitment was there. He is the one who has suddenly gone insane. Because I AM more concerned about my child than
myself, I have begged him to go to family counseling with me. He refuses,
and has moved in with a friend.
I have offered to do whatever he needs to do to keep our family together, but he says he has simply "changed his mind" about wanting responsibility. I don't know if he is really seeing someone else (he says he's not) or if he is simply a jerk, but I have tried EVERYTHING for the last two months, and I can't get through to him. When I said it was like a horrible alien had taken over his body, I meant it. This is the only relationship I have had since the abusive one I had with my daughter's bio father. Which leads me to my next point.
When I referred to my daughter in the letter I wrote as a "product" of a
abusive relationship, I was NOT implying that this is how I feel about her,
that I don't see her as anything else, but simply attempting to make clear
why her biofather is not involved in her life. If you must know, the reason I became pregnant in the first place was because this person RAPED me during one of his cocaine-induced rages, without a condom (something I
insisted on prior). I left him immediately after this event (the last straw).
When he found out I was pregnant, he tried to threaten me into marrying him by saying he would kidnap my baby, but thanks to several months of therapy, I decided it was better to be a single mother living with my mom than marry a drug-addict rapist. The tone of your letter indicates you would not agree. You seem to assume that I am some sex-crazed, irresponsible mother who doesn't give a crap how my daughter feels. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ONLY reason I wrote to you was because you appeared to give good advice in several other letters I read, and I simply wanted to know if you thought I should let my ex-fiance see my daughter or not - I don't KNOW what is more damaging to children.
I am not a child psychologist, but YES, I realize how hurt my daughter is going to be by this. My objective at this point is to lessen her pain if possible. I obviously made a bad decision in moving in with this guy, but I assure you, it will not happen again. In addition, my decision to move in with him had nothing to do with wanting "a man in my bed." If I just wanted screwed, that was easy enough. I wanted my daughter to have a family, and my ex-fiance CLAIMED to want just that. And as I said in my letter, I had no reason to doubt him. He cared for us for over 3 years. He was respectful and kind. He supported me and my daughter every way he could. He was always at home - never partied or cheated on me. He was responsible and dedicated. Then ONE DAY he SNAPPED! I can't emphasize this enough. Everyone who knows him - INCLUDING HIS
MOTHER cannot believe this behavior coming from him. It is truly INSANE.
I hope this letter has given further clarity to my situation, and that if you receive similar letters to mine in the future, you will clarify details if necessary before sending a mean, scathing reply. I know it's my fault for writing to someone online that I don't even know, but if you want to be
a psychologist, you should at least learn how to treat people with problems. I also believe that my first letter was not detailed enough and
that you may have misunderstood the situation, but PLEASE in the future
remember that the people you are responding to are real people, often in
pain, and for a weaker individual than myself, the type of nasty, insensitive letter I received could send someone over the edge.
A - Dear Stacie,
I completely concur with your assessment...however there is a VERY big thing that you must look at before you ever again get involved with another guy. There's a very old, and very true, saying that 'you knew going in what would break up the relationship'. We ALL have 'selective' lenses allowing us to select that which serves what we WISH were true and deny that which IS true.....(it simply saves time), however, that same 'time-saving' mechanism can lead us dreadfully astray. You see, part of being human is the belief that we 'can make this betterâ...that we can 'fix things'. Well, that CAN lead to great things, but more often, to dreadful results.....ESPECIALLY with young men and women who HOPE for the best while not dealing with what IS.
Now, look at what you have said about your previous relationship: "I became pregnant in the first place was because this person RAPED me during one of his cocaine-induced rages"
Stacie, as ugly and dreadful as it sounds, you IGNORED ALL of the warning signs that were there....this guy was a 'bad dude' and yet...you not only kept him in your life....you allowed yourself to be vulnerable to attack.
Notice......because it's REALLY important......*when ANY thing happens to you in your life.......YOU are 'there'*........and you must always ask yourself how it is that you were 'there'. Stacie, in order not to fall into a 'victim' mentality, (which is SO popular now), we must always be aware that, in large ways and in small, we contribute to how our lives ARE. That we would 'wish' or 'hope' that they would be different, is one thing.......that we must take responsibility for our contributions to our own lives is of paramount importance.
Now, have you have an overfull measure of disturbing experiences? Absolutely. The question now, is not, why did they happen TO you, but HOW, in the future, you will avoid putting yourself...and you daughter..at risk.
As human creatures, each of us has, courtesy of mother nature, an 'uh-oh button'.......the 'feeling' we get that we are in danger. To evolve ..for any organism......there are only two outcomes...EAT the dinner, or BE the dinner.......that's where the 'uh-oh button' came from. Now, for whatever reason you CHOSE to stay with the first guy, you ignored information selectively and you have an 'outcome'. Again, you ignored 'information' with the second guy.........another 'outcome'.
Stacie, as women, it is WE who bear the children and, to engage in sexual behavior outside of marriage, (which is the contractual, legal agreement which protects the offspring financially),.... children, as well as ourselves are put at risk. You sound as if you are in terrible pain, (and no wonder)........not only are you in shock over this development, your dreams in disarray, but your daughter is at a loss to understand why her little life has been so disrupted.
I'd like, too, for you to understand something about psychologists and about finding 'good' ones. Being a psychologist is not unlike being a parent sometimes........it would be really lovely if we could always do the 'mooshy, kissy' stuff and dispense Îhugsâ. Sometimes, (in fact usually), that's not our function.......because avoiding reality is often how someone has gotten into a pickle in the first place. I cannot change what has happened TO you, I can only reflect back to you, (through a lens that you may not have used), a way of looking at things in the event that you now have the maturity to make decisions that will more positively impact on your life.
You sound like a very intelligent young woman.........life can be hard, more so when you have the situation in which you now find yourself. You asked what happened to the person with whom you were living. I have no idea...do people 'suddenly' go crazy? No, not usually...but developmental stages do take place and what seemed a good idea during any of the years before about 25 and what seems a 'good idea' during some of the years around that time can, alone, make a difference in how one Îisâ..........if drugs or sexual dalliances are factored in, then all bets are off. While much of life is fun and glorious, it can also be very serious ........and the consequences of decisions can be terrible indeed. This is what 'real' can be...no darned fun.
I will bet that you come through this having learned a thing or two that will serve you well.....how you will help your daughter deal with this is, as I said before. Grownup's struggles are of no interest to her except in the terror of her own abandonment. Speak well of him, do not make her your confidant, support her in the belief that she is lovable and wonderful and good......all those things. Then, if and when you DO find someone who would call you 'wife'........it would be in everyone's best interests if that involved a beautiful ring and a date to walk down the aisle. You CAN do it, Stacie....I believe in you.
- Annabelle
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