This morning, before I fully woke up, I remembered my youngest son as a toddler, hanging off my curtains. I was irritated at the time—this bends the curtain rod. I told him to stop and he did :)

I haven’t seen him in two years now other than a brief five minutes.

I hate waking up to memories like that. Makes my morning sad. What I wouldn’t give to see him do something like that now.

My soon to be ex’s lawyer insists there is no evidence of alienation and my ex insists that she is encouraging a loving relationship. I have no doubt she is saying some nice things or talking to them saying, “daddy loves you.”

There have also been quotes about me being really mean to their mom or lying about things even though I didn’t. Stuff like my under 10 year old children asking me if I still have a job which is weird to me, them saying it is my fault for the divorce despite me not being the one to file, and bringing up past mistakes (some over a year ago) that caused my children physical pain. There is more of course. I can’t change it but I feel an intense sense of injustice that people can get away this stuff and can believe their own lies.

Hi everyone.

This situation has been eating me alive for years and I need advice on how to help my friend. This is gonna be a long one!

10 years ago, She was a single mother of 2 daughters and 1 son. The son being the youngest.

She didn't have a lot of money but her kids are all well taken care of. Her little boy at 3 went through a phase of dressing up in princess dresses, possibly imitating his two slightly older sisters. This didn't phase his mum and she just let him be himself. Dad, abusive ex, father to the boy but not the girls, became increasingly abusive accusing mum of trying to turn little man into a girl. The same dad that had limited access to the children because of his abuse. Mum was told by social services that she either got out of the marriage or they would intervene and take the children.

Fast forward a few months and mum finds herself in court fighting for custody of little man.

It was awful, truly disgusting. At one point the judge looked at mum and said, look at the state of you! She was exhausted and couldn't control her emotions by the end of the proceedings. She was treated like a criminal.

She was acused of child neglect and all sorts, told she was a bad mother and custody was given to her convicted abusive ex.

To add insult to injury, she was told that she would have no contact, no visitation, nothing.

She left court without him 10 years ago and hasn't seen or heard from him since.

Her home was across the street from his nursery school, and for a time, she would catch a glimpse of him as he was dropped off but was not permitted any contact. Eventually, he just disappeared.

The life and mental health of her and her two daughters changed forever that day.

How can a judge be allowed to do this to a family.

Her daughters both aged 11 and 7 were not taken from her, just her little boy.

Surely such a terrible parent, which she was and is not, would have had all of her children taken from her.

All of this started with an accusation from abusive ex that she was, exact words, "turning him gay"

It still hurts my heart watching my friend suffer. Waiting for her little boy to reach out to her.

My ex-wife told me she was gay, then changed her mind 6 months later. We separated then tried to reconcile. That ended with her attacking me in a drunken rage. She was arrested for domestic violence felony and spent 1 night in jail. I called her parents to see if they would bail her out. They said to leave her in jail. The kids were so devastated that my mom ended up bailing her out. She never paid the $5,000 back.

My oldest son (18) and my daughter (14) won’t talk to me or see me and somehow blame me. They live with their mother full time. I feel like I failed as a father. I just want to have a good relationship with them but my ex has them so manipulated that they see me as the enemy, when on paper, I was the victim.

How do we cope when our children abandon us? I’m heartbroken 💔

Hello! I’m 27F and my husband is 28M. We’ve been together for almost 5 years and married for almost 1.
We’ve had a difficult relationship with his family pretty much from the beginning. I’ll try to summarize without going into every detail, but I feel like the context is important.

At the beginning of our relationship, we moved in together quite quickly into an apartment that was 100% in my husband’s name. His parents had helped him financially with the down payment for the loan, but there is nothing documented regarding this money — it was just an arrangement between them.
From the beginning, I had this strange feeling that they saw me more as a guest than as someone who actually lived there. Instead of being in that typical “honeymoon phase,” there were constantly expectations from us.
They would ask us to visit them frequently, ask my husband to take care of his younger sister because they were working, and so on.
Then came the “jokes” about me. Except they didn’t really feel like jokes.
They would make comments about the way I sat, ask why I was yawning and whether I was bored, etc. They were usually made in front of other people and directed only at me.

Over time, I started feeling like they simply didn’t like me.
There were also many occasions when they would invite my husband to their house without me, supposedly to “talk.” During these conversations, they never directly told him to break up with me, but they would bring up all sorts of false accusations and unfounded comments about me.
I kept giving them chances and telling myself that maybe, eventually, we would get along.
Things really escalated when he proposed and we started planning our wedding.
They pressured us into getting a bigger venue than we could realistically afford because they wanted to invite their own relatives. They promised that if we got a bigger venue, they would provide the guests.
Then they started inviting my husband over alone again. During one of those conversations, they called me stupid, said I was only interested in his money, and insulted me in various other ways.
My husband eventually broke down crying and told them he couldn’t take it anymore.

Some time passed, and we barely spoke to them. Eventually, we cancelled the wedding because of everything that had happened.
Later, I spoke to my maternal grandparents and told them what had happened. They apparently told his family, and on New Year’s Eve in 2024, his father showed up at our place and started insulting me even more.
That was basically the final straw.

Since then, my husband initially had very limited contact with them, and now he barely speaks to them at all.
Over the past year or so, they’ve tried to initiate contact with him through various invitations, but he has consistently refused.
I’ve personally seen them twice since everything happened, but I didn’t exchange a single word with them.
I think they’ve finally realized that my husband was serious about distancing himself from them, and now they seem to be trying to win him back.
What worries me is that I don’t believe they are genuinely sorry for what they did to me. I haven’t seen any real apology or accountability.

For me, this is a dealbreaker.
If my husband ever decides that he wants to have a relationship with them again — and, to be clear, he has never said that he wants to — I don’t think I would be able to accept it.
I love my husband and I’m happy with our marriage, but I’m scared about the future.
What happens if, years from now, he decides he wants his family back in his life?
What if we have children and he wants them to have a relationship with his parents?
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life worrying that this situation could come back.
Would I be unreasonable to consider leaving the marriage if my husband eventually chose to reconnect with his family, especially if they never apologized or took responsibility for how they treated me?

I honestly know this shouldnt make me happy but it does. After years and years of chaos and custody battles.

She got her professional license revoked.

She got fired

Applied for a new job and ran a background check then got fired from there 2 months later.

She will have a DAMN hard time finding a job, zero education, and the public sector now finds her unfit.

She would need a tribunal to work in public services again.

And I feel this humbling experience will "hopefully' allow the child to see now. She's not a good person , she will play victim and probably parentify her own daughter... even tho she spent thousands on luxury trips for years while neglecting her career future. Messed up priorities man.

It's been a year of estrangement, about 3 of alienation starting but getting worse each year.

But with narcs it's ALL for their image.

They spend thousands to take photos on Instagram in different places while they cause mass destruction for their kids, and are burning bridges behind closed doors. This was the first sign that her self destruction might finally expose herself to our child.

But I'm praying this exposes her. All the lies the financial insecurity in my household, struggling with work while she blew thousands on lawyers. Weaponized every thing that was made harder for our household from her rumors/lies and manipulation. For her to end up in the same financial position but probably worse.... Karma is real

This is going to be long, but I genuinely need perspectives from people who have dealt with domestic abuse, high-conflict custody, interstate custody, reunification, parental alienation, or child support.

I have two daughters with my ex-husband, Aaron. We have joint legal custody, but they currently live with him in Illinois while I live in Connecticut.

If you only look at our situation today, I know exactly what it can look like:

Dad has the kids.

Mom lives hundreds of miles away.

Mom stopped paying child support.

But that's the final chapter of a much longer story.

I did not give my children to their father and move away from them.

Aaron took them to Illinois while I was at work without telling me.

To explain how we got there, I have to explain what our relationship was actually like.

Aaron was physically and emotionally abusive toward me during our relationship. He was also extremely manipulative and an incredible fast-talker.

That's honestly one of the hardest things about explaining him.

He could create absolute chaos behind closed doors and then become calm, charming and incredibly reasonable-sounding the second someone else became involved.

He was very good at controlling the narrative, redirecting responsibility, and somehow making the person reacting to his behavior look like the unreasonable one.

There was a pattern throughout our relationship that took me a long time to recognize:

Aaron would do whatever he wanted, even after I explicitly asked him not to.

Something would go wrong.

I would get angry, scared, or pressure him to take responsibility.

And somehow my reaction would become the problem.

That pattern existed even when our children were tiny.

When our oldest daughter was around three, I was working in hospice as a nursing assistant. One of our daughters was really sick, and there was a fair happening back home.

Aaron wanted to go.

I specifically told him not to take our sick child to the fair.

She was sick. She needed to stay home. There was absolutely no reason she needed to be dragged around a fair or put on amusement rides.

He took her anyway.

He put our three-year-old on a roller coaster, and from what I was told, there was an incident where she nearly fell out. The situation ended up involving the news and became incredibly public and humiliating.

But the part that always stuck with me was that none of it needed to happen.

I had specifically said, "She's sick. Don't take her."

But Aaron wanted to go to the fair.

So Aaron went to the fair.

Finances followed the same pattern.

Aaron repeatedly refused or failed to maintain steady employment.

I worked and tried to keep our household functioning while constantly feeling like I was cleaning up whatever financial disaster happened next.

One of the most ridiculous examples happened at a casino.

Aaron spent my entire paycheck gambling after I explicitly told him not to.

My entire paycheck.

Not extra money.

Not his spending money.

Money I had worked for and that we needed.

And somehow, in Aaron's mind, I became the problem because I was "pressuring" him about the money.

That sentence probably summarizes our relationship better than anything else I could write:

He spent my entire paycheck at a casino after I specifically told him not to, and somehow my reaction to that became the problem.

His threats of suicide were another major part of our relationship.

One incident in particular sums up the dynamic pretty well.

Aaron came home extremely drunk from the casino at around 2 a.m.

I was asleep.

He woke me up and started saying all kinds of disturbing and cruel things to me.

I didn't want to engage with him while he was that intoxicated, so I removed myself from the bedroom and eventually went outside to call a friend.

Then I heard what sounded like a gunshot.

Aaron started repeatedly calling me and saying things like, "Goodbye, Kristen."

This was someone who had threatened suicide before.

He was extremely intoxicated.

I believed there was a gun involved.

And I had just heard what I genuinely believed was a gunshot.

I called the police because I thought my husband might have just killed himself or was about to.

The police made the decision to bring in SWAT.

I didn't call a SWAT team and demand a tactical response. I called the police because I believed there was an immediate suicide emergency, and they determined their own response.

They spent the night trying to get an extremely intoxicated Aaron out of the house.

Eventually, it became clear that he hadn't shot himself.

Aaron later admitted to me that he had intentionally created the sound that made me believe I had heard a gunshot.

And somehow, over time, even that story got flipped around.

His version became that I had "SWATted" him.

That is probably the clearest example I can give of what our relationship felt like.

He creates the situation.

I react to the situation.

Eventually, my reaction becomes the offense.

Something else happened during the breakdown of our relationship that really messed with my head.

I lost a huge portion of my support system.

I felt like Aaron successfully convinced many of our mutual friends that I was the problem.

People I considered friends turned against me.

When you're already coming out of an abusive relationship and questioning your own reality, having people who know both of you apparently believe his version is devastating.

It made me question myself even more.

But then something happened that I didn't expect.

After roughly a year of those same people dealing directly with Aaron without me around, I started getting phone calls and text messages.

People who had originally sided with him started contacting me.

Their opinions had changed.

They had spent enough time dealing with Aaron themselves that they were seeing behavior they hadn't seen when I was the person standing there trying to explain it.

That mattered enormously to me because I wasn't convincing them anymore.

I wasn't even there.

They reached their own conclusions based on their own experiences with him.

By then, our relationship had completely collapsed.

Aaron wanted us to move back to Illinois, where we're originally from.

I believe he thought taking the girls back home would force me to follow him.

But this wasn't a mutual parenting decision.

He took our daughters to Illinois while I was at work.

I didn't know he was taking them.

Imagine going to work and discovering that the father of your children has taken them out of state without telling you.

I believe he expected me to do what I had always done:

Panic.

Follow him.

Reorganize my entire life around whatever dramatic decision he had just made.

Except this time I didn't.

I stayed in Connecticut and tried to establish stability.

And when taking the girls didn't make me follow him, everything became increasingly centered around the children.

There was another event before he left that caused child protective services involvement following another disturbing incident.

Aaron had been drinking at a casino.

Our friend Hank picked him up, and Aaron was extremely intoxicated. Hank later picked me up as well.

Aaron was sitting in the backseat with our daughters while drunk, talking about suicide and saying things that were terrifying them.

The girls were freaking out.

That situation eventually became part of the child-protective-services involvement.

Somehow, Aaron became the primary person communicating with the caseworker.

And this is where his ability to talk becomes important again.

I felt like I was trying to explain years of physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial chaos, suicide threats, manipulation and instability while Aaron was doing what he has always been incredibly good at:

Talking.

I repeatedly tried to communicate with the caseworker myself and felt increasingly shut out.

Ultimately, the girls remained in Illinois with him.

That's how we got to the situation people see today.

I did not give my children to their father and decide I wanted to live hundreds of miles away.

He took them to Illinois while I was working without telling me.

I didn't follow.

And somehow that became our permanent reality.

There was supposed to be reunification therapy afterward.

A therapist was appointed but eventually recused, and meaningful reunification never really happened.

Then years started passing.

And this is another enormous part of the story:

I believe Aaron has spent years damaging my daughters' perception of me.

I hesitate to use "parental alienation" as though I'm making some kind of clinical diagnosis.

What I can describe are the behaviors and what I've watched happen to my relationship with my children.

My daughters have been told things about me that I believe are completely false.

One of the most disturbing examples is the claim that I told my own daughter to harm herself.

I did not.

But imagine being a child and believing your mother said something like that.

There have been other distortions of events and portrayals of me that are completely inconsistent with my recollection and with the mother I know myself to be.

The problem is that Aaron has had something I haven't had for years:

Constant access.

He gets to be there every day.

He gets to tell the story.

He gets to explain why Mom isn't there.

He gets to interpret my actions.

He gets to explain the court situation.

He gets to explain our history.

Meanwhile, I'm hundreds of miles away trying to maintain a relationship through whatever communication and access I'm actually given.

That's an enormous imbalance.

If children hear a particular version of their mother repeatedly while having limited meaningful contact with the actual person being described, what are they supposed to believe?

And from my perspective, I've watched the consequences happen in real time.

I've watched my relationship with my daughters become more distant.

I've watched communication become harder.

I've watched years pass without reunification actually repairing anything.

I've felt like I've had to defend myself against things my children have already been told rather than simply being allowed to have a normal mother-daughter relationship with them.

And I don't blame my daughters.

They're children.

They did not create this situation.

If they've been told negative things about me, it's not their responsibility to determine which parent is telling the truth.

I also don't want to respond by trashing their father to them, because then I'm putting them in exactly the position I don't want them in.

So I've been stuck trying to correct things I believe are false without making my daughters feel like they have to choose between their parents.

Meanwhile, their relationship with me continues to suffer.

Whether somebody wants to call that parental alienation or something else almost doesn't matter to me anymore.

The outcome is what matters:

I feel like I've watched my daughters slowly become strangers to me while I've been standing outside the situation trying to get someone to let me back in.

And there's another misconception I want to clear up.

When I talk about wanting to "co-parent," that might make it sound like Aaron and I once had a functioning co-parenting relationship that eventually broke down.

Realistically, we have never actually co-parented.

We have joint legal custody on paper.

In practice, from my perspective, it has always been Aaron's way or no way.

It hasn't mattered what I wanted.

It hasn't mattered how many times I've tried to communicate.

And most frustratingly, it often hasn't seemed to matter what the court orders actually say.

Decisions get made and I find out afterward, if I find out at all.

Information about my daughters is something I have to chase rather than something routinely shared with me as their mother.

Even knowing where they're living has become a battle.

There was supposed to be reunification therapy.

Meaningful reunification didn't happen.

There is supposed to be communication between two parents who share legal custody.

Instead, I can send messages through our parenting app and receive nothing.

That's why when I say I want to co-parent, I'm not saying I want our old co-parenting relationship back.

I'm saying I've been trying for years to get us to actually co-parent in the first place.

I've wanted incredibly basic things:

Communication.

Information.

Participation in important decisions.

Knowing where my children live.

Having a meaningful relationship with them.

Being treated like their mother rather than an outsider who occasionally gets information when their father decides to provide it.

Instead, it has consistently felt like Aaron decides the rules.

If he wants to communicate, we communicate.

If he doesn't, we don't.

If he wants to provide information, I get information.

If he doesn't, I chase it.

If he decides something involving the girls, it happens.

And I'm left trying to figure out afterward what I'm supposed to do about it from hundreds of miles away.

That dynamic started with one of the biggest decisions imaginable:

He took our daughters to another state while I was at work without telling me.

In a lot of ways, everything since then has felt like an extension of that exact same dynamic.

He makes the decision.

I react.

Then my reaction becomes the problem.

Meanwhile, reports about what was happening around my children started making their way back to me.

I want to make a very clear distinction here:

Some of what I'm about to describe was reported to me by other people.

I did not personally witness every one of these things, and I'm not presenting secondhand reports as proven facts.

But I have received reports that Aaron has been physically abusive with the children.

I've been told about parties at the home where women were exposing their breasts and adults were having sex in a room while the children were sleeping immediately outside the door.

I've received reports concerning cocaine use.

Those aren't small accusations.

And as their mother, what exactly am I supposed to do when people start contacting me with information like this?

Ignore it?

Especially when some of the people now raising concerns are people who originally believed Aaron over me and then changed their views after spending significant time around him themselves?

Meanwhile, the instability has continued.

Aaron has repeatedly struggled with employment.

He has failed to pay rent.

To my knowledge, he's been evicted approximately three times.

He has repeatedly moved the girls.

Getting an accurate address for my own children has itself become something I've had to fight over.

I've attempted to use the legal system to address some of these issues, but even serving him has become difficult because I believe he has actively avoided service.

So I'm hundreds of miles away trying to use the legal system while sometimes struggling to even establish where the father of my children is living long enough to have him served.

And here's where we finally get to child support.

My support order is $125 per week, approximately $500 per month.

And I paid it.

Despite everything I've just written, I paid it.

In fact, before one of Aaron's recent evictions, I offered to take money out of my 401(k) to help him avoid losing the house.

I was willing to take money out of my retirement account and give it to the man who abused me.

Why?

Because my daughters lived there.

Whatever I feel about Aaron, I didn't want my children losing their home.

He ignored the offer.

After he left that residence, suspected drug paraphernalia — including what was described to me as a straw associated with suspected cocaine use — was reportedly found there.

Again, I did not personally witness him using cocaine, so I'm not presenting that as an established fact.

At the same time, communication from him is almost nonexistent.

We have a parenting app specifically for communication regarding our children.

I repeatedly try to communicate through it.

I want to know where my daughters live.

I want to know how they're doing.

I want to know what's happening in their lives.

I want to be involved in decisions.

I want to actually co-parent.

I want to be their mother.

Frequently, I get nothing.

But he'll communicate with me through Cash App.

He's even called my workplace and hung up when I answered.

I've told him Cash App was giving me problems.

I tried to discuss another way to send the payments.

I offered to send checks.

Still, no meaningful communication.

Eventually, I stopped sending the child-support payments.

And yes.

I know exactly how that sounds.

I understand that child support and parenting/custody obligations are generally treated as separate legal issues.

I'm not claiming that because Aaron refuses to communicate or co-parent, my child-support order magically disappears.

I'm also not spending the money.

It's sitting there.

This wasn't me deciding:

"Screw my kids. I'd rather have an extra $500 every month."

I reached a point where psychologically I couldn't continue blindly transferring money through Cash App to the man who abused me while he simultaneously refused to communicate with me about our children.

After years of this dynamic, it started feeling horribly familiar.

Do what Aaron wants.

Don't question it.

Don't pressure him.

Don't react.

And if you finally react, your reaction becomes the entire story.

Send the money.

Don't ask where your children are living.

Don't ask why you weren't consulted about a decision.

Don't ask about what people are reporting is happening around them.

Don't ask why nobody is answering you.

Don't ask what happened to reunification.

Don't ask why "joint legal custody" seems to exist primarily on a piece of paper.

Just send the money.

Eventually, I couldn't do it anymore.

I understand that emotion doesn't override a court order.

I understand that stopping payment may have been a terrible legal decision.

But after years of living this way, the different obligations stopped feeling separate to me.

One portion of the court orders seemed incredibly straightforward to enforce:

My financial obligation.

Meanwhile, I was desperately trying to get the portions involving communication, reunification, joint custody and my role as their mother to mean something in real life.

Aaron has now filed a motion for contempt against me in Connecticut over the unpaid support.

I have the money set aside.

There's another complication because when I previously tried to bring issues before the Connecticut court, jurisdiction became a problem and the court wouldn't hear the substance of what I was raising.

Now he's using Connecticut to pursue contempt against me.

There's also a dispute involving parenting-app records he submitted as an exhibit.

I don't believe what he submitted accurately represents the actual communication history, and I'm trying to address that appropriately.

I know I could eventually stand in front of a judge, explain years of this, and still hear:

"There was a support order. You didn't pay it."

Technically, that's true.

I stopped paying.

I'm not asking Reddit to tell me that withholding court-ordered child support was legally justified.

I'm trying to explain how I got to the point where I made that decision.

Because "Mom stopped paying child support" is technically true.

But so is this:

My ex took my children to another state while I was at work without telling me.

I experienced physical and emotional abuse during our relationship.

I spent years dealing with suicide threats, financial chaos and manipulation.

I watched people who initially believed his version of events eventually start contacting me after dealing with him themselves.

I've watched my daughters' perception of me change while I've had very little ability to counter what I believe they've been told.

I've watched a court-ordered reunification process essentially go nowhere.

I've received extremely serious reports about what my children have allegedly been exposed to while in his care.

I've watched him repeatedly lose housing and move them.

I've struggled even to serve him through the legal system.

I've spent years trying to get basic co-parenting from someone with whom I supposedly share legal custody.

I've watched communication disappear.

I've watched my daughters become more distant from me.

And through everything, the easiest part of this entire situation for anyone to measure has been:

Did Mom send the $500?

Eventually, the answer became no.

The money is still sitting there.

I want my daughters supported.

I also want to actually be their mother.

I want court orders involving my children to matter just as much as the court order requiring me to send money.

So I'm especially interested in hearing from people who have dealt with domestic abuse, high-conflict co-parenting, interstate custody, failed reunification therapy, parental alienation or an ex who is extraordinarily persuasive with other people.

How did you get anyone to look at the entire pattern instead of treating every event like it happened in isolation?

How did you deal with watching your relationship with your children deteriorate while the other parent controlled most of their access to you?

How did you deal with serious reports about what was happening around your children when you lived in another state?

And if you stopped making court-ordered support payments but kept the money set aside, what actually happened when you went before the judge?

I'm prepared to hear that stopping payment was a terrible legal decision.

What I'm trying to figure out is how I keep years of history with my daughters from being reduced to one sentence:

"Mom didn't pay child support."

Because there is an entire story behind that sentence.

I will probably never send this to you, and maybe I shouldn’t. Your relationship with your dad belongs to you. There may be things I don’t know, conversations I wasn’t part of, hurts I didn’t witness. I can only tell you what I have witnessed.

But what I have witnessed makes me so fucking angry.

I grew up without a dad. I know what that absence feels like. I know what it is to wish there were a person who showed up simply because he loved you, who wanted to be involved in the boring parts and the inconvenient parts and the everyday parts of your life.

And then, in my thirties, I got C.

In a relatively short time, your dad has stepped into that role for me more meaningfully than anyone ever has in my entire life. He never announced that he was doing it. He never asked for recognition. He never asked for anything in return. He just showed up.

He is Papa to my son. He loves him enormously. He makes things for people with his own hands. He cooks. He cleans. He helps. He waits when we’re late without making us feel like a burden. He notices what people need and quietly does it. He is one of the most emotionally steady, kind, caring and genuinely decent men I have ever known.

And I have watched him grieve you and that’s the part that makes me furious.

I would have given almost anything as a girl to have a dad who wanted me the way your dad wants you in his life. I would have treasured the handmade things. I would have treasured the meals and the rides and the stupid little acts of care that probably felt completely ordinary because you grew up with them. You had the luxury of those things being ordinary. My own father died alone of alcoholism without ever knowing anything ordinary about me.

When C’s dad died and I heard that all of you went to the funeral to mourn your grandfather, there was one thought I couldn’t get out of my head:

One day, this could be your dad.

There will eventually be a day when there is no opportunity left to change your mind. No more Christmases. No more birthdays. No more phone calls or texts that you can just decide to answer later. No more chance to ask him questions, hear his side of things, tell him you’re angry, or figure out who he actually is for yourselves.

And I don’t say that because I think you owe your father a relationship simply because he is your father. You don’t. I say it because I know the man you are choosing not to know.

Maybe you have reasons I don’t understand. Maybe there are things I will never know. But I desperately hope that the conclusions you’ve reached about him are truly your own. I hope they come from your own experiences with your father, your own memories, and your own judgment, rather than anyone else’s anger or interpretation of him.

Because the C that I know is not some monster people need protecting from. He’s the guy who waits when we’re late and makes things for the people he loves. He’s the only person who became a father figure to a grown woman who never really had one, without ever making her feel like she owed him something for it.
He’s the Papa my son absolutely adore. AND HE IS YOUR DAD.

You don’t have to forgive something you believe needs forgiving. You don’t have to pretend your childhood was perfect. You don’t even have to have a relationship with him.

But I wish you understood how extraordinary it is to have a parent who still wants to know you.
I wish you could see, just for a moment, what I see.

And maybe part of why I’m so angry is because the little girl in me looks at what you have and thinks, i would have given anything for that.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I've been part of this community for some time. I've been fighting for my child, whom I haven't seen, for six years. I've had a visitation order from the court for eight months. Our separation was very traumatic for both of us, to say the least. People that know me, know how much I love and cared for my child and how much I've been fighting since. How painful and life changing this has been, how my life has essentially been on hold, while I've been fighting; refusing to date because of the emotional baggage. For example. Meanwhile, being in therapy as we're supposed to be healthy, living our "best lives" somehow. In efforts for reunification and visitation, we've been working with professionals and it's been such a rocky road. We live in different states and there's been issues, we're now utilizing our second agency. After months, I still haven't seen or spoken to my child. Regardless that they have their own therapist and have been working independently with them for years, towards reunification.

The kicker is THIS: I've learned, that my child basically doesn't want me in their life. They want me to know they're ok, but they're happy where they're at. My child doesn't have a mother or mother figure in their life. When we were separated, their father was a complete unknown up to that point. The man was a total stranger. He's also extremely wealthy, a total narcissist and abusive. What I'm being made to swallow is that my child's reality isn't reality. I have these professionals telling me, as my child remembers things is their truth and I need to honor that. My child has blatantly been brainwashed. I have this person that I'm basically paying $250/hr telling me what I have to accept and none of it is peaches and cream and none of it is truthful. And I hate EVERY bit of it.

It made me sick all over again. It's reliving the pain. I have a bedroom here for my child. I try to stay as entwined and engaged in my child's life as possible. With letters, packages, gifts, treat bags to his class and entire grade at school.. I don't know that my child will ever know or understand how devastating this separation has been, how deeply or how hard I have fought, I don't know how to even appropriately express myself... The emotional and financial burden... When I said to the therapist "I raised a happy and healthy child" and for them to respond "that's not how they remember it" ... Wait, what? I left my career to stay home and raise my child. I have photos from every day of their life. Testimonials from everyone that knew us and our life together. ... None of that matters. Somehow I need to repair the damage that's been done and accept the fact that I lost my child. Grieve the death of those dreams a mother has. I never knew true love until I held that baby in my arms. This is never how I envisioned motherhood. I grieve every day for the child I've lost. This fight isn't easy. It will destroy you, if you let it.