Determining who will be in my child's life

Started by Milarepa, February 09, 2015, 07:17:18 PM

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Milarepa

I'm in the midst of a pretty bad episode with my uNPD F. Long story short, he's threatening to disown me if I don't apologize to him for prioritizing my boundaries and self-care over his sense of entitlement to be in my life as much as he wants.

I am not caving to the pressure, and thankfully, my stepmother and my half-siblings see his * and think he's being an *; so I'm not getting any additional pressure from that side of the family to change my stance. He's perfectly capable of writing people off no matter what anyone else says or thinks, though. He didn't speak to his younger brother for ten years, and they only reconciled (when my Uncle was on his death bed) after both of their wives cajoled them into it.

At this point, regardless of whether or not he actually goes through with writing me off entirely, I can't help but game out the next couple of years. My H and I are planning to start a family in the not-too-distant future. I have made a commitment to never leaving my child alone with either of my parents (my M is also uNPD of the covert, "secretly mean" type; so she'll be a very nice grandma as long as there are other people around), but I'm starting to think that it may be better to keep my F completely out of the picture. I can't expose a child to his controlling nature and unpredictable temper tantrums, nor can I stand to be around them myself.

I know that I'm worrying about a future that isn't here yet, so all of this is entirely hypothetical; but it makes me feel a little better to think about how my family will look in a few years and who will be in and out of the picture.

What do you guys think?

Kizzie

My S was not exposed much to my PD FOO because my H was military and we moved a lot.  He's 23 now and when I see a guilt bomb that a PD FOO has lobbed his way go sailing by him without registering I am thrilled. That there was a lot of distance from them in his life means he just doesn't know the rules of the game, or indeed that there is a game at all.  It's wonderful for us to see that he is not saddled with that mindset and that the cycle will not repeat with him.

Milarepa

Oh Kizzie, I am so happy to hear that not only has your son avoided even having receptors for the guilt bombs from your PD FOO, but that you were able to avoid passing them along to him as well. So much of the work that I am doing in my life is to avoid passing my traumatic childhood experiences along to my own children and you inspire me because not only do I know that it's possible, but that I now know someone who actually did it. Good work!  :applause:

I'm wondering if you would have been able to do that if your H's work hadn't kept you away from your FOO. I live in the same city I grew up in. I'm here for all the right reasons: love the culture, have a loving community of old and new friends, my H and I both have great jobs. We live on the opposite end of town from my FOO, and my M mostly leaves us alone, but my F (as you've seen from my other posts about the most recent crisis) feels entitled to weekly contact with me and reacts to me canceling plans with him because I'm depressed or otherwise sick as if I had committed a war crime.

Right now, he's punishing me with the silent treatment for not complying with his demands about frequency of contact. I'm enjoying the reprieve even as I wonder when the other shoe will drop and he will pop up again like an angry jack-in-the-box.

All of that I've been through before, but the new element is that I am newly married and my H and I want to have children in the next couple of years. If he's this bad now, I can only imagine what he's going to be like when a grandchild enters the picture. He will, of course, feel entitled to contact and I will not allow it unless he can satisfy me that he will not make any attempts to control my family. He's a high-powered attorney with a lot of money, so if we bar him from having contact with our child(ren), he might be very effective at using the courts against us. Our state law grants grandparents limited visitation rights, but there are all kinds of limitations the courts have to consider that involve an existing relationship between the grandparent and grandchild, the relationship between the grandparent and the child's parents and a history of abuse (including emotional) by the grandparent. The biggest factor that worries me is that my H and I are openly (as in publicly) poly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory) and some of our more conservative local family court judges will still use that as a strike against people's credibility.

I'm just wondering if we're going to need to move out of state or take out a restraining order before we start trying to get pregnant.

Kizzie

I think you're right that if we had not been moving around and were in the same location as my FOO it would have been much more of a struggle.  I can't remember if you've been to OOTF but you may find a lot more ideas there than here about this issue. I seem to remember there are some poly members there as well although I don't know if any of them have kids. 

Enjoy your quiet time while your F 'punishes' you  :bigwink: