Parental Alienation - help

[rachel]

My soon to be ex quit his job in our small town in Southern Illinois and accepted a new job in LA when our divorce proceedings began early in 2007. My ex did not tell me about the new job until 3 months after I filed for divorce. After he moved and throughout the year before the custody hearing, I encouraged as much communication and visits to LA as was humanly possible, sometimes taking my son out of school for one or two days so that he could have additional long weekends to visit with his father in LA. During that year, his father never once came to visit in Southern Illinois. I firmly believe a child needs both parents during his formative and teenage years in order to eventually form healthy relationships with spouses in his adult life. Last summer, after a year of me being a single parent to our son, my soon to be ex was awarded full custody because our son (age 14 1/2) stated a preference to move to the excitement of LA over staying in our small town. I also have reasons to believe he was coached by my husband and perhaps professionals based on the things he told me and he told the Judge.

I let my son go with a great deal of heaviness in my heart but determined to put my best foot forward to deal with our situation in order to make it as easy as possible for our son. During the first few weeks that our son moved to LA, he did not answer his cell phone nor did he respond to text messages or emails. He eventually called me late one night, but only after his father was in bed. Over the next few months it became apparent that he felt uncomfortable talking to me in the presence of his father, and one night while we were chatting on Skype, his father came into the room and once he realized who our son was talking to, told him to turn off the computer as it was getting late. It was about 10 pm. Our son normally goes to bed at 11 pm. Soon afterwards, I received an email from my ex telling me to not contact our son after 9 pm at night as it was disruptive to his homework routine and sleep habits. At the time, our son was doing football practice after school, then he was having dinner with his dad, then an hour or so downtime for video games, etc, then homework which he finished at about 9:00 or 9:30. So he wasn't free to talk to me until about the time when my husband, having full custody, told me to not contact our son.

My current dilemma: the visitation agreement stipulates that our son should visit me one week in each of his Fall break, Christmas vacation, and Spring break, in addition to a minimum of 8 weeks in the summer (allowing him 2 weeks to vacation with his father), but subject to our sons changing needs. This summer I have reason to believe my ex wants our son to attend summer school (for a class he is not failing) in LA, thus reducing our visit to 3 weeks. I believe my ex is trying to convince our son that he needs this class for his future success in his high school and has further told our son that it is "his decision" as to how much time he wants to visit with me. My ex has also always told our son, from the moment we announced we were divorcing in 2007, that it was "his decision" as to who he should live with. Looking back, I believe this to have been a tactic my husband gleaned from material coaching parents on how to get an upper hand in a custody dispute. I was naive at the time and firmly believed it was in my son's best interest to attend high school in a small town over LA, and it never occurred to me to look up "tactics" on the internet.

I also need to say that our financial settlement has not occurred yet and I am receiving $1,300/month voluntary contribution from my husband (property taxes alone are $12,000/year). All our assets are frozen and I have indebted myself in order to pay for bills. I am currently $35,000 in debt with no further options for loans due to my credit rating. I put our family home on the market as soon as my son moved to LA, but there has been almost no activity in our current economy. I was a stay at home mother for 24 years (We have 3 boys and our oldest son is 24). I followed my husband around the continent as he was being promoted while I gave up my career. Currently my husband makes over $300,000 per year with the potential of earning up to $400,000 when the economy improves and I am having difficulty finding a job in our small town in this economy. I do not have a Bachelor's degree and I do not think I could receive more than $15,000/year in salary. I cannot move to South Pasadena where my husband relocated in order to be closer to our son, as I could not even afford to rent there.

Your site has many articles and research about malicious mothers who engage in parental alienation, but I have seen very little in terms of how mothers can protect themselves against parental alienation emanating from fathers, expecially in this day and age when more courts are awarding full custody to fathers. Although my husband is and always was a very good father, he is also a master manipulator and our boys have never wanted him to be angry at them. How can I best protect our son from becoming brain washed by his father? I believe my husband wants my presence to be eradicated from his life and our children's lives entirely. In this post, I did not speak of the alienation tactics my husband engaged in with our two adult sons.

One last note. When our (now 15 yrs old) is with his father, he tells him the things he believes he wants to hear, and when he is with me, he tells me the opposite. It breaks my heart that this is the strategy our son feels is his best recourse to survive in his father's home, given his loyalty to his father and his knowledge that my ex will not have my name mentioned because he sees himself as the injured party in our divorce.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I am beside myself with grief over the entire situation.

[4honor]

In my case, when my parents divorced, my mother was the alienating parent. My mother demanded I pass frequent, sometimes daily, loyalty tests. If I failed (rules were arbitrary and fluid) I suffered physical and emotional abuse. I became someone else to "survive" in my mother's home. I blamed my father for not rescuing me, but did not find out until I was 40 that he never knew what we all went through ( I have 5 siblings). We all just assumed he knew and still did nothing. Our relationship suffered for many years. I grew to hate my mother, and was kept from my Dad up until she died in 1987. In four years she destroyed an awful lot and it took 23 years to fix it.
   What you describe is a teen in their most selfish years with possibly some mild alienation. However, you can't touch on every aspect in a single post, and with additional information,  might come another conclusion. Honestly, I don't allow calls to my home after 9 PM. Make an appointment to talk with your son just before he does his "down time".
   Kids have a tendency to take the path of least resistence. Your son chose what he likely believed was the more lenient parent and the town with more to do. Your son is very likely caught up in his own life (school, girls, sports, friends). His reluctance/discomfort in talking with you in Dad's presence -- or anyone else's presence -- is not outside the normal for a teen. How much ribbing can a 15 yo guy take about his "Mommy" before he backs off on talking to her in anyone's presence? Given the information you provided, so far, his being a teen with divorced parents, can account for all his behavior.
   The information on parental alienation and hostile agressive parenting can be used by any target parent.  The reason more alienating parents appear to be female, is that the majority of Custodial parents are the mother. More access = greater ability to alienate, although NCP's can be alienators as well.
   Since your son is a teen, there is alot of behavior that will appear strange to you that is only normal teen behavior. Some can be him purposefully pitting you against your ex. Kids learn to do that and find it an effective tool in his "dealing with life" arsenal.
   I found that the  one thing that made the most difference with my  relationship with my Dad, was that each time we parted ways, I found him emotionally exactly where I left him last. He neither smothered, or let distance grow between us. I imagine it cost him alot to sometimes just pretend that I had not been totally disrespectful at times.
   When all is said and done: 1) do not attribute all that is negative to the ex's behavior, 2) find a balance for your relationship with your child 3) Don't give up.

[rachel]

I found that the one thing that made the most difference with my relationship with my Dad, was that each time we parted ways, I found him emotionally exactly where I left him last. He neither smothered, or let distance grow between us. I imagine it cost him alot to sometimes just pretend that I had not been totally disrespectful at times.
When all is said and done: 1) do not attribute all that is negative to the ex's behavior, 2) find a balance for your relationship with your child 3) Don't give up.

The child abuse you went through is unpardonable. There is something horribly wrong with a parent who places his/her needs and hatreds first before their child's needs and your mother now is suffering the consequences of her actions. I am so sorry you and other victims of such tactics went through this.

Thank you very much for your response. I will not give up and I will also not add to my son's grief by behaving the same way his father does. Thankfully my son does not engage in any negative behaviors towards me. We love each other very much, although I fear that being a teenager, he may be swayed by my ex's attempts to discourage him from spending the time with me that was awarded under the Visitation Agreement. This, and the negative attitudes about me that my son lives with, will not cause him to hate me but it will create an emotional distance between us that would not have been there otherwise, no matter how often I call him. I can already see the signs now as we have fewer and fewer things to talk about. I fear this will negatively impact our relationship as adults. I have 2 older boys and I understand about a male teenager's need for independence from his mother. However, when you combine this with the disrespect and the sheer hatred emanating from his dad, the male that my son looks to for male role modeling, I can't help but think it will negatively impact our bond throughout the rest of our lives and it may impact my son's relationship with a future partner.

I suspect there will be more and more cases of male alienating parents as the courts award custody of more children to their fathers. There are lots of narcissists in this world, no matter the gender. And as you say, more access = greater ability to alienate. I hope the courts will come to see that when a parent who fights for custody also quits his job when he doesn't have to (this was proven in Court), and moves to another state therefore making the decision for the child that he should only have one parent in his daily life, this parent does not have the child's best interests in mind. It simply amazes me that the Judge saw nothing wrong with this, even if it is more interesting to live in LA than in small town midwest America.

My eyes were opened during this process. I was very naive before this and I felt the justice system truly had a child's best interests at heart. Although I have come to accept the situation for what it is, I still grieve terribly for what my son has lost and is losing due to his father's anger and narcissism.

Again, thank you for your response. I do hope the Courts will come to recognize parental alienation, no matter who engages in it. The mere fact that a parent willingly wants to take the child away from the other parent should be a very strong clue.