Adult child of alienation discovers the concept of PAS due to experiences in a current marriage and is able to identify ‘what really happened’ after her parent’s divorce.

Story is published as shared by an adult child of  Parental Alienation Syndrome.

“We are getting a divorce” I remember my mother saying. It was in 1981 so I don’t remember too much. What I do remember is a lot of conflict, mom crying and we all of course felt sorry for her. After the divorce, I remember a few times we went to see our dad. He told us that the white stuff in the orange peel was good for us. We went home and it became “Bob” (his title of Dad/Father was removed) feeds you orange peels instead of how he was teaching us about health. We basically made fun of everything and it made the visits with “Bob” feel like a joke. There was talk about child support and my teen brother stood up for my mom and punched our dad in the face. That was when the visits stopped I think.

I would write hate letters to “Bob”. Hateful cussing letters of what a terrible person he was for leaving us. My mother would tell me how good they were. There was no counseling for any of us. I moved out and I remember having an eating disorder. Looking back, I am sure it was due to lack of control over my feelings. I grew to know that “Bob was the enemy”, we just don’t like him. There was nobody there to insist that we have a relationship with our dad. There was nobody reminding us of anything good about our father. Only negative opinions about him, from our mother. Anytime I would say anything about him, it was laughed at. I had to watch what I said. I went from growing up with a quiet, peaceful dad that I loved, to learning to hate him. But there was part of me that kept wanting my dad. We were told that he abandoned us, that he didn’t love us.

I had many problems in my 20s. I had the most trouble with relationships. I couldn’t seem to make any work. I would cry so often but I didn’t really know why. Something was wrong but I didn’t know what. I went to group therapy and private but nothing seemed to help my heart. I think I was crying because relationships wouldn’t work, but now I look back and I think relationships wouldn’t work because I had a broken heart over the loss of my dad and I wanted a man to fix my heart.

After I married, we had two children. I took them to meet their grandfather and I tried to keep it a secret from my mother. It slipped from my daughter and my mother was mad. She gave me the silent treatment for taking our children to see their grandfather!! I didn’t really understand it at the time. I just went along with it.

The man I married had 4 children. They began to dislike us. We put a swimming pool in, got a trampoline and a new bike for the son and they had to go by their mothers rules at our house for those things. They weren’t even allowed on the trampoline. It was frustrating as I loved those kids. Slowly, things got more difficult. The kids would be cold when we picked them up. It would take a while to warm up to us. Their mother would call in the middle of our visits with them and she would come get them and we would be left wondering why they left. Things got so difficult and they were so disrespectful that we had them go back to their mothers. It was crazy. My husband and I are pretty peaceful likeable people and these kids were hating us. They ended up moving a half hour away and our phone was blocked. We didn’t know what to do. The mother wouldn’t let us go to counseling with them so we saw a dead end.

I began to research parental alienation as a friend mentioned it to me. I saw so many similarities to it and believed that this is what was happening. I read DIVORCE POISON. It was then that the light bulb lit brightly. That was it! As time went on I put more and more pieces together and was convinced that it was pa that had separated us from my husbands kids.
It was a birthday party for my mother and I heard her say how much she loved us and “its too bad the other parent doesn’t feel the same”. I think that was the moment I realized that our mother has been keeping the hate alive all of these years. Later, knowing Jesus is with me always, and having the love and support of my husband, I confronted her in email. I was too afraid to talk to her in person. I asked her if she really thought that our dad didn’t love us. No answer. I asked her not to say anything to us about our father unless it was a benefit to us. She rarely talks to me anymore. The threat she always hung over me of ignoring me came true. She pretty much ignores me these days. My own mother. I learned that she hates our father more than she loves us. Thankfully, I have learned that her childhood affects who she is and she never healed from having an alcoholic father. So I think I am ok not talking to her. Who wants to have someone in their life that really doesn’t care about them? She only wants me in her life if I hate my dad with her. No thanks. I have broken out of that hate jail and reunited with my Dad. I no longer refer to him by his first name. He is my Dad! Nobody will ever tell me who I can or cannot love again!

Thank you for sharing the sad situations and the heart warming story about reuniting with your dad.

Permission to use granted: 1/25/2015