After the Betrayal Your Abuser Will Pivot to Accusations and Censorship of Thought

Your tips are greatly appreciated! Upgrade at 30% offI never had a conversation with my father about how painful it was immediately after the divorce. He was off living his best life with a new girlfriend every week. The rest of us were left to pick up the pieces of a tattered life.It’s a strange thing to be in a moment like that. You love your parent. So when he comes into the living room and says that he’s leaving, you don’t know how to react. As a child your family is your whole world. When that’s destroyed, it leaves you feeling disconnected.There are some relationships that run their course. It’s not unforgiveable to have a divorce. But it is unforgiveable to inflict pain upon your children and then refuse to recognize or talk about that pain because it embarrasses you.We live in a society that creates man-children instead of men. These are boys walking around in adult bodies who have mistaken narcissism for self-esteem. They force the people around them into subservient roles, and they become petulant over the insufficient adulation they receive.They believe it’s their right to experience as much personal euphoria as they can, and it’s left to others to clean up the messes they leave behind. They don’t understand that true life satisfaction comes from cultivating deep affection and lifting your loved ones up. It doesn’t come from being fixated on frivolous pleasures and the thrill of escaping accountability. Those that pressure their own children to ignore their feelings of confusion and betrayal create a foundation of misery that will only magnify with time.As a teacher, I’ve observed a lot of students struggling with the various emotional conflicts that come in the aftermath of a irresponsibly handled separations. It’s frustrating that I can perceive this pain which could be so easily appeased with a few carefully chosen words, but I’m prohibited from offering those.Sometimes I want to grab fathers by the shoulders and shake them and say, “Can’t you see what you’re doing to your kids? Why can’t you grow up? This life isn’t all about you. Get over yourself. Admit your mistake, and spend every day from now until your last working to make amends for all the problems you create.”But that action is frowned upon too. So, the kids continue to suffer beneath the burden of their unacknowledged pain. Why do we allow this? You see kids having to endure the contempt of their father’s new girlfriend who sees the children as rivals. These poor kids are simply trying to find their way through life. They’re not equipped to handle the wrath and jealousy of adults.Parents need to protect their kids from that. Instead, we pretend like it doesn’t happen.There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t recall the things I did wrong in my life and which I deeply regret. But this recrimination isn’t an act of personal torment. I acknowledge my mistakes so I can do better going forward. This is how I hold on to my motivation to prevent more pain from coming into the world.Some men claim it hurts them too much to acknowledge the truth of what they’ve done. When you find yourself in the presence of a man like that, you should run.My own father is frustrated that we haven’t talked in twenty years. But he refuses to admit that the conflict didn’t begin there. It began when he left. If he wants to acknowledge that, I’m all ears.This scenario where a man comes home in a fit of ego and decides to break up his marriage is all too common. Too many men in our society have heard the whispers of patriarchs who insist they should be entitled to inherit the world. There isn’t a woman alive who can fulfill the requirements of that false promise. That any are expected to try is absurd.We’ve created a generation of men who are indifferent to the pain that it will cause everyone when they betray their family. Then they shamelessly come home and defend their destruction with the cruel deceit of a false authoritarian.“This is the way it’s going to be and you have to accept it because I’m still your father and you have to respect that too. It will never change.”But betrayal changes everything whether it comes through violence, or infidelity, or emotional abuse.They think they can make a declaration when their child is ten and that it will never become a point of contention.That’s delusional.Here’s what really happens.The kid starts off numb. They continue on and try to keep as many familiar routines as they can. They’re young and impressionable and they’re trying to survive. But they have a front row seat to the actions of their father cavorting around and having the time of his life. They see mom too, sad and strained but doing everything she can to make sure her children pull through.This is the moment when the wounds are left ragged and raw. The father refuses to recognize this suffering because it infringes on his perverse sense of self-love. It’s easier to respond with denial and anger. The kids crawl off to lick their wounds alone.“Come back when you’re feeling good, and then it will be the way it always was.”But it won’t. Once betrayed, a relationship will never be the same. The father feels all-powerful in that moment, and he deludes himself into thinking it’s always going to be that way. So what incentive does he have to do the right thing? The coward’s path is to deny all the pain he’s inflicting.At first, the kids accept the reality they’re presented with. But this is a new reality, so they are compelled to question both this one and the one that came before. They know the new situation is miserable, but they also come to understand that the previous one wasn’t any good either.They might never have had cause to question this if not for the betrayal of their father.They go and visit. They split their time as they’re expected. Their wounds turn into scars. They begin to develop a new worldview. They realize that in the wake of the divorce, they ended up having a lot more work to do. The burden of tending their parent’s ego somehow fell to them.Eventually they have to wonder why they got stuck doing the time when their father committed the crime.A self-centered man-child who is only interested in the superficial, thinks he’s got it made. The kids show up. They smile. He says, “How was your day?” They respond with, “Fine.” That’s a normal life right? Like what we see on TV?But the kids will come to recognize the injustice eventually.Without a family, they turn their attention to their studies, work, and friends. The extra hours wasted on trips to visit their dad, stop being worth it to them. If he complains, they can say, “But isn’t this what you modeled for me? Didn’t you leave? Didn’t you have other places you wanted to be?”Betrayal doesn’t just go away because there’s a power discrepancy. It lingers. It festers. It grows. One day the children decide they don’t want to have anything to do with their father anymore.There will come a day, many years down the road, when he’s old. He’s by himself. The kids have grown. They’ve gone on with their lives, and he expects them to come to him to tend him as he dies. Why? So they can reminisce about the betrayal? So they can sit together and listen to his cruel lectures about how their feelings don’t matter?Why should they risk being in his presence again? The last time they offered him their vulnerability, he tore it to shreds.I think about this a lot when people chortle at the feelings of others. Even those that are compelled to laugh when they see somebody slip and fall. The thing everyone forgets is that the people who are young and innocent and vulnerable will grow into their power someday. How will they think of you when that day comes?Time is undefeated. A child can never atone for a parent’s betrayal.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI’m so happy you’re here, and I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. 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