I have spent a lot of time attempting to shrug off and move on with my life. I like to think I have been very successful at this, I am happily remarried and gainfully employed. I am helping to raise on young man full time (He just started his first job! I’m so proud!). As for my two children with my Ex well I have done everything I can do to not put them in the middle. Unfortunately, I am not so certain this has been to their benefit. One of the things a High Conflict Personality tends to do, no, more like is required to do is demonize people who are in disagreement or do not support them. One of their “tools” is rewriting history, of course they cannot do this with you or when you are present, but they will certainly do it when you are not around and most definitely do it in front of your children.
A very basic example from my life is my exit from this marriage. When I finally decided to leave my Ex it was after a rocky thirteen year marriage it was because of finance and horrible things said to me. I had done everything I could do to maintain and work on myself in an attempt to keep our marriage going. No matter what the “problem” it always came back to something I wasn’t doing or something I wasn’t giving. The final straw came during the lending crisis, my wife of the time had gotten us into a house we could not afford. My in-laws asked me directly why would we be buying this house when the one we were living in was just fine? The answer I gave them: If it makes her happy and she’s going to help pay for it I’m good with it. Well she didn’t. It’s that simple. She promised me that she would be able to make $60-$90K as a broker (She could’ve she just didn’t want to work that hard). If you look at our returns for the entire time we were in that house she made on average around $45k. Now that’s not horrible, but it wasn’t enough for the lifestyle she wanted to live. Even worse during this time my company was not able to continue it’s growth (primarily because all it’s resources went into our living expenses). I had to start looking for a job. By the time I had secured a paying job we were in debt to or eyeballs and even with all the work I had put into her little brokerage office (Projectors, desks, computers, etc) my ex was earning less and less ($30k). The stress of trying to rob Peter to pay Paul was killing me and stress was high. During this time my Ex poisoned me with Lime and Pumpkin chili, I know sounds funny but there are some limes that I get ill from, my Ex new this and happily went through the Aj’s on Camelback telling everyone what she was up to. Do you know how odd it is to have your butcher ask if you are ok, because he had been told the “plan”? The worst, one day when arguing about finances my Ex told me the best thing I could do for this family was die. Wow! Really? None the less I implored my ex to sell the house at the height of the market we had purchased it for $666K (A sign right?) and we could have sold it for $1.1M. She absolutely refused telling me I was insane that we would never be able to get into this type of house again. Long story short, we lost it and went bankrupt in the process. Just before the fall I laid out a spread sheet and presented my case to my Ex I showed how we could move into a small home and live on what I make and have fun on whatever she brought in. I even took her to look for a new home. She told me flat out to go fuck myself and told me that I had to give her half of the tax return money. I did and I started the process of separating. Now for a normal person being bankrupt having nothing is not a point in time to argue or fight, its time to move on. For my Ex it was the time I moved from being a good guy to the demon and bad guy.
Rewrite stage one present to anyone who will listen how you are fighting to get Chris back. I cannot believe how many times I heard from mutual friends and in-laws how Christa was still trying and wanted to work things out. Really? Interesting, the time for that would have been before I began proceedings. What she really meant, I’m working hard to get Chris under control. To paraphrase a missive to her lawyer: He doesn’t realize what I can take from him. Doesn’t he know I can even go after his social security? Really? Remember a high conflict personality cannot handle being honest with their own self evaluation. So what if they have caused the situation that doesn’t matter.
Stage two — after six months of separation I started going out. I might add Christa delayed, avoided every part of the divorce process. During this time I started dating an ex-coworker, this is a fairly natural condition. We tend to date people we meet in passing. In my situation I kept running into this young lady at a mutual friends band events. I had nothing going on and she was fun to talk and hang with. Now once my Ex got wind of this and she found out who it was (an old coworker) she had her new story. Whenever she got a chance she would tell my children that I had a new girlfriend and I wouldn’t have as much time for them. Now lets be clear, at this time I had my children 50% of the time, while I was still paying for her car, insurance, directTV and other bills. I told my Ex very clearly I wanted to make sure both households got off to a good start. At no time did I say I was paying these bills permanently or until the kids graduate.
Stage three — I was still try very hard to be fair. Christa stated very clearly she didn’t want to go to court or use a lawyer. BIG BIG MISTAKE ON MY PART. We went to a mediator to start this process, one day on a Saturday. This person simply asked question and plugged in values with little input from either side. I provided what I was currently paying for — I in no way was signing up for paying them permanently. By the time we were done Christa had stormed out because I had been stating I didn’t want to pay all of this and didn’t think she was entitled to all of this. The mediator sat me down and told me clearly that this wasn’t an agreement that this would just show to the court we were working on an agreement and that they wouldn’t kick my case out. BIG BIG MISTAKE NEVER SIGN ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT IN 100% AGREEMENT WITH!