I was helping a client earlier today when she received yet another rambling, threatening email from her abuser ex. It was priceless. I even apologized to her and said, "Sue, I swear I'm really sorry but I can't help but laugh at this idiot. He is a special kind of stupid!"
This guy's major complaint was that he was peeved that she was making supposedly unilateral decisions about their special needs daughter, for whom she provides 24/7 care. You all know how that one goes, right? You send emails, forms, questions, copy them on stuff, and they defer to you because they can't be bothered. I've even had literally YEARS worth of communications attempting to arrange visitation totally ignored. Not joking.
But what was really priceless about this guy was that, on the heels of his ranting and raving about how he's not included and she's not doing this or that, he follows it by saying he feels he is left with no choice but to stop the child support payments and take her back to court.
Wait.
Let that sink in.
He is so mad because he accuses her of not co-parenting (when she sends stuff that is ignored) that he's going to STOP supporting his children per court order and take their mother to court over it.
I went threat-by-threat through this email with her and pointed out all the realities behind his crazy. She knows he's wacko, but his threats still affect her physiologically. I said, "Seriously, he has his own business and it's incorporated, right? His child support is collected by the state on a garnishment to his business, right? Well, DUH! If he stops sending the payments, he'll get hit for being a non-compliant employer AND a non-compliant non-custodial parent! Do you see how empty his threat is?"
This stuff is so hard to see in the moment. Captain Crazy can still occasionally push my buttons, but then I coach myself to look at just how unbelievably funny it is. My favorite one this week was his assertion to someone about the many "attacks" and "failure to adhere to agreements" of which I am supposedly guilty. You know how many times I have violated the legal agreements in 4 1/2 years? Zero. That would be zero. He is, so far, up to almost 50, not including the felony charge of Interstate Interference with Custody for purposely sending my 11 year old unaccompanied to Baltimore when he knew I was in Georgia waiting for the return exchange. Know how many legal actions I have proactively filed against him? 1. A protection order when he hired a private investigator to hunt me down so he could send a package to my house to let me know I cannot hide from him. This while he had full phone access to the children and had just had a visitation.
I absolutely get that this takes a lot of training! I have had to work my fanny off to survive the constant legal actions, threats and off-the-wall demands...like demanding that I pay for his long-distance visitation expenses if I wanted him to see his children who he moved 1,000 miles away from. Yeah, I have actual bills he sent me. He can bloviate about it all he wants to. Doesn't make it true, doesn't give him power.
So empower yourself with knowledge and then learn to laugh at the stupid. They can threaten anything they want but the joke's on them. I promise you one thing that I have proven to be true in my own case, over and over:
Give them enough rope and they will absolutely, positively hang themselves!
Go on with your bad self,
AC
This guy's major complaint was that he was peeved that she was making supposedly unilateral decisions about their special needs daughter, for whom she provides 24/7 care. You all know how that one goes, right? You send emails, forms, questions, copy them on stuff, and they defer to you because they can't be bothered. I've even had literally YEARS worth of communications attempting to arrange visitation totally ignored. Not joking.
But what was really priceless about this guy was that, on the heels of his ranting and raving about how he's not included and she's not doing this or that, he follows it by saying he feels he is left with no choice but to stop the child support payments and take her back to court.
Wait.
Let that sink in.
He is so mad because he accuses her of not co-parenting (when she sends stuff that is ignored) that he's going to STOP supporting his children per court order and take their mother to court over it.
I went threat-by-threat through this email with her and pointed out all the realities behind his crazy. She knows he's wacko, but his threats still affect her physiologically. I said, "Seriously, he has his own business and it's incorporated, right? His child support is collected by the state on a garnishment to his business, right? Well, DUH! If he stops sending the payments, he'll get hit for being a non-compliant employer AND a non-compliant non-custodial parent! Do you see how empty his threat is?"
This stuff is so hard to see in the moment. Captain Crazy can still occasionally push my buttons, but then I coach myself to look at just how unbelievably funny it is. My favorite one this week was his assertion to someone about the many "attacks" and "failure to adhere to agreements" of which I am supposedly guilty. You know how many times I have violated the legal agreements in 4 1/2 years? Zero. That would be zero. He is, so far, up to almost 50, not including the felony charge of Interstate Interference with Custody for purposely sending my 11 year old unaccompanied to Baltimore when he knew I was in Georgia waiting for the return exchange. Know how many legal actions I have proactively filed against him? 1. A protection order when he hired a private investigator to hunt me down so he could send a package to my house to let me know I cannot hide from him. This while he had full phone access to the children and had just had a visitation.
I absolutely get that this takes a lot of training! I have had to work my fanny off to survive the constant legal actions, threats and off-the-wall demands...like demanding that I pay for his long-distance visitation expenses if I wanted him to see his children who he moved 1,000 miles away from. Yeah, I have actual bills he sent me. He can bloviate about it all he wants to. Doesn't make it true, doesn't give him power.
So empower yourself with knowledge and then learn to laugh at the stupid. They can threaten anything they want but the joke's on them. I promise you one thing that I have proven to be true in my own case, over and over:
Give them enough rope and they will absolutely, positively hang themselves!
Go on with your bad self,
AC
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