When Alienation Makes Sense, Part II

This post is a continuation of, When Alienation Makes Sense

I wrote the above story to set the scene for further discussion of PAS.

My father’s abusive behavior was the perfect opportunity for my Mom and others to keep us away from him. She got the hell out of dodge in one quiet night. We packed up and left town with a note placed on the kitchen table for him to read. She filed for divorce and custody. After the divorce my Mom did her best to protect us from being hurt anymore… not just from him but from the whole situation. Let me explain how she DIDN”T use PAS to make circumstance any worse for us all.

My mother protected us from him, BUT she did not alienate us from him. She protected us by:
• going to court to ask for custody of us.
• she stressed that when we were with him to be good, listen and follow instructions.
• she talked with us and did not scare us about how to act on our visits with him.
• she explained that every household has different rules and that when we were with him we lived by his rules and when we were with her we lived by her rules just like anyone does at anyone else’s house.
• she never called him names
• she never repeated her conversations with our father to us
• she never told us how scarred she was when we left to go visit him
• she listened with interest and smiles when we returned with stories of the fun things we did.

She did this and I’m sure a thousand things more to ensure that we were not scarred, angry, frightened or sad when we left her to visit him. As a result, we visited him without fear. We had fun most of the time and we felt comfortable sharing when we got back to her house without feeling “grilled” for information.

But what if she had used another way of dealing with the whole situation? What if Mom recounted the abuse that happened when he lived with us. What if she had us tell him on the phone that we didn’t want to visit him. What if she told us details about the custody battle, the child-support and divorce proceedings. What if we all sat around the dining room table discussing in open, how our violent, angry, racist father that took out his frustrations on those around him with physical violence. What if she used phrases like “you both need to know your father is not a nice guy” or “I’m sorry your father ruined your lives”?

I can’t imagine what it would have been like as a 7 year old to board a 747 with only my sibling to visit my father for an entire month in another state. Can you imagine how scared we would have been? The terror we would have felt getting on that plane and waving good-bye to our Mother, only to arrive at another airport somewhere far away and come face-to-face with the monster that we were being forced to visit, our father.

Luckily, that’s not the way it went for me. I remember my first flight to visit dad clearly. I remember the book of “Dolls from Around the World” that was inside the surprise gift bag my Mother gave each of us as we boarded the plane. I remember how very nice the stewardesses (that what we called them then) were to us and how they gave us as many cokes and rolls as we wanted and playing will all of the controls and buttons at our seats. And I remember seeing him as we deboarded the plane with the stewardess, and we ran to greet him and hug him. We were happy, it is a happy memory for me… maybe a little bittersweet now as so many childhood memories can become… but one that makes me smile now.

Looking at it from a child’s point of view (my view as a child) … we shared good times and bad times with our father. And later, when I was older and more mature I decided that the man that is my father is not a man I want to be around. And I am grateful that my Mother gave me the right to make that decision for myself. He is abusive, he is scary, angry and racist, he is not a nice guy but he didn’t ruin our lives and neither did our Mother by trying to ruin our relationship with him. He alienated himself in time. His behavior never improved and as we both grew older our understanding of how adults should act made it clear that he needed some work.

Personally, I cannot stress enough the role of a parents love, or even “perceived” love on a child’s sense of self. I’m so glad now, as I was then, that I felt love for my father, I was allowed to show it and express it and even more important, I felt love from him.

In conclusion… Alienating is a cowards way to deal with your own hurt, fear or shame. It shows you have little if any empathy or compassion for your own children. It doesn’t matter how awful the other parent can be… and I know first hand how awful it can get. If you are willing and able to commit your family to alienating behaviors and actions, you are no better than the man pulling his wife by her hair, on her knees, into the hallway.