Filed under: Mentally Ill parents, Parents and their Dates, links to articles | Tags: Add new tag
Link to article called “8 Rules for Dating My Parent” by Nina Malkin. These rules are pretty good. The article avoids talking about how to remain in kid mode while Mom and Dad exploit their Peter Pan mentality and relive datingin High School over and over again. That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? (Peter Pan parents are fun and open and youthful but often sort of competitive with their kids, aren’t they?) The author doesn’t ask the kids how they actually feel about having a Parent who dates. It wouldn’t be safe for the kid to respond I suppose. But, does the child compare himself with his friends’ families who are intact? Does the kid feel like his life is more special because his homelife is more changeable (I was going to say volatile…) and kid-like? Parents who date are often much more “cool” and up to date on current trends. That might be a plus, or it might just be a shallow, immature lifestyle.
As usual, the children of parents who don’t wonder about how the child is reacting to their Dates must repress their experiences. There’s no therapy for this down the road once the child get older. There is only a superficial diagnosis of Depression, Anxiety, Anger and Lack of Trust which is mostly seen as a result of Chemical Imbalance and Bad Habits that can be reframed through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Since people who divorce a lot probably have addictions and mental illness, wouldn’t it be more to the point to help the kids who have to grow up in that situation? Why do the “Helper/Healers” in the world always seem to avoid the people who really need help? Why doesn’t this article tell the parents to start looking deeply at themselves and their own problems so that at least they won’t repeat their mistakes? The article could address how one’s Narcissicism, Instability, and Mistakes affects one’s child. Or it could address How to help little Junior whose Mom is drinking a 1/5 of Vodka or a Carton of Gallo? Just think what kinds of Dates she brings home. Just imagine what contortions go through her brain as she reads this article while in hangover mode and screaming at the kids just because her swollen head can’t handle anything but Diet Coke and Tylenol. Mostly she’s concerned with trying to remember what that strange man is doing in the house. Those are the kids who need the help.
On the plus side, most people who Mom brings home in this case probably grew up in bad situations themselves and are naturally sensitive enough to understand these principles.
This was just supposed to be a link to a reasonable blog entry about Parents of Children of D and it turned into the usual questioning of how the real problems always manage to slip by. So sorry, but this is so frustrating. Hopefully time to get back on track. Note to self: figure out how to turn off comments sections of Step-Parenting threads so as not to get distracted by said crazy situations.
Sorry I ended up butchering this article. I really did think it was good, just avoided the real problems involved in order to provide quick solutions. The parents who read this honestly will think they’ve done absolutetly everything in their powers to make things right for their kids. It’s a real trick to try to balance developing as an individual and developing as a part of a relationship. This is going to be a real distraction from the kids. In Intact families the kids don’t have to deal with their parents going through this (often they wish for it, though) and live a much more carefree inner existence.
http://www.match.com/magazine/article2.aspx?TrackingID=525061&BannerID=647430&articleid=9757
Filed under: Abandonment, Bad Children of Divorce, Mentally Ill parents, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, Parents and their Dates, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., Suicide, Violence, money
This movie, Savage Grace, completely destroyed my week-end. It’s the most miserable story in the world. Julianne Moore plays a rich socialite nymphomaniac who is murdered by her son. It’s based on the life of a woman called Barbara Baekeland and I don’t know how much of it is true. Barbara Baekeland married and was dumped by an heir to a Plastics fortune. She developed an abnormally close relationship with her son which can probably qualify in modern terms as Parental Alienation Syndrome, along with Incest and just plain old creep out. I sort of wonder if Incest (between parent and child at any rate) is sometimes connected with Parental Alienation Syndrome.
The Son, Antony Baekeland, was Gay and his Mother seduced him in order to try to convert him to normal, not that she’d have a clue what that was. The Father left Anthony to take care of his Mother alone as she descended into depressions and eventually a suicide attempt. There is a really great line in the movie where Anthony is writing to his father telling him that his only inheritance was taking care of his mother. Really interesting line in a family where inheritance and money seem to have caused so much trouble. The Father apparently did nothing to help his Son, typical behavior.
According to what I read on the Internet (sorry forget to get any links) Tony (Antony) was released from jail eventually and went to live with his Mother’s Mother. After a week he stabbed her. So, he was permanently destroyed. He eventually committed suicide in jail.
I have no idea how closely the movie follows what people know about the real story but I’ve found that movies are highly fictionalized. I don’t know if I recommend this to anyone who grew up in a difficult Divorce or suffered Incest or Suicides. Unlike the movie “About A Boy” which is partly about a boy witnessing his Mother’s suicide attempt, there’s no redemption to this story, made all the worse because it’s based on real life. Some of the reviews that I’ve read say that they don’t even believe it could be a real story, har har. The movie is based on a book by the same title.
Filed under: Abduction, Alcoholism, Bad Children of Divorce, Birth Order, Custody, Mentally Ill parents, Parents and their Dates, Suicide, money, self-absorbed parents, separate households
Marlon Brando’s troubled Son, Christian, passed away yesterday in Los Angeles, California. He had been hospitalized for pneumonia. Christian was 49 years old. May he Rest in Peace.
Christian was the eldest of Brando’s nine children. His Mother, Anna Kashfi, was also an actress. She separated from Brando when Christian was 5 months old and the couple divorced on Apr. 22, 1959 (can’t vouch for any dates here). The couple remained in a custody dispute over Christian until 1972 when Kashfi abducted the 13 year boy and took him to Mexico. She was sent to jail and subsequently lost all chance for custody. His Mother had drug and alcohol problems.
Christian dropped out of High School and held minor acting jobs. As can be expected he had emotional problems and ended up killing his sister Cheyenne’s boyfriend while arguing over whether the boyfriend had beaten his pregnant half-sister. He spent 5 years in jail for the murder. Cheyenne gave birth to the baby but hanged herself at Age 25. Christian was recently divorced for violent behavior to his wife and her daughter.
This is a description of his childhood from www.astrotheme.com. (Date of parents’ separation is different from one mentioned in obituary in newspaper (www.mercurynews.com):
Kashfi turned to barbiturates and alcohol and the couple divorced a year after Christian’s birth in May 1959. Christian was passed between the two as their relationship became more and more hostile and abusive. The author Nellie Bly claimed that “When the Brandos quarreled, Anna displayed a ‘frightening’ rage,” and that “Anna left baby Christian alone in her car parked on Wilshire Boulevard while she confronted Brando in his office, ‘beating at him with her fists, in a frenzy of rage.” There was a protracted custody battle between Kashfi and Brando until he eventually won custody of Christian aged 13 after an incident when Christian was taken out of school to Mexico by Kashfi without Brando’s consent.
Christian had little good contact with his father, being raised by nannies and servants, moving between Hollywood and the private island near Tahiti. A reluctant witness to his father’s sexual exploits and bizarre behavior, Christian complained that:
“The family kept changing shape, I’d sit down at the breakfast table and say, “Who are you?””
An old roommate said it best when he blurted out “All Mother’s Boyfriends are Johns!” It was actually part of a conversation where he was talking about his Mother’s boyfriend who was named John and I said Wow! my Mother’s boyfriend was named John too. Hence….you get it.
The dating thing. Wow. I had trouble adjusting to that. I learned how to be mean to men by watching my Mother date. She learned how to use my new talent when some guy came to the door without calling first. She’d have me open it. I’d have said anything to get them to leave. Unfortunately, I carried this skill into my own relationships later on.
My Father left with my best friend’s Mother whom he eventually married after 3 years of fighting over money with my Mother. I was 14 when he left and had just graduated from High School when he married his new wife. He was one of the Fathers who declares bankruptcy after he gets a divorce. From my internet searches I’m finding ex-wives who say that’s pretty common, but in my Father’s case all of his business partnerships fell apart that year as well so I think it was a personal thing. He was going through Hell no doubt but he still managed to hire a really shifty attorney, the guy was literally so skinny that when he turned to the side he sort of vanished, you could only see him again if he turned back toward you. But, back to the dating thing. Every time I went out with my Father for the weekly dinner I would feel like I was going on his date with his girlfriend. It was extra stressful because she had just broken up my family. And it was extra surreal because they honest to God thought they had done nothing wrong. And if I let on that I was uncomfortable at all I would be yelled at. And, looking back, I guess I should have been going on dates of my own and not just starting up my relationship with my Father. But we’ll talk about my pathology later after I’m completely spent on bitching about my parents’ pathologies.
So, my Mother had to get back into the dating thing. If she hadn’t been strapped by kids and money problems and the fact that she was 40 and had no job skills, she would have rejoiced at this much sooner because she was a charmer and a drinker and a partier who loved to dress up and go out. She was actually pretty cruel in letting me in particular know that I was a burden. My brother had just been given a car and was rarely home anymore and after a year he went to College. So he only experienced one year of after Divorce Hell whereas I was trapped for my entire High School years with it. The sight of me just launched my Mother off into a complaining session. She would talk non-stop about everything that was wrong. One day as we were driving on the freeway in the car I pulled the latch on the car door and almost dropped out, just to get away.
My Mother dated every left over and every loser in the town. And we lived in a tourist town so in the Summer she was pretty busy. The first boyfriend collected guns and was probably a gambler. That was Bill. Bill had the bulging eyes, a thyroid condition perhaps? My Mother met him at a bar. He had just broken up with his girlfriend who my Mother said was a Lesbian. This was a new vocabulary my Mother picked up after she started dating. All other single women were henceforth described as Lesbians. She let Bill move in for a while about 3 months after my Father moved out. It was too much for me. I became the family pitbull and refused to interact with Bill. Something told me that after a lifetime of looking at people with those eyes he was used to it. Besides I was at a really mean age and growing more emotionally stunted by my homelife by the minute. I should have let Bill live with us because he was needy but he was ugly. And he was drunk. And I had my own problems and I couldn’t even watch TV without a drunk, strange man sitting there with bulging eyes watching the TV with me. The part where he made his living collecting guns only added to his charm.
My parents put the house on the market and Bill moved out either because of me or because he dragged down the value of the house, probably both. My Mother’s friend set her up with a real man, a rich guy. He pulled up in some sort of exotic car that lifted up off the ground when he started it up. He was one of those red faced bulldog type guys. It was the 70s and I remember him dressed up in a white polyester leisure suit. Maybe only the belt was white. All I remember is red face, white clothes, white car, my mother laughing her head off as the door opened up from a hinge on the roof, blast off, they’re off and running. My Mother said this man had no personality except for his midlife crisis and she didn’t go out with him again.
There was one guy who she met who I liked. He was East Indian who carried an attache full of tiny diamonds to be used for computers or something. This guy was calm. He had split from his wife and said he was going back to her. He was philosophical and said that he figured that Life involves making compromises sometimes. I always liked that, my parents were fighting like cougars and this guy swings in and out of my vantage point with this single word “compromise.” At that point I think I figured I could still break up my Father’s relationship and get my family back so this gave me hope.
Then there was Joe. Joe was definitely a gambler. He showed up after we sold the house and were living in a motel while looking for a condominium to buy. My Mother loved Joe because he was wild and fun. He was from Louisiana and made us Gumbo to gain our trust. My Mother and Joe were arrested in Mexico for skinny dipping and they would do things to annoy the woman at the desk of the motel. My Mother said she was a Lesbian and clearly having wild sex with the other woman who worked at the desk. My Mother broke up with Joe after his landlady told her he was bad news, a nice guy, but bad news.
My Mother’s dating life got crazy after that. She bought a Suzanne Pleshette wig with curly hair. One night she walked out to the bar with her Suzanne Pleshette wig on and that’s the night that she met John. She never married John but they stayed together for years. He was Ok. I probably say that because he was rich and didn’t walk around with his butt crack showing. And actually there were other John’s mixed in. And a Clark. A Howie. And a Herb. And some guys who will remain nameless. And basically they’re all Johns in my memory.
