Dear Jezz:

I read your four recent posts for the first time, this morning (didn’t read the three before the recent one because they were not addressed to me).

A few comments:

1. Regarding co-parenting: “I just wonder how to avoid him in this coparenting… I’m trying to coparen”- You are parenting your toddler. He is not parenting her, so there is no co parenting.

2. “I have done well at directing my empathy towards my daughter but my heart hurt with our last encounter. I question whether he actually has feelings because of the way he cried”. He does have feelings.  Every human being has feelings. And every human being, no matter how cruel, feels pain just the same as any other human, good, bad or indifferent. So when you see him cry, it means he is human. It doesn’t mean he is a good person.

3. “I have felt tremendous guilt for him not seeing his daughter but he is not stable… The guilt is worsened when he says he will do anything for us to raise her together. I often cry about taking her from her dad even tho I know it’s for the better… I am so lost, confused and down”- it will help if you correct your thinking so to fit it to the truth: your daughter doesn’t have a dad. You wish she did but she doesn’t. You are not taking her away from her dad, you are protecting her from a man.

My suggestion: give up the idea that he is your daughter’s dad. Do nothing at all to encourage any relationship between him and her, not now and not in the future. Do all you can to discourage your daughter being in his presence, supervised or not. Do not give in to his pressure that you pay his bills.

Do all you can to not be in this man’s company, treat him like a criminal who is trying to steal your money and hurt you otherwise. Keep a record of police involvement.

You wrote, “I’m not making progress at all”- the more distance you make happen between this man and you, and between this man and your daughter, the more progress you make. At this point, I suggest you focus on avoiding him as progress, not on resolving your guilt feelings or worse, resolving or .. improving the relationship with him, or the non existing co-parenting.

And do post again, anytime.

anita

Dear Jezz:

You wrote: “this is not co parenting”. And so, if he is not parenting her, then he really is not her dad. He is biologically her father, the man who’s sperm united with your egg, that is all.

“the wiring in my brain literally pulls me back into those feelings!!!”- yes, this is how our brains work. We feel certain things even if they don’t make any sense. This is why we need to remind ourselves of what does make sense, of what reality is (“I have to remind myself of all the horrible things I have suffered because of him!!!”

Regarding you “scratching and pushing him”, that does not make you responsible for him hitting you. But notice this: it does not make you responsible for him not being your daughter’s dad, for him using her as a bait, for him being financially irresponsible and dishonest.

I hope that you do your best to have no contact with him whatsoever and that you involve the police and keep a record of what he does to you, so to build a case against him, you may need to use such a record in a future court hearing.

anita