Rewind: I Divorced My Spouse, And My Child Divorced Me
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Hi Cheryl. Hi Steve. So I want to tell you a story that I don't think you're gonna like very well. Uh oh. Well no, I mean you'll see what I mean. It was just terrifying.

I went out to the West Coast and visited an old friend of mine who I knew was struggling with a marriage that was failing. And it turns out that they had separated and that they were sort of trying to adjust the family to this new normal. He had two children, a son who's a little older than my son and a daughter. And one day, the son essentially announced, I'm going to marry you.

I'm not going to visit you anymore. I don't want to have any contact. And it went even further than that. He refused to refer to my friend as his father. He refused to even call him he. He called him it. Ouch. Yeah. And was verbally abusive and essentially was trying to say in every way that an eight or nine-year-old kid can say, you are dead to me. And I was listening to this story. My

I mean, literally, he just, I've never seen him so sad. And I was terrified because, Cheryl, you and I both know this is, as parents, we get that sometimes kids push away their parents in a way that's developmentally appropriate, whether it's a tantrum from a three-year-old or a teenager slamming the door in your face. There are certain kinds of alienation, quote, unquote, that are appropriate. They're trying to individuate, push their parents away. That's...

But this was something altogether different. This was the dread fear that lives inside a parent that you will have that door slammed on you for good by a child. Yeah. That bond that we take for granted. It's such a deep, strong bond. It seems like not even up for grabs. But it's terrifying to imagine that it could be. Right. And it turns out that this is...

Again, something that is not widely discussed, but there is a kind of technical academic term, parental alienation, which is the situation where not only is there a divorce or marriage that comes apart, but in the process of that, one parent is either actively or passively manipulating a child or children to push the other parent out of their lives. We're really going to dig into this today, and we're going to do something a little different. We're going to read two letters back-to-back. Yeah.

And then we're going to discuss them together because really they're both asking the same question. And we're going to talk to a national expert, somebody who's done a lot of research and work on this issue. Why don't you read the first letter, Steve? All right, let's do it. Dear Sugars, I'm a middle-aged father of one teenage girl. Within the last year, I ended my 20-year marriage after slowly coming to the realization it was a codependent relationship.

It had been an unhappy union for the last decade, and in the last few years it had turned emotionally abusive. I knew it needed to end as far back as ten years ago, but as so many do, I hung on. I'd like to say I did it solely for the benefit of my daughter, who was young at the time. But if I'm being honest, I stayed because the price of leaving seemed too dear.

When a serious health scare shook me to my core, I knew I could no longer go on. As you once pointed out in an earlier podcast, I had to save myself. I ended my marriage, but in so doing, I paid a terrible price, worse than I'd imagined all those years ago. Sugars, it has been nearly half a year since I've heard from my teenage daughter.

She is angry and blames me entirely for the discord between her mother and me. She has that right. I resolved early on that it is wrong for a parent, either of us, to involve our child in the terrible game of he said, she said. I kept my side of the story to myself. My daughter has blocked me from all communication since leaving her mother. Emails remain unanswered. I cannot call. She's blocked me from her phone.

I love my daughter dearly. I'm trying to give her the space she needs, but the silence kills me slowly, day by day. Sugars, how do I recover from this? How do I move past the immense guilt I bear for staying longer than I should have in a marriage that turns so sour and vicious? How do I repair a relationship with a daughter who refuses to even talk to me?

I played an equal part in a failed marriage, but I was a good and loving father, and yet I'm left with nothing. Signed, Broken Dad. Wow, that is a sad, hard letter. Yeah. Can you imagine your kids not speaking to you?

I'm devastated when they won't talk to me for 30 seconds. I'm devastated when they slam, you know, Josie's just gotten to the age where she will close her door and it's clear that I'm not allowed into the room and that levels me. I mean, it's every parent's nightmare. Yeah. So here's another letter, a variation on that theme. Dear Sugars, I'm a 55-year-old recently divorced mom of four wonderful children. I'm married way too young, making all the Freudian mistakes possible.

I finally managed to get out from under the thumb of a strange and hate-filled man for whom I could never measure up. The ex has filled our eldest child's head with lies and revised history that would be funny if it weren't being taken as gospel. She and I were formerly so close. Now her only words to me are yelling that I'm a bully and a cheater and a liar. I've done none of the things of which I've been accused. It's just her father's way of saving face.

I adhered to Ma Engle's philosophy, least said, soonest mended. So I did not respond to the allegations as they were lobbed at me. Just shook my head and said, you know that's not true. How do I help her pull herself out of this hate hole so she can gracefully reenter my giant, loving, extended family from whom she has extracted herself with great drama because they are, quote, on my side? Signed, Missing My Child. Mm-hmm.

You know, this is the nightmare here is that they're in a fight they don't want to be in. Both of these letter writers, as people do, more than half of the people who get into a marriage, you know, eventually leave that marriage.

And if there are children involved, the hope is you can hear the undercurrent of both of these letters. I don't want it to be a conflict. And I especially don't want that my side, their side, he said, she said to filter down to the kids. And in both these cases, that has happened in really radical ways. Right.

So, yeah, in the first letter, Broken Dad says that his daughter is a teenager. In the second letter, she doesn't say, but it sounds like a teenager to me. Yes? Yes. So I wondered, too, as I read these, what I'm hoping is this alienation is temporary. And also, you know, obviously both of these families are at a time of great turmoil. Right. And the kids also, you know, as we know, teenagers...

I love them. They're beautiful. They're powerful. They're creative and interesting. But? Well, they're going through so many hormonal changes. And they're volatile even often in families that are not coming apart. And so I do wonder also how much age...

Age plays a contributing factor. Oh, I'm absolutely sure it does. But I'm equally sure that any kid who is existing in an ecosystem where one parent has left, there's a divorce, is suddenly consciously and unconsciously under a certain kind of pressure to decide whether

who was right and who was wrong and why it happened. And the fundamental condition of childhood, whether you're a teenager where they buck against it a lot or younger, is helplessness. You are the charge of your parents. And as much as you want to feel you have power, this is what we're

right at the age where Rosalie's throwing tantrums. And it is the distillation of the fundamental crisis of childhood, which is you do not have the power. And in the most radical way, you don't have the power to keep your parents from separating, but you do have the power to decide who's right and who's wrong. And sometimes, as in these systems, there is one parent who is pushing for that to be a matter of conflict and for the other parent to be punished for leaving the marriage. But

In the worst possible way, in the nightmare scenario, which is I'm going to take the kids too, psychically. Well, I mean, this is the beautiful thing about having a family and also the really complicated and difficult thing. I've seen this come into play actually in my own marriage is that, you know, I think that most of us think, okay –

A marriage is between two people. You know, it's what they do is their business. And, you know, you try to sort of stay out of your friends' relationships and so forth. And yet when you have kids, they are inevitably part of that relationship. They have a front row seat.

To your love and romance or lack of it. Right. And so this divorce, you know, your kids, you can't help but take it personally. It is hard not to choose a side, probably, if you're a kid in the midst of that divorce. Right. I mean, I can see that I can see psychologically, you know, what my feeling is without knowing other of these daughters that these letter writers are talking to us about is that, you know, they're hurt. Right. Right.

And so they're lashing out with anger. They're involved in a relationship that they're not a direct player in, but they're so enmeshed with that bond, that pair bond, that they're part of it, really. Absolutely. And what makes these letters so particularly thorny is laid over that tumult and sort of psychic schism is an agenda. Right.

And in both of these letters, what they share is that there is a clear sense in the first and a pretty clear implication in the second that there is one parent who is fostering. In fact, both of them say that there are accusations that aren't generated by the kids and their internal struggle, but that are actually coming from the other parent. And this is why we are calling in an expert to help us with this. It's Dr. Richard Warshak, who's the author of a couple of books. He's a psychologist.

who's the author of the book Divorce Poison and also Welcome Back Pluto, Understanding, Preventing, and Overcoming Parental Alienation. I think he's the guy who's going to help us navigate these rocky waters. So I think we should give him a call. Let's do it.

Hello? Hi, is this Dr. Warshak? Yes, it is. Hi, this is Steve Allman. I'm here with Cheryl Strayed. Hi. Hi, both of you. Hi. So, you know, we're calling you because we are faced with a couple of letters that are really tough for us to try to parse because they are so extreme in not just in the breakup of the marriage, but in this active fostering of the conflict.

I assume you read both the letters. I did. What are your thoughts? Can you tell our listeners a little bit about the idea of what parental alienation is?

Well, parental alienation in the clearest sense of the term means a situation where a child, even a grown child, develops a feeling of feeling disconnected emotionally from a parent. And in some cases, there's a good reason for it. If the parent really has wronged the child or treated the child in a harsh or abusive manner,

But the kind of parental alienation that I write about is the type of situation where a child rejects a parent without good justification, that the child becomes involved in disputes between parents and takes sides with one parent against the other parent and really succumbs to efforts on the part of one parent to undermine the child's love and respect for the other parent.

And both of these letter writers are really asking the same question. What do I do in the face of not just a child who's alienated from me, but a former spouse who is inciting and fostering that hatred?

Exactly. And what I found interesting with these two letters is that, you know, one is from a father, one is from a mother. In one case, we're dealing with an adolescent girl. In the other case, with an adult child. And so it really shows that this problem affects, you know, all types of families and that both mothers and fathers are at risk for this. And I think your letter writers have both made the same most common mistake that parents in this situation do, which is that

They're sort of hoping that time will heal the wound and that taking the high road means to say nothing about what they see going on. When they see the child succumbing to hearing only one side of the story, they leave the child in that situation. As the mother said, you know, least said, soonest mended.

and she was quoting Ma Ingalls, but Ma Ingalls' daughter, Laura, says it is still best to be honest and truthful. Wow, great. And that's the problem here, is that if children hear only one side of the story, then they're left to cope on their own with incomplete information that's resulting in the destruction of such an important relationship.

So rather than take a passive approach in order to try to maintain or rebuild some harmony, I think it's important that parents in this situation step up and find some way to communicate the message to their children that I simply cannot accept being marginalized.

And so I suggest a more active approach, but one in which you're careful not to put down the other parent, but find a way to communicate, look, there's another side to this story. You don't have to tell your side of the story, but you do need to introduce the idea that there is another side to this story and that if you had all the facts, you would think differently.

Certainly reminding the child of the relationship you had in the past, of all the things you've done for the child, reassuring the child there's nothing she or he could say that will ever end the relationship or keep you from loving the child. Mm-hmm.

You know, it sounds like both of these kids are pretty volatile and angry. Do you recommend face-to-face or letter writing? How might you specifically reach out in these two cases?

In the case of the broken dad, his emails aren't being answered and his daughter has blocked him from communication. So one approach would be to try to use an intermediary. If there is anyone in the family who recognizes the terrible price that this girl is paying for her parents' divorce and will intervene and to try to help the child realize that she doesn't have to take sides anymore.

in this and it would be better for her not to that the divorces between the parents and there's no reason why she needs to lose a parent as a result of the divorce. So if there's a relative who has the ear of the child, that person can act as an intermediary. Uh, otherwise the father may need to use, you know, opportunities, for example, where, where his daughter does need something from him, a permission slip signed, uh, uh,

you know, auto insurance paid, anything like that, where he can say that's fine, but I need to see you, make sure this is being used correctly. It's my responsibility as a father to make sure you have what you need. And so we need to meet. And although she'll maybe come to the meeting with a chip on her shoulder, it's still a beginning.

My concern is that just as Broken Dad says that the silence is killing him slowly day by day, the relationship is dying as well. That the absence of contact is not allowing his daughter to speak.

to see her dad and to be confronted with his love for her and basically to be able to see him through her own eyes, that she's seeing him through the eyes of her mother, who's angry and who did not want the breakup. And the dad's taking all the heat for this when, in reality, we know that most relationships that fail, each person,

partner has some responsibility for the end of the relationship. And in this case, broken dad's daughter's blaming him entirely. But if he accepts it and hopes that with space, you know, she'll come around. In the meantime, he's missing out on a lot of important events in her life, and she's missing out on having dad there. He's not going to be in the photographs for graduation, for prom, for

those sorts of things. I think the message has to be both with words but also in action that our relationship is just too important for me to allow you to cut me out of your life.

What happens when there is, you know, a divorce that's clearly like, let's say the husband had an affair and a secret life was revealed and then the marriage comes to an end. And when one of the partners is really angry, does feel betrayed, has reason to have those feelings. What happens in those cases when the kids take a side because it's reasonable to defend one of the parents?

Well, that's right, Cheryl. Clearly, when the relationship ends, for example, as a result of an affair, then at least the precipitating event is the discovery of the affair, and that parent bears responsibility for having betrayed a spouse, and then with all the ripple effects that that creates. Even then, though...

we wouldn't want children to identify the parent only with the worst mistake they've made. It should not wipe out in the child's mind all the investment that the parent has in that child, all the things they've done, the entire history of the relationship should not be wiped out by one behavior or one set of behaviors. And in most cases, it actually isn't. In most cases...

despite the fact that one parent might have been more at fault for the failure of the marriage than the other, children don't take sides. They're not expected to, and they find some way to manage a relationship. Parents aren't perfect, and we all learn to accept our parents and continue to love them, despite things we might learn about them that are not what we would have liked to hear. Right.

It's a matter of balancing the benefits versus the drawbacks of the relationship. Even, for example, even if your father has had an affair and that has resulted in a sudden and traumatic disruption of the family, that doesn't relieve the children's need for a father. Right, of course. Yeah, no, I think it's...

I was curious about that because the mother who wrote the letter, the missing my child letter, I think you're right that this eldest child probably is an adult. She didn't say the age, but she's 55 and she said she got married young. Right. What's a different dynamic with the child who's a grown-up him or herself?

Well, the interesting thing is that in that family, the mother speaks only about the eldest child as having become alienated. And so it just underscores that not every child reacts to the same circumstances. And when it's an older one, the older one oftentimes feels that

She has to be loyal to her dad. But again, she's only hearing one side of the story. And we know that it's very easy for adults to be persuaded to a particular point of view if they only hear one side of the story. That's what propaganda is all about. That's why politicians are always running ads that only tell you the bad things about their opponents with the idea of trying to sway your mind.

Yeah. And psychically, kids also naturally are very tuned in at any age to

to their parents' weakness and sadness. And they have a desire to protect a parent who's weaker and sadder. You know, that's part of what's happening here is that, especially in the letter from Missing My Child, this is a dad who sounds like he was, you know, controlling and full of anger. And underneath that was, she says, he wanted to save face. And, you know,

One suspects that this oldest child might be trying to, you know, kind of protect a dad who's suddenly been revealed as very weak. Mm-hmm.

Yes, that's a good point. And ironically, a child who's very respectful and generally described by others as very loving and one whose heart goes out to a father who's suffering because he didn't want the breakup, ironically, this child can actually be very cruel to her mother. And part of it, though, is, as Steve pointed out,

points out that she may feel that mom's strong enough to take it. And another part to this, though, is that she may feel more reassured that no matter what she says or does, mom will never stop caring about me. Whereas dad's love may be seen as more conditional, that he needs me to side with him. Right, you can act out with the safer parent.

Well, this has been so interesting. I think that you've offered our letter writers a lot of great insight and advice. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. You're very welcome. I have one other thought, which is that sometimes it does help just to educate children about this problem.

up to help them see it with a little bit of distance and uh... so for example if there's a t_v_ segment about it to direct the children's attention to it or even uh... you know uh... even for dear sugar you know to to uh... let the children know that

that this problem that we have in our family is now being discussed. I had created a video to help younger children and teenagers learn more about this problem and try to help them, encourage them to keep an open mind. Where can they watch this video? They can go to my website, which is warshack.com. Just learning about the problem can help them see another perspective about it. Yeah. And certainly, Broken Dad and Missing My Child, I know that

You're alienated from your kids right now, but...

Maybe one of the things, too, a way to reach out is send them a link to this podcast. Listening to this conversation that we've had with Dr. Warshak might just open up some avenues of conversation to begin to mend this bond that's been not broken, but certainly temporarily severed. And we'll also list that video in our show notes as well, linked to how to find that. Absolutely. But it's so important that parents not give up.

Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much, Dr. Warshak. Oh, you're very welcome, and nice speaking with both of you. Thanks. Reese's peanut butter cups are the greatest, but let me play devil's advocate here. Let's see, so, no, that's a good thing. That's definitely not a problem. Reese's, you did it. You stumped this charming devil.

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I'm so glad that, you know, who knew that Dr. Warshak was also a Little House on the Prairie addict, you know, that he was able to say it's not Ma Engel's philosophy, Lee said, soonest men, it's the response that matters, right? When Laura says, still best to be honest and truthful.

And that's the counsel you could hear. These are parents who wisely do not want to fight with their exes. They do not want to fight, but they do need to fight for the love of their kids, and their kids need to see that.

In some ways, it's almost as if broken dad and missing my child, they receive that message too well. That message, never say anything negative about your child's other parent. I think that that's a great value to hold and to honor. But I want to say I think that there is also a way to speak plainly about some of the truths of your own life.

People always ask me, how is it possible that your mom was able to talk to you about a father who was abusive and in the wrong without condemning him? And, you know, I was witness to that violence. So what happened is as I was growing up at various points along the way, I needed to talk to my mom about it so that I could make sense of it. And my mother would...

She didn't deny those negative experiences. She didn't say, no, no, you're not remembering correctly. Your father's great. You know, she also didn't condemn my dad. She didn't speak ill of my dad. She would explicitly say, yes, your father made bad choices. He had an anger problem. But he...

here are also the good qualities he had. Here are the reasons that we fell in love with each other. Here are the reasons we tried to work it out. She tried to sort of help me get a balanced view of what a relationship might be, which is full of positive and negative. Even my own parents' marriage had some positive attributes. And she also explicitly said to me, even really in the final days of her life, you can love your father. Mm-hmm.

Please don't think that you need to turn away from that relationship in order to be loyal to me. And what's interesting is I did feel loyal to my mother. I do feel angry now.

Right. Right.

well beyond my mother's life. And so I think that that's something for these letter writers to really think about is that there are going to be ways that you can speak truthfully about your marriage

Without condemning your spouse, but yet also saying, look, life is more complicated than you might be seeing right now. Right. You know, the overriding message is that if you're not fortunate enough to have a parent as gracious as your mother, Cheryl, if there is a parent who wants to make that marital discord essentially get in the way of the relationship,

The parent who is being alienated has to impress upon the child, even if it doesn't take root immediately. This is not about the marriage and the marital discord. It's about my love for you and the moment and the moments when you're ready to love me back. The one thing I can say that is quite interesting.

beautiful and sort of redeeming in all this is that story I mentioned earlier about my friend who was devastated by his son pushing him away in really extreme ways.

That dad refused to go away. And he said to his son over and over and over again, I love you. I'm here. I love you. I'm here. Call me this. Do this or that to me. Hurt me. Stick the dagger in as deep as you want because you feel wounded. But I'm not going away and I love you. And miraculously enough, he said, it's been repaired. He's come back to me.

It doesn't mean everything's perfect, but they are again, like love prevailed. Yeah. And these are bonds. They don't die easily. Right. And it's because it's a primal bond.

Those relationships we have with the mother and the father are essential to us. And they, in so many ways, especially early on, define who we are and what we think of ourselves and what we think of the world and of others. Right. It's so important in this moment for Missing My Child and for Broken Dad to get the message across.

by email, by an intermediary, directly, however you can do it. My love for you is sacred, it's permanent, it's not going away, and I am eagerly awaiting with an open heart the moment where you are ready to enact that love with me. Good luck. Please write to us and let us know how things progress. Yeah, please do.

Dear Sugar Radio is produced by WBUR. We're produced and edited by Lisa Tobin. We're recording in Portland, Oregon. Our engineer is Josh Millman of Talkback Sound and Visual. Our theme music is by the Portland band Wonderly. Please listen and subscribe on iTunes. And if you like the show, leave an iTunes review. We really appreciate that. And you can write to us at dearsugarradio at gmail.com. That's right. And people can also follow us on Twitter at Dearsugar Radio.

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