Fractured Fairy Tale Thinking....

[dashcat]

This is a relatively mild situation, but it showcases the baffling, fractured thinking process of the typical difficult child.
Last night D and I went tothe calling hours of my dear uncle. She was sweet and respectful all night, nimbly dodging questions about college from well-meaning and clueless relatives.

Afterward, we went for pizza during which time she regales me with tales of her boyfriend and how disrespectful he is becoming. He, for example, is communicating with several old GFs of facebook, yadda, yadda, yadda, smile and nod, smile and nod.

Meanwhile, poor innocent Mike is wating on us. Mike looks to be about 25, clean cut, nice guy. Pays absolutely no attention to D other than to dispense with his waiterly duties.

She mentions he's cute, marvels that he rememered her TWO LEMONS in her water, as if it were a sign....

Later, she asks for a pen. I give it to her before i realize she intends to leave him her phone number!!! She begins scribbling and grinning and tucks it under the plate!

She looks at my fairly astonished face and says "What???" "Well,," I reply "Weren't you just saying you and B made up and were doing well following his promise nott o contact old GFs?" "What would he think of this?" She sayd "I know I'm being a hypocrite". I ask "but you're still going to do it?" "Uh Huh." "Why". "B will be jealous!"
"And mabye things will fall apart with B and I can see this guy!" alll with a gleeful smile on her face.

Ok. This waiter LITERALLY barely noticed her. And, yet, she was willing to leave her phone number for this complete stranger to decide if he would contact her.

nevermind this could be Ted Bundy's little brother .... that's not the even the point as she seems to exhibit no regard for safety.

It's the magicaL ME ME thinking that blows me away. In her mind, this sweet guy would call her. Perhaps arrive on horseback. The boyfriend, whom she claims to love and wants to marry, would slink off into the sunset OR get on a bigger horse and do battle. She doesn't care which scenario plays out, as long as she gets to star in the story....and nevermind how ANYONE feels about this.

ARRRGHHHH!!

by the way, she didn't leave the note due to my continued calling her on it (I often cite the golden rule at times like this). Had I not been there, the note would have been left. And, besides, WHO does this with their mother right there?

Sigh....
Dash

 

[AnnieO]

Dang, I wanna live in that world!!! The one where everything good happens to me, and I never have to deal with any ugly stuff. And the knight on the white horse comes and saves me...

Sigh... I know the feeling. Hugs!!!

 

[elizabrary]

They're nuts. Remember Kat ran off to live with a guy she met on the internet, who she had known all of 2 weeks. Who is going to be drafted by the NFL even though he's already 24. Awesome! I often can't believe the things she will do right in front of me too, and then looks at me like I'm the crazy one. It makes me want to scream and I hear over and over in my head, "But I didn't raise her like that." As if that matters. I'm feeling your pain Dash!!!!!!!

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

"Fractured fairy tale thinking" is a good way to put it.

Here is another story of how strong a grip these fairy tale fantasies can take:

Last year difficult child decided to look up easy child 1's bio dad, a guy who ran 10 years ago when difficult child was 4 1/2 months pregnant and subsequently spent several years in prison. She found him through Facebook. He fed her this whole fantasy about how he had cleaned up his act, and was talking to an agent and was going to go to Vegas and make lots of money in ultimate fighting, and they were going to get back together. She took the bait, hook, line and sinker. She told wife about it; wife and easy child son 1 tried mightily to persuade her he was full of it, reminded her how untrustworthy he was, his criminal record and running around on her. She didn't want to hear any of it - they didn't understand him, he had been a victim of bad luck and people mistreating him, sure he made mistakes but he had gotten his life together now, etc. However, to shut them up she pretended to give up trying to get back together with him. But she kept up the email correspondence / phone calls / texting on the sly, eventually setting up a meeting at a WalMart near his house. You would think that him not wanting her to come to his house would send up a big red flag, but not for difficult child - she was too enamored of her fantasy to let a detail like that intrude. So on the "big day" she borrowed our car and drove 75 miles to see him, giving the excuse that she was meeting some girlfriends for a marathon study session for a big exam coming up (she was enrolled in a medical assistant course at the time).

Well, it turned out he had a wife and several children with her and other women. The wife had seen some of difficult child's texts on her hubbie's cell phone and she showed up at the rendezvous at WalMart. I guess there was quite a scene. Over the course of a weekend, difficult child and the wife came to a truce and difficult child learned the true history of the guy since easy child 1's birth and what all he had told his wife about difficult child.

So she was gone and not answering her phone for two days. When she finally came home she cried and cried about how he had betrayed her. She couldn't believe how he had lied and led her on. We gently pointed out that everyone had warned her and that she knew from prior experience what a liar he was. "I know, I know, I'm so stupid, I really thought he had changed."

wife and I rescinded her driving and computer privileges and took her phone back (wife was paying for it), but none of those measures lasted more than a week or so - at that time, coming off six months of good behavior, difficult child was able to wear wife down by constant wheedling and whining and promises that she had seen the light. In retrospect, that episode marked an early stage of difficult child's latest downward spiral, but wife and I were reluctant to see it - fairy tale thinking isn't always confined to difficult children.

 

[witzend]

HWGA, all I can picture is "People of Walmart".

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

HWGA, all I can picture is "People of Walmart".

LOL - yeah, WalMart was a nice touch.

 

[DaisyFace]

Dash--

I think that "Fractured Fairy Tale Thinking" is a good way to describe it...

These difficult children really cannot imagine that they are not the center of everyone's world. I mean, why wouldn't the waiter just JUMP at the chance to go out with her?

Sheesh...

 

[Star*]

I just keep thinking everytime I hear one of these stories - How DF and his buddies were going on a bike run (back in the day) and had this "friend" at the local bar, used to pick up women they knew (casually) - seemed like a nice guy, kinda quiet, never drew attention to himself - yadda, yadda. And then they were all sitting around one night in that same bar - and there, on the TV - was THAT guy......

The Son of Sam.

Yeah - Lemme just leave MY phone number with some "bundy" guy.

Did I ever tell you about the time I broke down in FL and had to walk to the nearest pay phone and got offered a ride by the real undertaker serial killer? Drove a hearse and all. Or how about living in Gainesville, FL?

OMG are these little girls on the backside of a lightbulb or watt?

 

[Star*]

Dash -

I am so proud of you for standing up for your beliefs!! I'm telling you fractured Fairy Tales can slip to Nightmare on Anystreet in a snap. I guess the "It will never happen to me" saga continues. Maybe for her birthday she should start taking self-defense classes?

 

[dashcat]

Star, OMG!! SHRIEEEEKKKKK! I'm glad you kept on walking.

yes, difficult child was taking a huge chance .... I even told her (and, sadly, she agreed) that she probably would have gonewith Joran VanDerSloot.

But possibly as, or more, fractured than that ... is that Mike the waiter was probably a perfectly nice, upstanding mroal guy. .. and the fact that she thought that said most likely decent guy would respond to a 19 year old girl dining with her MOTHER, scrawling notes on a napkin like an 8th grader would elicit any kind of positive response just blows me away. The fact taht she thought this romance with the waiter was even attainable ... I cannot grasp it.



And Elizabray, HWGA, i have similar stories ... when i's scary, it's really,really scary. And when it's crazy fantasy thinking, sometimes I laugh so I won't cry.
Dash

 

[Hound dog]

First thing I thought of was a scene from a movie or tv show to be honest. And yes I have to admit even when I watch in on the screen I'm thinking to myself Are You Kidding Me?

Sadly though, it usually takes at least one really scare you outta your mind experience to break girls with no common sense for self preservation from doing such stupid things. (ok so sometimes they never get the idea, but most do)

I had more self preservation at the age of 4 than most people I know as adults even in middle age.

My girls would never consider it. Katie, though, I caught her a few times on my computer doing similar with "dating" sights and banned her from using my computer. She was 20 yrs old. And when I talked to her about it, it went whoosh! right over the head.

ugh.

Hugs

 

[DammitJanet]

Holds hand up. Still that stupid!

 

[svengandhi]

Star -

Did your DF live in my neighborhood? I had thought he was Southern? Son of Sam went to my HS (a few yrs before but he was in gym class with my old boyfriend) and lived in the same building as some of my friends when he was a kid. One of his victims was a girl I knew casually at college. That summer he was caught, I was working at a day camp and all of us wore bandannas and scarves around our heads because we knew he was after brunettes. However, he never came to our neighborhood - because people would recognize him there! As another irony, the night he was caught, he was on his way to shoot up a nightclub in the Hamptons, where my now H was hanging out (we didn't know each other yet).