Hi everyone, I've been reading your posts from a couple of years ago but they so ring true and it's so good to know I'm not alone.
My son's father went missing when my boy was nearly nine. We were no longer a couple but the father was seeing his son fairly regularly. Anyhow the trauma of his father going missing and the years we lived without any closure were hard. I made huge efforts to keep in touch with the paternal side of the family who lived a few hours away.
My son left school at 15 with no qualifications and started mooching around the house stealing from me to buy cannabis. He refused to learn to drive or do any training or seek employment. This escalated to harder drugs as he got older and he made more desperate measures to get money. Selling my bike or anything he could get hold off.
He sometimes locked me in the house and demanded I give him money. He assaulted me on numerous occasions and I dreaded his key in the door. It was domestic abuse and I should have had the courage to involve the police but I kept thinking he would grow out of these bad habits.
Eventually he met a woman and moved in with her. It was in the days when social security gave people more money the more kids you had. They had four children they couldn't feed, house or cloth without extended family support IE: me.
The couple were always fighting and the children were on the Child Protection Register because of their arguments which often turned nasty (she was worse than he).
Then they finally split up and my son became homeless. He was living in a squat not far from me and I was feeding him, giving him money so he could take his children out and basically enabling him to just not face up to reality and to have peter pan syndrome.
Fool that I am I came in to some money and bought a place for him to live in as a tenant with a proper two year tenancy agreement to cover myself so not such a fool. Thank goodness I did have that tenancy agreement because instead of making use of the opportunity to have a home for him and his kids he just partied on. Spent every penny he got on drugs and booze and then demanded I buy him clothes and food.
Like a sap I did as well. I was so guilt ridden because I felt I hadn't been a good enough parent to him and basically screwed him up.
When the two year tenancy was up I sat him down with him ( he only agreed to me doing this because he wanted money) I drew a diagram of the co-dependency loop we were both on and explained that I was giving him a twelve month tenancy and that if he didn't seek the professional help he needed I would evict him.
Guess what he did? Yes absolutely nothing. So to save my sanity and marriage I evicted him in August last year. The house was a rubbish dump. His children never saw the inside of the house and in fact he gave up on them a long time ago as it was interfering with his drug and alcohol use. The house was infested with mice and while I was cleaning up ( it cost a lot to have all the toxic waste removed) several of the neighbors in the street called to tell me they are pleased he has gone.
Since then he has had nothing to do with me and although this hurts if I'm honest, even though I worry about him I'm also pleased to have my life back. Not having to deal with his constant and on-going demands, dramas and crisis's have freed me up.
I still feel guilt and carry lots of regrets but I am free. I cannot tell you how good that is after all these years.
Thank you for your posts fellow parents of difficult children it has given me strength to know it wasn't me it was him.
My son's father went missing when my boy was nearly nine. We were no longer a couple but the father was seeing his son fairly regularly. Anyhow the trauma of his father going missing and the years we lived without any closure were hard. I made huge efforts to keep in touch with the paternal side of the family who lived a few hours away.
My son left school at 15 with no qualifications and started mooching around the house stealing from me to buy cannabis. He refused to learn to drive or do any training or seek employment. This escalated to harder drugs as he got older and he made more desperate measures to get money. Selling my bike or anything he could get hold off.
He sometimes locked me in the house and demanded I give him money. He assaulted me on numerous occasions and I dreaded his key in the door. It was domestic abuse and I should have had the courage to involve the police but I kept thinking he would grow out of these bad habits.
Eventually he met a woman and moved in with her. It was in the days when social security gave people more money the more kids you had. They had four children they couldn't feed, house or cloth without extended family support IE: me.
The couple were always fighting and the children were on the Child Protection Register because of their arguments which often turned nasty (she was worse than he).
Then they finally split up and my son became homeless. He was living in a squat not far from me and I was feeding him, giving him money so he could take his children out and basically enabling him to just not face up to reality and to have peter pan syndrome.
Fool that I am I came in to some money and bought a place for him to live in as a tenant with a proper two year tenancy agreement to cover myself so not such a fool. Thank goodness I did have that tenancy agreement because instead of making use of the opportunity to have a home for him and his kids he just partied on. Spent every penny he got on drugs and booze and then demanded I buy him clothes and food.
Like a sap I did as well. I was so guilt ridden because I felt I hadn't been a good enough parent to him and basically screwed him up.
When the two year tenancy was up I sat him down with him ( he only agreed to me doing this because he wanted money) I drew a diagram of the co-dependency loop we were both on and explained that I was giving him a twelve month tenancy and that if he didn't seek the professional help he needed I would evict him.
Guess what he did? Yes absolutely nothing. So to save my sanity and marriage I evicted him in August last year. The house was a rubbish dump. His children never saw the inside of the house and in fact he gave up on them a long time ago as it was interfering with his drug and alcohol use. The house was infested with mice and while I was cleaning up ( it cost a lot to have all the toxic waste removed) several of the neighbors in the street called to tell me they are pleased he has gone.
Since then he has had nothing to do with me and although this hurts if I'm honest, even though I worry about him I'm also pleased to have my life back. Not having to deal with his constant and on-going demands, dramas and crisis's have freed me up.
I still feel guilt and carry lots of regrets but I am free. I cannot tell you how good that is after all these years.
Thank you for your posts fellow parents of difficult children it has given me strength to know it wasn't me it was him.