We changed the locks, she went to sugar daddy site

[Valentine mom]

Hello-

After graduating college our daughter never got a real job or officially left home. She lounged around, dated a lot of guys without many lasting relationships, spending half of her week at home and the other half at a boyfriend's house. She worked doing sporadic temporary jobs but spent her money on frivolous items and activities. She developed devious ways of cheating the companies she did jobs for. She was constantly lying to us. We were vehemently against the way she conducted her life. I seekeed out professional advice, and was told to just let her "get caught", don't turn her in myself. We began giving deadlines for her to move out but each date that came there would be an excuse why she couldn't leave.
Our daughter is savvy, intelligent and attractive, but uses her natural gifts in an extremely detrimental way to maneuver through life. We finally got to a point where we had had enough of her using us and others and being rude and lazy, so we changed the locks.
We thought that she would get a job and get her life on track, but instead she went to a sugar daddy site and started a relationship with a wealthy VIP stockbroker who had a porn business on the side, and he was the star! My daughter discovered his secret, and he promised he wasn't going to do it any more. She caught him a second time with a coworker, and she is still seeing him. All this in a 1 year relationship. They broke up and then got back together, and I 'm not going to put up with her shenanigans and lying to us any more. He wines and dines her and gives very expensive gifts and he is much older. He is also manipulating and underhanded in other ways, but puts on an upstanding face to his high profile clients. He has no relationship with anyone in his family and it looks like he wants my daughter to do the same with us. She now defends him and is upset with me for not accepting him. She is choosing what she thinks is the easy way, and for the most part, shunning our family. She comes from a truly loving and caring home.
Since the relationship started it has caused extreme rifts between my husband and I. I can't accept the stockbroker creep in my life. I am ready to tell her I don't want a relationship with her until she can get her life together and be honest in her life and with us. She wants me to accept anything she does or any relationship she decides to be in. I don't want to do that. She wants to create an anger toward me so that she doesn't feel guilty about the relationship. My husband insists on maintaining some sort of relationship with her even though she is being very nasty toward us. I love her so much and this is killing me. There is nothing that we can do to talk any sense into her. She is willing to put up with his unsavory life so that she can live like a queen in the monetary sense.
Please help, I need advice.
Valentine Mom

 

[BusynMember]

Hi. I happen to be up now...will give you my "quickie" advice

Your daughter is a college graduate and an adult. You can not force her to be close to her family. At her age, most grown kids are pulling away from family anyway. That is normal. It hurts us sometimes, but it's normal. Her love life relationships, good or bad or even her wanting a super daddy, are her own business. You are too invested in her bad choices, which most of us are when we first come here. You are also talking too much about her boyfriend. Your daughter has made a decision to be with this loser. It is HER bad decision and after our kids turn eighteen we can't control who they date or marry or anything else they do. And you can't control what your husband does either. Let him handle it the way he wants because you can't change it. And you handle it the way YOU want. He does not control you either.

I would not have no relationship with my daughter because I didn't like her boyfriend. That smacks of trying to control her. Now...if she is disrespectful, rude, takes your money without paying you back, steals, uses drugs, assaults you verbally or physically or treats you like dirt in any way, then I'd detach, which is not the same as totally cutting her off. But you can do that too, if you want to. But don't do it because of the boyfriend. You are no longer in control of this adult's life. You can no longer tell her what is best for her. And personally I don't like emotional blackmail from our kids, who often threaten to disown us, or from us.

Why do you feel like you are responsible for what she does at her age? Why are you afraid to make her leave and perhaps give her a push to grown up?

One thing I learned in years of therapy...we can not control anybody except one person...ourselves. But we CAN control how we respond to abusive and uncaring people, and, yes, this even includes are children. Some will abuse us until we don't allow it anymore.

Read the article on this site about detachment and purchase the book "Codependent No More" by Melodie Beattie (not sure I spelled her name right). Most of us started out guilty, full of stress, sleepless, depriving ourselves of our own life and happiness, and miserable. But we are not our children and they are not us. When we are too connected to what they do once they are adults, that is being codependent and it is not a good thing. It ruins OUR lives.

I hope this was halfway coherent I would start right now telling yourself that who your daughter dates is HER choice and HER mistake. Don't blame him, blame her. See her for who shes really is. And start to work on detachment.

Here is a link that defines borderline personality disorder. I am not a diagnostician, but I feel that she has many of the traits. Many of our grown kids who just can't get it together have personality disorder, which are very hard to treat. Many others use drugs too. You can't fix it. Only she can, when she wants to.

Ok, here goes and soooooooo sorry for your hurting mommy heart. I recommend reading the whole thing. If it rings true, then there is a good book called "Walking on Eggshells" which tells you how to deal with people who have it. Not sure of the author, but you can get it off Amazon or at the library.:

http://psychcentral.com/lib/symptoms-of-borderline-personality-disorder/0001063

Detach, detach, detach. You need to be healthy and functional and to have a good, fun life in spite of your daughter's poor choices or whatever problems (mental health or substance abuse or both) t hat she may have. Remember: You can not fix her. She can maybe make her worse though if you enable her. You are not her; she is not you.

More hugs!!!

 

[Childofmine]

We understand here how much you love your adult child and how much this hurts. I have been there too. It is awful and painful.

MWM tells it like it is. You have to let her go---after all she is an adult, no matter how many childish and dumb decisions she is making.

She will have to find her own way. Nobody can tell anybody anything to "save them the pain of living it." We have to experience it ourselves, for the most part.

This site may help you shorten the long, agonizing months and years of doing what your heart wants instead of what you and your daughter need.

If you have an open mind and are miserable enough to want to change the way you are doing things. And that is what has to happen for her as well---believe me, she sounds super-resilient and resourceful. Once her life as is stops working for her, she'll change it.

So, start the hard work, as MWM said, of detachment. Read the book Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend. It is great and one of my core books. I have given it to others who are in the throes of stopping enabling and setting healthy boundaries and I go to the book and reread sections all the time.

You don't mention whether your daughter is using drugs or alcohol or not. If this is the case, consider going to an Al-Anon meeting. Go to six before you decide if Al-Anon is for you or not. Al-Anon has saved my life and my sanity in dealing with my 24 yo son. It is wonderful.

Melody Beattie also has several other books, including some daily devotionals. She is a recovering addict and alcoholic and a great writer. She also lost her son prematurely in an accident. She has been through it all, and she gets it.

Another writer who has helped me a lot is Anne Lamott. She writes great books, very practical, about life, love, faith and relationships.
I also like the book Simple Abundance, it's a daily reader and straight talker.

I have had a lot of therapy in my life---well before all of this with my son---so I had that good foundation as well. A good therapist is worth a lot. Also, one easy thing that pays great dividends is every day, writing down 5 things you are grateful for. Just take two or three minutes and do this, and sit thoughtfully with your list for a couple of minutes. You will be amazed---I mean this---at how much this will change your attitude and your outlook.

Also, every day, focus on what YOU want to do, what YOU enjoy, living YOUR life, working toward your goals. Do kind and nice things for yourself. I exercise, take trips, own my own business, am involved in church and in the community, etc. I am living my own life, and I am grateful for all my life includes today. I work hard every day to turn my son back over to God. I have to do it over and over again.

Your beautiful, smart daughter can turn and walk in a new direction at any time. She has her college degree already! That is great. You are already on the road to setting boundaries as you changed the locks and said no more. Often, when we start setting boundaries (Cloud talks about this in his book) people push back hard. Things get worse. They don't like it because we have changed and then they have to change.

Hang in there. We are here for you.

 

[2much2recover]

Your story has alarm bells ringing all over it - lying, stealing (companies) manipulation and control. Now you say she is in a degrading relationship. These are things I learned about my own daughter while reading about Sociopaths. Another bell ringer: a sociopath will place themselves in degrading relationships that they are quite aware are totally against the family morals and values. It is the big "SCREW YOU" Instead of worrying about what is going on in her relationship, while she is busy - educate yourself to the possibilities of what you may be dealing with and make a life plan for the rest of your family - to return it to it's true core values. Finding out WHAT your child's (maybe) diagnosis is (or what it seems like without a professional diagnosis) will help you to deal with her in a much more protected way. It CAN stop the fighting if you can accept that your child is ill (or has a personality disorder) and you begin to set up boundaries with her. Perhaps you could try walking away when she is verbally abusive to you - me, my difficult child would call me up and scream obscenities at me so I just got to where when she called and did that I would just hang up the phone. When you are dealing with someone who is disordered YOU for YOU have to learn to walk away. Whether you have a relationship with her or not, who is wrong, who is right doesn't matter - you need to understand the WHAT that you are dealing with so you know the how's and whats of how YOU want to respond. Sociopaths are excellent at GAS-LIGHTING us. I can empathize with how you feel about the boyfriend - my daughter, demanded that I accept some creepo that she wanted to marry and I just said - nope, ain't gonna happen - next thing you know, after she had foot surgery he tried to throw her in her wheelchair into the pool. I didn't even go over there - not my circus - not my monkeys.

 

[Origami]

My easy child daughter is currently trying to get an order of protection against a fellow she got involved with 2 years ago when she was 18 and he was 39! I expressed my disapproval from the start, especially when I overheard a conversation in which he was calling her nasty names and accusing her of cheating on him. But she continued to see him off and on and has been to the police 4 times now for various "light" physical confrontations (shoving, etc.) as well as stalking behavior which he still continues although he lives 700 miles away and is living with another woman. My husband, on the other hand, actually let the guy come to our apartment while I was away for a weekend last year and went out to dinner with him when the guy was trying to charm his way back into my daughter's life.

I'm new to the board also, so don't have the vast experience and wisdom of others here, but I'd say all previous advice is right on target. I didn't really have to practice detachment in a big way in my case because I don't have any issues with my daughter per-se. She's a great girl, going to college, etc., and not a difficult child at all, but made this bad relationship choice. Regardless, I've been glad she hasn't tried to drag me into the drama except to keep me informed and ask my advice from time to time.

I think you've made a good start (changing the locks), but hope you can see past the hurtfulness of your daughter and regain some happiness with yourself and your husband.