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Fractured Fairy Tale Thinking....
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<blockquote data-quote="HereWeGoAgain" data-source="post: 416006" data-attributes="member: 3485"><p>"Fractured fairy tale thinking" is a good way to put it.</p><p> </p><p>Here is another story of how strong a grip these fairy tale fantasies can take:</p><p> </p><p>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). </p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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."</p><p> </p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="HereWeGoAgain, post: 416006, member: 3485"] "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. [/QUOTE]
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