I found you all here when I typed My Son Hates Me into the Google search bar. I have been lurking here for a while, reading all your stories of heartache. I have one too.
A little background. In 1998, I discovered from a midnight phone call that my then husband had been having an affair for the past 10 years. We had 6 kids from age 3 to age 15, at least 4 of which were conceived during this period. Needless to say, I was shocked and devastated. I never had a clue. Fourteen years of marriage ended in that moment, my husband leaving the house with two Hefty bags and one black eye.
From that moment, as I struggled to work and support my children, my bitter XH has done everything imaginable to alienate my children from me and to evade his financial responsibilities for his children. At times he succeeded. Today, as things stand, my five older children and I are all on good terms, although that was not always the case. The latter parts of their teen years were tough, and most of them seemed to need some sort of major blowup in order to separate from me. Now that they have separated and become adults, they have come back to warm relations with me and my new husband. My oldest son recently said, “I was such a jerk then that if I were standing next to myself when I was 16 I would slap myself.”
I am writing today because of my youngest son. He is now 17. About a year ago, he decided to go live with his father when my husband and I objected to him smoking in his bedroom. (I don’t mean cigarettes either) He was mad at me and refused to speak to me for a few weeks after moving a mile down the street to his father’s, but eventually got over it, although he didn’t come back to live here. I suspect he gets away with more at dad’s.
We recently had another falling out. Or rather, he sent a letter to my facebook mailbox that was beyond nasty, swearing, calling me names, enumerating my faults, laziness and greed. What precipitated it was a court hearing for a modification of child support my XH requested after being threatened by Child Support Services with revocation of license for being sixteen thousand dollars in arrears. At the hearing my XH asked that child support be waived retroactive to the date my son had gone to live with him 8 months prior. Mind you, there was absolutely nothing preventing him from requesting this hearing the minute he let our son move in, but he decided to procrastinate in typical fashion while child support payments accumulated….The judge said that by law she could not order that unless I agreed to it. I said no.
I personally I feel that this man will never even scratch the surface of being able to repay me for what he did to my life. Neither financially nor emotionally. If I think about all the things I might have chosen had I not been in that marriage having all those babies with him, I want to scream. If I went into all the things he has done over the past 14 years to try to destroy my spirit I would never stop typing. He hasn’t succeeded, but he still tries. Saying no in court that day was my way of saying no to what he did to my life.
My X apparently went home and told his sob story to our son, complete with exaggerations, embellishments and outright falsehoods. My DS in his smoky distorted haze, decided to become his poor father’s avenger. Hence, the letter. His father is the hero, the victim, the taken advantage of, the overworked and downtrodden and I am now officially the gold digging whore and spawn of Satan. I was stunned by his letter, but I know that my DS is just regurgitating what he has been fed. I am not surprised at my XH’s tactics.
I never responded to his venomous letter, although at times (like today) I am sorely tempted to. There has been no contact between us at all now in over a month. I see his news feed on FB, primarily using angry foul language and promoting the legalization of marijuana, that’s about it. I have mixed feelings about even doing that but I can’t bring myself to hide him completely. This way at least I get some news and hold onto the fact that he didn’t unfriend me….I’m that pathetic.
Since our estrangement in December, his grandfather died, his grandmother turned 80, I turned 50, his siblings have visited from Arizona, his sister experienced a miscarriage, we had a family Christmas Variety Show and other family gatherings and because of his arrogance and stupidity (and I suspect his other hobby), he has missed out on all these family experiences, the happy and the sad. This year is his senior year in high school and I’m already thinking about his final Band Concert, his Graduation, (if he manages to take care of all his incompletes…..) his brother’s upcoming wedding…and all that he will miss, and all that I will miss, and my heart aches. People ask me what he’s doing after graduation and rather than say I don’t know because he hates me, I say I don’t think he’s really made up his mind yet. I’m hoping that’s true in more than one way.
I guess I’m not looking for answers, although if you have any I'll listen. I kind of know there’s nothing I can do to reason with someone looking at the world through a distorted lens, and a teenager at that. I have seen that kids do come around eventually. My other kids all say not to worry, that he’s just being stupid. I know they’re right. I’ve been here before. Still, it smarts and there’s no preparing for it. No armor, no crash helmet, no vaccination, no painkiller, no anesthesia. Hurts first time, every time. And no guarantee he’ll ever reconsider. He seems to hate me with a vengeance.
Because I love him, I guess I’ll go and watch his final concert, and his graduation, slipping in the back door and slipping back out like a guilty thief in the night. Then I’ll wait. Maybe someday I will be able to say, you didn’t see me, but I was there, you know….
If you are still reading, thank you. I know it was long. I just needed someplace to say it. I hope this is the right place for it. Reading your stories has helped me feel less like a freak and more able to keep my head up.
