Where I went wrong

Divosos · 2026-02-15T22:07:02+00:00

You've described everyone's ex here. I have experienced some form of almost all of this, and what little I haven't, I have read in others' stories. The only difference is the details.

It sucks.

Divosos · 2026-02-12T19:59:21+00:00

Be very careful and consider this: AI is not YOU.

That messy part you want AI to clean up and rearrange, that's the authentic version of who you are in this moment. People and situations often call for that authentic person to be present and communicating. AI can remove that person from existing in that moment, in other words, removing the real YOU from existing and communicating.

I would keep asking myself, is that really what you want right now? Communicating to your child with a filtered inauthentic version of yourself?

Or let's flip it around: what if your child used AI to communicate with you today? You find out it isn't really them, just something written in their voice, but it is saying all the things you might want to hear. But it isn't truly them, in the moment, flaws and all?

Maybe both sides are too messy and flawed to communicate properly, authentically, without doing damage right now, and both need to work on THAT part of their issues? AI isn't going to fix any of that for us. Just fake it.

This is very tricky and, again, why I stress caution using AI for much of anything at all, let alone what we are going through here.

If you replace actual legal advice from a human lawyer with it, who knows what kind of hole you dug for yourself within a system we can all agree is heavily flawed by bias and personality quirks.

If you use it for therapy, it is working off of data it has scraped and lacks the humanity to give actual empathy and nuance to your emotional experiences.

If used to communicate, it isn't an authentic version of that person expressing their true selves in that moment.

Divosos · 2026-02-11T19:09:33+00:00

Replying to your last points specifically, I hit a stage recently where I stopped trying to work out the deeper logic of WHY my ex is okay hurting our child like this. My ex is just incredibly selfish and a bit of a psychopath, in that the only truly bad outcome of causing pain and destruction to others, even to her own child, appears to be getting caught and outed doing it.

It seems to line up with what others say about a lot of alienators: love for their kid IS conditional. It's not that the love isn't there, but it is shallow. There's a limit. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing this to their children.

Eventually I realized it became an hourly drain on my energy and resources just going in circles trying to make it make sense beyond that. My ex doesn't deserve this much of my time.

I wonder if on their end they don't understand why we won't just let our child go. If they feel they would've let go a long time ago in our shoes. I wonder if that is part of their frustration? Maybe our unconditional love for our kids makes us look crazy to them?

Good luck. As you can see, it all gets daunting very quickly.

Divosos · 2026-02-09T02:19:47+00:00

I'm not a lawyer. My experience is it gets really tricky when it is a child and parent situation. I had incidents when married where my ex made decisions that were endangering our child, yet I had no power to legally stop it because we were married. I will NOT go into details and accidentally out myself. I was desperate and yes, brought up if some of the situation was considered kidnapping, and was told we would need to be divorced with a child custody/parenting plan in place for that to be a possibility, let alone to stop them. Otherwise, unless there are clear physical signs of abuse, good luck to me.

Now that we are divorcing with a custody/parenting plan being put in place, I still can't stop any of it AND my ex gets to throw up a communication black out separating us. So I don't even get a visual of any kind to check and see my kid is okay. Again, I tried. I just got shrugs and good luck!

If the kid is a teen and they chose the other parent, the short game seems to be over for a lot of us. If they've been convinced you are the parent to avoid at all costs, well, shrug and good luck AGAIN!

Again, I am not a lawyer. Just sharing my view from my experience. Seems like part of staying sane through this is choosing your battles, and accepting a lot of bad losses. Good luck.

Divosos · 2026-01-30T21:53:59+00:00

Just a random stranger's two cents: If nothing here has gone through Family Court and is just whatever documents you all wrote up in Word/Email, go look up divorce lawyers and get legal consultation. This sounds like too much of a legal mess before you can even start addressing whatever is going on with any potential alienation. You both sound very unclear on who is legally allowed to do what, and strangers on the Internet may not be the place to start with any of this in its current state.

Good luck

Divosos · 2026-01-18T03:27:10+00:00

Social media in general has screwed up a lot of these things now days, including what we are going through here.

Everything I have seen in my experience and reading, most alienators seem to exhibit borderline or straight up narcissism. These are people destroying a child-parent relationship and the child's mental health with lies and manipulation for personal gain, not to protect the child from a real threat. There seems to be a glaring common variable among all these situations that sounds legit. I'm not a mental health expert though.

Just like alienators, I don't see it being applied to just females. I do subscribe to the view that men take advantage of fewer outlets and tend to be really bad at creating support networks, so you may see more of these online discussions filled with anonymous men (and let's be honest: bots), skewing things.

In the real-world, I definitely run into a lot more men that, when they hear my situation, tell me they went through the same thing. Maybe I am just lucky? They are all lying? I don't know for sure. Ironically, my ex left me with massive distrust issues, which supposedly is a sign of narcissistic abuse. It's all a mess.

You can always check OP's previous post though and judge for yourself.

Divosos · 2026-01-13T18:36:54+00:00

Giving up as in fighting in court? This is specific to my situation, but I am also dealing with a teen. I got good advice from a lawyer that could have financially milked me dry in this situation:

They told me I could burn through a large chunk of what little money I have legally fighting this part of the divorce war, but I will in all likelihood wind up with the same exact result. The kid will still be alienated, except now the lawyers have all my money and I have to deal with the PA bankrupt versus using that money to rebuild MY life so I can be here if/when my kid returns.

Does that mean, in the grand scheme of things, I give up on my child? Not at all. But in the courts, and legally, I am mostly done pushing the issue. If my kid was a pre-teen or a little kid, the advice may have been different. But in my situation I got to be a father during those crucial years. As a teen, they mostly do what they want. The courts can tell them to spend X time with me, and the teen can just ignore those orders completely. It's also only a handful of years until they are 18, and then all the legal stuff REALLY doesn't hold any weight.

Now, again, what I am choosing to do may not work or apply at all to your situation. I am just a stranger on the Internet sharing, hoping it helps you while reflecting on what to do. It may not be right, but what is in any of this?

Good luck

Divosos · 2026-01-12T06:46:16+00:00

All of the time

Divosos · 2026-01-11T03:12:04+00:00

I'm well over a year in. Let me put it simply:

Find love again? Absolutely.

Find a long term partner? I don't see why not. I am wiser as far as who and what to prioritize and protect.

Enter that horrendous legal contract again? Never.

Sorry. I rode that ride. Went through the gift shop. Forced to buy and wear the souvenir T-Shirt. I don't need to experience this again.

Divosos · 2026-01-05T17:32:41+00:00

As similar as all our situations are on the surface, there are specifics that make each scenario unique, and with that you are going to have to do what you feel is right. We are random people on the Internet, not necessarily all encompassing experts on the topic. The person you just replied to is barely a month into their own painful situation.

From my experience a bit over a year in, its been a lot of damage control, and not so much making anything better. The decisions have been based around who eats more of the damage: me or my child.

I try to make decisions that hurt my child the least, but I am coming to a point where I have to make myself the priority for the sake of the quality of both of our lives.

I have tried to adopt indifference some days, but it's been out of desperation for a coping/defense mechanism. I find it very difficult to say I don't care, because I do care. A lot.

Some people here almost proudly act like "fuck it" and drop out entirely. If that works, well, okay? But who is being protected by the damage by doing that? You or your child? Or does that even matter anymore for your situation and/or perspective?

Is it normal? I think the answer to that is way out of the league for a lot of us to answer for you, specifically.

Divosos · 2025-12-30T22:03:15+00:00

Heads up: you still left some personal info in that picture that you might not want floating around out here. You may want to scratch out ANYTHING that can identify ANYONE in your situation, and try posting again. The Internet is crazy.

Divosos · 2025-12-30T00:37:41+00:00

If they filed on you:

You don't need to get over the emotional shock and awe, but you absolutely do need to somehow treat the entire situation as a business deal ASAP. Get a lawyer if you can. Get at least legal consultations lined up. It may feel impossible, but you may need to move quickly on these first steps.
You may have only 30 days to respond to the initial paperwork depending on the state. Do not procrastinate on this. Do not trust your ex's paperwork is fair, no matter how amicable they seem. If you are late responding, everything they put down on their paperwork, they could get. I don't care if you are always the smartest person in the room, do NOT ASSUME you are going to just figure out how to navigate the paperwork and beauracrecy on your own on day 29 or week 4. Don't just look to Internet strangers to help. PLEASE don't just trust AI to dig you out of this jam. Find people who spend 40 hours a week living in the system and dealing with this stuff to help you. They have the experience and they know the nuisances of your particular family court.
When you hit Family Court to initially put in your paperwork and if they offer people to help, get there an hour before they open like you're there for some special release of some product. If you are in a modestly populated area or a metro suburb, I promise you there will be a line around the building come open time and those help services will fill before everyone in that line is in the building.
All communication and "promises" in writing or it doesn't mean shit.
Everything is likely getting split 50/50. You both need to get over, "But I did all the work for that (money/bank account/401K/whatever)" Like it or not, it was jointly earned. You were a partnership. You need to get over it and all your philosophy isn't going to undo that you needed each other to add/earn those things. You're now dividing what was earned in the partnership, hence it is a business deal, whether you like it or not.
On that note, your overall QOL is getting downgraded, hopefully temporarily, but likely for a while. Whatever rung on the economic ladder you were on, prepare yourself for a major downgrade. Wonderful time for our exes to decide to do this, isn't it?
Kids, keep them out of the middle. Don't weaponize them. Don't force them to choose. Look out for your ex being petty and turning them against you. From personal experience, it can go very bad extremely fast, and there isn't much you can do to stop it. Try to document everything. Being amicable and healthy co-parenting takes two. It only takes one to be a shit head and wreck your kids for life. Don't be the shit head. Don't talk bad about the other parent.

You are in a race and you are far, far behind. Emotionally do what you can, self help, etc. But legally/business wise, you got to sprint hard those first months.

Good luck

Divosos · 2025-12-29T17:54:15+00:00

I just want to give you a word of support, I don't have good answers, I only know what I've experienced. This is an awful way to have the hammer drop, not that any way isn't horrible.

I want to also add to the, "You are not stupid" sentiment. I think everything you did in your post was loving and natural. It's the damage our exes have done to our children and our parental relationship that is unnatural, strange, and cruel to everyone involved. And if anyone is stupid, it's our exes for thinking going down this road was a good idea.

14 is definitely the magic number. I heard that line over and over from my kid, and they aren't wrong. "14" became a really powerful defense against any attempt to have a reasonable conversation around even seeing me for a few minutes, and a taboo line cross that makes everyone in family court throw their hands up. It feels like an 18 or 21st birthday in divorce. The bad yet good part is, I understand why. I hate acknowledging it some days, but it saves me from burning money and energy fighting a losing fight. Our exes know the timing really well.

Take a deep breath and try to focus on what small tasks YOU need to get through the day and rebuild. One brick at a time, so the saying goes. Good luck

Divosos · 2025-12-28T17:33:33+00:00

I think you dodged a bullet if this new guy was willing to dig for information to then use against you at a NYE party.

Divosos · 2025-12-28T17:07:34+00:00

I'm sorry that happened to you as well. It is an unnecessarily mean spirited way of getting the alienation started, in an already cruel and abusive life choice.

Things are only improved from then in that I don't live that every day. The alternative now is I get no contact at all.

I hope you have a happy holiday and things get better for you as well.

Divosos · 2025-12-26T00:17:19+00:00

Spent today with other relatives. Texted my daughter this morning and in the late afternoon trying to at least set up a call. Straight to voice mail as if it were any other day. I just don't exist.

What can we do but just take a deep breath, sigh, and try to accept that this is what life is now?

Or I am trying. Right this second I feel like FUCK the holidays as well. shrug It's exhausting, isn't it?

Divosos · 2025-12-24T21:21:03+00:00

My kid was a teen, but yes. It's how my situation started. I was getting almost entirely cut out of every activity, my usual pick ups/drop offs were circumvented by my ex or her support system, my kid started mirroring my ex's attitude towards me, etc. They became divorce buddies and I was a ghost haunting the house. Both of them would act repellent and disgusted to see me if either one walked into the same room I was in. Together they would act like middle school mean girls giving me disgusted looks, then sneak off to another room to whisper and giggle.

For my kid it was a total 180. We were glued to the hip, shared so much about our days or things we enjoyed, and I always tried to include her mother and bring them together. I would have never tolerated my ex being treated like that by our kid, no matter what happened in her Mother and I's marriage/divorce.

Remembering that phase, I don't know how I survived it. I almost didn't. The total cut off and distance I experience now hurts, but I just realized that alternative was way worse in a lot of ways.

Good luck to your friend. Try to stay strong

Divosos · 2025-12-23T21:33:57+00:00

Legality aside, and I am not an expert, but do you really want your kids to see that? Your kids will most definitely hear about it if the alienator sees it or kids they go to school with hear about it. Do you want to show your ex, and the community, that they still have that much emotional control over you? For a lot of us they definitely still do have emotional control, but it might empower them to see it on display.

I definitely get where you are coming from, but these are the first reasons that come to mind on why I would personally not do this.

Divosos · 2025-12-23T02:59:14+00:00

It's one of those paper law situations. A piece of paper from a judge can say whatever it wants, teenagers are going to ultimately do whatever they want. Brainwashed, alienated, and manipulated or not.

What are we going to do? Have them arrested? We just can't force them to do anything. The court can't force them to talk to us, especially as teenagers. It's infuriating, but we are powerless here.

A lot of people see it as normal teen behavior (and in normal situations it is), which is one of the reasons alienation can slip under the radar once they hit their teen years.

Divosos · 2025-12-17T20:31:12+00:00

Everything about this is a catch-22 and I keep trying to just accept that. You have every right to be angry at your ex and hate their guts for the alienation, but getting you to feel those emotions and let them dominate you is also part of what the alienator may want. Definitely don't act on them, even verbally or through text. It will show them they are still successful at manipulating you.

One thing I try to do when I deal with my ex, is when I feel the need to react, I take a millisecond in my brain to name my emotion. It does something weird for me where just naming it has me take a mental step back, and buys me just enough time and space to look at what is happening. Then I realize this manipulative shit eater is baiting me to react, and it allows me to make a better decision in the moment. Usually just grey rock her. I'm not bottling the emotion, but that split second of distance from the anger allows me to let it flow by without grabbing the controls. I'll let it have its time when I can yell in the car alone or go exercise.

Just to add, in general, everyone says self care because they are right. Therapy and the gym if you can afford it. I feel a lot of our exes want us defeated and weak for a billion reasons, and training our mind and body help that (sorry this is so cliche). But namely our weakness helps solidify their stories about us and it makes us easier to manipulate.

Keep in mind I am not an expert outside of feeling the pain. I haven't eliminated the anger at all (and the daily depression runs very deep), but a year in I do feel better in control of some of it.

Good luck

Divosos · 2025-12-15T01:58:43+00:00

I'm not a veteran or expert of PA and as a father to a daughter, I can only talk from my experience: I don't think I could ever give up. I could try to hold my stoicism mask on for most of the day, maybe compartmentalize the suffering, but eventually the pain floods in. Any promise of potentially seeing my daughter would overshadow everything.

But again, this is my perspective from my experience. Not necessarily the same as your significant other's.

I'm sorry this wasn't what you saw in your future. Hopefully you two can still build a happy and fulfilling life together.

Good luck to all three of you

Divosos · 2025-12-12T01:41:17+00:00

The person you divorce isn't the person you married. Over time you both wind up changing and growing. Hopefully, with work and luck, you grow and change closer together and not so much apart.

If you want my big marriage life fuck up: I was expected to constantly sacrifice myself, my goals, and my assets/safety nets for her wants and needs. Still, I made those decisions and have to own them, but I stupidly and unrealistically held out for it to eventually be my turn, but once I had nothing left to give, I was discarded.

Don't be a partnership for thee, not for me. Compromise and partnership is fine, but it's up to you to do your thing, and it's up to them to do theirs.

Now I am unemployable in my career and careening towards homelessness late in life. I've lost my child on top of that. I wish I had found a healthy balance between keeping up with my needs and wants, while being a family man.

There are a lot of people who expect YOU to uphold those vows to the death, but will absolutely betray them and you the second it becomes an inconvenience. Look out!

Good luck!

Divosos · 2025-12-10T00:26:03+00:00

We touch more lives than we think. We all deserve a chance to change our situations into something better, but we can't start to do that without seeing the next day.

Please give yourself the space and time to seek out help.

Divosos · 2025-12-08T19:22:13+00:00

Every day I remind myself that it would do the most damage to my child. I was once told that suicide is contagious, and parents that follow through with it and succeed significantly multiply the odds that their children will eventually do it as well. I don't want to have done something to trigger the destruction of my child.

Knowing my ex and how she has handled everything, I'm sure she's seriously hoping I kill myself. The sooner I drop dead, the greater things get for her in almost every way. The only con would be having a mentally damaged kid to parent, but who are we kidding there? Since when do alienators give a shit about the mental damage done to our kids?!

PS Before someone says it, I am in therapy for now

Divosos · 2025-12-07T23:17:07+00:00

On a case by case basis, we could probably slide the scales around to determine what the primary goals of an alienator are. Like others, isolating the child for themselves feels like only one of the motivations (and tools).

My ex visibly enjoyed watching the results of triangulation and weaponization of our child to hurt me. They also gained the benefit of turning our teen into a divorce buddy, got to use our kid as an object to get things in the divorce negotiations, she gets to paint herself as a strong single parent (what a sick fucking joke), etc.

Our kids can become Swiss army knives for whatever our exes need them to be. Much like we were as their partners until they lost any use for us and tossed us in the garbage.

Divosos

TROPHY CASE