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agonyaunt2022-10-28 12:32 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-10-28 12:32 pm
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Dear Care & Feeding: My Stepson is Making my Daughter's Assault All About Him
Content advisory: sexual assault
I’m a mom in a complicated blended family. My ex-husband and I have a 16-year-old daughter “Wren” together. I’m remarried with no other kids. He is now married to his former mistress, and they have a 17-year-old son “Aaron” together. We coparent politely but disagree harshly about many things.
One of those things has been Aaron’s fixation on incel/men’s rights type-figures, and his belief in their philosophy. I find this extremely alarming and multiple conversations about it have gone nowhere. Recently, an adult coworker at Wren’s job attempted to violently sexually assault her in an unambiguous, caught-on-camera type of way. We got Wren into therapy, we’re pressing charges, and she’s in the process of healing with support from both her parents.
Aaron is reeling from a real-life exposure to this common experience, and it’s shaking the foundations of his former worldview, which I guess is good? But he cannot stop talking about it, making himself the center of every conversation, every family therapy session, and every interaction. I know he genuinely loves his sister and is horrified to learn about this, but it’s exhausting and distracting, and she complains it makes it hard for her to work on healing and moving on. Any suggestions?
—Seismic Shifts
Dear SS,
You should talk to your ex about how Aaron’s behavior is making it more difficult for Wren to heal. Explain how his self-centered attitude distracts from the true issue at hand—that something terrible happened to his sister—and talk about how family therapy sessions need to adjust to focus primarily on her experience. You should also talk to the family therapist about how Aaron manages to suck up the air in the room during your sessions.
Talk to Wren about how Aaron’s actions have made her feel. Empathize, and let her know she isn’t wrong to feel bothered by how he’s taking up space here. Advocate for her, as I’m sure you do, when you talk to your ex; Aaron must learn how to balance his own feelings about what happened to his sister without getting in the way of her healing process. If Wren has only been talking to a therapist with other family members present, you may want to give her the chance to have one-on-one sessions so that she can talk at length about her own processing without having to share that time with Aaron.
Also, you have my complete sympathy for having to not just navigate this awful thing that has happened to your daughter, but for dealing with the stickiness of coparenting with your husband’s former mistress—and now having to deal with their son’s men’s rights activism shit. Hopefully, this experience will have a long-term impact on Aaron’s worldview and has effectively challenged some of the awful things he had come to believe to be true about the world, and gender. If he has spent a good deal of time embracing incel/men’s right’s philosophy, it’s not entirely surprising that he’s managed to center himself during this ordeal, as he’s been exposed to the idea that men’s needs and concerns are the most urgent and important of all. I am wishing you the very best as you and Wren continue to heal.
I’m a mom in a complicated blended family. My ex-husband and I have a 16-year-old daughter “Wren” together. I’m remarried with no other kids. He is now married to his former mistress, and they have a 17-year-old son “Aaron” together. We coparent politely but disagree harshly about many things.
One of those things has been Aaron’s fixation on incel/men’s rights type-figures, and his belief in their philosophy. I find this extremely alarming and multiple conversations about it have gone nowhere. Recently, an adult coworker at Wren’s job attempted to violently sexually assault her in an unambiguous, caught-on-camera type of way. We got Wren into therapy, we’re pressing charges, and she’s in the process of healing with support from both her parents.
Aaron is reeling from a real-life exposure to this common experience, and it’s shaking the foundations of his former worldview, which I guess is good? But he cannot stop talking about it, making himself the center of every conversation, every family therapy session, and every interaction. I know he genuinely loves his sister and is horrified to learn about this, but it’s exhausting and distracting, and she complains it makes it hard for her to work on healing and moving on. Any suggestions?
—Seismic Shifts
Dear SS,
You should talk to your ex about how Aaron’s behavior is making it more difficult for Wren to heal. Explain how his self-centered attitude distracts from the true issue at hand—that something terrible happened to his sister—and talk about how family therapy sessions need to adjust to focus primarily on her experience. You should also talk to the family therapist about how Aaron manages to suck up the air in the room during your sessions.
Talk to Wren about how Aaron’s actions have made her feel. Empathize, and let her know she isn’t wrong to feel bothered by how he’s taking up space here. Advocate for her, as I’m sure you do, when you talk to your ex; Aaron must learn how to balance his own feelings about what happened to his sister without getting in the way of her healing process. If Wren has only been talking to a therapist with other family members present, you may want to give her the chance to have one-on-one sessions so that she can talk at length about her own processing without having to share that time with Aaron.
Also, you have my complete sympathy for having to not just navigate this awful thing that has happened to your daughter, but for dealing with the stickiness of coparenting with your husband’s former mistress—and now having to deal with their son’s men’s rights activism shit. Hopefully, this experience will have a long-term impact on Aaron’s worldview and has effectively challenged some of the awful things he had come to believe to be true about the world, and gender. If he has spent a good deal of time embracing incel/men’s right’s philosophy, it’s not entirely surprising that he’s managed to center himself during this ordeal, as he’s been exposed to the idea that men’s needs and concerns are the most urgent and important of all. I am wishing you the very best as you and Wren continue to heal.
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1) Whole Man Disposal, quite sensibly, does not pick up teenagers, so we have to work on/with them.
2) Aaron has a lot of shit to process.
3) He should have been stopped two days ago from doing all his processing on Wren's time.
However, reading between the lines, I kind of doubt LW's ex and his wife will see it that way.
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god i want him to have solo therapy so much, because i want him to have a totally self-centered headspace that's All About Him, so he doesn't get sucked into the incel/MRA "ladies get everything they want!!" response, and have that be a safe space to learn it's not all about him.
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Aaron needs therapy, this is probably the best possible time to get him to actually engage with therapy well, and for sister's sake he needs to stop making it All About Him *but* if he's really going to have a chance of escaping the ideology he does need a place where he can process and make it All About Him.
Get him solo therapy.
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Yeahhhhhhhhhhh.
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