agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Prudence,

I’m not sure what to do. My daughter divorced last year after four years of marriage. I was caught off guard. In that four years, I saw her yelling loudly at her husband, in our company, and he did not ever seem combative in return. Looking back, I can see some of the issues, but we (her father and I) were surprised the day she told us he was moving out. On that day, she told me to never mention his name again and never ask about the divorce. I have abided by both of those requests and many other mandates she has issued to me in the ensuing year. I seem to have become Enemy No. 1. Our relationship has deteriorated horribly. She is now engaged and living with another fellow. I’m constantly being told what her boundaries are and being issued ultimatums to obey or she will have nothing more to do with me. She has refused to go to counseling with me.

Today she found out I had “liked” a Facebook post of her ex-husband about his new relationship with his new girlfriend. (In no way have I hidden I was still his friend on FB, etc.) Once again, she came after me, demanding I unfriend him. “It’s him or me” were her exact words. I unfriended him. But at this point, I am exhausted from her demands, or really, just the disrespectful way she gives them to me. I do not talk to her ex or have any relationship with him. I have no idea why they divorced or any specific issues, as that was part of her first set of demands she laid down. Is it really so awful to remain FB friends with an ex of one of your children? She has told me, angrily, I should know that and am intentionally disrespecting her. I contend they were eager for us to develop a bond with this person when they first introduced us. We did as we came get to know them. They had time to realize the relationship was going to end. We did not. And were never privy to any reasons why.

— I Can’t Get it Right

Dear I Can’t Get it Right,

Walk me through the moment when you were scrolling through your social media feed and saw that your daughter’s ex, who she clearly feels angry at and sensitive about, had a new girlfriend. When you lifted your finger to hit a button that would let everyone (including your daughter!) know that you wanted to communicate your support and approval of the new relationship … what was going through your head? What did you hope would happen? How did you hope she would feel when she saw it? I don’t know, maybe that’s not a fair question—after all, I wouldn’t want to have to answer “What were you hoping to accomplish?” with every dumb tweet or Instagram story. But I do think it’s at least worth exploring. Did you think about your daughter’s feelings? Did you think about them and decide they didn’t matter? If so, what did you base that on?

It’s not that it was “so awful” to remain friends with him or to continue to interact with him. I just wonder why you wanted to, and how that thinking connects to how you might have treated your daughter in the past. Hear me out: Every letter I receive is written from the perspective of one person, and is likely missing information that could make them look like the bad guy. But here, the missing information is kind of jumping off the page. I suspect that for some reason, based on your past behavior, your daughter didn’t feel comfortable telling you about the issues in her marriage. I suspect you might have hurt her feelings in similar situations in the past, or just been generally judgmental. I suspect that she worries that you might have blamed her for the divorce or even taken her ex’s side. These are the sorts of patterns that generally push people to erect the “boundaries” and issue the “ultimatums” with family members that you find so grating. Of course, I could be completely wrong. Maybe she’s totally unreasonable and was the bad guy in her marriage. But your level of concern over your “bond” with the ex—as if he’s on equal footing with the woman you raised when it comes to your loyalty—makes me wonder whether you’re not as clueless as you claim to be about why she’s behaving the way she is right now. Give it some thought.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/12/dear-prudence-boundaries-photo-ex.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't know who's more right or wrong in the situation leading up to Daughter's divorce. And I guess I don't know who's more right or wrong in the situation which appears to be speeding directly towards estrangement. I suppose at least sometimes the estranging child has to be in the wrong.

But I do know that LW is a damn liar, and not a very good one. You cannot say in one breath that you saw your daughter frequently scream at her husband in public and then in the next say that the divorce came out of nowhere. You also can't claim you don't talk to your former son-in-law "or have any sort of relationship with him" while you're also following his Facebook and liking posts on it. Like, seriously. Either you have a relationship with him, or you're a cyberstalker.

The comments over there, sigh, are uniformly taking LW's side. No nuance at all in those responses, and there's one charming person who is opining that Daughter obviously has borderline personality disorder.

I'm not exactly willing to armchair somebody based on a single letter to an advice column, one which is sorely lacking in details and, you know, an objective viewpoint. But since it's already out there, I guess I gotta just say: even if that were true, which seems iffy, BPD is not just a diagnosis that simply pops up outta nowhere. People with the condition are very disproportionately likely to have suffered trauma and/or lived in an abusive home as children, so. I mean. It's not exactly a stellar defense of LW, is it? Even if that commenter is sure it sounds like one.

You also can't claim you don't talk to your former son-in-law "or have any sort of relationship with him" while you're also following his Facebook and liking posts on it.

I follow a lot of folks on FB who I have only a tenuous acquaintance with, and if I'm looking at their feed and they post something interesting I'll click like; that's our only interaction. Technically I do have a relationship with them and communicate with them, but if I'm being succinct I'd say I don't talk to them or have a relationship with them.

And that said, I don't click on nibling's ex's FB posts. I liked the ex fine, but I wasn't particularly close to them, and the nibling is more important to me. I certainly wouldn't click if ex were announcing their remarriage. (And that said, if another nibling were to divorce their spouse for reasons other than awful behavior by spouse, I'd stay in touch with the ex because I'm closer to them than the nibling. But I'd be doing it in PM.)

I'm not really sure "My daughter's ex, and the divorce was acrimonious even if I don't understand why" counts as a tenuous acquaintance. It'd be a lot less weird to be following him if it was tenuous.

Yeah, by the time we came to the word "mandates" I felt like the one thing I could be sure of here was that I didn't trust a word the LW wrote.

Fascinating how all these "boundaries" and "ultimatums" just... spontaneously manifest. Out of thin air! Totally irrelevant to any behaviors you may or may not have been exhibiting, LW. Surely none of this has anything to do with you. Your belief that all of her decisions are irrational and "disrespectful" is obviously completely private and isn't being shoved in her face to provoke this hostility - she's just being crazy and mean! To poor, innocent, "but whyyyyyy did you divorce him, let me pass judgement on your intimate relationships and decide if you were REALLY justified", you.

You're gonna end up without a daughter, and you'll probably whine that you were "never privy to any reasons why" she would cut you off. Somehow all those boundaries and ultimatums where she said explicitly that she'd cut you out of her life if you didn't back off won't count.

Very missing reasons here, or at least missing information. Because generally, if someone feels the need to explicitly have and enforce boundaries, there's reasons behind it, but this mother is Not Seeing Them. I want the back story.

As for staying Facebook friends: Generally, I don't see an issue with it. Your daughter, LW, clearly does. So. Now that you have been told, apologize and don't like stuff of his again. And if you want to keep the connection with *him* so much, de-friend him and use a second account to keep up, or just give him a *call* every so often to check in. (This will lead to more problems down the road, but you seem to want to create some.)

I am not convinced LW is a reliable narrator. I will say, however, that it does not surprise me that some people have adopted the language of boundary-setting to behave rudely and issue unreasonable ultimatums. Calling a demand a boundary does not automatically make it kind, reasonable, or just.

Oh, no, definitely. I think it is very possible that Daughter is also in the wrong. But that doesn't make LW honest.

I saw her yelling loudly at her husband, in our company, and he did not ever seem combative in return

Could mean the daughter was mean to the husband, but also, abusers are very good at "looking" innocent when other people are around.

It's possible LW "liked" a FB-announced relationship without registering who it was, but "I don't have any relationship with him" contrasts heavily with "I formed a bond", so which is it -- bond, casual FB acquaintance, or nothing?

If this were AITA I'd say ESH. "I don't want to discuss X" is a boundary; "I don't want you to think about X" isn't. But I am extremely suspicious about narrator reliability here.

Could mean the daughter was mean to the husband, but also, abusers are very good at "looking" innocent when other people are around.

Oh yeah.

But I am extremely suspicious about narrator reliability here.

Agreed. Like, Daughter doesn't sound great - but I still would rather hear her side of things.