It seems to me she became traumatized after she re-interpreted his emotions as grooming, which is presumably the interpretation her shrinks gave her.
There was a follow up piece in Salon. Apparently at one point the teacher threatened to kill her if she left him, which sounds pretty traumatic.
"The life of a traumatized, sexually assaulted student is always intense."
I find myself wondering how the hell he thought he could possibly get away with it. It's not like 14 year olds are particularly skilled at keeping secrets, and it only takes a tiny slipup to get busted.
Teenagers are in such a weird place, emotionally and judgment-wise (I say as the horrified mother of a fourteen-year-old girl who gets nauseated thinking about this sort of thing). An intelligent, mature kid can be functioning on a level right up there with most adults, most of the time, particularly if the adults are working cooperatively to backstop them and nudge them back into productive ways of dealing with things. And so they get this self-image of themselves as fully adult.
But they really don't have the defensive resources of an adult against being taken advantage of, and you get an unscrupulous asshole (or, charitably, terribly damaged nutbar) like this teacher manipulating them, you end up with a kid thinking that they're fully responsible for everything that happened.
I guess what troubles me here is that we only ever get half the problem explained. Yes, it's important for women and girls to be able to say no, but it's equally important for them to be able to say yes. What would her parents' reaction have been if she'd been caught having sex with another 14 year old? Probably not "oh yay, let's celebrate our daughter's blossoming sexuality!" I can't help but think that some prior discussion of, and support for, good consent could have saved everyone a lot of grief here.
[To disclaim: No, of course I don't think that this type of unequal intergenerational relationship is a good idea. It's a very bad idea, and should be discouraged. Perhaps not with such draconian penalties as are often meted out though.]
I can say that for me, having all the people finding out around you: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, other kids, and eventually police, the courts, the media, therapist, was much more traumatizing then any abuse that had happened. It's a fucked up, seemingly huge + public thing that goes on and on.
What would her parents' reaction have been if she'd been caught having sex with another 14 year old? Probably not "oh yay, let's celebrate our daughter's blossoming sexuality!"
As someone closer to being in that position than most other posters here, I'll say that while either Sally isn't getting up to much or she keeps her secrets well, if I found out she was getting busy with another kid, I'd be a bit taken aback and would then snap into reiterating birth control/STI and so forth lectures. If I found out she were involved with an adult, I'd be heading for police and/or a lynch mob.
11: I was thinking about the whole Texas justice aspect of it. 100 years ago I expect ol' Trace would have been choosing between a shotgun wedding or a short dance at the end of a rope. Neither of which would have been good options either, from a social justice perspective.
I can't help but think that some prior discussion of, and support for, good consent could have saved everyone a lot of grief here.
I need to have this conversation with my nephew sometime in the next few years. I know my sister won't have it with him and nobody else is likely to step up, so it's on me. Should be super-awkward.
I wish the original article were a bit more like the follow-up in terms of giving examples about how the relationship was harmful, manipulative, and abusive. At some point one needs to say something that distinguishes this situation from other sexual relationships that 14 year olds have that their parents and society disapproves of (say two 14-year olds in a same-sex sexual relationship). As the follow-up shows, and as one can deduce with high certainty from the facts, there was harm, manipulation, and abuse; but I think it weakens the original piece not to have that spelled out a bit more.
Doesn't the word "teacher" cover much of that ground?
10: acgh, I'm sorry. Are you up for sharing what happened?
16 - I am up for that, but have to run to a meeting, so I can return to it in 2 hours. But lots of things in the Texas article resonated (the parents; the people who tell the parents showing up in a car).
This fantastic New Yorker article from last year on the Horace Mann sexual abuse scandals does a great job portraying how this sort of affair works, including how the trauma kicks in later.
"People think of child abuse as a moment in a shower, like Sandusky. They don't think of it as essentially abducting and brainwashing. This was a cult of art, literature, and music, a cult that was revered in some circles. And being in a cult is seen as a sign of weakness."
7: I was definitely very committed as a teenager to the idea that I was already an adult. Looking back of course that's pretty laughable, as I was very immature in predictable ways. That said, looking back, the big maturity leaps happened at 14 and 24. So I still kind of don't think teenage me was totally wrong about his maturity level.
Hawaii is at a stage right now that I vividly remember: where you figure out how to intonate your speech with adult inflections.
People called me a victim. They called him a villain. But it's more complicated than that.
It's really not, and blindingly obvious from the original article that it's not. And given the totality of the circumstances, the end of a rope would have been just fine for social justice.
I wish the original article were a bit more like the follow-up in terms of giving examples about how the relationship was harmful, manipulative, and abusive.
This, absolutely.
I'm trying to remember accurately why, as 14 year olds, we never told an adult about a guidance counsellor who had had an affair with a friend of ours (resulting in an abortion). Nor did I tell any adult about the choirmaster pedophile who was eventually busted by a suicide note. Or the scoutmaster who abused my friend. God there were a lot of them, abusers. I'm not even counting the late-high-school - teacher romances.
As clearly as I can remember, I saw the choirmaster as the kind of smart nerd who gets picked on, so I identified with him and dismissed the rumours. But in the other cases, it felt clear that to reveal anything to adults would bring down on me the wrath of the student, who had very mixed but mostly affectionate feelings toward the abuser; it would make the abused students lives very miserable in the way Rance descibes; and just as I wanted my sexual (and drug, and everything else) secrets to stay secret, I felt as if I was respecting their privacy and their right to a sexual life by not telling. And this is nuts from an adult perspective, but we weren't adults. If we had had explicit right to a sexual life in the first place that would have made a great difference, but in the 80s that was not going to happen.
There was another kind of kid world-view I had going on that saw (suburban) adults as so sad and failed or corrupt or all of those that to pick on one would be to pull at an infinite thread.
Wow, does that ever bring back depressing memories. I never want to be that age again, and I hope I can be a helpful adult to some kid someday.
21, 22: Yeah, the death threat part definitely sets this apart from some greyer situations. I don't think a lethal response would be justified, but certainly it puts it further out on the continuum. People are fucked up.
23: I saw the choirmaster as the kind of smart nerd who gets picked on
This resonates with how I saw my pederast Russian teacher. Still not sure about what happened to finally out his behavior, but all the students were aware of it. He was certainly not creating a cult around himself though. Just struck me as a very lonely, very messed up guy, but one who was still fairly high functioning.
It was weird too, as he was pretty friendly with me, but was clearly not attracted to me. Or maybe I just didn't seem like an easy mark. Hard to say all these years later.
Finally read the OP article. What strikes me is that no adult is mentioned who helped the writer deal with the grief of losing an intimate companion. The writer experienced a bereavement. The good therapist I know would definitely help someone work through this, but maybe it's not a normal part of post-abuse counselling? Seems as if it should be.
24: From the rest of the story, I'll bet the death threat looked greyer in context then it does in isolation -- heated rhetoric rather than a credible threat.
These cases are hard to talk about in absolute terms, because while I feel quite strongly negative about teacher/student and adult/teenager relationships generally, this is something that really does exist on a continuum, and line-drawing is always going to be arbitrary. Like I said, a bright, mature fourteen-year-old kind of thinks they're an adult, and while they're right in some contexts, they're wrong in others, and their self-assessment in terms of how capable they are of asserting their interests against a manipulative adult isn't worth much.
But at some point, they're going to be as much of an ad. Sixteen, eighteen, twenty? There's a point at which you're still really not that emotionally mature, but you need to start fending for yourself regardless of the fact that you're still likely to be taken advantage of, because you can't stay sheltered forever.
13: Do this. I'll buy you a cookie.
14: I don't think more detail would help at all, actually. I'd argue that leaving the story more about how she felt at the time than about her 20/20 hindsight makes it easier to see how the affair/abuse happened. This way of telling that story isn't the traditional narrative - teacher acts charming, plays head games, threatens consequences if students tells authorities or parents. I think it gives a little more insight from the victim's perspective.
to be as much of an ad. s/b "to be as much of an adult as they're ever going to be."
I think I saw a squirrel or something while writing the sentence.
That Horace Mann article in 18 is quite something. Not an easy read.
I was in a situation like this (though the one I'm speaking of involved an older boarder, not a teacher), and my parents didn't find out until a few years later. Even now, I'm unsure of whether it would have been better for the abuse to have been uncovered while it was happening--I don't know if I could have handled the publicity, or the fall-out in my family. I was living wth a mentally-ill mother and my younger sister at the time.
The irony is that I escaped from the abusive relationship by dating my 21-year-old confirmation teacher (I was 16 by then), and the only people in the church who objected to our illegal relationship were his parents. The youth group leader, the choir leader (my confirmation sponsor) and his wife, my parents, and the head confirmation teachers were all just fine wth it. WTF? (I heard through the grapevine that this guy ended up marrying another student from my confirmation class).
The part of the article that actually resonated with me the most was when she talked about his truck. To this day, I still feel panicky when I see a '90s Nissam Maxima.
Question: If there was a plea bargain, is there a chance the original publication was uncomfortable saying the guy had committed an actual crime (I assume a death threat is a crime)? The name was changed but this was apparently a huge case in the media.
I do know, but did forget briefly, that a plea bargain is a guilty plea, but say some of the charges were dropped?
That Horace Mann article is very very good. It occurred to me that my freshman year in college, two out of four suitemates had gone to NYC private schools and both of those recently had sex-abuse scandals. Not sure what that signifies.
The death threat is the least skeevy part of this story. He's an ineffective twit who can't even stand up to a bunch of rowdy eighth graders. Instead of getting help or training from colleagues he goes into a corner and sulks every day and reads his email rather than teach. And this is not some guy who in a moment of weakness banged a 17 year old while he was drunk or something. He sought out a 14 year old by getting her number from her 12 year old sister, using a position of authority. She described herself as barely five feet tall. I'm guessing she wasn't one of those "looks older than 14" at all and how does he want to teach her to drive? By having her sit on his lap like a little kid. I'm betting this dude would be down for or would prefer if she had looked even younger. Again I say, end of a rope is just fine here.
By having her sit on his lap like a little kid. I'm betting this dude would be down for or would prefer if she had looked even younger.
Calling the guy a pedophile (as I assume you mean to) kind of rubs me the wrong way. The thing about actual pedophiles is that they're pretty rare -- most people don't want to have sex with children. Ephebophiles (if I'm recalling the word for people who are attracted to post-pubescent teenagers) are, on the other hand, as common as dirt -- adults are generally not having sex with teenagers because it's recognized as wrong, given the varying emotional maturity levels, not because they don't want to.
This guy doesn't sound like someone with an unusual mental illness, he sounds like someone who did something wrong and abusive, but that it wouldn't have been terribly uncommon to want to do.
He might not be a ped, but the implication of that lap shit wasn't lost on her at all.
He suggested that I sit in his lap and steer while he controlled the pedals, as I had with my father when I was a little girl.
Again I say, end of a rope is just fine here.
As a fellow father of daughters, I'm not sure that I'd weaken my opposition to the death penalty in this case, but I'd definitely be a teensy bit more flexible about DIY justice. What do you make of that, Ross Douthat?
I was 17 when I was raped and it wasn't in this sort of scenario, but Rance's 10 resonates with me. I felt fine on autopilot after the rape, but hearing a dormmate say, "Oh, SHE'S the girl who (etc.)" as I left the laundry room and supposed earshot was what put me over the edge.
40: Yeah, that's one if the things I was worried about. I think I was also worried about getting in trouble for lying so much, and given that the person I was lying to most energetically was my mother, I wasn't about to do anything that vindicated her in any way.
40: I think there's a lot to be said (but probably not by me) about being able to narrate your own story. I think that the sequence the author goes through is a good example. Initially, she thinks she's got some power in the relationship rather than being a victim. Then, she speaks out to regain some control of the narrative, and subsequently brings it up as an amusing story so she can show how tough and resilient she is. Looking from outside, I hope she finds some peace about how this event fits into who she is. It's a hard thing to balance scarring and healing.
I think it serves as a reminder of how little power we have when we hear someone tell our intimate stories in a way we don't like and can't control.
I'm not sure that I'd weaken my opposition to the death penalty in this case
The rope doesn't have to go around his neck. Maybe from his dick to your truck bumper or something.
As for the sharing request in 16: I was in middle school when abused on several occasions by my parents minister. I kept it secret for a while, and then told a high school student shortly after the last incident. She was a few years older, and some weeks later told her parents, who told my parents. This was extremely upsetting to all involved. My father was out of town, and my mother was really great in the first response. In many many ways, my life would have been easier if I hadn't told anyone or she hadn't told her parents. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure going through all of that was worth it so that he got kicked out his position, and eventually, got a record. My parents really wanted to keep things in the (protestant) church, so they didn't go to lawyers/police/DA for a few years, but after a rather abysmal handling of the situation, they changed their mind. Though the DA's office plea bargained so that he only ended up probation. Still, probably kept him from preying on others (or at least reduced it).
I can also say there's a lot of conflicted feelings that I also resonate with. Thoughts like, I should have known better; what happened wasn't that bad; etc. etc. The whole thing is a head fuck, of course.
Wow. Thanks for sharing, and I'm sorry.
It really brings home the point the extent to which the victim is forced either into secrecy or into the role of whistle-blower, and then gets all the fall out (and often uselessness) of being a whistle-blower.
42: I'm curious about how it comes across as her bringing it up as an amusing story. Though it does make sense that by speaking out, she may be trying to regain some control of the narrative.
I definitely went through a long phase where I owned my narrative by talking about it *all* the time. It was part of a "I'm not going to be ashamed" process, I think. I even wrote several articles in (uni) school papers. I'm much better now about not needing to talk about it. But, it's a big part of my history, so I don't shy away from bringing it up when I find it relevant. I still think it's important for people to know how frequently this stuff goes down; that it happens to males too; etc.
45: No problem, and thanks. I feel pretty adjusted about the whole thing, and I know that what I went through was a lot less shitty than people who endure years of that shit. Still pretty crap-tacular anyway.
Also, 42 was me.
Ironically, those 4 words in 48 were exactly the 4 words I dreaded hearing from people before things came out. Though, my parents really were super, all things considered, and never even came close to saying or acting like that at all.
Well, I was making a butthead joke to that effect, which undercuts the irony.
I mean, the joke was only referencing the comment you claimed. I think you meant 46, not 42.
I'm starting to feel like a jerk.
48 was intended to be in reference to 47.last?
My father was out of town, and my mother was really great in the first response.
I would love to know what constitutes being really great, if you want to go on talking about it. There are lots of responses that I know aren't great, but I'm not at all sure I know what is.
And it did take me a while to figure that out! 'cause it too me a while to see my error (sorry ydnew!)
46: I'm sorry that happened to you, and it must have been really difficult for a long time. Good on you for trying to keep it from happening to anyone else. I was taking the first bit of this line:
I have told strangers about him in the punch line of a party or after the punch line of a particularly insensitive joke; no matter the context, people's faces always twist the same way
to mean that she occasionally makes a joke about the facts of what happened. Maybe I'm reading more into it than the author meant, but I expect that it's a way to tell folks that you're tough/healed/resilient enough to joke about it. I can't possibly guess what's really in her head, but I am reading it (given that she's still pretty young, I think) as a little bit of bravado to cover up lingering uneasiness (since it's still on her mind). I hope it didn't sound as if I were referring to the linked article as an example of retelling bits and pieces as an amusing anecdote.
54: Since you asked.... I'll write about the initial finding out.
My mom gets a phone call from Person I Told (PIT)'s parents who want to come over "and discuss something that happened on the retreat". I was leaving the house for an event, so my mom told them to come by after that, and hung up. She then came and asked me what happened, and did I do anything wrong. I played stupid (I don't know what they want to talk about), wrote down PIT's phone number and ran down the street to a pay phone. Called PIT, and uncharacteristically for me at the time inquired, "What the fuck is going on?" PIT asks me where I am, and says she's coming to meet me. She show's up, I'm blubbering like crazy, all kinds of upset, and I see my mom's car show up. By this time, PIT's mother told my mother what she knew. PIT then tells me my mom knows, I freaked the fuck out. I essentially got dragged down the hill to where my mom was getting out of her car, and my mother just grabbed a hold of me and held me tight while I balled my eyes out for something like 15 minutes straight. I forget what she said (my memory is some words of comfort), but mainly I remember a lot of allowing me to not meet her eyes and holding on tight. She did ask if I was raped, which I didn't want to get into, but did answer. (Though the answer really depends on one's definition.) Anyway, what was great was that instant support, no questioning, never asking me too much, etc. Keep in mind that the first thing PIT said to me when I first told was that was a huge accusation to be making. Which was my fear that everyone would think. But I never so much as got an inking from my parents that that's what they thought. It was crappy for me, but I wonder how crappy that would be for them: this was their good friend (the abuser); this happened to their kid; this had to be discussed with lots of people; etc.
58: Ah, I got what you mean. I wondered about that line too, when I read it. I took the second part "after the punch line" to mean that if someone said a stupid and insensitive joke, she'd speak up and say something about her story. Not that she was making the joke herself. But you can't really tell based on how the sentence is written. People's faces would twist whether she was making a joke of it, or speaking seriously.
54: Rance's answer is (unsurprisingly) really good, but I know I didn't realize as a young person how tough it is to be on the parent end of that conversation. The advice I've always given is to be supportive and as calm as possible, because if you freak out you're putting implicit pressure on your chid to comfort you. I always advise people not to say the "I'm going to go beat the fucker up now stuff," because again I think it's taking the narrative and control away from the person who deserves it, and I don't personally know cases where the person has found the actual beating-up emotionally helpful although I wouldn't be surprised to hear it exists. Keep the focus on your child and not the details or the perpetrator. Be loving and supportive and make an effort not to make it about you. (These are all general comments and not meant to imply I think you'd do differently going just on instinct.)
If your child will have to get a rape kit done, a Children's Advocacy Center (she calls it by a slightly different name, so that may vary by region) is probably going to be the best place for a forensic exam and interview, or if you don't have one of those choose a Children's hospital over one for the general population.
60: Agreed on the second part of that sentence. I was imagining her riffing on driving lessons, teacher's pets, May-December romances, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with that - it's her experience to do with as she wishes, but I think I'd feel a little sorry for someone I'd just met who did that because I'd guess they're still struggling with what happened.
62 is also excellent advice and widely applicable to receiving hard news from anyone.
I also agree that 62 is excellent advice.
This is true of this thread and life in general, but kindness in response to this sort of situation makes such a difference.
This is just general trauma-related, but Mara has a hard time with medical visits and so getting her under anesthesia today was not the easiest parenting job I've ever had. But the people working with her were so wonderful, letting her wear her clothes since changing them was threatening, having her blow bubbles to keep her calm and distracted while the nurse took her vitals, singing to her and having her follow a princess sticker with her eyes as the anesthesia took hold, and at that last point I was so overcome with gratitude that I just started crying. These are all little things and I would have found ways to work around them if they hadn't been there, yet having someone make the effort to be respectful and gentle made everything work so much better for us.
That's super awesome, Thorn. It seems like people are getting better and better at working with kids and difficult situations. I wonder if/when this change occurred in how the medical profession approached dealing with kids. And, I'm sure it still depends on who you get and how skilled they are, but the string of events in your story suggest that the culture of that setting was very kid-centered.
"I always advise people not to say the "I'm going to go beat the fucker up now stuff," because again I think it's taking the narrative and control away from the person who deserves it, and I don't personally know cases where the person has found the actual beating-up emotionally helpful although I wouldn't be surprised to hear it exists."
One interesting aspect of my experience is that my sister has spoken to me about being really upset that this wasn't our dad's reaction when he initially found out (years after the fact). I tried to explain to her that this would only have made me feel worse (and my dad would have ended up in legal trouble, not to mention the hospital).
Incidentally, you know how my parents found out? The therapist that was treating each of them, and who had treated me briefly, accidentally told them both. In two separate instances, a few years apart.
That's ghastly on the therapist's part.
That's ghastly on the therapist's part.
Yes, but aside from the horrendous ethical and possibly legal breach on her part, could help her job security.
Just a gift to the profession, you mean? Ensuring that there are going to be more people needing therapy?
That's ghastly on the therapist's part, especially since you'd hope that any decent human being would be so shocked and horrified at the first disclosure that they'd be extra, extra careful in the future.
Presumably it was an "accident" not an accident., so I'm not sure how relevant 72 is.
73: I honestly don't know. I'm not sure she should have been seeing so many people in my family to begin with.
Jayzus, J, that's outrageous and awful. You have really come through a lot.
75: Agreed. The only reason to be seeing so many people in the same family is if you're seeing them all at once in the context of family therapy. And downright creepy to be breaking confidentiality either way!
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Guess what you can learn from sending in some DNA to 23andMe? That your bio dad is a psycho who was convicted of kidnapping a woman and attempting to force her to love him with behavioral modification techniques.
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That's a super creepy story. I'm not sure what counts are more creepy: swapping sperm samples, or using reward / shocks to induce love. And the Patty Hearst connection with the lawyers is also really odd.
Seconding 76, because I have very few original thoughts.
Since I've met up with all involved, I can suggest that a Rance-ydnew-J, Robot-Thorn meetup would be about as cathartic, supprotive, insightful, and drinky as this thread suggests. I might have just added the last part because I am still intrigued by that star anise-bourbon-whatever thing Rance had, I admit.
Yes, my sympathies, J, and to Rance and Thorn.
Ephebophiles (if I'm recalling the word for people who are attracted to post-pubescent teenagers) are, on the other hand, as common as dirt -- adults are generally not having sex with teenagers because it's recognized as wrong, given the varying emotional maturity levels, not because they don't want to.
That's what I've been saying! LB, you're my kind of girl. Except for the whole age thing.
God, having kids/getting old: I was going to make the Derbyshire joke, but I forgot. Thank you, OJD.
Thanks, Ogged, but you're not really my type.
82: Sounds like a slumber party to me (as long as no one snores).
That therapist was actually not the worst I ever had. This one was far worse, and afterward I took a few years away from therapy at a time I probably most needed it.
If you read the story, note that the office where the alleged shockingly brutal stranger rape occurred was quite literally next door to my apartment. This therapist had also suggested that I try the hormone clinic she was using herself.
Natilo, do you remember this case? It was a much bigger deal in St Paul, I imagine, and Cathedral Hill in particular,
89: Wow, that's nuts. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be a patient of someone in that situation.
Whoa. It took me a while through the article before I realized that you were saying that the subject was your therapist.
Maybe I should become a therapist. I'm not as nuts as that chick. Tell me about your problems. OK, fuck you. Push ups. Let's eat. Come back next week with the entrails of a libertarian. I am your god-emperor. Fuck off.
That sounds more like a personal trainer than a therapist.
92: The lesson that I am getting here is that it is very difficult to be considered too nutty to be a therapist.
94: Nobody becomes a therapist without some oddball baggage of their own.
Related, when one discovers that one's boyfriend has been sleeping with large numbers of other women - discovers this, moreover, because he actually as an act of deliberate cruelty shows one the text messages they have been sending each other - how is it even remotely sane to decide that this is a fixable relationship with enough couples therapy to overcome the trauma that said boyfriend no doubt has in his past, rather than simply depositing him in the non-recyclable bin and heading off?
Barring gender alterations, you're not really qualified to be any of them but the boyfriend, no? On the substantive question -- eh. You know the people, so you're probably right about your assessment. But I wouldn't say that multiple infidelities necessarily make a relationship unfixable as a hard and fast rule.
97. Glad about that. Is 96 soliciting meaningful advice for the party of the third party, or just asking for your take to be endorsed. You are right. It is not even remotely sane; it presages endless pain for the person harbouring the delusion. As to what you or anybody else an do about it, probably nowt.
I'd suggest that multiple infidelities deliberately revealed with the detailed suggested by sharing text messages makes for a passive-aggressive attempt to exit a relationship.
99: it's more of a venting of irritation, tbh.
On further review, it's actually not very passive.
100: it worked - they broke up. This is her talking him into an attempt to resurrect the relationship via the Magic of Therapy.
100: Yeah, probably. I'm still coming down on "not enough information" -- that is, I can imagine a misguided attempt to get things all out in the open that wasn't meant as deliberate cruelty.
The couples therapy (assuming a non-insane therapist), sounds like a plausible way for the woman concerned to figure out what's going on and eventually extricate herself if (as does, admittedly seem likely) that's the best idea.
103: Oh, geez. With that added, some friend of hers should take her out, get at least semi drunk, and explain that the relationship is over and she should focus on a hobby until the desire to be involved with him has passed. Someone who reveals multiple infidelities and then breaks up with you isn't worth a moment more of your time.
I mean, possibly this is a conversation that could successfully be had cold sober, but I think I'd need a half-bottle of wine at least to explain the situation forcefully enough.
Sounds like low-self-esteemy stuff on the ex-girlfriend's part. She doesn't think she'll find a better relationship than this one, and she's terrified to lose it and be alone. Since she believes that he's in the throes of his baggage, he's probably a navel-gazer who feeds her lots of garbage about how damaged he is. So in addition to being terrified of losing him, she also thinks she can save him and be heroic and redeem this whole gigantic mess, instead of knowing when to fold.
I was going to suggest that ajay should do just that, but probably better another woman, if such can be roped in.
Yeah, someone with plausible absolutely-trusted-best-friend status is who you want, which is most likely to be a woman friend, but if ajay fits that role, then ajay.
We have a friend going through the situation in 96, but she's dealing with it by roping in his mother on her side, outing the situation to several of the other women he's sleeping with, and working on being able to keep his house. But it took many months of the attitude 96 describes before she finally got to that point.
working on being able to keep his house
This sets off all my nosiness (specifically, that you characterized the house she wants to keep as "his" rather than "theirs".)
108: yeah, this isn't one for me, because I'm an angry drunk and besides the person in question is in California.
Maybe one of the West Coast commentariat.
she should focus on a hobby until the desire to be involved with him has passed
Crossfit! This is all coming together nicely.
Halfordismo-intervention! She can train as one of the dictatorial bodyguard.
112: I swear I'm not just anonymizing my own situation and am in fact about to post a follow-up about that.
But yeah, he bought the house but she's lived in it the whole time they've been there and has put in a lot of sweat equity and whatever that doesn't really matter. I have no idea if her plans are feasible and have 100% stayed out of them, and she mostly confides in Lee (and compares Lee to her ex-ish BF, so I'm not sure why Lee puts up with that, really) and I hear second-hand. She has partial custody of her kids and the house has a good layout for them and she could afford to pay for it on her own I guess. So she's just pressuring him to somehow sign it over to her and move out, with various passive-aggressive means of negotiation being employed. When it reaches a conclusion, I'll try to get the whole story, but I've been actively staying out of it for now.
Right. And sounds like just the therapist she needs.
Halfordismic therapy makes me think of what Freud wrote when he was doing his military service: "It would be ungrateful not to admit that the military life with its inescapable 'must' is good for neurasthenia. It disappeared in the first week."
I start at $250 an hour for my therapy services but there's a discount if you pay for your own Praetorian Guard costume and war steed.
So, my current stupid relationship thing is that Lee has promised she won't ask to have Nia moved and will go through with the adoption if I accept that this is going to cause her a lot of mental pain and need to have more pleasurable outlets in her life. Specifically, she wants me to agree to a plan where she can teach overseas in five or ten years. I assume implicit in that is an agreement that I'll still be around in five or ten years, but it's pretty easy to agree to hypotheticals (and I even got in a clause about how it has to be in the girls' best interests medically and psychologically, not that she'll ever remember the conversation) that require someone else to get a job.
I really don't care what the details are, because I just want to get the adoptions done and be free to see what happens from there. I'm making Lee right down the things that worry her so we can get answers from the caseworker about them (what if Nia needed to be hospitalized again? Um, she'll have exactly the same insurance coverage post-adoption, so it will be exactly the same. etc.) and maybe that will help with her uncertainty. I also asked her to specifically request what she is going to need right now on an ongoing basis to keep her balanced, whether a few nights out of the house a week or one weekend a month or whatever. Not that it ever worked when I asked for similar setups, but since this one requires me to step up and make it happen it should be fine.
I'm kind of tempted to make a big deal about our anniversary this weekend because I know she won't have remembered it, but that just seems mean.
119: I wouldn't think there are any psychological problems that couldn't be completely solved with a Praetorian Guard costume and a war steed.
Thorn, for what it's worth at this range, you have my sympathy and I really hope things work out for you and the girls - very glad to see that things are starting to improve.
Lee has promised she won't ask to have Nia moved and will go through with the adoption if I accept that this is going to cause her a lot of mental pain and need to have more pleasurable outlets in her life.
I am not-quite-successfully stifling my reaction to this.
I read that as "consume a war steed", which still worked. I forsee problems for the Halfordismic cavalry.
122: Thanks, but please don't send me a war steed. I'm not in the horsey part of the state and have enough to deal with already.
122: Ditto. Thorn, as a mostly lurker and complete stranger (I wish I had had the time to go to the Pgh meetup), this won't mean much, but you sound like you put a lot of effort into taking a complex and emotional situation and making it as best as possible for a lot of people, especially the girls. That's very commendable and I'm glad things are on the upswing.
(But yeah, making a big deal of the anniversary would be a little mean--maybe you could forewarn her and try to do something fun?)
Is 125 intended to be subtle begging for a Praetorian Guard costume? Because it's not very subtle.
123: She had a long list of explanations of her mental state that I meant to write down as soon as she left the room but I'd end up either throwing them back at her in anger or making fun of them online, so I didn't. I will just note that she was really scornful yesterday about the mental pain I would suffer if she insisted on making Nia leave and that it might get in the way of my working toward a healthier relationship.
I am glad she's being honest, but being told that she feels fucked and forced in a corner and like she has no choice every day for, I don't know, six months now? Nine months? Anyway, it's made me less than sympathetic, especially since I don't feel like I'm actually in control of the decision, whatever she says.
I will just note that she was really scornful yesterday about the mental pain I would suffer if she insisted on making Nia leave and that it might get in the way of my working toward a healthier relationship.
Gritting teeth.
Nevermind. That's shittily passive-agressive of her.
Is it possible that she felt overridden or insufficiently engaged about the initial decisions to foster Nia and Selah, and is still holding on to resentment on that front? Not that I have any idea what to do about that, given that it's water under the bridge by this point.
127: Nah, I'm sure I could make my own if I needed one, but I have a longstanding anti-Roman bias and can't imagine ever bothering.
What, after all, have the Romans ever done for us?
longstanding anti-Roman bias
Racism isn't cool.
I'm not against the Roman people, I'm against the Roman state.
I mean, she's being honest about all of this, not trying to be manipulative. She had one weekend of regretting taking on Selah because she feels too old and knows nothing about babies, but that also involved rolling back the magical clock to make me not exist either, and she made it clear that she wants to retain the relationship. (That's how we know she's not totally out of touch with reality, because I am pretty awesome and she's going to be trading down by default.)
She is afraid things will get worse with Nia's behavior and that the other girls will learn bad habits from her, which I think is kind of hilarious because Mara's bad tantrums are much worse and wilier and if Nia knew what was good for her she'd have learned a thing or two from that. And also the speed of Nia's improvement has been amazing me and her therapist and her caseworker, though not Lee. But Lee's also afraid she'll never love Nia as much or treat her as well as she does the others, and she refuses to understand that the last part of that is in her hands. Sometimes she gets it but she's very good at blaming other people, which ironically is what she gets on Nia's case about all the time.
She really resents that I'm even thinking about leaving, because only she should be allowed to do that because only her life sucks. I have Selah's cold and I beg to differ about that last part just on those grounds.
132: you could make them for the members of the Halfordian Guard, then. You know, in your copious free time.
They probably wouldn't take much time to make, in any case. I am assuming that, in keeping with Halfordismo Thought, they don't involve much material.
134: But Latin just really isn't as good a language as Greek, and it's hard to forgive them for that. (Although true to stereotypes, I found it a lot more engaging when I was tutoring a girl who was doing Latin than when I had to do it myself.)
she feels fucked and forced in a corner and like she has no choice every day
This is pretty much the essence of having kids.
132: My mom feels that wayabout Romans too. She was practically chortling when we visited the Arch of Titus, "Ha! Ha! We're still around and you're gone!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arch_of_Titus_Menorah.png
You do have to pick the material so that the required body-oil doesn't stain.
142: I do have a lot of experience with body oils! (I would say "... laydeez," except that seems creepy when I'm really talking about the children.)
140: Yeah, basically she only likes the fun parts of having kids, which I totally understand and yet I'm not really willing to make happen. I'm so, so glad I didn't give in to her wish for a 3-year-old boy, though, because she had no idea what she was asking for there. Selah is 40 thousand times easier, and I can build up these good times for when she's 3.
141: I had no clue about the seven-lamp Menorah.
141: I'm sure the movie camera is appropriate for the ethnicity, but it seems a bit anachronistic.
139: Thorn is my sister. (Roman poetry is great, really, but the prose really just can't compete. And I'm fond of Cicero.)
she had no idea what she was asking for there
Huh. I find my sons *entirely* easier than my daughter, but (a) that's a really small sample size, and (b) as a man who grew up with no sisters and no extended family nearby, I guess that's no surprise.
And mine are pretty much tied on easiness. More so as little ones -- now, there's a bit of a split where he's both more likely to be actively defiant (not terribly likely, but more so) but also more helpful, so if you want something useful to happen, he's easier, whereas if you want to pretend you're childless, she's easier. But really very close.
(And she's not all that unhelpful, either. Really, they're both better than I deserve.)
You could get an incontinent pug to even things out.
But actually, I read 144 as saying that an integrating an infant into the family is easier than integrating a three-year old (particularly one with the sort of difficult prior history that culminates in foster care), rather than that a girl is necessarily easier than a boy, and the former seems fair to me.
Or any number of incontinent pugs required for balancing deserts.
Incontinent pugs are the rat orgasms of parental suffering.
My daughter is pretty goddamn difficult, especially in the past two days, but I have no son for comparison.
||Also, vaguely related to Halfordismo -- and let's keep the focus where it belongs, on me, not on Thorn's serious relationship problems or her efforts to help great little kids because whatever -- an old elementary school friend just found a school "recipe book" that the school put together when I was in fifth grade and posted it to Facebook.
I had no memory of this, but my recipe was "Caviar on Hamburgrs." The recipe was as follows: "4 lbs of hamburger meat, 1 1/2 pounds of caviar. Grill hamburgers until done. Put caviar on hamburgers. Serves two." It's nice to see that I have not changed or matured at all, except now I'm not sure that 5 1/2 pounds of meat and caviar would really be enough for two people.|>
That really is the most Halfordismo of possible recipes. I suppose it could be slightly improved if you specified ground bison.
157 made me laugh!
I think it would be hard to have only one boy in a family like ours, and also they pee on everything. Apparently she forgot that since having Alex, who peed on everything. Whereas this way we get hand-me-downs and no stupid comments and other things that are just easier. Plus Selah is a super easy baby, except when she's not.
and also they pee on everything.
Okay, Thorn, dude? This is not a general characteristic of boys. I mean, your preferences are your preferences, but you really can't predict the level of bodily fluids you're going to be interacting with from the sex of the child.
The recipe actually did include a bun, but I was too embarrassed for my younger self to include it in the summary here.
162: At age 3, when toilet training is in the early stages? This is someone who won't even let the girls use her bathroom because she's afraid of mess or contamination, and you don't get to defer little kids to the upstairs one because when they can't wait, they can't wait.
No, I know that's not really a factor and if they'd called us about the right boy I would absolutely have said yes, but I also don't think she was being remotely realistic about what a placement like that would be like for her.
If there wasn't supposed to be a little bit of pee on the floor the bathroom, they would carpet them.
I think I've mentioned this before, but my son's first full sentence was, "Pee on the floor?" and that he said it while walking toward our bedroom.
164: Seriously, not a noticeable difference for us. Newt shares his father's catlike fastidiousness (and catlike inability to tolerate someone else reading a newspaper), but I spent a fair amount of time around other toddler boys, and it wasn't a maelstrom of urine.
167: I was mostly joking, not trying to be sexist. Though of course it was a sexist joke.
Yeah, and it's one that I do tend to push back against, not because it's so horribly offensive to little boys, but that it is something that people really seem to believe is uncontroversially true -- that boys are wildly different and less easily civilized than girls -- and it's false to my experience. I still treasure the memory of a friend of Buck's telling me serenely how I was so lucky to have a sweet little girl and not have to deal with the raw aggression of boyhood, as I was chasing two-year-old Sally desperately around the room taking toys away from her so she wouldn't hit two-year-old Zeke with them.
I don't pee on everything because I'm old and lazy, but I do try to pee on a wide variety of things.
I don't pee off the edge of the patio anymore, because the neighbors' have a new light on a motion sensor.
That's totally fair, and the girls we have can be plenty barbaric in ways that do and don't conform to gender norms. That said, we never got calls for young boys that didn't include a description of what wild behaviors to expect, and every time I worried what the impact on Lee would be even though she kept saying she wanted a young, active boy.
that boys are wildly different and less easily civilized than girls
This seems quite different claim than the claim you were pushing back against, which was just that boys have penises which can more easily spray urine in uncivilized directions.
The main thing I miss about living in a high rise is peeing off the balcony. 14 stories down. Bliss.
(I didn't actually pee off the balcony that often, except when I'd been drinking.)
I hope you shouted "Garde Loo" first.
which was just that boys have penises which can more easily spray urine in uncivilized directions.
Well, more that they "pee on everything". There's probably an average difference in pee where it shouldn't be between boy and girl toddlers, but in my limited direct experience, not a huge one.
I don't recall much of a mess as a toddler. But if you have one that goes off while on the changing table, you're going to see a huge increase in distance with a boy.
In my experience with older males, the difference in things that pee gets on and radius of pee sprayage/dripping is indeed huge.
"Pee on everything" was obviously an exaggeration, but allowing for exaggeration it's not really inaccurate. Bathrooms used by young boys really are usually a mess. Obviously it's not universal.
I don't think I'd pee off a balcony fourteen floors up. You could check the ground to ensure you're not going to pee on anyone, but what if the wind blows your urine stream in on one of the balconies below, where another person has stepped outside to smoke or chat on the phone and OH GROSS PEE FROM ABOVE.
Pee from below isn't any less gross.
which ironically is what she gets on Nia's case about all the time
I am, without fail, hardest on the kids when they display bad behaviors (and especially self-defeating behaviors) that I know are my own as well.
I'm pretty sure 183 is as close as it can get to a human universal, but I also thought most humans knew that.
Urple is the Keith Moon of peeing.
183: I had a variety of this discussion with my daughter last night. "But what possessed you to emulate me in this particular regard?"
a maelstrom of urine
PEE FROM ABOVE
Weemageddon.
Obviously you don't pee off a balcony in high wind, Stanley.
Or knowingly rent an apartment beneath urple.
On the plus side, Leroy Brown is now 85 and you may mess with him.
I believe what urple did is okay as long as he didn't also tell the people downstairs that it was raining.
193: I COCKED IT. ITS MOLE OOBLECK!
Not that I have any idea what to do about that, given that it's water under the bridge by this point.
Yeah, I will confess that it's never been quite clear to me how you guys got to the point of taking in Nia and Selah after Lee seemed so spectacularly not up for parenting more than one kid. But, of course, however that happened, I recognize that that was then and this is now, and now features real children in in your house that you need to care for properly.
196: We did a lot of work in therapy and she seemed to have improved a lot. We'd both indepdendently always wanted more than one and it was quite clear that Mara would do better with more children. I thought we were being careful in selecting Nia, but there were warning signs that Lee wasn't on board that I thought she could overcome because it was so clearly good for Mara and because Nia's such an easy, likeable kid. And then she quit therapy and things went downhill. Sort of rinse and repeat for the baby, but there it was more clear that I was being selfish because I wanted the baby and not taking on a foster placement because I didn't think Lee could handle that.
I'm not really sure what encouraged me to be optimistic about any of it when optimism isn't usually my strong suit. I'm to blame for most of the decisions even if Lee made them too, because I knew how badly things could go and Lee really didn't seem to believe or remember. I was just playing the odds and testing things out in ways that were probably not fair to anyone. Wouldn't Lee do better with an older, active, verbal child? No, not this one. Maybe with a baby who's going to attach and be loving and adorable? Well, sort of, but it's still too much work for months to learn to put diapers on the right way around, etc.
Lee was adamant that she wanted to try again when we did take on Nia, but realistically she probably wouldn't have chosen a child if I'd refused, which I'd been threatening to do if she didn't show improvement. I was just really unrealistic about how much she could manage, mostly because I wanted that to be true.
And having kids 3/4/5-year-old, of mostly 4/4/5, was just really hard and I think would have been hard for anyone. And because it was hard for me too but I managed it, I figured doing something easier than that would be much easier and that Lee wouldn't go back to being absolutely hopeless and helpless. To her credit, she's only done that intermittently, but I don't know if I've gotten much more kind or patient about it.
And I don't regret having had Val and Alex with us. I still see their grandma around town occasionally. I really hope they're doing well, though I may never know, but they did indeed have problems the next time they went into foster care that are just like the problems I'd thought we were protecting them from by keeping them in their home community and connected to their family. So that part at least was worthwhile, but it also probably did irreparable damage to our relationship to be as disconnected as we were during that time, and it's not as clear what to do about that. Having the girls leave doesn't feel like the right answer.
I'm to blame for most of the decisions even if Lee made them too, because I knew how badly things could go and Lee really didn't seem to believe or remember.
No. You are not. Lee is an adult too; absolving her by damning yourself is not right.
Also, I'm not going to say Lee is to blame for most of the decisions. I'm not going to flip the binary. Although my feeling is she has made more bad decisions in all this (and deluded ones) than you have.
(My strong feelings, let me show them to you.)
Oh, I'd totally agree with 200. But I had the option to be more obstructionist earlier on and thought about it and chose not to. She could have stepped up and acted like a mature adult at any time, still can. We'll see.
I don't regret saying yes to any of the kids because I can't regret that exactly. But there are a lot of things that could have gone better and I could have done some of them. Time doesn't work that way, so I just try to do things better now.
197: Thorn, this is probably a dumb question, but to what extent does Lee agree with your recollections of those past events? From what you've written, it sounds pretty difficult, but there were evidently some reasons for optimism.
174-175: Did anyone else have an unsettling moment when they wondered whether urple did anything else off his balcony on the 14th floor while drunk?
203: She thinks having Val and Alex here was the worst time of her life and that she checked out completely during it. I doubt she remembers all the same conversations I do or anything like that, but she believed things were horrible and untenable and that she couldn't keep living that way, and she also believed she was ready to try again way, way before I did. But she doesn't like to talk about this much. With Nia, she has big ups and downs, which I think correlate really well to when she's making some effort to be nice and when she isn't, though she thinks it's more random and that (again) it's understandable she'd want to step back and take a break from parenting sometimes. She agrees with most of what I say happened but not why.
Rather than commit to Nia, Lee would have preferred to keep auditioning kids in our home until she found one she clicked with. We have a fundamental disagreement about how foster care adoption should work (I see it as being about the kids and their needs, period, she considers herself "the customer" and thinks the experience should be focused on her and caseworkers should cater to her more) and I wasn't willing to keep playing with that, especially because I polled my group of secret fostering friends and most of them said they stopped feeling that "click" after a while, after more kids leave and you're guarding your heart. So I thought that it was better not to push for that and deal with the uncertainty but to take Nia, who needed to be around other black kids and who clicked immediately with Mara, and grow to love her, which is absolutely what I have done. Lee, though, still keeps here distance and doesn't take responsibility for that.
She did click with Selah, in part because I made her go do the first pickup by herself so she couldn't step back and rely on me, but mostly just because it's so easy with a child who needs you for everything and so much harder with one who's convinced she could run a household by herself and is much more suspicious of you. But part of the reason I was drawn to Selah was the hope that that click would happen and that it would make things easier for Lee and that maybe THAT would make things easier for Nia's place in the family.
204: Good luck. I'd guess that even if Lee thinks the ups and downs with Nia are random, and doesn't believe your explanations, it would still make sense to keep trying different things, to see if you can *accidentally* find the solutions to some of those problems.
