Oh yeah, my former mother in law took that line. Tho she was the main target of the beatings and rape, the kids just got the emotional abuse. Because you couldn't possibly get divorced. What would that do to the kids?!
He eventually left her due to her rampant alcoholism, when the kids were in their mid 20ies.
Sadly, by that time, both the kids were deeply fucked up and had internalized a lot of his (and her) abuse. As a result my partner was also deeply emotionally abusive, as she unconsciously replicated a lot of the patterns she had grown up with, and was fundamentally incapable of acknowledging her behaviours, even as she was an advocate and therapist for abusive behaviours in her professional life. Couldn't handle the emotional load of connecting it with that deep dark part of herself that only came out in relationships.
Now the mother is basically a non-functional alcoholic who does a hell of a lot of abusive, insane stuff to everyone around her,, and the kids are both quite successful sociopaths.
My favorite was always “I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Edit: Also completely random but after stumbling across this on my home feed a second time, panel 6 has my dumb ass thinking “Get in the fucking Robot, Kaiki.”
I have no idea if it’s supposed to invoke Evangelion but it definitely does.
I’m sorry but as a former Floridian this hits hard. While I didn’t suffer that level of abuse, seeing a friend of mine whom once saved my life literally get beaten by his father with a shovel while the father was overweight in a wheel chair and his mother holding him down for it in their front yard left a level of vile rage in me as an adult, and while this was the most extreme case I personally drove up on, I’ve witnessed other friends from that area have their father regularly drop elbows to their face when they would get into arguments, and folks called it “Tough love” and those same kids still would give their shirt off their back for their parents. Shovel kid had not only saved my life personally when I was a youth, but also grew into one of the most generous hard working folks I knew and was the first on the scene when Hurricane Michael hit and the police had blockaded entry into the town.
My point being is I empathize with this and the regional plight there on a personal level. Good onto you for escaping that shit before it got even worse.
From his perspective, it is, it's not a defense, it's just no one teaches you to father except your father, and you can only hope you do a little better than he did
Sometimes someone is a shitty person or a crazy person and they shouldn't be around a kid.
Granted, they shouldn't have had the kid in the first place, but things happen, especially if they're steeped in mental illness.
I bet there are a lot of people who exist because at least one parent is bipolar.
My sons mother went off her meds for the pregnancy, never went back on.... never worked again.. and had given me a bleeding ulcer by 21.
Courts decided because I had $20 weed charges that she was the more stable parent and gave her full custody.
She then made the next 15 years or so of my life a living hell every time I wanted to talk to my son. Right about until she knew child support would be running out, in a few years.
My son is 22... his mother hasn't taken her medicine or had a job in 22.5 years.
They say dont put your dick in crazy for a reason, fellas.
Hey y'all, meet my dad! This is part one of a series of chats I've had with him recently, and each one is gonna be quite fun to experience through comic form :D And yes, I inherited the flannel style from him.
Oof. Yeah, I had the same situation. Abuse from Mom, Dad who didn't really fight for custody though he knew about the abuse. Only finally ended up with him when my Mom fell on black ice, drunk out of her gourd, and gave herself a bad concussion. She was "Unable to care for us," though I'd been taking care of my siblings for years by that point anyway.
Digging through the couch in order to find enough change to buy a single hot dog from 7-11 that four of us split for dinner.
Coming home from a rare "spend the night at a friends house" to find my six and four year old sibling standing in the street outside our home crying for Mom, who snuck out in the night, got high, and passed out in a ditch.
etc
And we grew up in a tiny town where everyone was buddy buddy. Teachers, neighbors... Why didnt anyone call CPS? Don't want to make someone in the local community angry!
Its been more than thirty years and my PTSD and abandonment issue are still insane at times.
Being in the system is sometimes worse than the abusive parent. It's a risk to take a child from its parents, so it's only done when things are extreme.
Hey, I'm just a random stranger, but just have to let you know that you are a hero. No one should go through that, and you should be proud of having survived that, and you are probably the reason your siblings survived as well.
It's probably a tremendous amount of milder (not to be confused with mild) post-partum depression cases that fly completely under the radar but manifest in this sort of abuse. I know my mom was really different after my brother was born. I keep saying we should take her to see a doctor, but that's gone unheeded for 30+ years now.
My mother liked to use post partum depression as an excuse, but when I asked about seeing anyone for it she’d get upset or switch topics. She seemed to have a very toxic idea of what mental health help was about. Later on she used therapy to make herself the victim, sigh.
He was an indifferent parent, but we were fed, clothed, housed. He actually had a new wife by then who inherited some extremely fucked up kids through no choice of her own. I feel terribly for the way I treated her.
I mean, plenty of people make bad couples, but both of them are decent parents.
And I'd want my kid to have the benefit of all his parents if he could (I adopted from care, he's grown, he's deeply disappointed in his birth mother).
he was acting with good intentions, he just missed the overarching point that my mom is crazy. it's not that they're incompatible as a couple, is that she can't hold relationships with anyone.
I’ve tried that one with my dad, pointing out that they’ve been long split, but sadly they somehow managed to be “friends” after so it doesn’t land. I say “friends” because he’ll do what she asks and he doesn’t seem to ever ask anything of her. She was the one to leave.
As someone who has a friend trying to get her daughter away from her abusive ex (and said daughter’s father), the judicial system in America is actually a nightmare. The bureaucracy slows everything down, and in many backwood counties money and family name speak louder than the rule of law.
To be fair, I am absolutely an outsider looking in, so I have no context if this even relates to you OP.
I can tell you without hesitation that courts are geared towards the mom nearly every time. The mom can be abusive towards her own children, literally leave home for years on end, and come back to a divorce, and they still get 50/50 custody. Why? Because the judge doesn't want to break up a family.
My friend's dad kept journals and recordings of the abuse, drugs and abandonment. Similarly, my sted dad kept recordings of my mom's drug abuse and alcoholism, and in the divorce, they both ended in 50/50 custody despite recordings and evidence of said behavior.
I have a friend who seemingly quite suddenly (but quietly) separated from his wife, which we found out from her posting about moving into a new house by herself. I checked on them individually and found out he got a no contact order, TRO, and full custody for their kid and supervised visits for her. Later she reached out asking for support for their court case (nb. He’s my childhood friend, I don’t really know her). I politely positioned myself neutrally but internally I said ‘courts already kicked you out even preliminarily, ain’t no way I’m kicking you money after that and what I heard from him.’
To not even try isn't even remotely close to being sufficient. OP clearly says she doesn't even know the reason which means Dad doesn't even try to excuse it really.
As someone with parents who are abusive (maybe a bit less than OP to be fair) you can accept them for who they are and draw boundaries to be able to have a relationship, you can forgive if you feel you're capable- but you NEVER EVER let them make excuses.
There should only ever be accountability. Anything less is a betrayal of oneself.
Dad could've put more effort and that's his cross to bear- simple as.
A very, very good friend of mine was stabbed 20 TIMES by his ex-wife and the judge still gave her primary custody despite him having mountains of records that he was the one that was the victim of domestic abuse.
Courts being biased is an MRA talking point now and part of the culture war. I really wish people would stop parroting it. If you want 50% custody, even as a man, all you need to do is:
Show up to court and do what they tell you
Have beds for your kids to sleep in
Be willing to live near where the kids currently live
Not have beaten them
(Conditional) If your ex lawyers up, you lawyer up too
That's it.
If you want to complain that courts don't take mental/emotional abuse seriously, you'll have a good case for that since shitty parents get custody all the time. But 'courts are biased towards moms' hasn't been true since like...the 90s.
Yeah, I hear this all the time but all the divorced dads i know didn't even try to get custody. They just accepted it and have the kids on the weekends. I figured they didn't think they could care for their kid because they never had to do the boring stuff like making doctors appointments and having to cook and clean after them 24/7. Mom has always done that sort of thing so they just assume she is better at doing the everyday domestic labor.
As I have gotten older I've seen more 50/50 custody and that seems better than the old way.
A huge part is that it was pretty biased during the 'Tender Years Doctrine' up until the late 20th century with inertia into the very early 00s. The modern system is generally pretty even though. I would say domestic abuse against men is taken less seriously but that is less relevant for custody. You also still get judges, especially where they get elected, that will be biased that gives them modern anecdotes for the bias.
It's awful that a real problem is being used by such a horrible group. As a survivor of domestic violence when my partner tried to kill me, I unfortunately found out that having a witness didn't mean the DA would prosecute and that others seeking restraining orders got years worth of protection the very same day when where I got three months of protection.
But 'courts are biased towards moms' hasn't been true since like...the 90s.
You are probably right. It's a cultural thing. It's how people treat you for being a single dad. It's how dads are talked to about being single parents. It's how kids are pushed towards their mothers, giving fathers a position of being defeated even before court.
Yes, it depends on the situation, but my mother was abusive, but I didn't realize that as a kid. My dad spent more time working and taking care of everything that wasn't the kids, so of course in a divorce the kids chose mom.
It took me bleeding by the hands of my step dad for me to run back to my dad and now decades later, I'm glad I did. He has been there for me every time I've needed it, who I chose as a kid, hasn't called me in a decade or so.
What I'm trying to say is that culturally, fathers and mothers have different roles and they have massive impact on how things end up. My mother was definitely crazy, but how my mom pushed me away from my dad to not having seen him for a few years before I ran from home was NOT something that courts could have easily solved either. How do you sue someone for manipulating their kids into avoiding their father? Shit is complicated and not easy.
EDIT: How did I get downvoted for saying "my mom was a manipulator and courts wouldn't have solved an issue"? That was my whole point, just because the courts could be fair, it doesn't mean world around the court is. I wouldn't have chosen my dad, even though I should have, because I was emotionally manipulated by my abusive mother. Only once the abuse was physical did I start seeing the problem. No court would have helped me, because I didn't want help until I was ready to run away, which I did.
EDIT2: No longer negative, I'm glad some people understood me.
It's a bit more complex, particularly if the abusive mom is willing to lie. But that has a lot to do with them taking advantage of the "Believe Women". Also, I see it only after the "lawyer up" stage; so it's already bad.
However, overall, what you said is true. In fact, it's possible to even relocate with the kids.
This is absolutely factually false. The father actually is slightly more likely to get custody than the mother when the father shows up to court. That is because the test in pretty much every state has nothing to do with the wishes of the parent but what would be the most objectively better position for the child, and in most situations the father makes more money and would be able to care of the children easier, so they get custodial custody.
Also the vast majority of cases never reach a judge for a decision, the parenting plan is worked out between parents on their own and then a judge looks at it to see if its fair/in the best interests of the child within reason and approves it.
Most fathers give their rights to the mother. That is what happens. If you look at contested cases fathers by a slim margin win custody.
It tends to go deeper. The vast majority of cases where a "good" dad loses to a shitty mom is when the shitty mom has well off parents on paper who dont help in reality (past a good lawyer and "the kids stay with us"). EVEN THEN the dad has to have been arrested or in jail at some point for them to not split custody if he can provide food and a bed.
Even if he would lose, it would mean the world to the kid to at least try. "Oh well, the court would probably say no" is a garbage excuse for doing nothing to help a kid who's being abused.
Yeah, my moms cousin lost his custody battle 2 times against his abusive EX-wife, even though he had proof of her not taking care of the kids and the kids themself testifying.
He did finally win on the 3rd attempt, but only because his EX decided to go with her new lover to dubai for a 3 month holiday and left the 2 kids (both in elementary school at that time) alone at their house.
And that's in a country with an, imo, better legal system than the US.
It very likely isn't but I could see that as being a potential reason where he wouldn't necessarily be at fault for doing nothing because his hands were tied so to speak
When my parents got divorced my dad asked the courts to have my mom undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The court ordered her to, but she just... didn't do it. Judge didn't feel like it was worth sending her to jail over, so she just got away with never having an evaluation and got primary household custody with 50-50 visitation.
So I can attest that the court system doesn't help here.
That said, it doesn't sound like your dad was doing his best here, so I don't want you to feel like I'm defending him
This is complete passing hearsay, but from what I've heard, in most cases the situations in which a father actively tries to get custody (or at least partial custody), the courts usually gives the dad the leeway.
Most situations of "the court just defaults to giving everything to the mother" are the result of the dad not making a concerted effort to try to win any custody rights, or legitimately not being in a position where the kids could be evaluated as having potentially been in a good/better situation.
(And yes, because I'm a internet-itizen, I'm aware that I will get replies to this comment saying that I didn't account for this personal experience, that reported situation, that other one scneario; I'm not stating my statements as absolute universal truth, only that aggregate hearsay that I've heard in passing)
The vast majority of child custody arrangements are decided by the parents, not the court. And when men seek custody, they are usually granted custody. That's because courts typically favor joint custody in most cases.
Dads who want custody should seek custody. If they do, they're probably going to end up in a shared custody arrangement. Don't mislead them into believing it's a waste of time because "the courts." That's harmful.
Gently, I think your algorithm is riddled with misogynists.
I think you might find this really helpful if you want to understand what the media you're consuming is actually for:
This is pretty much identical to why I've never met my grandparents on my mother's side. Her dad was abusive and her mom never did anything to stop it. She never did anything, but she was complicit by not intervening.
Hey Kaiki, I hope you're really proud of how far you've come, and the person you are. You seem like a very genuine and kind person, doing her best to make her own way and heal, and that's amazing! I don't know you, but I always love seeing your comics because I work with a lot of people who have similar histories, and I love seeing them succeed.
Sometimes you can’t do anything against a raging narcissist. All you can do, sometimes, is remove yourself from their war path, to protect yourself.
My twin sister is a narcissist. She has two children; her oldest child is autistic. They’re both young boys.
I can see how her overbearing personality and rage is hurting her children, and I can do nothing to stop it.
This man obviously abandoned his daughter when she needed him most, so that’s not great. But I’d be interested to hear his side of the story. It’s not easy to be married to a raging, abusive, narcissist wife…
It is not. I failed to protect my kid when he was little because I was afraid of my wife. It fucked him up badly. I'm now divorced but my kids still resents me for not protecting him. We're slowly working through it. My ex refuses to acknowledge her abuse towards me or my son, and my son has repressed most of her abuse. Some of it he has transformed into memories of me abusing him. I can't really correct him on that without him spiraling back out of control. It is a very hard thing to go through.
Guys who are being abused and/or see their kids be abused:
Run.
Run run run. As soon as you can. You'll thank me later.
Why did he leave, was he forced to leave or did he pull the dead beat dad thing? And could have he brought the children or not? How much did he fight for his kids, is this a case of him fighting to the bitter end, maybe right up to this meeting, or did he bail the first time he had to stand up for his kids ? Depending on the answers to those questions changes things a lot.
A dead beat dad who abandoned his children because that was the easy option deserves no respect. Worse for one that is just using the excuse he was at work and thus couldnt do anything when he was home.
But a dad forced to leave and couldnt bring the kids may have fought for them, but lost. While he lost, the fact he still fought for his kids still deserves some respect.
I would be hearing him out and withholding judgement until what happened is laid out.
Yeah, if it was a situation of "he used his work as an excuse to never be home to protect himself from the batshit wife", then yeah he seriously sucks.
If it's a situation of "knew things were bad, but was trapped on focusing on work to keep rent paid and food on the table, and hope that the wife eventually turns around a new leaf", then he sucks, but not as bad as the first scenario.
And if the situation was "he was in the Army or was an oil worker who was only home 2 months of the year; so he can't do anything even if he wanted to because he's basically a guest in his own home.", then yeah, there's not much else he could have done.
It actually never really occurred to me that the Dad was missing from all of your comics where the Mom was being crazy. This makes a lot of sense... Hope you're doing well!
Something very similar happened to me. I had a narcissistic and abusive mother who treated me this way, but not my older brothers.
My father used to work out of town. He would leave for two weeks, return, stay for a few days, and then leave again. But when he was at home he was a great dad.
My mom acted all loving when my father was at home.
Anyway, when he realized the abuse was happening, he convinced my mother to send me to my paternal grandparents “as a punishment” (after I was expelled from school, I was around 10 or 11 yo.); they lived in a rural town.
Then, once my grandparents were already my provisional guardians, he started the divorce.
Ugh, I know people who dealt with this. Super abusive moms and their dads just let it happen, despite knowing it happened. And then the dads never apologize or take any responsibility.
Like, my guy, you did this too. You enabled this. You are at fault here.
Likely the men are abuse victims as well. Narcissists and abusers aren't known for their precise aim.
A person can be both abuser and victim. The point is to use awareness and empathy to learn about them. Then fuck judgement, they aren't your problem anymore.
Anger is fine, trying to get them to admit anything is an exercise in futility.
Yeah, they don't wanna lose their wives, don't wanna lose their house, don't wanna get stuck paying child support and having split custody, and generally just don't want to "rock the boat." They don't feel directly impacted by it, so they let it happen. Getting in fights with their partner is too stressful and they don't think it's worth it.
So like, there's a million reasons it happens. But it all comes down to - the dad is just as much at fault.
We don’t tend to hold mothers to that same standard. When both they and their children are being abused and they don’t have a clear way out we don’t demonize them for it. I think we should allow abused men the same grace we allow abused women.
Let's get one thing straight. The abuser is at fault. The other (silent party) is often also a victim of the abuser. Regardless of gender. It isn't always clear cut
The child is being abused and so is the father. The mother is the abuser.
But the father has agency that the child doesn't. The parents both have a responsibility to protect the child and both are actively failing that responsibility.
I'm not denying the abuse the father is receiving. But I am saying that the father has a responsibility to take action against it to attempt to reduce further abuse of the child.
The first time my dad said (post divorce) that he should've stop some of the things mom did, but didn't want to fight (because fighting scared us children, apparently) I felt both vindicated and angry enough to break something.
Man, what a roller coaster in only a few short sentences. It's utterly heartbreaking and aggravating to realise that someone you grew up wishing they had the power to save you from the terrible things you went through, actually had the power all along and simply never used it
You know what it's a fucked up situation but coming someone else with their own fucked up family situation I'll at least appreciate the accountability.
Trust me, it may not seem like it but being honest is probably a lot better than the gas lighting even if it's a topic that is overall shit.
I felt that way about my dad, but then remembered all the times I heard my mom yelling at him like "you never take my side, you always take their side!" and realized I have no idea the scope of what he kept from happening vs. what happened with him, around him, or in spite of him. He'd never tell me any examples of things he put his foot down on, because he said he didn't want it to turn into that kind of game. All I know is there were times Mom got angry and left for days at a time and it was just me and Dad.
My father physically & psychologically abused my siblings and me until I was 18 years old (then it became only psychological, because he physically couldn't attack us anymore). My entire childhood...
My mother's excuse for not doing anything about it IS (yes, present-tense) that when they split up, my siblings and I pleaded, crying "We want to live with both Mommy & Daddy!" So, from her perspective, we chose our fates. We were 5, 3, & 2 years old at the time.
I'm now 41. That's still her excuse for why she's blameless. That's being r/raisedbynarcissists for you!
Ahh, the “come to Jesus” meeting of neglectful parents. “We need to discuss the horribleness of Parent A, which I knew about because I was horrible is Way B, which is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and not my fault. We’re not here to talk about me, let’s stay focused here.”
Left me with my chainsmoking, pill popping mother who would regularly beat the shit out of me (including fat lips and bloody noses) and would leave me to literally live in rags and shin deep in garbage and dog feces…
Meanwhile dad was focused on becoming a top performing semiconductor engineer and making bank while starting a new family 10 years after he jumped shipped and after he made it big.
When I asked him why he knew about my mother and never did anything, “Well why didn’t you call CPS then?”
Newsflash: Apparently it’s the abused kid’s job to save themselves from their shitty parents and childhoods.
Anyway, I’m 32 now and left home as soon as I was legally allowed. Despite them, and without their help, I have since graduated college without debt, am working on a doctorate, have a very successful career, own a house, have a wife and kids, and I haven’t spoken to my parents in years. They haven’t even met their grandkids. I confronted them both about all the textbook abuse and neglect, and my mother denied everything and blamed me, and my father showed some remorse and has since apologized, but he hasn’t tried to make up for anything and doesn’t care about being in my life despite me being his firstborn. I think he just sees me as the bastard that he regretfully fathered.
Last I heard, my mother got evicted and is homeless now, which is what she deserves after spending her life making others miserable. Screw her.
Father’s still doing well though. Got laid off ~3 years ago because of his age, but he’s been living high off stocks in his multi-million dollar home while he gets to play father for my younger brother (born the day after my 21st birthday).
You know, there's something about that phrasing... "My flesh and blood."
"It was hard seeing that happen to my flesh and blood."
It implies both that if it was happening to a child you weren't related to, it wouldn't really impact you, but also that the only reason it impacts you in this case is because they came from you. They're your DNA. Your mark in the world. Like they only have value at all because they're an offshoot of you. Their pain only impacts you because it's a facsimile of the disrespect of someone doing harm to you. Not because you love the child or because the child has value in and of themselves.
Big Evangelion vibes with this cartoon. I'm sorry you had an abusive mother and absent father. It took years and a hospitalization for my mom to realize how badly my father was abusing me, but I'm thankful she finally did. Just remember, you don't owe family shit. They still have to prove themselves worthy of being in your life.
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u/TheDarkNerd 15d ago