High Conflict Personality.

The blog that I had written before this last one I had mentioned the two more important thing to make your life not a living hell regarding dealing with ' the others' . Unfortunately, I had not been practicing those things recently. I've let myself slip into a bullshit mode and I am not exactly happy with it. Well, I should say I had..After my slip up of falling into the trap of the ex bullshit (with my ex)...I snapped back to reality.. I have recently been practicing my own advice to ignore any conflict between any ex's what-so-ever and it's been working out nicely.

I read this article today and I wanted to share it with my readers because I know that there's a lot of you that can appreciate this advice. This one piece of advice really opened my eyes because I had been trying so long to co-parent with everyone and it simply is not possible. Especially with the recent events that I had been dealing with my ex-husband and his new pleasant (ha) wife.

5. Stop Trying to Co-Parent
I have written before about the one-size-fits-all co-parenting model. Well-meaning, but misinformed therapists do targets of high-conflict personalities a huge disservice by advising them that they can, and should, co-parent. Certainly, an amicable co-parenting relationship is ideal for children. But attempts to co-parent with a narcissist or a borderline will keep you engaged in battle. You will forever be on the receiving end of intrusive, controlling, chaotic behaviors which will make you and your kids crazy.

Parallel parenting is the only paradigm that should be recommended to people with personality-disordered exes. This means that you give up the fantasy that you can have consistency between homes, or appear as a united front. The more high-conflict your ex is, the more you will need to separate yourself and your parenting. This may mean hosting separate birthday parties, scheduling separate parent-teacher conferences and not sharing what goes on in your house.

While you may feel that you are sending a terrible message to your children by limiting contact with their other parent, you are actually protecting them by minimizing the potential for conflict.

Targets of high-conflict personalities need to accept that it isn't wise to be "authentic" with their ex. Strategic, limited disclosures and iron-clad boundaries are essential tools in managing a high-conflict divorce. While it may seem paradoxical, true authenticity comes from holding on to one's sense of self while gracefully disengaging from a narcissist.

That bit up there is from an article on this website:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/virginia-gilbert-mft/what-therapists-dont-tell_b_2622776.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1299755b=facebook

When I had been trying so hard...Too hard, really, to co-parent I had been setting myself up for his up and down and all around personality & in the end...Guess who ended up getting hurt? Me. I allowed myself to do that and I will never do that again. 

Let me give you an example on what not to do, using your my own experience.

Example #1
At the time girlfriend of the ex had text messaging me asking me to do a favor for her and my ex husband. This woman and I have not gotten along since we were children. She is someone who is also a high conflict person and she is also considered a narcissist.  However, these past four years of my ex and his on again off again relationship I've tried to make it work.  I reached out to her for the millionth time telling her I was tired of the bull and I would really like to be able to co-parent with her and my ex husband and I also had reassured her that there's nothing between Patrick and I. You see, she throws a fit whenever I talk to my ex husband because she, for whatever reason, thinks we're going to fall in love again and get back together.

But shortly after that she had started bath mouthing me and I had found out about it and I had of course, fell into the trap and felt like I needed to defend myself. Stupid....Stupid...Stupid.

A) Someone who has never lked you is never going to like you. Do not fall into the trap of thinking things will be better when they're speaking nicely to you. They are the ones who will turn around and say something terrible about you as soon as you turn your back.

B) Never fell the need to defend yourself. If you know that they're lying, they're lying. Who are they lying to? People that do not know you. If you don't know these people....They don't matter.

Example #2
Shortly after the events up above my ex husband had started speaking to me again. He and his girlfriend had broke up. He had told me to not let the children around his ex girlfriend because of her ongoing drug problem. I listened to him and for those 4 days we co-parented really well, but it was only because I was pretty much the only one that was willing to listen to his upsets---or at least he knew he would get sympathy from me.

Just as I thought things were going well with him I had text messaged him about almost 9 one night to speak to him about some dance thing Miley was wanting to do. I didn't think the time would be an issue, but little did I know my ex husband and gotten back with that very girl he told me had a drug problem and "he wouldn't be friends with her until she was clean." and that next day he told me that I needed to stop talking to him and he was back to the same ol' man he usually has been.

My first mistake was letting him talk to me about his relationship problems.
My second mistake was actually thinking he would hold up on his end by keeping the children away from a drug addict.

And the biggest mistake I made was when I had called him out on getting married to her two weeks after he had told me to keep them away from her. Although, it did open my eyes. Because I am no longer practicing co-parenting with him. I let him know the staples of the childrens lives as far as school and sporting events go and I try to keep conversation as minimal as possible. NOT because he told me to, but because I don't want to. I will not allow myself to be his mental punching bag.

Since deciding to no longer try to 'make things work' and ignore him, I've been so much more happier. It might be hard at first because if you're like me you love to have everything work out...But sometimes things just don't. Let it go....and things will be better.

I stopped caring what people think!

SO this year I've decided I'm going to take a stand and not back out of doing the things I want to do. I will not let people intimidate me or make me feel like I don't belong. I also learned that I need to give people a chance here in Knoxville instead of automatically thinking that everyone that lives here is a snob.

I've lived here since January 2010 and belonged to this community, but never really felt like I belong.

Like I said in the beginning of this blog, I set a goal to be more involved and make new friends. Especially with the Moms in my town. When I signed up to be room Mom last year, I went to the meeting and signed up for the parties... and the only time anyone ever called me is because someone else backed out of doing something. But of course my snacks and drinks were always welcome, but not my physical participation.  When I signed up I wanted to try to not only do really fun things for our childrens holiday parties but I also wanted to try to make friends. I always walk up to the school with my boys and everyone else around me are talking to each other. Those are just some examples of my experience so far here.

So I've started finding a few people that seem friendly and start talking to them. I got on the conversation of house holds with this very friendly woman that told me she's jealous that we have so many kids. She wants eight, but has four. Very family oriented and a good person to hold a conversation to. I've also met another girl that we found common ground about our tattoos, she too felt like she was awkward because of them.

I also have been trying to talk to other parents at sports events and even offered to help the coach at a ball game this year! Which was totally huge for me!

As much as I have a big mouth and I tend to be confrontational, I do have a soft side of me that no one sees. Everyone always expects me to be the strong one that won't take anyone's shit, but I do strive to ' fit in' where I'm from by not changing and conform to the perfect hair, nice bod, seemingly super moms. I love my crazy hair, tattoos, silly sense of humor & I need to give other people a chance too.

SOOOO my goal is to make sure that when I sign up for room Mom, make sure I'm invited to all and any meetings, talk to everyone I see whether they look friendly or not, and just be confident at what kind of Mother and Wife I am!

It's not always roses and sunshine.

I haven't written in so long! I guess that's not such a bad thing. I miss blogging!

Today I was lost in my thoughts while I was doing dishes. I was thinking about this new school year that will be starting this week for our children, and I was thinking about Alexander and how young he was when Jay & I decided to move into together.

Alexander was in Kindergarten and is now going into the fourth grade, Joey, Miley, & Aiden will be in 1st, & Dylan will be on his 2nd year of pre-k. Judging by where we were & where we are now, is something I feel so blessed to be a part of and that would be being a Mother of a blended family!

But you know, I just wanted to point out despite me blasting my love for family on facebook & my blogs and to everything that lives.... (LOL).....I do have hardships. I do have things that I have to deal with on a daily basis that I constantly think about and they're things that I simply cannot control. I'm going to write for once about the negative.

The biggest downside of being a Mother to a blended child family, is dealing with "the others." Let's face it, it can get down right ugly sometimes, and sometimes for absolutely no reason at all. I have my struggles lately as to where I don't know why the others do some of the things they do. I don't mean for this to be a bashing blog, but this is just the genuine truth of my life. The part of our lives that will always exists whether we like it or not!

Which brings me to my next points and this is some very important advice to people who are in a blended family or will be marrying someone with children:


PICK YOUR BATTLES:  What I've learned is that there should be as little as possible contact with the other parent. Only things about the kids. Seriously. Pick your battles, if you hear that your ex husband/wife has been talking badly about you, just suck it up. THEY'RE YOUR EX FOR A REASON! Once you two split their opinion of you is nothing but that, an opinion. You need to learn to say, "who cares?"

DO NOT NIT PICK: Please, for the love of God, do not nit pick. Okay so little Johnny wasn't wearing socks that fit him. Throw the fucking pair away, and suck it up. It's not worth getting into an hour argument over some socks. Should you put your child in a pair of socks that fit, yes. But it doesn't mean it's worth fighting over, that kind of goes in with pick your battles.

and that's the end of that.


I seriously believe that I am so much more of a calm person when I practice those two key pieces of advice up there. I am not perfect and do go off into a rant sometimes, but usually I keep it pretty calm.


Now that we're done with that let's move on to the other thing the most important thing of all!

 

THE KIDS ARE THE #1 THING YOU SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT!

Remember to always focus on them. Being a MOTHER or FATHER should be about what you can do to make sure your children are going to have a safe and happy life. ...That they will have an open mind and be well behaved. Live your happy life with your amazing children, and don't worry about anything else.

Okay! I'm seriously done now, thank you for reading my ramblings.

 

 

xoxoxox

NIK

It's been such a long time..............

Wow, it's been such a long time since I've written a blog! I wish I could write more but I just do not have the time anymore!

So, since I've written a lot has been going on. We are ending the school year and also starting baseball season. Jay and I have signed 5 of the 6 up for baseball. It's been pretty time consuming, but fun so far!

This is Dylan's first year of t-ball and he's doing very well. I told my husband that I could quite possibly be his biggest fan. He will be finishing up his first year of pre-k and I really cannot even begin to tell you how overwhelming that is. I went from rocking this little butterball 9 month old to sleep, to tucking this big boy in that is excited for his next ball game.

Miley, Aiden, & Joseph are in coach pitch this year and this is a little bit harder for them. I'm very excited to see what they will accomplish.

As far as Alexander's team goes, they're 100% BETTER this year than they were last year. We don't have the same team as we did last year, but we do have a lot of the same players. This year they've won 2 out of the 3 games played.

Anyway, now that I've updated you all on their sports I have to make a special part of my blog deticated to my twins, Aiden and Miley.

Tomorrow my babies will be turning six years old. I find it so hard to wrap my mind around it because it seems like just yesterday I was getting my ultrasound finding out that I am having not one baby, but TWO babies. I was quite young when I had found out I was pregnant with them, but I also was married and ready to complete the family I had always wanted. I remember laying on the bed and seeing one sack with a bean in it..........then her moving the wand around (the vaginal wand, since it was 9 weeks when i found out) and seeing a second sack (or so I thought!) and asking..........."there's only one, right?!" I remember feeling the anxiety when she told me that there's two in there and wondering how the hell I was going to manage....I told the woman "I'm going to live in a box! I can't afford this!" But, I always seemed to be able to take care of my babies no matter the circumstances.

I can sit here and remember the sleepless nights where I was 18 years old taking care of a 3 year old and twin newborns all by myself. My marriage was quickly falling into the dark place and I would go days without sleep. Patrick did always work but if he wasn't working he was never home. I did have help during the day sometimes, from my sister or my sister in law (at the time) but most times it was just me and my children. I thank God for the strength he gave me to be able to care for my children the way the needed to be cared for. Sometimes I DO wish that I would have taken care of things better, but I have to remember that I really did the best I could and I cannot turn back time.

Well, that's all for now...


xoxoxox

Nikki