A gentler interpretation might be that she doesn’t want her own daughters to face this kind of criticism from their future husbands because she believes this is what marriage is and has no idea how f***ed up her own marriage is.
So she believes she is being helpful because she doesn’t understand the concept of being in a relationship where the other person accepts your imperfections.
This is a great opportunity to troll that therapist. Get her to tell him that she thought about what he said and has decided to worship Trent Reznor as her personal lord and savior. His music really speaks to her, etc.
You folks are so kind for helping this girl out of her situation. Really nice to have a reminder that there are good people in the world to try to balance out all the a-holes like FM seems to be.
Goddaughter mentioned “the bubble in her tire”.
-The WHAT?
Oh, it’s just a little bubble from when I bumped into a curb. It’s fine though, I’ve been driving with it since April! It’s my cute little tire bubble.
Anyway we have a $244 tire replacement scheduled for 1 PM tomorrow and she’s driving our car to work. Told her in general, whatever she wants to do with our advice is her deal. This one is a requirement.
The replacement is her bill to foot. I know she still has something in the vicinity of $15k and is working ~40 hours/week until school starts and she lowers hours, it’s within her capacity.
you don’t f around with tires that are just waiting to fail
Chatting with Goddaughter this morning about her upcoming trip to her hometown and likely as part of it, 30 minutes to grab coffee with her little sister and Former Mother.
She’s not super excited about it. In my opinion, she shouldn’t go at this time, but I’ve kept a gentle hand around pressuring her to reduce contact. Perhaps she’s feeling that lowering contact any more will inevitably totally sever that tie, and I don’t blame her. We’ve given her some advice regarding setting and maintaining her boundaries.
She said, “I’m going to make sure it’s not more than 30 minutes and get home as soon as possible.”
Partner and I shared a look that both our hearts were melting again.
We recently surprised her by printing out a photo of the 3 of us and put it in a photo frame. She just bought a bisexual flag with the intent to hang it in her room, but we offered to add it to our LGBTQ+ flag outside if she wants. Hasn’t decided yet. But it’s been good progress making her feel at home.
We’ve been making better progress with her health than her parents ever did. Our early suspicion is that the narrower diagnosis of her long COVID-derived dysautonomia is Addison’s disease. We’re still working to get her into the long COVID rehab clinic, but it’s in motion. Next up is to get a gyno to diagnose/disprove her suspected endometriosis, which parents never helped her address. While we wait for the rehab clinic, we are getting her mild exercise via lunchtime/after work 15-minute walks and playing some VR games that get her heart rate up to 110-120. She also just bought an exercise bike off Facebook for $50, as she has bad knees where running isn’t great.
Hopefully the 30 minutes has a hard stop built in. If there isn’t, then build in a fake one.
Good work
Yep, after her haircut she has “another appointment” back in our town that she needs to leave for pretty soon.
Edit: her town
Goddaughter just called us while leaving her coffee meetup with Former Mother (FM) and younger sister, which went longer than planned but eventually she did make her excuse and left.
It was a mixed bag. Goddaughter first stopped by the house to pick up a few things. Former Father (FF) was there, gave her a hug, asked how her car was running, then disappeared into the house. No “I love you”, “we miss you”, anything.
Went to get coffee, made small talk for a few minutes. Younger sister left to use the bathroom. FM told Goddaughter, “By the way, there’s a change to the law, we can kick you off our health insurance anytime.”
(I’m unclear if FM was lying or merely wrong. I’d consider her moderately stupid, and it’s very possible she misunderstood FF saying “we can kick her off [any year].”)
Either way, it was a clear threat that she’d be removed for next year. Goddaughter reminded FM that FM promised she’d have health insurance for next year. Goddaughter asked why, if FM cares about her, she’s threatening to kick her off when she has dysautonomia/possibly Addison’s and endometriosis and ADHD and depression/anxiety.
Dudes, FM said to her daughter, "I didn’t know you were so sick! When did all this happen?" This girl had lived under FM’s roof and care for 18 years and with a direct daily line of communication for 2 more years and she had no idea what health issues her own daughter has. Literally the only change to her health is a hunch regarding a narrower diagnosis for her broadly-defined dysautonomia.
Anyway, Goddaughter’s headed back now. I think I will advise her to text FM the following:
“I’m hoping that you will let me stay on the health insurance for next year. I have a lot of health needs, and you said you’d like to make sure I stay on good health insurance. I’d like that too. If you decide you’re going to kick me off of your insurance, please let me know ASAP, as I’ll have to pay for a plan of my own under Obamacare and hope it covers my issues. The best outcome to my health is to stay on your insurance, but it is your decision what to do. Please let me know by the end of October if I need to find my own insurance.”
(Worth noting that FM/FF are far-right MAGA conservatives, so their daughter getting Obamacare seems like a good boogeyman for them. I intentionally didn’t say “ACA”.)
That’s because they call it Obamacare, not ACA.
I may have to figure out time to get to Missouri to go have an argument with M’s college. Financial Aid has fucked around for a month asking for paperwork, then saying oh, never mind, we have it and then asking for it again. Rinse and repeat about every 4 days for a month. The bursar’s office sent out a statement on school costs, decided “there’s no financial aid here” and tacked on a $40 service fee and said “you need to pay $460 to stay registered for classes, or you’ll be dropped on Tuesday.”
Financial Aid still hasn’t processed paperwork, but says “don’t worry, you’ll get financial aid” but can’t say when it will actually happen. The bursar’s office says “that’s not our problem, you need to pay for school and we’re not waiving the fee.” M is hyper-stressed from a week on a cruise, 3 days of trying to get back from Florida with everyone, and then m being super bitchy at random and apparently having a “manic” episode one morning. Which, that needs to be a trip as well but I only have so much time available and an intern for 23 more days so that’s 23 days at a minimum before I can cut loose and go down and deal with stuff while working remote.
Don’t punch the bursar, sir.
Ours is still waiting on FAFSA things to process.
I have a guest access to her financial aid/tuition balance/etc. The only thing she didn’t want me to have access to was her grades, as apparently her parents would get on her ass about an A- or a B+. Told her that I expect her to come to us before she might fail a class, because this affects us and her living here. Otherwise, her college is her deal unless she wants to tell us things.
But her student account shows she still has to submit her FAFSA… she tells me that it’s definitely on track and just the “unusual circumstances” is making it look off, so I’m trusting her.
Just recalled something from our debrief after the visit with Goddaughter’s mom.
Mom was supposed to give her some of Goddaughter’s stuff that was left behind. The order of events was brief stop at house, out for coffee, haircut, supposed to come back home. Mom “forgot” to give her the stuff and suggested she come back to the house.
Goddaughter was going to, then thought about how mom exploded last time she’d cut her hair. This time it’s shorter than she’s ever had it (barely above her shoulders!) and colored auburn rather than her natural blonde. Goddaughter decided to make an excuse to avoid having another fight over her hair and came back home, leaving her stuff.
She felt really guilty over it. I told her, “This isn’t your fault. This is due to your mom abusing you in the past. You don’t consider it safe to be around her with your new hair because of her actions. If you felt safe around your mother, she would have been able to see her daughter a little more today, but you didn’t. We know you weren’t being spiteful, hell, you feel guilty right now. You knew that showing your mom you’d changed your hair without her permission would have caused a fight and I don’t blame you for coming right back.”
She thought on that for a while. Told me she hadn’t considered it from the viewpoint of her worrying about her own safety. She was thinking about how she wasn’t being a good daughter and was feeling like she owes her mom something.
Good day for her to have therapy tomorrow!
She don’t owe her mom shit.
Tell her I said that.
I hope one day she will realize that she never had a mother.
Goddaughter decided to text Former Father (FF) today. His favorite band of all time is performing half an hour away from him in a few months. She texted the link, said I thought of you and thought you might want to go! It was her first time reaching out to him since May. She saw him for a minute one time while at the house, and otherwise had a 30-second phone call where he told her she was removed from everything financially possible and hung up.
Received back a thumbs-up. Fucking prick. This is your daughter trying to reach out to you.
I think, while she was clearly disappointed and upset, she pretty much expected that response. Didn’t seem at all surprised, just a grimace and sad eyes and “Yep, that’s my dad.” Told her, he’s excessively proud and had his ego bruised because you didn’t obey. Now he’s giving you the silent treatment like a mean girl, and while you had no obligation to reach out to him, you did the thing. FF decided to give his daughter the bare minimum acknowledgement that he saw the message and didn’t want to respond.
Related topic, we finally found out why her college hasn’t processed her FAFSA. We had to call and wait to find out since there was nothing in an email or on their portal telling us why.
Apparently we haven’t given enough detail on her dad’s abuse. Her personal statements have a lot of information about her mother’s abuse and touch on her dad. They said they need more information on how her dad specifically abused her. Prove you’re traumatized enough to learn here! We need to see more trauma!
It seems like FAFSA processing is way behind this year. Even for “normal” cases like the bonus kids’ best friend who has no special circumstances, it took 6 tries for her application to finally go through because she was getting questioned about different things and so all her financial aid awards got held up.
This may be the first time I’ve disagreed with you (in THIS thread). When your goddaughter goes no-contact with FF, it means no-contact. She (or you) will NEVER get the response that you desire or are looking for, so it becomes a lot of wasted emotional energy on your side. Add in the impersonal, limiting, and instant nature of texting, then any (or no) response could be interpreted many different ways.
While I do not embrace FF, you do not know what it’s really like to walk in his shoes. It is easy to simplify another person when in fact everyone is much more complex than we give them credit as we are not in their head. Similar to categorizing people on a message board.
To be clear, I did not encourage her to contact FF. She told me that she had already done so.
Follow-up to this:
21 days later - the “investigation” is complete. “The account was opened online with your name and your SSN, so it’s valid, it definitely wasn’t fraud.” . No contact with m, no asking hey, you said this account was fraud, can you give us some details?
My letter in response will go out Monday morning. It will … not be kind.
Such a cautionary tale. Sorry for all the BS, which you know will all get sorted out…eventually. Perhaps with legal intervention which should not have been necessary.
Insane. So I can just rack up cards in somebody else’s name and it’s fully legit? Good to know, I’m off to the dark web.