Dad's Attempts At Alienation

My dad (Brian Wolferts) sought my total isolation from my mother and anyone in her life, hoping that I would discover for myself his idea that my mom (Michelle) was “mentally ill” and “damned.” It was obvious to me that he needed me to have as little time as possible with my mother in order to make his implanted ideas stick easier, because the reality of time with my mom was completely opposite to what he kept repeating about her.

He told me the only way that I would discover for myself that she's "mentally ill" is if I cut off every tie not only with mom, but with her family, her friends, anyone in any of my wards I’ve lived in, anyone from her work field or people she knows from the ward, etc. For me to even begin to know "what she’s done, and the kind of person she really is". Because “they’ll all defend her because she’s got them thinking she’s the victim.” He would also tell us that she wasn't a good mother, and didn't really love us because of the way she tried to destroy our relationship with him. I have endured countless hours of my dad railing and lecturing us about our mom about all these things and many, many more. Yet she never tried to alienate us from him like he claims. I find it absolutely mind-boggling how much he accuses her now of doing the exact things he has done my entire life. I'm thankful that his attempts to alienate me from my mom didn't work.

When I say his attempts to alienate me from her 'didn't work,' I mean that they didn't keep me from wanting a relationship with her. I'm very thankful for that. But I didn't survive his alienation attempts without being affected. Dad tried as hard as he could to make us hate our mom. He found every excuse possible to sneak my mother into every subject, whether it was suggesting how awful a driver she was to accusing her of being mentally unstable and unfit to raise us. He always spoke negatively about our mom to us, and it was apparent that our dad wanted us to hate her. He incessantly channeled rage and abhorrence at us in hopes that we would channel it to her--it was apparent to me that the end goal of his raging to us was to get to Mom. It seems he wanted us to blame her for our pain he was causing us. It hurt us to have him talking about her so horribly (and I think it hurts any child to hear any parent talking bad about the other).

We knew Dad was not telling the truth. My sisters and I lived with our mom for six years, then visited her for the remaining four, and we never heard a negative remark against my father from my mom, even when we cried to her about the scary things he was saying and doing. She was gentle and kind our whole lives. I knew that his attempts to make us believe something untrue about Mom were wrong. The bad things my dad kept trying to convince us Mom was doing were almost verbatim what he was doing and had been doing for years. 

It was easy to not internalize the falsehoods about my mom, because there was such a stark contrast between her true self and what Dad kept trying to make us believe about her. With that being said, though: there were times that it seemed that it would be so much easier to earn our dad's love and stop his attacks if we started hating her, but we knew it wasn't right to hate our mom, and we didn't want to! All of this constant negativity toward my mom that my dad openly fostered ever since they first separated brought us all immense internal pain. 

In my personal experience (and I know Sydney and Dani feel the same way) I didn't want to be a vessel that channeled my dad's hatred to our mom--or anyone else for that matter--and so I turned the hatred inward. It seemed like the solution at first, but it didn't take much time to wear on me. My self-esteem, my faith in my talents, my belief that I was a good person--all of that began to decay. I've thought a lot about it, and I think that my dad fosters the idea in all of the people he lives with that they somehow deserve the horrible treatment he inflicts upon them. Because people with little or no self-esteem don't fight back. 

What motivates him to do this?
I believe that my dad has always been someone who accuses others of the behavior that he himself has exhibited. He has always sought to paint my mom in a bad light and sought to get us to believe that she wanted us to hate him when it was perfectly clear to us that he wanted US to hate HER.  Another motivation he might have to claim my mom has sought to alienate us is because he has known all along that my mom knows him and all his problems intimately. She KNOWS him. He did many of his worst abuses to her or to us in front of her. I witnessed his abuses firsthand, and some of them I only recently discovered when a box of old documents was found.

If I were a mom who wanted to protect her children from a possible predator (who should be a trusted adult in their world, but instead is a risk to children), I would have a very difficult time making sure I didn't alienate my kids. I don't know how my mom did it. I know it must have been hard for her. I look back on all the many times we would come home from the weekend at Dad's, and as soon as we were safe at home our walls would come down. We would be crying and emotionally drained, and we would talk to our mom about everything. Many times, I recall her saying things such as "I know it's hard, but look at the bright side, girls." When the time came for our next visit with him, and we expressed that we didn't want to go, she would say things like, "I'm sure your dad has something really fun planned!" And "It's only a weekend. Try to enjoy your time with him."

We would also beg her to tell us what was going on in the courts, because all we knew about the courts came from Dad's rants, and he would say a lot of scary things such as, "The courts are on my side" "The courts are going to punish your mom" "I'm the only one keeping them from throwing your mom in jail". As a young child, those things were terrifying! We would beg Mom to tell us what was really going on, hoping and praying that what he was terrorizing us with wasn't true. "I don't know why he's saying that. That isn't going to happen," she would say gently. "Then what IS going on?" We would ask, and she would say she couldn't tell us, though she wished she could. I know for a fact that the officials tell parents to keep their children out of the court conflict, which is what my mom did, and what my dad definitely didn't do.

My dad would say the reason why my mom was hated by the courts was because "she keeps fighting me". The irony to that was that we earnestly begged our mom to constantly keep fighting for us. There were a few times my mom sat us down and said, "Girls, I want you to know that I want you to live where you want to. If you want to live with your dad, I would miss you, but it would be okay with me. I just want you to be happy." We were disgusted and flinched at the very thought, and reminded her of all the ways we didn't feel comfortable or safe around Dad, and that we never wanted to live with him! Although we would ask her to never give up fighting for us, it gave me comfort to know that we were living with the parent who wanted peace.

My dad will continue to try to blame our feelings toward him on my mom alienating us, because he will never want to face (nor have others see) that HIS choices and actions and words are the reason for any distance in our relationship with him. It doesn't have anything to do with Mom; it has everything to do with his decisions to try to alienate us and constantly hurt us. He can't hide his true self from the people who have lived with him. He seeks to hide his true self from everyone on the outside, and wants always to get away with the bad things he does. The only way to do this is to call liars any people willing to expose him.