ManFrom…
I think you’ve hit at least a few nails squarely on the the head.
Not entirely sure that she wanted me to dominate more, but maybe you’re right. In the end her criticism of me was that I was dominating, but I know that was just hogwash. Maybe she needed to justify her situation in a failed marriage and that’s the best she could come up with. But mostly I’m over trying to psychoanalyze her.
I’m totally buying in to your last paragraph. Days upon says of “silent treatment” and glares of disapproval if I reprimanded the kids for things. She would not discipline them. She’d wait until I did it, and then she would subsequently give in and be the good cop, always leaving me to being the bad cop and attempting to render my authority over them completely ineffective. She figured she’d win their affection and play her games with me. If I read her the riot act for what she did with the kids, I was then painted a “bad father” and told, “That’s not how things are done.”
Last week, my teen-aged daughter complained to me how when they are at Mom’s, she can’t make them do anything. She doesn’t even threaten anymore. They don’t take her seriously… I was told, “At least when you tell us we have to do something, you mean it and we know that we’re in trouble if we don’t.”
