Liars

[Scarlett]

So this happened.  I discovered my XH planned my sons graduation trip last summer based upon/around a trip he had planned with a girlfriend.  Xh heavily involved me in this planning.....so I was majorly deceived about the time it needed to happen  in.  I questioned it at the time...squashed down my suspicions...and carried on....so when I put two and two together recently  I called him on it....and he bit back hard.  

I feel ok about I all.  I won’t tell ds what I know.  Is that dishonest?  And xh is furious with me,  

[shawthorne44]

It really is a good thing he is ex.  

[Scarlett]

1 minute ago, shawthorne44 said:

It really is a good thing he is ex.  

It is.  Unfortunately we don’t generally get to have ex parents..this is over and over again xh not being able to say the actual thing he was living or feeling.  Glad I don’t have to deal with that as a wife anymore......being a mom never ends though. 

[Tanaqui]

Wait, I'm confused. He decided to make his plans based on existing plans, and he just didn't let you in on the reasons? Is that all?

[Catwoman]

1 hour ago, Scarlett said:

So this happened.  I discovered my XH planned my sons graduation trip last summer based upon/around a trip he had planned with a girlfriend.  Xh heavily involved me in this planning.....so I was majorly deceived about the time it needed to happen  in.  I questioned it at the time...squashed down my suspicions...and carried on....so when I put two and two together recently  I called him on it....and he bit back hard.  

I feel ok about I all.  I won’t tell ds what I know.  Is that dishonest?  And xh is furious with me,  

 

I don’t think I im understanding you. Did you find out that the girlfriend is going along on the trip with your ex and your ds, and your ds thought it would only be his father and him, without the girlfriend? And why is your ex furious with you?

Sorry to be so clueless!  🙂

[Scarlett]

Xh asked me to help plan a trip with him and ds. There were a couple of good dates for this trip....June was the best.....August was ok. Xh told me he couldn’t do the June date because his vacation wouldn’t kick in until August.  Turns out that was a lie.  I felt it was at the time...but just wanted to be agreeable. I figured it out recently and called Xh put on it.   He is furious with me for calling him on it.  Ds has no clue.  

Edited January 10, 2019 by Scarlett

[J-rap]

So he was pretending the whole thing was centered around your ds, when in reality it was centered around his girlfriend.  I'd be irked!!

[Rosie_0801]

Wasn't this the trip your son didn't want to go on anyway?

 

It's not dishonest not to tell your son. It'd be busybodying if you did. Your son is now an adult. It's not your job to be involved in their relationship any more. His stupid lies are never going to stop, so it's best not to be bothered about them and his personal life is thankfully not your concern either.

[Liz CA]

I suppose it might be a minor annoyance (as in shaking my head and mumbling that he lives up to his reputation) to me but surely not unexpected since you know what a skilled liar he is. I agree with Rosie. It's over now. Your ds is an adult. He may even know about it but has not mentioned it to you. Who knows? 

[Chris in VA]

I would caution you against getting further involved. I think acting as an intermediary is called triangulation, and it isn't good. (I'm still working on that and do it all the time, so it's my newest "trying to stop this unhealthy behavior" kinda thing). If you think it is important for your ds to know your ex's gf is coming on the trip then I'm not sure you are the person to talk to him about it (does he know it won't just be him and his dad?)

[May]

Your son is an adult, he will figure it out. Chris in VA said it well, don’t involve yourself. If my adult daughters have a problem with their dad, I refuse to get involved. Hubby was trying to fix a problem between oldest DD and me. I told him to back off. 

3 hours ago, Chris in VA said:

I would caution you against getting further involved. I think acting as an intermediary is called triangulation, and it isn't good. (I'm still working on that and do it all the time, so it's my newest "trying to stop this unhealthy behavior" kinda thing). If you think it is important for your ds to know your ex's gf is coming on the trip then I'm not sure you are the person to talk to him about it (does he know it won't just be him and his dad?)

 

[alisoncooks]

Has the trip already happened or is it upcoming?

[Scarlett]

8 hours ago, J-rap said:

So he was pretending the whole thing was centered around your ds, when in reality it was centered around his girlfriend.  I'd be irked!!

Yes this and just the general constant LIES.  You know he really wanted to take ds on a cruise or overseas somewhere...something nice.  And ds did. not. want to go.  I felt sorry for XH because it seemed like he wanted to do something nice for ds....so I came up with the trip they eventually took....basically used my mom skills to come up with something ds would tolerate.  And when we were discussing dates he just flat out lied about it.  I think what has me so annoyed is that I KNEW he was lying and once again I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I guess eventually I will learn.  Ds says his dad is trying to talk him into doing another trip this summer and ds told me he really really doesn't want to go.  So I won't be trying to talk him into it again that is for sure.  

I told dh last night that my life with XH was just one big lie after another.  I am sooooo thankful to be away from that sort of toxic person.

[Scarlett]

1 hour ago, alisoncooks said:

Has the trip already happened or is it upcoming?

No it happened already.  Last summer.  

 

[Scarlett]

5 minutes ago, Indigo Blue said:

This happens to me over and over with the person in my life that lies. And you find yourself getting sucked in and falling for things time and again. There is just no understating just how up on your toes you have to constantly be with people like this. It is soooo good that you don't have to have this person in your everyday life anymore.

Exactly.  And it is not easy to explain to people who don't have experience with a liar.  

[shawthorne44]

10 hours ago, Scarlett said:

It is.  Unfortunately we don’t generally get to have ex parents..this is over and over again xh not being able to say the actual thing he was living or feeling.  Glad I don’t have to deal with that as a wife anymore......being a mom never ends though. 

People are shocked when I point out that having a child with someone is much more of a commitment than marrying someone.  I usually try to mention that at some point to the young unmarried co-workers (mostly male).  When I point out the facts, they Get it and then get this horrified look on their faces at what might have happened.   

[Scarlett]

3 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

People are shocked when I point out that having a child with someone is much more of a commitment than marrying someone.  I usually try to mention that at some point to the young unmarried co-workers (mostly male).  When I point out the facts, they Get it and then get this horrified look on their faces at what might have happened.   

Yep.  Thankfully ds doesn't seem to want his dad in his life much at all.  So that cuts down on the drama.  I just need to remember to never trust a word out of his mouth.  

[Bluegoat]

I would absolutely let your ds navigate this.  I have a dad who is also somewhat difficult, and some cousins with a mom who is kind of hellish in her own way.  It's interesting to see which kids manage to maintain a stable but not negative state.  Both being too sucked in is bad, but also the ones that end up cutting the person off usually end up with a lot of difficulty over it.  It's a good skill to learn to be able to be loving yet detached from people like that.  It takes some practice though.

[Scarlett]

28 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

I would absolutely let your ds navigate this.  I have a dad who is also somewhat difficult, and some cousins with a mom who is kind of hellish in her own way.  It's interesting to see which kids manage to maintain a stable but not negative state.  Both being too sucked in is bad, but also the ones that end up cutting the person off usually end up with a lot of difficulty over it.  It's a good skill to learn to be able to be loving yet detached from people like that.  It takes some practice though.

Yes, I have noticed that my XH and his two brothers all have very different ways of dealing with their VERY difficult mother.  One has cut her off completely, one manipulates her to his advantage and my XH basically tries to just take care of what needs taken care of because she is now  89 years old.  

Ds will never know his dad the way I do.  And thus he may not ever know what a big fat liar he is.  I won't be telling him that is for sure.  

[Bootsie]

I do not think it is dishonest to not share this information with your son, especially if he does not ask you about it.  Since this happened last year, I can't see much helpful to your son coming from it.  It will not do anything to help support a healthy relationship between the two.  

Given that your son is out of high school, I would try to have as little contact with his father as possible to minimize being put in this type of situation.  DH has two older daughters and his ex would do similar things.  It was such a relief when the girls were old enough to handle making plans with their mother on their own.  At first his ex resisted and tried to get him pulled back in, but it was well worth putting up with the initial reaction in the long run.

[Tanaqui]

Oh, I see.

It's a stupid little lie, but I've heard worse. Either he's simply pathological and never tells the truth when he doesn't absolutely have to, which is sad and pathetic, or he's extremely conflict-averse and got it into his head that you'd object to him mentioning his girlfriend or some other nonsense and thought he'd dodge the issue, which is also a little pathetic.

Either way, since this clearly isn't unusual behavior for him, you don't have to worry about your son. Unless the kid is absolutely the most gullible person around (and it sounds like he's not if he's this reluctant to spend time with the man) he already knows what his father's like. How could he not!?

Don't be the intermediary anymore. It's not good for your son, it's not good for the relationship between him and his father, and it's not good for you.

[HS Mom in NC]

If I were you would say to my adult child, "You don't have to go on any trips you don't want to go on and it's OK to to say so when asked.  You're an adult now, so your relationship with your dad is 100% yours, it's no longer mine. " Then I would no longer interact with my ex.  My divorced parents and my divorced siblings do not interact with their adult children's other parent after the kid turns 17 or 18 because it's no longer necessary.  That's the point of getting divorced, right?  So you don't have to interact with each other anymore. If you struggle with detaching emotionally from your ex or you struggle with the shift from actively parenting a minor child to no longer parenting your adult child, there are licensed family counselors who can help you with setting and enforcing healthy boundaries.

You don't have to care why he's scheduled things when he has.  You don't have to care that he's a liar. You don't have to help him plan or do anything with your son.  You don't have to care if his GF is going on a trip or not.  You're divorced from that jerk and you can enjoy the freedom from his lies that comes with it if you choose to.

My brother's exGF that he has a son with is a compulsive liar.  She lies at work, she lies in relationships, she lies to her kid, she lies socially, she lies to her own family, usually about stupid things.  My brother doesn't invest his emotions in it because it would be a bad mental health habit to do so.  Their son is 16.  We never speak negatively of the boy's mother in front of him because we don't have to and it's not good for him to hear us do it. When he complains about her we say things like, "That's so frustrating.  Yeah, I'd feel that way too if that happened to me. I'm so sorry that happened to you."  When she talks about why she had to schedule the son's flight for 4am instead of the 10am flight, my brother doesn't burn with fury that she's lying about it, he just tells himself that at least he isn't paying for the flight, that she lives out of state now, and counts down the number of years he has left to deal with her. When she lied to me about the cat she gave us having a raspy meow because it was in a fire where flames went down her throat and burned her voicebox and the smoke inhalation caused her to need one lung removed (obvious lie, the cat was never burned in a fire and was perfectly healthy) we just smile and say, "Oh my!" And then we laugh about it to blow off steam. We can riff on that for a solid 15 minutes laughing until we cry.  When she lived nearby and lied to a co-worker in front of my brother's best friend and said, "My son's father abandoned us." The friend just asked, "Isn't your son with his dad right now because of your 50/50 joint custody agreement?" We laugh about her boneheaded, stupid, self-defeating lies that we always knew would bring about their own consequences.   Guess what?  My nephew is slightly developmentally behind, but he's figured it out and has chosen to limit his time with her.  Life is full of consequences.  He's chosen not to continue to see her when he's 17-the legal age in his state for the boy to decide not to go.  He wants to legally change is last name to his dad's last name when he's 18. 

My brother's approach has always been to take the high road and be the solid, dependable, generous, honest parent and husband to his wife and kids and let the chips fall where they may.  He only interacts with her as much as is absolutely necessary and stays emotionally detached.  It's paid off so far and is now building compounded interest. 

[Scarlett]

20 minutes ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:

If I were you would say to my adult child, "You don't have to go on any trips you don't want to go on and it's OK to to say so when asked.  You're an adult now, so your relationship with your dad is 100% yours, it's no longer mine. " Then I would no longer interact with my ex.  My divorced parents and my divorced siblings do not interact with their adult children's other parent after the kid turns 17 or 18 because it's no longer necessary.  That's the point of getting divorced, right?  So you don't have to interact with each other anymore. If you struggle with detaching emotionally from your ex or you struggle with the shift from actively parenting a minor child to no longer parenting your adult child, there are licensed family counselors who can help you with setting and enforcing healthy boundaries.

You don't have to care why he's scheduled things when he has.  You don't have to care that he's a liar. You don't have to help him plan or do anything with your son.  You don't have to care if his GF is going on a trip or not.  You're divorced from that jerk and you can enjoy the freedom from his lies that comes with it if you choose to.

My brother's exGF that he has a son with is a compulsive liar.  She lies at work, she lies in relationships, she lies to her kid, she lies socially, she lies to her own family, usually about stupid things.  My brother doesn't invest his emotions in it because it would be a bad mental health habit to do so.  Their son is 16.  We never speak negatively of the boy's mother in front of him because we don't have to and it's not good for him to hear us do it. When he complains about her we say things like, "That's so frustrating.  Yeah, I'd feel that way too if that happened to me. I'm so sorry that happened to you."  When she talks about why she had to schedule the son's flight for 4am instead of the 10am flight, my brother doesn't burn with fury that she's lying about it, he just tells himself that at least he isn't paying for the flight, that she lives out of state now, and counts down the number of years he has left to deal with her. When she lied to me about the cat she gave us having a raspy meow because it was in a fire where flames went down her throat and burned her voicebox and the smoke inhalation caused her to need one lung removed (obvious lie, the cat was never burned in a fire and was perfectly healthy) we just smile and say, "Oh my!" And then we laugh about it to blow off steam. We can riff on that for a solid 15 minutes laughing until we cry.  When she lived nearby and lied to a co-worker in front of my brother's best friend and said, "My son's father abandoned us." The friend just asked, "Isn't your son with his dad right now because of your 50/50 joint custody agreement?" We laugh about her boneheaded, stupid, self-defeating lies that we always knew would bring about their own consequences.   Guess what?  My nephew is slightly developmentally behind, but he's figured it out and has chosen to limit his time with her.  Life is full of consequences.  He's chosen not to continue to see her when he's 17-the legal age in his state for the boy to decide not to go.  He wants to legally change is last name to his dad's last name when he's 18. 

My brother's approach has always been to take the high road and be the solid, dependable, generous, honest parent and husband to his wife and kids and let the chips fall where they may.  He only interacts with her as much as is absolutely necessary and stays emotionally detached.  It's paid off so far and is now building compounded interest. 

I rarely give him any thought.  And ds18 sees him about twice a month for dinner.  So it isn't a big problem for me or ds, but when I am hit in the face AGAIN with his lying I do get angry---mostly at myself for getting sucked back in to thinking he is a decent human being.  

[Scarlett]

Also, when we were married he would often do this thing where he would do something nice for me and ds right before he went off for the weekend with his friends or whatever.  So once you see the pattern it is difficult to unsee it and now I know for sure he is continuing it with ds.  

[Hikin' Mama]

28 minutes ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:

If I were you would say to my adult child, "You don't have to go on any trips you don't want to go on and it's OK to to say so when asked.  You're an adult now, so your relationship with your dad is 100% yours, it's no longer mine. " Then I would no longer interact with my ex.  My divorced parents and my divorced siblings do not interact with their adult children's other parent after the kid turns 17 or 18 because it's no longer necessary.  That's the point of getting divorced, right?  So you don't have to interact with each other anymore. If you struggle with detaching emotionally from your ex or you struggle with the shift from actively parenting a minor child to no longer parenting your adult child, there are licensed family counselors who can help you with setting and enforcing healthy boundaries.

You don't have to care why he's scheduled things when he has.  You don't have to care that he's a liar. You don't have to help him plan or do anything with your son.  You don't have to care if his GF is going on a trip or not.  You're divorced from that jerk and you can enjoy the freedom from his lies that comes with it if you choose to.

My brother's exGF that he has a son with is a compulsive liar.  She lies at work, she lies in relationships, she lies to her kid, she lies socially, she lies to her own family, usually about stupid things.  My brother doesn't invest his emotions in it because it would be a bad mental health habit to do so.  Their son is 16.  We never speak negatively of the boy's mother in front of him because we don't have to and it's not good for him to hear us do it. When he complains about her we say things like, "That's so frustrating.  Yeah, I'd feel that way too if that happened to me. I'm so sorry that happened to you."  When she talks about why she had to schedule the son's flight for 4am instead of the 10am flight, my brother doesn't burn with fury that she's lying about it, he just tells himself that at least he isn't paying for the flight, that she lives out of state now, and counts down the number of years he has left to deal with her. When she lied to me about the cat she gave us having a raspy meow because it was in a fire where flames went down her throat and burned her voicebox and the smoke inhalation caused her to need one lung removed (obvious lie, the cat was never burned in a fire and was perfectly healthy) we just smile and say, "Oh my!" And then we laugh about it to blow off steam. We can riff on that for a solid 15 minutes laughing until we cry.  When she lived nearby and lied to a co-worker in front of my brother's best friend and said, "My son's father abandoned us." The friend just asked, "Isn't your son with his dad right now because of your 50/50 joint custody agreement?" We laugh about her boneheaded, stupid, self-defeating lies that we always knew would bring about their own consequences.   Guess what?  My nephew is slightly developmentally behind, but he's figured it out and has chosen to limit his time with her.  Life is full of consequences.  He's chosen not to continue to see her when he's 17-the legal age in his state for the boy to decide not to go.  He wants to legally change is last name to his dad's last name when he's 18. 

My brother's approach has always been to take the high road and be the solid, dependable, generous, honest parent and husband to his wife and kids and let the chips fall where they may.  He only interacts with her as much as is absolutely necessary and stays emotionally detached.  It's paid off so far and is now building compounded interest. 

There is so much wisdom here! And I say that as the mom of an adult child whose bio dad I parted ways with before my son was born. 

[regentrude]

On 1/10/2019 at 12:04 AM, Scarlett said:

Xh asked me to help plan a trip with him and ds. There were a couple of good dates for this trip....June was the best.....August was ok. Xh told me he couldn’t do the June date because his vacation wouldn’t kick in until August.  Turns out that was a lie.  I felt it was at the time...but just wanted to be agreeable. I figured it out recently and called Xh put on it.   He is furious with me for calling him on it.  Ds has no clue.  

I do not think your ex owes you any explanation why a certain date did not work for him. Nor do I think it is any of your business since you are no longer married. Yeah, he could have told you the truth, but perhaps he wanted to avoid your judgment/confrontation/whatever. He could simply have said it didn't work for him. I fail to see what there is to tell your DS.

Edited January 11, 2019 by regentrude