After an affair, some spouses use your children as weapons. They resort to using control and lies to get their way.
What about Parent Alienation? <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I appreciate you tuning in today, and I’m glad that you’re with me today. Today’s topic is a timely one, and one that is causing a great deal of heartaches in many families.
What we’re going to be dealing with today is “What about parent alienation?” Sometimes they refer to this as ‘parent alienation syndrome‘ or (PAS) and I’m going to be talking about what that is today.
After an affair you run the risk of parent alienation. In the aftermath of an affair some spouses start using your children as weapons, and they use them as weapons against you. They resort to using control and lies to get their way.
They will say all kinds of things to the kids to essentially turn them against you, or take them from you.
Every interaction with your kid can suddenly become a battle. Even mundane things like going and getting haircuts and where you get a haircut. Differences in parenting can erupt into major custody battles. Your spouse will use your kids as a way to isolate you or alienate you.
When you can’t motivate someone to do things by love, you’re left, oftentimes, with nothing more than control. When there’s been an affair the love has gone out of the marriage.
The other spouse oftentimes resorts to using control to get their way, to make things happen, rather than using love. They oftentimes will resort to using these control techniques through the kids.
In some ways this is a form of a nuclear option that people have, in terms of reacting to an affair.
This parent alienation, whether or not you were the one involved with the affair, you may be at risk. I have seen situations where the loyal spouse who was not in the affair, the cheating spouse used parent alienation techniques against them.
I have also seen that the parent who was involved in the affair, that the other spouse will use parent alienation. Regardless of whether or not you were the spouse who stayed or whether you were the one that strayed, you’re still at risk for the possibility of parent alienation. That’s why I wanted to go ahead and deal with the topic and cover it.
The solution to parent alienation, is ‘you’re going to need to develop a parent alienation survival plan‘. As part of your parent alienation survival plan, or many times with parent alienation syndrome they will use the abbreviation PAS in referring to it.
- First and foremost you’re going to need to educate yourself about parent alienation and its symptoms.
When you see the symptoms they should be like red flags that say you need to take action. When spouses are hurt they’re not themselves, and you’re going to need to realize that. Because your spouse who may have been typically very loving, with an affair, things change. And you need to be aware of that.
2. Realize that hurt people hurt people. This goes more into depth on the idea that when your spouses are hurt that they’re not themselves, because they’re wounded. When they’re wounded they behave differently. When they hurt, many times, they’ll start trying to hurt you.
If you’ve been educating yourself on parent alienation, you see the symptoms when a kid’s starting to be turned against you, this should make you wake up.
3. When the parent alienation card is played you’re going to need to find professionals that understand it and how to counter it. By professionals I’m referring to lawyers, psychiatrists, counselors, because not everybody knows how to deal with parent alienation and what’s going on there.
Many times in the legal system there’s this mindset of just because the children make these accusations they must be true because a six- or seven-year-old would not lie about such accusations.
Well, they do lie. And when they have been coached they do lie. It’s going to take a savvy professional who’s familiar with parent alienation to know how to deal with these situations.
That’s why you’re going to need to make yourself aware of what parent alienation syndrome is, what are the symptoms. Because there are some tell-tale signs to know when a child is being coached, when they’re being lied to, when there is an active program of alienation going on.
A savvy professional will know the difference between when a child is being coached and when there are truly some things going on in the home where the children don’t have a good relationship with you.
In terms of parent alienation you need to have a survival plan. Because otherwise once this card is played you may find yourself feeling like you’ve been blown out of the water with these wild accusations of parent alienation.
This is serious, because if your marriage ends up in divorce, in a child custody situation, you could end up losing access to your children. And those years cannot be replaced.
Once it hits that point it’s too late. You’re going to need to be aware of parent alienation before that so that you can intervene before the judge’s gavel comes down and there’s been a ruling made.
That’s why you need to know about parent alienation. Any time you’ve got an affair there’s a risk of this. Regardless of whether or not you are the loyal spouse, or whether you’re the one who strayed and cheated.
I felt like this was an important topic that I needed to go ahead and cover with you. These are things that you can start to work on even now, and I encourage you to do so if you’re dealing with an affair situation. Because parent alienation is a problem, and it’s a growing problem out there.
Whether or not the two of you want to work things out, you’ll still need to be talking with each other. This is where the ‘Affair Recovery Workshop‘ comes in. the techniques for improving communication are important for all couples.
Having good communication goes a long way in reducing the risk of PAS.
Best Regards,
Jeff
