Coercive Controllers Exact Revenge Through the Children

And what you can do about it

Photo by Thiago Zanutigh on Unsplash

A coercive controller will attempt to co-opt and compromise the children because they want to maintain control. If they are narcissists, they will want to punish you for leaving them, for causing them narcissistic mortification. They are vindictive and will therefore exact revenge. Their vindictiveness may be a defense mechanism, but that doesn’t take away from its sadism. Revenge is “the narcissist’s way of restoring self-imputed grandiosity,” and the other side of that is destruction. What better way to destroy an intimate partner than to target the children.

They, without fail, put their needs above their children’s needs; they do not make good parents. They compete for nothing less than the child’s love and fidelity. To them, the ultimate win is when the child rejects the safe parent. Of course, this is abuse.

How do coercive co-parents exact revenge?

• They undermine the safe parent (ie they say things like: she doesn’t know anything, doesn’t know what they’re talking about, she is unreliable, she is unsafe, don’t trust her)

• They lie

• They gaslight

• They shift blame (if she had/hadn’t done otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this situation, this is all her fault)

• They malign the other parent

• They patronize the other parent to the child

• They dismiss the other parent’s parenting authority

• They speak in absolute terms

• They say the same things they said to the safe parent in the relationship (ie, you need me, I make the decisions, you’re nothing without me, this is my house… )

• They sow conflict between the child and the other parent

• They violate boundaries and rules (here you can stay up as late as you want, eat whatever you want, play as many video games as you want…)

• Anything good you do for the children will be perceived as a form of competition, as undermining their fragile egos (if you buy the children a toy, they will buy the entire line of toys)

• They tell the child, if it weren’t for the other parent, we’d be happy, we’d be together, we’d still be a family

• They play victim and tell the child, if it weren’t for the other parent, I’d have more money… they stole from me

• They use facial expressions and body language to more subtly convey disagreement and disgust

• They minimize the children’s feelings and will express displeasure if the children show love or express that they miss the other parent

• They monitor the children’s contact with the other parent and coerce the children into behavior modification via gifts and transactions (and of course, the threat of losing those gifts)

• They punish the children if they challenge them

• They indoctrinate the children, eliminating the children’s ability to think for themselves (around politics, medical issues, gender issues)

They lack attunement to the children’s needs and cannot genuinely support the children. It’s not about the children at all, though they may be getting supply from them. It’s about controlling them and, therefore, controlling the other parent.

But there have been studies that show children need one safe parent to guide them through it all.

So, what is the next logical step for the abuser?

It is to inject fear into you via any communication, via intimidation, and most destructively, through the child. This steady stream of fear affects you and affects your parenting—how can it not? Of course, all this is triggering and designed to tap into your reactivity. But this is very dangerous to your relationship with your children.