Dear Malena:

You wrote about the mother of your boyfriend’s 11 and 17 year old children:  “she continuously threatens to leave them if they engage in any positive way in dad’s relationship so they live in constant fear of mother’s rejection… bf is a fantastic dad so I fully understand that he doesn’t want to cause the children any distress”-

– but they are already experiencing lots of distress. It doesn’t take a mother to actually leave her kids to cause the kids distress, it takes threatening to leave them that causes them a great deal  of distress.

I grew up with a mother who repeatedly threatened to leave me, ever since I was about five and throughout my second decade of life. She never left me but the repeated threat that she will leave me caused me so much distress that I develop a variety of anxiety disorders, including Tourette Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, beginning in  my first decade of life.

It may be better for his children (for as long as they know that he is dating you) to have you  in his house while they are there, and let their mother know about it before hand. Whatever happens next is not likely to be worse than his children waiting and waiting and worrying about their mother leaving them sometime in the future.

The ongoing anxiety- filled anticipation, day after day, night after night, of a dreadful to happen the next day, or the next,  is more harmful to a child than the event itself.

Every day or night that they are afraid that she will leave them is as bad for them as if she did leave them that day, or night.

anita