August 13, 2024 • 59 mins
Hey, Fellow Travelers. It's been two decades since Lenny's daughter cut off contact with him after he and her mother divorced. Lenny has thought about his daughter and the grandchildren he has never met every single day and has tried to make peace with the situation, but his wife Patricia sees his pain and asked for our guidance. She and Lenny join us together as we help them to consider a new approach to Lenny's parental alienation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Laurie Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist advice column for the Atlantic. And I'm Guy Wench.
I wrote Emotional First Aid, and I write a Dear
Guy column for Ted. And this is Dear Therapists. This week.
A man is strange from his daughter for twenty five
years wants a chance to reconnect. She said, I changed
(00:27):
my mind. I don't want you to come to my wedding.
And I just asked her, why are you doing this?
And she said to me, you weren't there for my
teenage years, the last several years that I was growing up.
You just weren't in my life. I said, I wasn't
in your life because you kicked me out. Listen in
and maybe learn something about yourself in the process. Dear
(00:49):
Therapists is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice,
and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental
health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions
you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter,
you are agreeing to let IHOT media use it in
(01:10):
Potter and Full and we may edit it for length
and a clarity. Hi Laurie, Hey guy, So what do
we have in our mailbooks today? Well, this week we
have a letter about a very common but very tricky situation.
All right, let's hear it, dear therapists. My husband Lenny
has been estranged from his daughter Julia, who is now
(01:32):
thirty eight, for over twenty five years. She has three children,
and he, of course has never met them. When Julia
was ten, he and I got married. She was severely
poisoned by her mom. At Julia's wedding. Her mom passed
out during the ceremony upon seeing Lenny there. She was
taken to the hospital and never returned to the wedding.
Her own parents told my husband, there she goes again.
(01:56):
Every rabbi, mental health professional, etc. Advised him to wait
until Julia grew up and moved out of her mom's house,
and that then she'd come around. Lenny is a family
attorney and did not engage in a custody battle because
he knew what that could entail for Julia. Throughout the years,
he has sent Julia cards and they were either returned, unopened,
or never acknowledged. Do you think there's any hope at
(02:17):
this point for Lenny to have a relationship with Julia
or at least know his grandchildren. Thank you, Patricia. This
is a letter about parental alienation and those situations for
a parent, but incredibly painful to know you have kids
out there who just do not want any contact with you.
It's one of the most painful things parents can go through.
(02:41):
And then on the other side, there's the child who's
obviously going through or has gone through something incredibly painful
that made them monta cutoff contact. And these are very
difficult cases to deal with. When we get something like
that enough clinics, because we rarely get both parties coming in.
It's usually the parent coming in and say, I do
(03:01):
not have any contact and I don't know how to
re establish it. Yeah, And I think what's so hard
about it is that usually the parent feels like maybe
they made some mistakes but it didn't merit alienation. That
they're also being portrayed in a way that isn't accurate,
and that leaves them feeling like they need to defend themselves.
(03:21):
They feel like they want to just throw up their
hands because they don't feel like they can clear up
these misperceptions that have been so embedded in the fabric
of the family at this point. And yet there's so
much longing to reconnect with that child, and when there's
grandchildren involved, it makes it even more painful. And one
(03:43):
of the things she mentioned in the letter was that
he didn't want to embolk on a big custody fight
because it didn't think it would be good for his daughter.
But that then puts him at such a disadvantage in
that sense. And I've worked with so many parents who,
like I, tried to do the right thing and it
cost me the relationship because I didn't want to put
my door in the middle. It ended up my ex
did that. So there's incredible amounts of frustration towards the
(04:06):
X because of that outcome. Yeah, and I wonder why
it's the wife who has reached out to us on
her husband's behalf, because it might be that he just
feels so stuck and she sees that, and she sees
the pain and really wants to kind of right this wrong.
(04:27):
And I think I know how we can find out.
Let's go talk to them, Let's do that you're listening
to Dea Therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a
quick break. I'm Laurie Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wench and
this is Dea Therapists. Hi. Patricia, thanks for your letter. Hi,
(04:51):
thanks for taking it on. And I see we also
have Lenny, your husband, yes, with us, which is great.
So it's so glad that you could come on the show.
Thank you, Thanks for having us. It's a very painful
situation that you described, and we'd love to hear a
little bit more of the history there of what happened
over the years, how that alien nation happened between you,
(05:15):
Lenny and Julia. I got divorced from my first wife
in nineteen ninety two. Subsequently I met Patricia. Interestingly, we
met over a lunch that my daughter invited her daughter
to come to, and then we met afterwards and started
(05:37):
talking and started going out, and a year later we
got married. And at the time, I had what I
considered to be a very close, very bonded relationship with
my daughter Julia. And interestingly, Patricia was not the first
person I had dated. After I got divorced. I had
(05:58):
gone out with a number of people never any issues.
Somehow this became a major issue. My ex wife, Sunday
was very upset that I was dating someone who also
lived in our community. We live in a fairly small community,
and she'd basically threatened me and warned me I better
(06:18):
not get married or there would be consequences. So the
consequences were that my daughter rather quickly stopped seeing me. First,
we were having what I would consider to be a
real legitimate joint custody where she would spend half the
time with me, half the time with her mother. That
quickly became a meal once a week, which then became nothing.
(06:42):
Once a week. I would go over to pick my
daughter up, she would say to me or my daughter,
in front of both of us, oh, sol and soak,
just your friend just caught up. Wanted to invite you
for dinner, but you have to go out with your father,
or she say things like I wish your father would
get cancer and die. That would be better for both
of us. I mean, I'm literally telling you what happened.
(07:03):
My daughter was ten years old at the time. What
was Julia's reaction when this was set in front of her?
Do you remember did she say anything, did she look
at you. Did she look at her mom? Do you
remember how she reacted to this? I'm going back literally
twenty seven years. I kept a diary at the time,
(07:24):
and all I can tell you was her attitude became
much more negative towards me, angry. She would take on
the tone and the words of her mother. It became
if we were going out, I had to take her
somewhere to buy her something, clothes or whatever. That's how
it became. If I wouldn't do it, we weren't going out.
What was her relationship like with the friend, which I
(07:47):
guess is Patricia's daughter, right? So that was how you
guys met was through her friend? Was your daughter Patricia? Yes?
So what happened to that friendship once the two of
you started dating? And how did your daughter react? So interestingly,
my daughter has disabilities and Julia and my daughter were
(08:10):
in the same girl scout troop, so Julia would invite
sometimes my daughter over for a Saturday. Neil kind of
fatter the goodness of her heart because she didn't have
a lot of friends my daughter, so it was less
a friendship and more a good deed, shall we say. So,
(08:31):
it wasn't like their friendship then died out because it
was never really a friendship to begin with. Was your
daughter okay with you dating Lenny? My daughters were fine
with it. Yeah, my daughters were fine with it. Yes. Interestingly,
one of the main factors I believe is because my
ex husband gave them what I call permission to like
(08:58):
this man who would never be their father, but who
would be their stepfather. That's a really good thing he
did to his credit, Lenny, can you tell us a
little bit about your relationship with Cindy, your ex wife
at the time of the divorce. Was it very acrimonious. Yes.
When Patricia got divorce, she had a perfect divorce, very friendly,
(09:23):
using mediation. Everything worked fine and there was really no animosity.
When I got divorced, I had a war the Roses
type situation. We had a marriage that was not a
good marriage. My parents got divorced, and I was very young,
and I did not want to get divorced, so I
stayed in the marriage way too long. But Cindy would
(09:46):
often say to me, we should get divorced. I don't
know why we're together. Eventually I reached that point where
I agreed, and then I tried to go to counseling
to see if that would help. It didn't, so I
pushed forward with the divorce. We got divorced very quickly
after you went to counseling and you said, let's go
ahead and get divorced. Was she's still on board with
(10:06):
getting divorced an action did? Yes? But in reality I
don't believe so. Is Julia your only child together? Julia
is my only natural child. And I think you said,
Patricia and Yoletta that you had consulted professionals and they
all suggested, Lenny to you that just wait until she's
at the house and she has less influence from Cindy,
(10:30):
and then things should be better. Was there any shift?
What did happen when Julia did leave her mom's house.
We had seen many psychotherapists over the first years, trying
to see what could be done. Who's Patricia and we
went to a clinic and I arranged for therapy for
(10:50):
my daughter. I try to keep it out of the
courts because as a family court attorney who deals with
the worst stuff, I knew what could be and I
try to avoid that. My daughter graduated from high school,
went to Israel for a year to study there and
I went over, I reached out and started having a
(11:13):
relationship with my daughter. At that point. We emailed back
and forth for the year I met her there, we
went out. When she came back, we went out to
lunch one time, and then she was back in her
mother's home or within a couple of days. That was
the end of it. Was there any discussion when you
were seeing her, any processing about what had happened about
(11:33):
the relationship. Was it just with seeing each other and
being very tentative, or did you actually talk about what
had gone on at that point for the last eight
nine years. I believe it was just being friendly and
trying to re establish communication. We really did not discuss
what went on. There were certain things I couldn't discuss
with her. She just wand't let me go there. What
kinds of things. Well, if I would try to bring
(11:54):
up anything like this, she would just not respond or
change the subject. And I wanted to try to reestablish
a relationship, so I didn't want to push her away.
Do you have any sense of if she were to
answer that question at that point in her life, what
she would have said about why she had broken off
(12:15):
contact with you. I feel I do, because a few
years later, she got engaged, got married, and apparently I
had learned that through a lot of pressure being applied
by her mother's family, she eventually invited me. At first,
my name wasn't on the imitation, nothing of that nature.
(12:37):
But then she invited me. I was excited and thrilled
and made the arrangements, and then about a week or
two before the wedding, she disinvited me. She said, I
changed my mind. I don't want you to come to
my wedding. We were able to arrange to meet at
someone's home and we talked and I just asked her.
(12:59):
I said, I don't understand what you're doing. Why are
you doing this? And she said to me, she said,
you weren't there for my teenage years, the last several
years that I was growing up. You just weren't in
my life. I said, I wasn't in your life because
you kicked me out, your mother forbid me to be
to your about mitzvah or anything that was important. She said,
I know, but you still weren't there anyway. So I
(13:22):
feel that she was angry. Maybe she felt I didn't
try hard enough. That's a question that I'm wondering about
So when you say that Cindy wouldn't let you come
to Julia's bot mitzvah, couldn't you have shown up at
the bot mitzvah? Maybe not the party, but the service.
I was told by several people in the community not
to come to any parties. There wasn't much. I don't
(13:44):
think there was any service at all. Did you communicate
with her at all at the time to say, you know,
congratulations or I'm really sad that I'm not going to
be there, I'm so proud of you. Was there any
communication going on like that at all? Yes, that bot
gifts for her which I was never able to give her,
and I did try, even though I wasn't there. I
(14:05):
would let her know how much I loved her by
writing to her, by leaving messages on the phone, because
she wasn't picking up at the time, I believe, but
I did let her know. So you were saying right
before the wedding, there was I think before the wedding,
said there was this meeting and she explained she doesn't
want you there because you were absent from her teenage years.
Little bit because he went aloud. But then you did
(14:26):
end up coming to the wedding. How did that come about? So,
as you can imagine, that was one of the worst
weeks in my life. I was just very despondent, very upset.
I spoke to our rabbi and he insisted that I
go to the wedding, that I had to go to
the wedding, to the ceremony, and so he said he'll
go with me, and so we went and I walked
(14:49):
in and I saw the other side of the family
that everyone came over to me and they just hugged
me and kissed me and thanked me for coming. They
then took me in to meet my future son, and
then I took a seat in the audience so as
not to make a scene or anything. And then Cindy
and Julia and my former father in law walked down
(15:10):
together down the aisle. They had the ceremony, and towards
the end of the ceremony, Cindy just fainted and passed
out into the arms of a rabbi. It was just,
you can't put words into it. What was Julia's reaction
to seeing you, because she also didn't know that you'd
be there. I did not go into the room where
(15:34):
the bride sits before the wedding, because I did not
want to create a scene. I just wanted to attend
my daughter's wedding. My feeling was that, besides the fact
that I'd have a right to see my own daughter
get married, I felt that she shouldn't have to go
through life later on dealing with why she did not
(15:56):
allow her father to be there. Happened when Julia did
see you though, because she must have seen you there,
I can't even remember having eye contact with her. To
be honest, what was Julia's reaction when Cindy fainted? It
was really towards the end they finished it up. They
(16:18):
kind of moved Cindy off to the side, and then
they and then after the ceremony, they attended to her
and her parents and siblings stayed with me and just
basically said, there she goes again with the theatrics. She
allowed them to take her to a local hospital apparently
missed the wedding, and then the rab I called me
a little later and said, she's getting her strength together,
(16:41):
she's starting to spend this that you're just you just
ruined your daughter's wedding, so you should leave, which I did.
Has there been contact at all between you and Julia
since then? And what efforts did you make sense then
to try and stay in touch in some way? No.
I would write letters, I would send gifts at first,
but everything one unanswered. How did you know what her
(17:05):
address was so she was an adult now or did
you send her emails? How did you try to contact her?
People in the community seem to know where she was?
And then now it's say the later two thousand, so
you can start googling. I learned what google meant, and
you can start googling addresses. And I actually spoke to
(17:25):
my former in law several times because they would come
to visit another adult child who was living in this community,
and I believe I may have found out from them.
So literally, no contact directly on the phone or otherwise.
Julia really since the wedding in many many years right
(17:46):
now now, And so the answer is no, and the
irony is her mother then moved to that community to
be near her too. I'm curious to know what you
said in those letters. Do you remember I would tell
her how much I loved her, how much I cared
about her, how important it was to try to establish
(18:07):
a relationship again, to try to see things from her perspective.
As difficult as it is to put this on me,
it actually came back unopened, so I know she never
saw it. So this was through the mail. It wasn't
through email. Yeah. I emailed my son in law a
number of times to try to reach through him, so
I must have emailed Jolia too, and I was getting
(18:27):
no response. So Patricia, I have a question for you.
So this has gone on for so many years. Why now,
how did you write to us and ask for help? Well,
we talk about this a lot throughout all the years,
and as we're getting older, and Lenny has three granddaughters
(18:52):
who he's never met. The oldest is either twelve or thirteen,
so he would often say, I hope when they get older,
they'll at least google me to know that I'm alive,
because they've probably been told that I'm dead or whatever.
So maybe that's a chance I have. He actually tried
with another therapist a few years ago, and that therapist
(19:13):
recommended he write a letter. He did that went nowhere.
All these letters come back returned to sender unopened. Whatever,
nothing gets anywhere. So as time goes on, is there
something else we could do? At this point, is there
another rock we could turn? There's got to be something.
It's never too late, that's my attitude. It's never too
(19:34):
late as long as we're on this side of the earth.
So one night, it was like midnight, I said, what
the heck? I just stream of consciousness wrote that, just
reaching out. He didn't even know I wrote it because
it's so painful. I mean, I have three daughters, and
Lannie is very connected to them, so it just hurts
(19:57):
me to know that he's got three beautiful granddaughters. And
I mean, this is like the worst case scenario parent
alienation syndrome carrying on into the next generation. I mean,
can there ever be something, some inroads, some crack in
that window. I also tried through the rabbis, and I
(20:18):
was able to locate her rabbi, and I tried reaching
out that way again. I just got nowhere. The Rabbi
wouldn't respond to you. He spoke to me for two
minutes one day, sett'll speak to me again a few
days later. I've been emailing him and calling him, leaving messages.
I just stopped. At some point it was clear he
(20:39):
wasn't going any further. So again I started thinking well,
maybe if there can't I say that in quote be
a relationship with Julia. Can there be some connection with grandkids?
I mean, it just seems just so overwhelmingly sad that
there should be such a generational cutoff. Lenny, do you
(21:04):
know anything about Julia's life other than the fact that
she has these three kids? Is there a part of
you that from Afar is really proud of her. You
look at what she's done, and you're just filled with
I guess just parental pride and love even with all
(21:25):
the pain that's going on in the background, or I
should say in the foreground. I know something about her life,
I honestly don't know very much. I'm just wondering if
your friend Google got you anywhere, or even the people
in the community. You're in the community. It's a small community.
I'm wondering how much you know about Julia, where her
(21:46):
life has taken her, and her husband and his life.
So I do Google things or Facebook things, because I
do try to stay in touch and see what I
can find out of my friends. Who seems to be
able to get some information. He's providing me with the
pictures of my three granddaughters, and he would always say
(22:08):
to me. He'd say, if you want me to send
this to you because I know how painful it is,
And I'd say absolutely, I say I want to see it.
I do get a lot of pride, and as I said,
I love my daughter. I think what she's done is
a terrible thing because it wasn't just me. She cut
off my mother, my grandmother when they were alive. It's
(22:30):
just the whole family. Can you tell me what you
love about Julia? That's a hard question, but I wasn't
expecting take your time. I don't know if I can
(22:52):
even answer that. I don't. I know so little about her,
and I mean, she's thirty eight, and I just I
don't know anything about her really, when you get down
to it, tell me what you loved about her when
she was little. I loved her smile. I thought she
(23:15):
had a good heart. We had a very bonded relationship.
What did you do together? We played games, board games. Unfortunately,
when we would go out as a family, it was
basically me and Julia, and then there was Sunday as
opposed to me and Syndia. Then there was Julia. What
(23:35):
do you mean that when you went out it was
you and Julia, and there was Cindi instead of you
and Cyndi and there was Julia. I feel like a
couple is the main core, like will be me and
Patricia for example if movement out, and then there's the
children who are the extended part of you. But here
(23:56):
it was more like it was Julia and me as
the APO, and Sinday was the extended part. Let me.
I know that at the time of the divorce, when
Julia was still a minor, your feeling was, I can't
get into this fight with Cindy because Julia will be
(24:17):
collateral damage and I don't want that for her. She
will be the one to suffer. So I'm going to
stay on the sidelines for her benefit as much as possible.
And I'm wondering whether you've considered over the years, since
she's become an adult, stepping out of the sidelines or
do something that exactly the kind of thing that you
(24:39):
would never really do when there's a custody negotiation going on,
or when there's the option for her to get really
caught in the middle there. Yeah, but you consider doing
anything that is more proactive since she's been an adult.
So we're I guess laughing or smiling. Because Patricia has
that conversation with me very often. She's always prompting me
(25:03):
and pushing me. It's very much in my court in
that regard. I think, if I'm honest enough with myself
and I look at all these years that have gone by,
the bottom line is I haven't done enough. I feel
that I haven't really done much other than the letters
and the cards. In that regard, I don't feel like
(25:24):
I've stepped up to the plate. Did you not step
up to the plate because you don't want to make
it difficult for Julia by having that potential confrontation or
did you not step up to the plate because you
were trying to save yourself the hardacre further rejection In person,
I would tell you it's both. Really, I have to
(25:45):
say I've compartmentalized this whole thing to live my life.
It's so painful and so difficult, and there are certain
movies that will watch and Patitia will see me cry
during those movies when they involved parents, children or reconnecting.
It's so difficult, and I think a large part of
(26:07):
it is I've blocked it. I've really blocked it, and
it's like opening up a really sore wound. So that's
certainly a big part of it, and that might be
where there's some disconnection between the perception of what you
think is going on and the perception of what Julia
(26:29):
thinks is going on. Because that comment that you made
to you about well, you weren't really there during my
teen years, and you said yes, but you made sure
I wasn't there. You didn't want me there during your
teen years. I think there's this fantasy that all children have,
even adult children of my parents, are going to fight
for me, even if you're telling them go away. Right
(26:53):
when you think of little kids when they say to
their parents, go away, I hate you. They don't really
want you in that moment. They feel that, but they
don't really want that to happen. I think it's interesting
that Patricia was the one who nudges you. Patricia is
the one who wrote the letter to us today because
this is just so painful for you that it's hard
(27:16):
to open that door emotionally for yourself because you feel
like you won't survive it. That's true, and at the
same time I imagine that maybe from Julia's perspective, there
is some element of he didn't fight for me hard enough,
(27:36):
even if the message was go away. And I get that,
I get that you're asking, is that something I can do?
Are you clear that even if there is something you
can do, to do it would be to open up
that wound that you've been able to complementalize. To do
(27:58):
it would be to really risk a lot of pain.
And I'm asking if that's something you've thought through, if
that's something you're actually indeed looking forward. Is that something
you are you humoring, Patricia? Or is that something that
you're ready to do now to go and fight now?
Is that something you will be ready to do? So?
(28:18):
I would certainly tell you, am I afraid? Is that
a big factor? Absolutely? Can you talk more about the fear? So?
I'm very scared about this. My stomach has been just
a wreck the entire week just thinking about it and
really opening the sail up again. I don't know what
(28:41):
else to do anymore, and I think I had to
become more proactive. So I'm prepared to do whatever anyone
could think of to try to see if I could
break the stalemate. What do you fear more that you'll
try something and it won't work, or that things will
stay the way that they are. I'm not sure there's
(29:04):
a difference, because if I try something and it doesn't work,
then things are going to stay the way they are.
It's really the same thing. To me, there is a
difference because you will be smarting from the pain in
a fresh way if you try something now and it
doesn't work. Yeah, and that's a good point. I don't know.
I've learned to live with this for so many years,
(29:27):
and I don't know what it can do to my life.
It's very scary. What is the worst possible thing that
you think it could do to your life? If you
reach out, you get really proactive about this, and she
still doesn't want to have contact with you. The worst thing,
I guess would be my health. Honestly, I had a
(29:49):
heart attack years ago. I'd be afraid it happened again.
Patricia thinks that it was all caused by stress or
am I holding it back or combination. As scary thing
and are you also will any that in the best
case scenario, that is that you take some kind of
(30:10):
action and it does work and she's willing in some
way to have some kind of contact with you, that
there would be a lot of processing and very difficult
conversations to be had. In other words, that the difficult
moment is not just the moment of you taking action,
but it will be many moments that follow, because this
(30:30):
is a relationship that would need a lot of work
if it were to get into the right track. Is
that something you're also considering that this is not just
a one time shot but probably an ongoing exposing of
the wound and all of it. So I'm prepared to
do that. In fact, in one of the letters I
wrote her, maybe more than one, I'd suggest that we
go to counseling. She picked the consoler, she picked the time,
(30:53):
the place. I understand that's exactly what I'd have to do.
I think one of the things that's scary as may
is that, at least initially, if we get anywhere, it
would require me to have contact alone, that Patricia's cut
out of that. Probably that bothers me tremendously. I haven't
(31:17):
even discussed it with her, right because Patricia just turned
at you like, m what do you mean? That was
the expression, Yeah, we're two separate people, and that bothers
me tremendously. But I know that would have to be
the case. And Patricia does too, probably right at least
at the beginning. The thing is, you are two separate people,
(31:40):
and there are a bunch of relationships here. There's Julia's
relationship with you, There's Julia's relationship with Patricia. There's your
relationships respectively with the grandkids potentially the son in law,
and your relationship with each other, and how this affects
that as well. It sounds like Patricia has been a
(32:00):
great support for you throughout all of this. She's a rock, yeah,
and so having to go into this without her meaning
she'll be there to support you, but she won't be
by your side because Julia probably would not want that
right now, right So I'm not afraid to do it
(32:23):
alone in that regard. I just don't like cutting her out.
What I'm hearing is there are so many reasons based
in fear, and the fears that you're describing, I think
are just one when you sum it all up, and
that's the fear of having your heart stomped off again.
(32:44):
So you can say, well, I don't like that Patricia
wouldn't be a part of this. I don't like this
or that or the other aspect of it. But I
think at the end of the day you said, and
I think it's very symbolic. You said, I'm afraid of
having another heart attack the seat of love. That your
fear is that your heart in every way might not
(33:04):
be able to endure this. Yeah, And at the same time,
I don't know that your heart can endure leaving things
the way they are, knowing that you didn't act as
proactively as you might have ANTICI said something very similar
to me last night, And those really are the choices.
(33:27):
You have the choices to do nothing, but then have
that question of what if I had taken more proactive
action and living with that, or risking taking more proactive
action and risking getting your heart stumped on because when
you take proactive action in this kind of situation, there
is always hope, and it's the hope that gets dashed
(33:51):
that is so painful. And there's no way to take
proactive action without allowing the hope to come through. And
you've been able to compartmentalize for many years and keep
pope down and keep expectations down, but it won't be
possible to do that if you're actually planning to take action.
So those are the risks, and you're saying very clearly Lenny,
which I'm kind of glad to hear that I would
(34:12):
rather risk having my heart stumped on so even if
it doesn't work out, I'll be able to say to myself,
I did what I could. I'm saying that, Patricia, you're
nodding along as any speaking. You seem to be so supportive.
You seem to be really clear about Yes, of course
I can't be there right away. So you've thought about
this a lot, and because you've been living with it
(34:33):
for so long, I'm just curious. Have you ever thought
about what is the most proactive thing you could see
Lenny doing? Wow, that's a great question. What is the
most proact showing up at her apartment because we've talked
(34:54):
about that. You have, Yeah, we've talked about like when
the letters come back, like go to her partment house
and just seeing what the apartment number is, because one
came back saying wrong apartment number, So I think, go
to the apartment house, like do your own investigation, just
show up. I know that's huge, but I'm nodding from
(35:15):
the perspective of Lenny's talking and the heaviness and the pain,
and I'm also nodding because everything you're saying is just
so amazingly right on. I mean, the visuals of the
heart being stomped in the metaphor of the heart attack
and the breaking, I mean, it's so powerful. And fear
(35:35):
is a huge factor in Lenny's personality and doing what
he's done up until now, or not doing what he's
done up until now, because the hurt and the fear
of rejection has outweighed the benefit. I bring it up
openly and say, if you were to die tomorrow and
on your deathbed, would you be okay that you did
(36:00):
enough that this was it? And sometimes in the past
his answers have been yes, because the pain of re
engaging and opening that up is too horrific, too hard.
But of late it's been not such an obvious answer.
(36:20):
So maybe there's starting to be a shift. Maybe there's
starting to be a shift since I got the response
from your letter, But these conversations, even in the last
ten days, have started shifting. Oh, there's a shift, because
Lenny is really clear right now, and so there's definitely
been a shift. You didn't waffle on that you're clear right,
I'm class So that's a big shift. Yes, and sometimes
(36:41):
these shifts happen as people get older and they start
to really come to terms with the reality that they
might not have as much time to fix something that
maybe they imagine they would have earlier on oh, for
something to get fixed spontaneously, because she comes to some
kind of epiphany, right that the urgency, the urgency becomes
(37:02):
heightened as people get older. I see also on your face, Patricia,
throughout this conversation, I've seen how much you care about
Lenny and love him, and as a parent yourself, how
much you can empathize with the pain that he's experiencing.
And I wonder if you're holding a lot of the
(37:23):
pain for him that he's not able to feel himself. Yeah.
I mean, it's going to sound wrong, but I'm caring
for the two of us, Like, yes, I care more
than he cares. Now that's not the truth, of course
he cares more, But it feels like I care more
because this uses me to the point of doing things
(37:44):
about it and trying whatever cookie thing I could possibly think,
like writing a letter to us. Yeah, right, that cookie thing.
And he's comfortable closing the door, locking it, putting the
key in a compartment and saying, let me just live
my life with my step grandchildren and I'm doing fine.
(38:05):
Why you're rocking the boat. It's not that you care more,
it's that it doesn't hurt as much for you to
think about it. You know. There's another piece of this,
which is that there's often so much shame for the
estranged parent in a community where you have to explain
(38:26):
to people all the time where you just meet people
and they say, do you have kids, and yes, I
have a daughter. Oh you know, tell me about your
daughter right where you might be out socially and then oh,
it's just such a point of pain right there. And
then what do you say? And do you have a
story that so you don't have to get into it
with strangers or people that you don't know that well.
(38:46):
In daily life this comes up where you're reminded and
there's a lot of shame because I think a lot
of times the estranged parent worries that people are going
to think, well, what did this person do that their
daughter doesn't talk to them anymore for all of these
years that he can't see his grandchildren. What's the real
story there? What happened? And so I can understand Lenny
(39:08):
why part of you thinks it's easier to just kind
of live the way you're living and have the grandparent
relationship that you have with Patricia's children. If I could
just say that his way of coping all these years.
It's kind of like, sometimes I feel like I'm judgmental
because how could you do that? And then I spat
(39:29):
myself and I say, like you said, this is his pain.
This coping style has worked for him all of these years,
because what the coping style is of complementalizing, it is
not like repression. Repressions means you put it out of mind,
you don't think about it. When you compatmentalize, you think
(39:49):
about it, you don't feel it. What you compatmentalize is
the emotional aspect. So the ideas can be there, the
thoughts can be there, but you find a way to
put the feelings side so that the hurt is not
there all the time. And it's not that that's comfortable,
because he said, you know he's comfortable. He's not comfortable,
but it's easier. It's just a little less painful. And
(40:10):
it's such a great distinction. Yes, the compartmentalizing the feelings,
because it's too uncomfortable to feel. And for twenty five
years he's led an amazing life, I mean, in his
professional life, in our life, in our doing amazing things together.
So it's not like he curled up in bed and
said I'm done. His coping skills have tremendously enabled him
(40:33):
to be resilient and carry on, and now we're here.
This is one of the reasons I went into the
field that I went into family life. I'm a trial
litigator in dealing with child abuse, primarily domestic violence and custody.
That's what I do. It's one of the things. It's
been so rewarding. I can't even begin to describe how
(40:54):
rewarding that's been. And there must be such cognitive dissonance
when you can do that for other families, but you
weren't able to manage that with your own. And so
we're glad to hear that you're open to some possibilities
and maybe trying something different instead of what hasn't worked before.
And so I think Guy and I have some advice
(41:16):
for you. Great. It's very clear that you've been thinking
about Julia every single day of your life in some way,
and you've tried to contact her you've made various efforts,
and even so, we're not sure that Julia knows this,
(41:42):
and that might be very confusing for you because you
feel like you've tried so hard and she was the
one who pushed you away. But I have a feeling
that she sees it differently. So in order to make
sure that she knows, we want you to create a
(42:04):
very strategic campaign. And the campaign isn't to get her
to reconnect with you, although we hope that that might
happen at some point, but the campaign is to make
sure that she knows how much she matters to you,
(42:25):
because we think that will do a lot no matter
what she does. One of the things that Julia might
have been thinking was that in your work every day
you are fighting for other people's kids, but that maybe
you didn't fight enough for her. And again, this is
her perspective, This isn't necessarily how you think about it,
(42:48):
but it's going to be really important that she feels
like you understand why she is so hurt. And what's
important for you is to feel like you've done everything
you can, like you are now going to be as
proactive as you can possibly be, and that really means
(43:10):
a full court price. It really means a campaign because
one letter, one voicemail or two is not going to
give her the impression that you care as much as
you do, and it's not going to give you the
impression that you've tried as hard as you need to.
And that campaign is contacting her by voicemail or by
(43:31):
email or by letter, but one of those every single
day in which you say to her, I screwed up
because I think about you every day, but you don't
know that. I know you don't because I didn't make
that clear enough to you over these years. And so
I'm going to be contacting you every day with the
(43:53):
hopes that we can speak eventually, and if not, with
a knowledge, at least that you know that I truly care,
because that's what as your father, is really important, that
you know that it's every day that I think about you.
(44:13):
And we'd like you to start that campaign as soon
as possible, and would like you to keep a little
bit of a journal on what it feels like to
be so proactive, what it feels like to fight, and
would like to hear how you're feeling after two weeks
of this campaign, and would like to hear from you, Patricia,
your perspective on how Lenny is doing in this campaign?
(44:36):
What is fighting doing for him? Is he is he
putting a spring in his step? Is he more proactive
in other areas of his life? Would like both perspectives,
yours Lenny and yours Patricia about him? How would this
be perceived by her as harassment? So here's the thing.
(44:57):
It seems like you guys have a lot of reasons
not to be proactive. And it's not that there isn't
some real validity to some of the concerns. But the
fact is that from Julia's perspective, it's been decades and
her father tried to send some letters. Maybe she received them,
(45:22):
maybe she didn't. We don't know. If you have any
pieces of information from Julia, it's this in my teenage years,
you didn't fight for me, and I don't want you
at my wedding. That is the one piece of information
you have. She feels you didn't fight for her, and
I have a feeling. It's very hard for one's child
when the parent is not saying I am out there
(45:45):
fighting for you every single day, to know how much
they care, to know how much she matters to you,
You're not showing up on her doorstep, you're not trying
to waylay her on the street. You are simply sending
her an email, a voicemail, a letter in the mail.
And so we'd like you to do this for two
(46:08):
weeks straight without skipping a day, so that Julia sees
what it's like to have her father fight for her. Now,
we don't expect anything to happen in these two weeks.
We would like you to report back in two weeks
to see what it feels like to you to actually
fight in a concerted way. To start this campaign to
try to get reelected as her father. You are running
(46:31):
for the office of father and you need to get reelected.
You've never done that kind of campaign with her. But
here's a thing plenty. For this to truly have an impact,
it has to be a campaign, and we want you
to do it for a full year. And I know
that sounds like a lot, but it's been many years
(46:52):
where Julia doesn't know that you've been thinking about her
every day, and we want to give her enough time
to see you be proactive, to see you fight a
consistent way, and we think a year is that amount
of time. And then at the year mark, you can
let her know, Hey, I'm so sad that you weren't
(47:15):
interested in having a conversation with me. I wanted to
let you know how much you matter, and I feel
like I've done that and I will still think about
you every day for the rest of my life, and
I want you to know that I am here for you,
and then maybe you'll have a sense of peace at
(47:36):
the end of that year. Were no matter what happens,
whether she gets back in contact with you or she doesn't,
that you did the thing that she said you hadn't,
which was to fight for her. And you fought a
good battle, and you might win and you might not,
but you showed up. I want to speak not to
the part of you that is full of fear, but
(47:57):
I want to speak to the part of you that's
full of love and longing. How does it sound to
that part of you? It sounds very good. I'm in
That's what I'll say, you know, Lenny. I want you
to think of this when you're doing it as this
is me fighting for her, because that's a very empowering thought.
(48:23):
This is not me begging her. This is me letting
her know that I can and that is an impowering thought,
and that's the thought that should sustain you through this
even if you don't get responses. You made a good
point before that really hit home when you said that
how hard I fight for other children, but I haven't
(48:46):
done it for her. And maybe perhaps she's aware of that,
and that is a reality to her, and she needs
to know that she matters more than those other kids.
And I don't think that's been communicated, and that's what
we hope we'll get communicated to her no matter what
(49:08):
she does with it through this campaign. I said that,
thank you, all right, Well, we look forward to hearing
how it goes, and we'll speak to you in a
couple of weeks. Thank you, okay, great, very special. Thank
you very much for talking with us. It's really been
(49:28):
a pleasure, and we really wish you the best and
we wish you good luck. Thank you, Thank you very enlightening.
I think Lenny has an opportunity here to really make
up for a lot of years in which she was
(49:51):
way too passive and way too on the sidelines. And
I think in part it's because when you are a
lawyer in family court, you are so aware of how
bad things can go. You really do want to stay
away from it, but sometimes you stay too far away
from it, and I think he did. I definitely think
that his work informed some of his decisions, but I
(50:11):
think it went much deeper than that. I think it
was so painful for him, and sometimes when something is
so painful, we don't want to feel. Every time he
would kind of stick his neck out a little bit
and he would get that rejection. It was just too
much to bear. And from Julia's perspective, I imagine she thought, well,
(50:34):
why isn't my dad fighting for me. That's the one
piece of information we got from her, and unfortunately, probably
her mom told her all kinds of reasons why her
dad wasn't fighting for her, and then when she doesn't
hear from him, it just validates what her mom has
been saying. And when she said that to him, you
didn't fight for me as a teenager, I think what
(50:55):
she needed to hear was tell me more about that,
because I have a different impression of that. I want
to hear what your experience was. And I think that
he's opening the door now to say I really think
about you. I care. I screwed up. I didn't communicate
that to you, and I want to hear about you
(51:17):
and your life and your experience. And I agree with
you that I think it goes deeper than the professional stuff.
And that's why I'm really curious to hear how two
weeks of fighting will you impact him? But I heard
a lot of was, well, we tried everything, but I
don't think they tried everything. So I want to see
what it's like when they have a task, a specific
(51:38):
concrete task of here's what it looks like to try everything,
and are they still going to find that they're not
able to do it? Hopefully, between the two of them,
they'll be able to make some progress. You're listening to
dear therapists from my Heart Radio. We'll be back after
(52:00):
a quick break. So, guy, we heard from Patricia and
Lenny and we gave them something really hard to do.
So let's hear what happened. Hi, it's Patricia and Lenny,
(52:24):
and here is the update of the homework assignment you
gave to us. So Lenny, you go first. Wow, it
was not easy. In fact, the first couple of days
were still very stressful. However, I did reach out to
(52:44):
enjoya every day and I reached out to her in
several different ways. I was able to get a phone
number and I would leave some voicemails. I then left
some text messages and I sent letters. So the first
couple of days were still very stressful, but I made
(53:06):
sure to make a phone call and leave a voice
message the second day because I felt that that was
the hardest thing to do and I needed to deal
with Dad head on. And I would say that it
did become easier after that, although even as recently as
yesterday I called and it was still I found it
(53:29):
stressful beforehand. Yesterday was Joey's birthday, so I did leave
her a message. I sank to her happy birthday, and
all at all, it gave me a good feeling to
do this. I felt that it was important. I felt
(53:51):
that it even chastperred over to my daily life. I
felt that I was a little more proactive in initiating
different things, and I intend to continue to do this
for the ensuing year. As you had suggested, I may
modify how I do it, but I wanted to be
(54:11):
meaningful and regular and not to become wrote and just
annoying to her. So thank you very much. Okay, So
My part was to observe how he was these two weeks,
and I have to say that all in all, surprisingly so,
(54:32):
he was pretty calm. He likes to use the word
agitated when he gets anxious or upset, so I would
say that his agitation level was pretty low other than
right before a couple of the phone calls, but other
than that, he was basically in a good mood. I
feel that he felt a bit more empowered, and it
(54:55):
did carry over certain specifics into more proactivity, doing things
without being reminded so much, taking care of certain things
again on his own, and I think it was a
positive experience and I do hope that he will continue
(55:16):
it into the year. As you said, to be reelected
as her father. Thanks, this was a great opportunity and
a great conversation. We've had very enlightening and a very
interesting homework assignment. Thanks again. So what I loved about
(55:41):
what happened was that he went from a place of
feeling helpless and like there was nothing he could do
about this situation to becoming proactive. And even though he
hasn't gotten a result yet and we were not expecting
that he would get a result at this point, it
changed his way of feeling about himself and also who
(56:04):
he is in the world, that it seemed to have
translated more generally for him, according to both him and Patricia.
That's the interesting thing about both helplessness and on the
other side, proactivity. They're a bit contagious, both of them are.
So when you feel really helpless in one domain, it
often spreads into other domains. But then when you want
(56:26):
to kick out of that, if you can get really
proactive in one specific area, it will spill over into
other areas as well. And it's great to remember that
that you don't have to address the issue in the
domain it's at. You can literally sometimes do it in
a parallel place and it will still carry over. Yeah,
And I think the piece it's important here is that
(56:46):
he was doing something, not just proactively, but differently, that
he was taking responsibility instead of defending himself and trying
to say, well, I don't understand I was there for you.
I tried to be there for you. You're the one
who didn't want to see me new approaches. I realize
that in some ways I failed you, and you're very hurt,
and I want to hear more about that. And I
(57:07):
am interested in your experience. And now I don't know
how much she's able to communicate that in the kinds
of messages he's leaving, but I hope that that is
the gist of his messages, so that she knows that
he's approaching her from that perspective. And the cherry on
the cake for me was when he said, I'm going
to try and vary it up so he doesn't get wrote,
(57:28):
so I've put thought into it so it's meaningful each time.
To me, that's the best thing he said, because it
means that his heart is really in it, and hopefully
that will come across to Julia. Hey, fellow travelers, if
you've used any of our advice from the podcast in
your own life, send us a quick voice memo to
(57:50):
Laurie and Guy at Ihartmedia dot com and tell us
about it. We may include it in a future show
that brings us to the end of our show for
this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you're
enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate and
review it. You can follow us both online. I'm at
Lori Gottlieb dot com and you can follow me on
(58:11):
Twitter at Lorie Gottlieb I or on Instagram at Lori Gottlieb,
Underscore author, and I'm at Guywinch dot com. I'm on
Twitter and on Instagram at Guywinch. If you have a
dilemma you'd like to discuss with us, big or small,
email us at Lorian guy at iHeartMedia dot com. Our
executive producers Christopher Hasiotis, were produced and edited by Mike Johns.
(58:35):
Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our podcast Fairy
Godmother Katie Curuk. So this episode marks the middle of
our first season, and we're going to be taking a
brief break, but don't go away because when we come back,
a woman struggles with resentment toward her sister, who always
seems like the perfect sibling to their parents. Sometimes I think, oh,
(58:56):
I should be better at this. I should ask them
more question because that's what Jill does when she's there.
She writes questions for the night and has people discuss
memories and labels, the antiques and oh my goodness, she
is Mary Puppy's Yeah, And it's like, I can't compete
with that. I don't know how to do that. Dear
(59:17):
Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Laurie Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist advice column for the Atlantic. And I'm Guy Wench.
I wrote Emotional First Aid, and I write a Dear
Guy column for Ted. And this is Dear Therapists. This week.
A man is strange from his daughter for twenty five
years wants a chance to reconnect. She said, I changed
(00:27):
my mind. I don't want you to come to my wedding.
And I just asked her, why are you doing this?
And she said to me, you weren't there for my
teenage years, the last several years that I was growing up.
You just weren't in my life. I said, I wasn't
in your life because you kicked me out. Listen in
and maybe learn something about yourself in the process. Dear
(00:49):
Therapists is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice,
and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental
health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions
you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter,
you are agreeing to let IHOT media use it in
(01:10):
Potter and Full and we may edit it for length
and a clarity. Hi Laurie, Hey guy, So what do
we have in our mailbooks today? Well, this week we
have a letter about a very common but very tricky situation.
All right, let's hear it, dear therapists. My husband Lenny
has been estranged from his daughter Julia, who is now
(01:32):
thirty eight, for over twenty five years. She has three children,
and he, of course has never met them. When Julia
was ten, he and I got married. She was severely
poisoned by her mom. At Julia's wedding. Her mom passed
out during the ceremony upon seeing Lenny there. She was
taken to the hospital and never returned to the wedding.
Her own parents told my husband, there she goes again.
(01:56):
Every rabbi, mental health professional, etc. Advised him to wait
until Julia grew up and moved out of her mom's house,
and that then she'd come around. Lenny is a family
attorney and did not engage in a custody battle because
he knew what that could entail for Julia. Throughout the years,
he has sent Julia cards and they were either returned, unopened,
or never acknowledged. Do you think there's any hope at
(02:17):
this point for Lenny to have a relationship with Julia
or at least know his grandchildren. Thank you, Patricia. This
is a letter about parental alienation and those situations for
a parent, but incredibly painful to know you have kids
out there who just do not want any contact with you.
It's one of the most painful things parents can go through.
(02:41):
And then on the other side, there's the child who's
obviously going through or has gone through something incredibly painful
that made them monta cutoff contact. And these are very
difficult cases to deal with. When we get something like
that enough clinics, because we rarely get both parties coming in.
It's usually the parent coming in and say, I do
(03:01):
not have any contact and I don't know how to
re establish it. Yeah, And I think what's so hard
about it is that usually the parent feels like maybe
they made some mistakes but it didn't merit alienation. That
they're also being portrayed in a way that isn't accurate,
and that leaves them feeling like they need to defend themselves.
(03:21):
They feel like they want to just throw up their
hands because they don't feel like they can clear up
these misperceptions that have been so embedded in the fabric
of the family at this point. And yet there's so
much longing to reconnect with that child, and when there's
grandchildren involved, it makes it even more painful. And one
(03:43):
of the things she mentioned in the letter was that
he didn't want to embolk on a big custody fight
because it didn't think it would be good for his daughter.
But that then puts him at such a disadvantage in
that sense. And I've worked with so many parents who,
like I, tried to do the right thing and it
cost me the relationship because I didn't want to put
my door in the middle. It ended up my ex
did that. So there's incredible amounts of frustration towards the
(04:06):
X because of that outcome. Yeah, and I wonder why
it's the wife who has reached out to us on
her husband's behalf, because it might be that he just
feels so stuck and she sees that, and she sees
the pain and really wants to kind of right this wrong.
(04:27):
And I think I know how we can find out.
Let's go talk to them, Let's do that you're listening
to Dea Therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a
quick break. I'm Laurie Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wench and
this is Dea Therapists. Hi. Patricia, thanks for your letter. Hi,
(04:51):
thanks for taking it on. And I see we also
have Lenny, your husband, yes, with us, which is great.
So it's so glad that you could come on the show.
Thank you, Thanks for having us. It's a very painful
situation that you described, and we'd love to hear a
little bit more of the history there of what happened
over the years, how that alien nation happened between you,
(05:15):
Lenny and Julia. I got divorced from my first wife
in nineteen ninety two. Subsequently I met Patricia. Interestingly, we
met over a lunch that my daughter invited her daughter
to come to, and then we met afterwards and started
(05:37):
talking and started going out, and a year later we
got married. And at the time, I had what I
considered to be a very close, very bonded relationship with
my daughter Julia. And interestingly, Patricia was not the first
person I had dated. After I got divorced. I had
(05:58):
gone out with a number of people never any issues.
Somehow this became a major issue. My ex wife, Sunday
was very upset that I was dating someone who also
lived in our community. We live in a fairly small community,
and she'd basically threatened me and warned me I better
(06:18):
not get married or there would be consequences. So the
consequences were that my daughter rather quickly stopped seeing me. First,
we were having what I would consider to be a
real legitimate joint custody where she would spend half the
time with me, half the time with her mother. That
quickly became a meal once a week, which then became nothing.
(06:42):
Once a week. I would go over to pick my
daughter up, she would say to me or my daughter,
in front of both of us, oh, sol and soak,
just your friend just caught up. Wanted to invite you
for dinner, but you have to go out with your father,
or she say things like I wish your father would
get cancer and die. That would be better for both
of us. I mean, I'm literally telling you what happened.
(07:03):
My daughter was ten years old at the time. What
was Julia's reaction when this was set in front of her?
Do you remember did she say anything, did she look
at you. Did she look at her mom? Do you
remember how she reacted to this? I'm going back literally
twenty seven years. I kept a diary at the time,
(07:24):
and all I can tell you was her attitude became
much more negative towards me, angry. She would take on
the tone and the words of her mother. It became
if we were going out, I had to take her
somewhere to buy her something, clothes or whatever. That's how
it became. If I wouldn't do it, we weren't going out.
What was her relationship like with the friend, which I
(07:47):
guess is Patricia's daughter, right? So that was how you
guys met was through her friend? Was your daughter Patricia? Yes?
So what happened to that friendship once the two of
you started dating? And how did your daughter react? So interestingly,
my daughter has disabilities and Julia and my daughter were
(08:10):
in the same girl scout troop, so Julia would invite
sometimes my daughter over for a Saturday. Neil kind of
fatter the goodness of her heart because she didn't have
a lot of friends my daughter, so it was less
a friendship and more a good deed, shall we say. So,
(08:31):
it wasn't like their friendship then died out because it
was never really a friendship to begin with. Was your
daughter okay with you dating Lenny? My daughters were fine
with it. Yeah, my daughters were fine with it. Yes. Interestingly,
one of the main factors I believe is because my
ex husband gave them what I call permission to like
(08:58):
this man who would never be their father, but who
would be their stepfather. That's a really good thing he
did to his credit, Lenny, can you tell us a
little bit about your relationship with Cindy, your ex wife
at the time of the divorce. Was it very acrimonious. Yes.
When Patricia got divorce, she had a perfect divorce, very friendly,
(09:23):
using mediation. Everything worked fine and there was really no animosity.
When I got divorced, I had a war the Roses
type situation. We had a marriage that was not a
good marriage. My parents got divorced, and I was very young,
and I did not want to get divorced, so I
stayed in the marriage way too long. But Cindy would
(09:46):
often say to me, we should get divorced. I don't
know why we're together. Eventually I reached that point where
I agreed, and then I tried to go to counseling
to see if that would help. It didn't, so I
pushed forward with the divorce. We got divorced very quickly
after you went to counseling and you said, let's go
ahead and get divorced. Was she's still on board with
(10:06):
getting divorced an action did? Yes? But in reality I
don't believe so. Is Julia your only child together? Julia
is my only natural child. And I think you said,
Patricia and Yoletta that you had consulted professionals and they
all suggested, Lenny to you that just wait until she's
at the house and she has less influence from Cindy,
(10:30):
and then things should be better. Was there any shift?
What did happen when Julia did leave her mom's house.
We had seen many psychotherapists over the first years, trying
to see what could be done. Who's Patricia and we
went to a clinic and I arranged for therapy for
(10:50):
my daughter. I try to keep it out of the
courts because as a family court attorney who deals with
the worst stuff, I knew what could be and I
try to avoid that. My daughter graduated from high school,
went to Israel for a year to study there and
I went over, I reached out and started having a
(11:13):
relationship with my daughter. At that point. We emailed back
and forth for the year I met her there, we
went out. When she came back, we went out to
lunch one time, and then she was back in her
mother's home or within a couple of days. That was
the end of it. Was there any discussion when you
were seeing her, any processing about what had happened about
(11:33):
the relationship. Was it just with seeing each other and
being very tentative, or did you actually talk about what
had gone on at that point for the last eight
nine years. I believe it was just being friendly and
trying to re establish communication. We really did not discuss
what went on. There were certain things I couldn't discuss
with her. She just wand't let me go there. What
kinds of things. Well, if I would try to bring
(11:54):
up anything like this, she would just not respond or
change the subject. And I wanted to try to reestablish
a relationship, so I didn't want to push her away.
Do you have any sense of if she were to
answer that question at that point in her life, what
she would have said about why she had broken off
(12:15):
contact with you. I feel I do, because a few
years later, she got engaged, got married, and apparently I
had learned that through a lot of pressure being applied
by her mother's family, she eventually invited me. At first,
my name wasn't on the imitation, nothing of that nature.
(12:37):
But then she invited me. I was excited and thrilled
and made the arrangements, and then about a week or
two before the wedding, she disinvited me. She said, I
changed my mind. I don't want you to come to
my wedding. We were able to arrange to meet at
someone's home and we talked and I just asked her.
(12:59):
I said, I don't understand what you're doing. Why are
you doing this? And she said to me, she said,
you weren't there for my teenage years, the last several
years that I was growing up. You just weren't in
my life. I said, I wasn't in your life because
you kicked me out, your mother forbid me to be
to your about mitzvah or anything that was important. She said,
I know, but you still weren't there anyway. So I
(13:22):
feel that she was angry. Maybe she felt I didn't
try hard enough. That's a question that I'm wondering about
So when you say that Cindy wouldn't let you come
to Julia's bot mitzvah, couldn't you have shown up at
the bot mitzvah? Maybe not the party, but the service.
I was told by several people in the community not
to come to any parties. There wasn't much. I don't
(13:44):
think there was any service at all. Did you communicate
with her at all at the time to say, you know,
congratulations or I'm really sad that I'm not going to
be there, I'm so proud of you. Was there any
communication going on like that at all? Yes, that bot
gifts for her which I was never able to give her,
and I did try, even though I wasn't there. I
(14:05):
would let her know how much I loved her by
writing to her, by leaving messages on the phone, because
she wasn't picking up at the time, I believe, but
I did let her know. So you were saying right
before the wedding, there was I think before the wedding,
said there was this meeting and she explained she doesn't
want you there because you were absent from her teenage years.
Little bit because he went aloud. But then you did
(14:26):
end up coming to the wedding. How did that come about? So,
as you can imagine, that was one of the worst
weeks in my life. I was just very despondent, very upset.
I spoke to our rabbi and he insisted that I
go to the wedding, that I had to go to
the wedding, to the ceremony, and so he said he'll
go with me, and so we went and I walked
(14:49):
in and I saw the other side of the family
that everyone came over to me and they just hugged
me and kissed me and thanked me for coming. They
then took me in to meet my future son, and
then I took a seat in the audience so as
not to make a scene or anything. And then Cindy
and Julia and my former father in law walked down
(15:10):
together down the aisle. They had the ceremony, and towards
the end of the ceremony, Cindy just fainted and passed
out into the arms of a rabbi. It was just,
you can't put words into it. What was Julia's reaction
to seeing you, because she also didn't know that you'd
be there. I did not go into the room where
(15:34):
the bride sits before the wedding, because I did not
want to create a scene. I just wanted to attend
my daughter's wedding. My feeling was that, besides the fact
that I'd have a right to see my own daughter
get married, I felt that she shouldn't have to go
through life later on dealing with why she did not
(15:56):
allow her father to be there. Happened when Julia did
see you though, because she must have seen you there,
I can't even remember having eye contact with her. To
be honest, what was Julia's reaction when Cindy fainted? It
was really towards the end they finished it up. They
(16:18):
kind of moved Cindy off to the side, and then
they and then after the ceremony, they attended to her
and her parents and siblings stayed with me and just
basically said, there she goes again with the theatrics. She
allowed them to take her to a local hospital apparently
missed the wedding, and then the rab I called me
a little later and said, she's getting her strength together,
(16:41):
she's starting to spend this that you're just you just
ruined your daughter's wedding, so you should leave, which I did.
Has there been contact at all between you and Julia
since then? And what efforts did you make sense then
to try and stay in touch in some way? No.
I would write letters, I would send gifts at first,
but everything one unanswered. How did you know what her
(17:05):
address was so she was an adult now or did
you send her emails? How did you try to contact her?
People in the community seem to know where she was?
And then now it's say the later two thousand, so
you can start googling. I learned what google meant, and
you can start googling addresses. And I actually spoke to
(17:25):
my former in law several times because they would come
to visit another adult child who was living in this community,
and I believe I may have found out from them.
So literally, no contact directly on the phone or otherwise.
Julia really since the wedding in many many years right
(17:46):
now now, And so the answer is no, and the
irony is her mother then moved to that community to
be near her too. I'm curious to know what you
said in those letters. Do you remember I would tell
her how much I loved her, how much I cared
about her, how important it was to try to establish
(18:07):
a relationship again, to try to see things from her perspective.
As difficult as it is to put this on me,
it actually came back unopened, so I know she never
saw it. So this was through the mail. It wasn't
through email. Yeah. I emailed my son in law a
number of times to try to reach through him, so
I must have emailed Jolia too, and I was getting
(18:27):
no response. So Patricia, I have a question for you.
So this has gone on for so many years. Why now,
how did you write to us and ask for help? Well,
we talk about this a lot throughout all the years,
and as we're getting older, and Lenny has three granddaughters
(18:52):
who he's never met. The oldest is either twelve or thirteen,
so he would often say, I hope when they get older,
they'll at least google me to know that I'm alive,
because they've probably been told that I'm dead or whatever.
So maybe that's a chance I have. He actually tried
with another therapist a few years ago, and that therapist
(19:13):
recommended he write a letter. He did that went nowhere.
All these letters come back returned to sender unopened. Whatever,
nothing gets anywhere. So as time goes on, is there
something else we could do? At this point, is there
another rock we could turn? There's got to be something.
It's never too late, that's my attitude. It's never too
(19:34):
late as long as we're on this side of the earth.
So one night, it was like midnight, I said, what
the heck? I just stream of consciousness wrote that, just
reaching out. He didn't even know I wrote it because
it's so painful. I mean, I have three daughters, and
Lannie is very connected to them, so it just hurts
(19:57):
me to know that he's got three beautiful granddaughters. And
I mean, this is like the worst case scenario parent
alienation syndrome carrying on into the next generation. I mean,
can there ever be something, some inroads, some crack in
that window. I also tried through the rabbis, and I
(20:18):
was able to locate her rabbi, and I tried reaching
out that way again. I just got nowhere. The Rabbi
wouldn't respond to you. He spoke to me for two
minutes one day, sett'll speak to me again a few
days later. I've been emailing him and calling him, leaving messages.
I just stopped. At some point it was clear he
(20:39):
wasn't going any further. So again I started thinking well,
maybe if there can't I say that in quote be
a relationship with Julia. Can there be some connection with grandkids?
I mean, it just seems just so overwhelmingly sad that
there should be such a generational cutoff. Lenny, do you
(21:04):
know anything about Julia's life other than the fact that
she has these three kids? Is there a part of
you that from Afar is really proud of her. You
look at what she's done, and you're just filled with
I guess just parental pride and love even with all
(21:25):
the pain that's going on in the background, or I
should say in the foreground. I know something about her life,
I honestly don't know very much. I'm just wondering if
your friend Google got you anywhere, or even the people
in the community. You're in the community. It's a small community.
I'm wondering how much you know about Julia, where her
(21:46):
life has taken her, and her husband and his life.
So I do Google things or Facebook things, because I
do try to stay in touch and see what I
can find out of my friends. Who seems to be
able to get some information. He's providing me with the
pictures of my three granddaughters, and he would always say
(22:08):
to me. He'd say, if you want me to send
this to you because I know how painful it is,
And I'd say absolutely, I say I want to see it.
I do get a lot of pride, and as I said,
I love my daughter. I think what she's done is
a terrible thing because it wasn't just me. She cut
off my mother, my grandmother when they were alive. It's
(22:30):
just the whole family. Can you tell me what you
love about Julia? That's a hard question, but I wasn't
expecting take your time. I don't know if I can
(22:52):
even answer that. I don't. I know so little about her,
and I mean, she's thirty eight, and I just I
don't know anything about her really, when you get down
to it, tell me what you loved about her when
she was little. I loved her smile. I thought she
(23:15):
had a good heart. We had a very bonded relationship.
What did you do together? We played games, board games. Unfortunately,
when we would go out as a family, it was
basically me and Julia, and then there was Sunday as
opposed to me and Syndia. Then there was Julia. What
(23:35):
do you mean that when you went out it was
you and Julia, and there was Cindi instead of you
and Cyndi and there was Julia. I feel like a
couple is the main core, like will be me and
Patricia for example if movement out, and then there's the
children who are the extended part of you. But here
(23:56):
it was more like it was Julia and me as
the APO, and Sinday was the extended part. Let me.
I know that at the time of the divorce, when
Julia was still a minor, your feeling was, I can't
get into this fight with Cindy because Julia will be
(24:17):
collateral damage and I don't want that for her. She
will be the one to suffer. So I'm going to
stay on the sidelines for her benefit as much as possible.
And I'm wondering whether you've considered over the years, since
she's become an adult, stepping out of the sidelines or
do something that exactly the kind of thing that you
(24:39):
would never really do when there's a custody negotiation going on,
or when there's the option for her to get really
caught in the middle there. Yeah, but you consider doing
anything that is more proactive since she's been an adult.
So we're I guess laughing or smiling. Because Patricia has
that conversation with me very often. She's always prompting me
(25:03):
and pushing me. It's very much in my court in
that regard. I think, if I'm honest enough with myself
and I look at all these years that have gone by,
the bottom line is I haven't done enough. I feel
that I haven't really done much other than the letters
and the cards. In that regard, I don't feel like
(25:24):
I've stepped up to the plate. Did you not step
up to the plate because you don't want to make
it difficult for Julia by having that potential confrontation or
did you not step up to the plate because you
were trying to save yourself the hardacre further rejection In person,
I would tell you it's both. Really, I have to
(25:45):
say I've compartmentalized this whole thing to live my life.
It's so painful and so difficult, and there are certain
movies that will watch and Patitia will see me cry
during those movies when they involved parents, children or reconnecting.
It's so difficult, and I think a large part of
(26:07):
it is I've blocked it. I've really blocked it, and
it's like opening up a really sore wound. So that's
certainly a big part of it, and that might be
where there's some disconnection between the perception of what you
think is going on and the perception of what Julia
(26:29):
thinks is going on. Because that comment that you made
to you about well, you weren't really there during my
teen years, and you said yes, but you made sure
I wasn't there. You didn't want me there during your
teen years. I think there's this fantasy that all children have,
even adult children of my parents, are going to fight
for me, even if you're telling them go away. Right
(26:53):
when you think of little kids when they say to
their parents, go away, I hate you. They don't really
want you in that moment. They feel that, but they
don't really want that to happen. I think it's interesting
that Patricia was the one who nudges you. Patricia is
the one who wrote the letter to us today because
this is just so painful for you that it's hard
(27:16):
to open that door emotionally for yourself because you feel
like you won't survive it. That's true, and at the
same time I imagine that maybe from Julia's perspective, there
is some element of he didn't fight for me hard enough,
(27:36):
even if the message was go away. And I get that,
I get that you're asking, is that something I can do?
Are you clear that even if there is something you
can do, to do it would be to open up
that wound that you've been able to complementalize. To do
(27:58):
it would be to really risk a lot of pain.
And I'm asking if that's something you've thought through, if
that's something you're actually indeed looking forward. Is that something
you are you humoring, Patricia? Or is that something that
you're ready to do now to go and fight now?
Is that something you will be ready to do? So?
(28:18):
I would certainly tell you, am I afraid? Is that
a big factor? Absolutely? Can you talk more about the fear? So?
I'm very scared about this. My stomach has been just
a wreck the entire week just thinking about it and
really opening the sail up again. I don't know what
(28:41):
else to do anymore, and I think I had to
become more proactive. So I'm prepared to do whatever anyone
could think of to try to see if I could
break the stalemate. What do you fear more that you'll
try something and it won't work, or that things will
stay the way that they are. I'm not sure there's
(29:04):
a difference, because if I try something and it doesn't work,
then things are going to stay the way they are.
It's really the same thing. To me, there is a
difference because you will be smarting from the pain in
a fresh way if you try something now and it
doesn't work. Yeah, and that's a good point. I don't know.
I've learned to live with this for so many years,
(29:27):
and I don't know what it can do to my life.
It's very scary. What is the worst possible thing that
you think it could do to your life? If you
reach out, you get really proactive about this, and she
still doesn't want to have contact with you. The worst thing,
I guess would be my health. Honestly, I had a
(29:49):
heart attack years ago. I'd be afraid it happened again.
Patricia thinks that it was all caused by stress or
am I holding it back or combination. As scary thing
and are you also will any that in the best
case scenario, that is that you take some kind of
(30:10):
action and it does work and she's willing in some
way to have some kind of contact with you, that
there would be a lot of processing and very difficult
conversations to be had. In other words, that the difficult
moment is not just the moment of you taking action,
but it will be many moments that follow, because this
(30:30):
is a relationship that would need a lot of work
if it were to get into the right track. Is
that something you're also considering that this is not just
a one time shot but probably an ongoing exposing of
the wound and all of it. So I'm prepared to
do that. In fact, in one of the letters I
wrote her, maybe more than one, I'd suggest that we
go to counseling. She picked the consoler, she picked the time,
(30:53):
the place. I understand that's exactly what I'd have to do.
I think one of the things that's scary as may
is that, at least initially, if we get anywhere, it
would require me to have contact alone, that Patricia's cut
out of that. Probably that bothers me tremendously. I haven't
(31:17):
even discussed it with her, right because Patricia just turned
at you like, m what do you mean? That was
the expression, Yeah, we're two separate people, and that bothers
me tremendously. But I know that would have to be
the case. And Patricia does too, probably right at least
at the beginning. The thing is, you are two separate people,
(31:40):
and there are a bunch of relationships here. There's Julia's
relationship with you, There's Julia's relationship with Patricia. There's your
relationships respectively with the grandkids potentially the son in law,
and your relationship with each other, and how this affects
that as well. It sounds like Patricia has been a
(32:00):
great support for you throughout all of this. She's a rock, yeah,
and so having to go into this without her meaning
she'll be there to support you, but she won't be
by your side because Julia probably would not want that
right now, right So I'm not afraid to do it
(32:23):
alone in that regard. I just don't like cutting her out.
What I'm hearing is there are so many reasons based
in fear, and the fears that you're describing, I think
are just one when you sum it all up, and
that's the fear of having your heart stomped off again.
(32:44):
So you can say, well, I don't like that Patricia
wouldn't be a part of this. I don't like this
or that or the other aspect of it. But I
think at the end of the day you said, and
I think it's very symbolic. You said, I'm afraid of
having another heart attack the seat of love. That your
fear is that your heart in every way might not
(33:04):
be able to endure this. Yeah, And at the same time,
I don't know that your heart can endure leaving things
the way they are, knowing that you didn't act as
proactively as you might have ANTICI said something very similar
to me last night, And those really are the choices.
(33:27):
You have the choices to do nothing, but then have
that question of what if I had taken more proactive
action and living with that, or risking taking more proactive
action and risking getting your heart stumped on because when
you take proactive action in this kind of situation, there
is always hope, and it's the hope that gets dashed
(33:51):
that is so painful. And there's no way to take
proactive action without allowing the hope to come through. And
you've been able to compartmentalize for many years and keep
pope down and keep expectations down, but it won't be
possible to do that if you're actually planning to take action.
So those are the risks, and you're saying very clearly Lenny,
which I'm kind of glad to hear that I would
(34:12):
rather risk having my heart stumped on so even if
it doesn't work out, I'll be able to say to myself,
I did what I could. I'm saying that, Patricia, you're
nodding along as any speaking. You seem to be so supportive.
You seem to be really clear about Yes, of course
I can't be there right away. So you've thought about
this a lot, and because you've been living with it
(34:33):
for so long, I'm just curious. Have you ever thought
about what is the most proactive thing you could see
Lenny doing? Wow, that's a great question. What is the
most proact showing up at her apartment because we've talked
(34:54):
about that. You have, Yeah, we've talked about like when
the letters come back, like go to her partment house
and just seeing what the apartment number is, because one
came back saying wrong apartment number, So I think, go
to the apartment house, like do your own investigation, just
show up. I know that's huge, but I'm nodding from
(35:15):
the perspective of Lenny's talking and the heaviness and the pain,
and I'm also nodding because everything you're saying is just
so amazingly right on. I mean, the visuals of the
heart being stomped in the metaphor of the heart attack
and the breaking, I mean, it's so powerful. And fear
(35:35):
is a huge factor in Lenny's personality and doing what
he's done up until now, or not doing what he's
done up until now, because the hurt and the fear
of rejection has outweighed the benefit. I bring it up
openly and say, if you were to die tomorrow and
on your deathbed, would you be okay that you did
(36:00):
enough that this was it? And sometimes in the past
his answers have been yes, because the pain of re
engaging and opening that up is too horrific, too hard.
But of late it's been not such an obvious answer.
(36:20):
So maybe there's starting to be a shift. Maybe there's
starting to be a shift since I got the response
from your letter, But these conversations, even in the last
ten days, have started shifting. Oh, there's a shift, because
Lenny is really clear right now, and so there's definitely
been a shift. You didn't waffle on that you're clear right,
I'm class So that's a big shift. Yes, and sometimes
(36:41):
these shifts happen as people get older and they start
to really come to terms with the reality that they
might not have as much time to fix something that
maybe they imagine they would have earlier on oh, for
something to get fixed spontaneously, because she comes to some
kind of epiphany, right that the urgency, the urgency becomes
(37:02):
heightened as people get older. I see also on your face, Patricia,
throughout this conversation, I've seen how much you care about
Lenny and love him, and as a parent yourself, how
much you can empathize with the pain that he's experiencing.
And I wonder if you're holding a lot of the
(37:23):
pain for him that he's not able to feel himself. Yeah.
I mean, it's going to sound wrong, but I'm caring
for the two of us, Like, yes, I care more
than he cares. Now that's not the truth, of course
he cares more, But it feels like I care more
because this uses me to the point of doing things
(37:44):
about it and trying whatever cookie thing I could possibly think,
like writing a letter to us. Yeah, right, that cookie thing.
And he's comfortable closing the door, locking it, putting the
key in a compartment and saying, let me just live
my life with my step grandchildren and I'm doing fine.
(38:05):
Why you're rocking the boat. It's not that you care more,
it's that it doesn't hurt as much for you to
think about it. You know. There's another piece of this,
which is that there's often so much shame for the
estranged parent in a community where you have to explain
(38:26):
to people all the time where you just meet people
and they say, do you have kids, and yes, I
have a daughter. Oh you know, tell me about your
daughter right where you might be out socially and then oh,
it's just such a point of pain right there. And
then what do you say? And do you have a
story that so you don't have to get into it
with strangers or people that you don't know that well.
(38:46):
In daily life this comes up where you're reminded and
there's a lot of shame because I think a lot
of times the estranged parent worries that people are going
to think, well, what did this person do that their
daughter doesn't talk to them anymore for all of these
years that he can't see his grandchildren. What's the real
story there? What happened? And so I can understand Lenny
(39:08):
why part of you thinks it's easier to just kind
of live the way you're living and have the grandparent
relationship that you have with Patricia's children. If I could
just say that his way of coping all these years.
It's kind of like, sometimes I feel like I'm judgmental
because how could you do that? And then I spat
(39:29):
myself and I say, like you said, this is his pain.
This coping style has worked for him all of these years,
because what the coping style is of complementalizing, it is
not like repression. Repressions means you put it out of mind,
you don't think about it. When you compatmentalize, you think
(39:49):
about it, you don't feel it. What you compatmentalize is
the emotional aspect. So the ideas can be there, the
thoughts can be there, but you find a way to
put the feelings side so that the hurt is not
there all the time. And it's not that that's comfortable,
because he said, you know he's comfortable. He's not comfortable,
but it's easier. It's just a little less painful. And
(40:10):
it's such a great distinction. Yes, the compartmentalizing the feelings,
because it's too uncomfortable to feel. And for twenty five
years he's led an amazing life, I mean, in his
professional life, in our life, in our doing amazing things together.
So it's not like he curled up in bed and
said I'm done. His coping skills have tremendously enabled him
(40:33):
to be resilient and carry on, and now we're here.
This is one of the reasons I went into the
field that I went into family life. I'm a trial
litigator in dealing with child abuse, primarily domestic violence and custody.
That's what I do. It's one of the things. It's
been so rewarding. I can't even begin to describe how
(40:54):
rewarding that's been. And there must be such cognitive dissonance
when you can do that for other families, but you
weren't able to manage that with your own. And so
we're glad to hear that you're open to some possibilities
and maybe trying something different instead of what hasn't worked before.
And so I think Guy and I have some advice
(41:16):
for you. Great. It's very clear that you've been thinking
about Julia every single day of your life in some way,
and you've tried to contact her you've made various efforts,
and even so, we're not sure that Julia knows this,
(41:42):
and that might be very confusing for you because you
feel like you've tried so hard and she was the
one who pushed you away. But I have a feeling
that she sees it differently. So in order to make
sure that she knows, we want you to create a
(42:04):
very strategic campaign. And the campaign isn't to get her
to reconnect with you, although we hope that that might
happen at some point, but the campaign is to make
sure that she knows how much she matters to you,
(42:25):
because we think that will do a lot no matter
what she does. One of the things that Julia might
have been thinking was that in your work every day
you are fighting for other people's kids, but that maybe
you didn't fight enough for her. And again, this is
her perspective, This isn't necessarily how you think about it,
(42:48):
but it's going to be really important that she feels
like you understand why she is so hurt. And what's
important for you is to feel like you've done everything
you can, like you are now going to be as
proactive as you can possibly be, and that really means
(43:10):
a full court price. It really means a campaign because
one letter, one voicemail or two is not going to
give her the impression that you care as much as
you do, and it's not going to give you the
impression that you've tried as hard as you need to.
And that campaign is contacting her by voicemail or by
(43:31):
email or by letter, but one of those every single
day in which you say to her, I screwed up
because I think about you every day, but you don't
know that. I know you don't because I didn't make
that clear enough to you over these years. And so
I'm going to be contacting you every day with the
(43:53):
hopes that we can speak eventually, and if not, with
a knowledge, at least that you know that I truly care,
because that's what as your father, is really important, that
you know that it's every day that I think about you.
(44:13):
And we'd like you to start that campaign as soon
as possible, and would like you to keep a little
bit of a journal on what it feels like to
be so proactive, what it feels like to fight, and
would like to hear how you're feeling after two weeks
of this campaign, and would like to hear from you, Patricia,
your perspective on how Lenny is doing in this campaign?
(44:36):
What is fighting doing for him? Is he is he
putting a spring in his step? Is he more proactive
in other areas of his life? Would like both perspectives,
yours Lenny and yours Patricia about him? How would this
be perceived by her as harassment? So here's the thing.
(44:57):
It seems like you guys have a lot of reasons
not to be proactive. And it's not that there isn't
some real validity to some of the concerns. But the
fact is that from Julia's perspective, it's been decades and
her father tried to send some letters. Maybe she received them,
(45:22):
maybe she didn't. We don't know. If you have any
pieces of information from Julia, it's this in my teenage years,
you didn't fight for me, and I don't want you
at my wedding. That is the one piece of information
you have. She feels you didn't fight for her, and
I have a feeling. It's very hard for one's child
when the parent is not saying I am out there
(45:45):
fighting for you every single day, to know how much
they care, to know how much she matters to you,
You're not showing up on her doorstep, you're not trying
to waylay her on the street. You are simply sending
her an email, a voicemail, a letter in the mail.
And so we'd like you to do this for two
(46:08):
weeks straight without skipping a day, so that Julia sees
what it's like to have her father fight for her. Now,
we don't expect anything to happen in these two weeks.
We would like you to report back in two weeks
to see what it feels like to you to actually
fight in a concerted way. To start this campaign to
try to get reelected as her father. You are running
(46:31):
for the office of father and you need to get reelected.
You've never done that kind of campaign with her. But
here's a thing plenty. For this to truly have an impact,
it has to be a campaign, and we want you
to do it for a full year. And I know
that sounds like a lot, but it's been many years
(46:52):
where Julia doesn't know that you've been thinking about her
every day, and we want to give her enough time
to see you be proactive, to see you fight a
consistent way, and we think a year is that amount
of time. And then at the year mark, you can
let her know, Hey, I'm so sad that you weren't
(47:15):
interested in having a conversation with me. I wanted to
let you know how much you matter, and I feel
like I've done that and I will still think about
you every day for the rest of my life, and
I want you to know that I am here for you,
and then maybe you'll have a sense of peace at
(47:36):
the end of that year. Were no matter what happens,
whether she gets back in contact with you or she doesn't,
that you did the thing that she said you hadn't,
which was to fight for her. And you fought a
good battle, and you might win and you might not,
but you showed up. I want to speak not to
the part of you that is full of fear, but
(47:57):
I want to speak to the part of you that's
full of love and longing. How does it sound to
that part of you? It sounds very good. I'm in
That's what I'll say, you know, Lenny. I want you
to think of this when you're doing it as this
is me fighting for her, because that's a very empowering thought.
(48:23):
This is not me begging her. This is me letting
her know that I can and that is an impowering thought,
and that's the thought that should sustain you through this
even if you don't get responses. You made a good
point before that really hit home when you said that
how hard I fight for other children, but I haven't
(48:46):
done it for her. And maybe perhaps she's aware of that,
and that is a reality to her, and she needs
to know that she matters more than those other kids.
And I don't think that's been communicated, and that's what
we hope we'll get communicated to her no matter what
(49:08):
she does with it through this campaign. I said that,
thank you, all right, Well, we look forward to hearing
how it goes, and we'll speak to you in a
couple of weeks. Thank you, okay, great, very special. Thank
you very much for talking with us. It's really been
(49:28):
a pleasure, and we really wish you the best and
we wish you good luck. Thank you, Thank you very enlightening.
I think Lenny has an opportunity here to really make
up for a lot of years in which she was
(49:51):
way too passive and way too on the sidelines. And
I think in part it's because when you are a
lawyer in family court, you are so aware of how
bad things can go. You really do want to stay
away from it, but sometimes you stay too far away
from it, and I think he did. I definitely think
that his work informed some of his decisions, but I
(50:11):
think it went much deeper than that. I think it
was so painful for him, and sometimes when something is
so painful, we don't want to feel. Every time he
would kind of stick his neck out a little bit
and he would get that rejection. It was just too
much to bear. And from Julia's perspective, I imagine she thought, well,
(50:34):
why isn't my dad fighting for me. That's the one
piece of information we got from her, and unfortunately, probably
her mom told her all kinds of reasons why her
dad wasn't fighting for her, and then when she doesn't
hear from him, it just validates what her mom has
been saying. And when she said that to him, you
didn't fight for me as a teenager, I think what
(50:55):
she needed to hear was tell me more about that,
because I have a different impression of that. I want
to hear what your experience was. And I think that
he's opening the door now to say I really think
about you. I care. I screwed up. I didn't communicate
that to you, and I want to hear about you
(51:17):
and your life and your experience. And I agree with
you that I think it goes deeper than the professional stuff.
And that's why I'm really curious to hear how two
weeks of fighting will you impact him? But I heard
a lot of was, well, we tried everything, but I
don't think they tried everything. So I want to see
what it's like when they have a task, a specific
(51:38):
concrete task of here's what it looks like to try everything,
and are they still going to find that they're not
able to do it? Hopefully, between the two of them,
they'll be able to make some progress. You're listening to
dear therapists from my Heart Radio. We'll be back after
(52:00):
a quick break. So, guy, we heard from Patricia and
Lenny and we gave them something really hard to do.
So let's hear what happened. Hi, it's Patricia and Lenny,
(52:24):
and here is the update of the homework assignment you
gave to us. So Lenny, you go first. Wow, it
was not easy. In fact, the first couple of days
were still very stressful. However, I did reach out to
(52:44):
enjoya every day and I reached out to her in
several different ways. I was able to get a phone
number and I would leave some voicemails. I then left
some text messages and I sent letters. So the first
couple of days were still very stressful, but I made
(53:06):
sure to make a phone call and leave a voice
message the second day because I felt that that was
the hardest thing to do and I needed to deal
with Dad head on. And I would say that it
did become easier after that, although even as recently as
yesterday I called and it was still I found it
(53:29):
stressful beforehand. Yesterday was Joey's birthday, so I did leave
her a message. I sank to her happy birthday, and
all at all, it gave me a good feeling to
do this. I felt that it was important. I felt
(53:51):
that it even chastperred over to my daily life. I
felt that I was a little more proactive in initiating
different things, and I intend to continue to do this
for the ensuing year. As you had suggested, I may
modify how I do it, but I wanted to be
(54:11):
meaningful and regular and not to become wrote and just
annoying to her. So thank you very much. Okay, So
My part was to observe how he was these two weeks,
and I have to say that all in all, surprisingly so,
(54:32):
he was pretty calm. He likes to use the word
agitated when he gets anxious or upset, so I would
say that his agitation level was pretty low other than
right before a couple of the phone calls, but other
than that, he was basically in a good mood. I
feel that he felt a bit more empowered, and it
(54:55):
did carry over certain specifics into more proactivity, doing things
without being reminded so much, taking care of certain things
again on his own, and I think it was a
positive experience and I do hope that he will continue
(55:16):
it into the year. As you said, to be reelected
as her father. Thanks, this was a great opportunity and
a great conversation. We've had very enlightening and a very
interesting homework assignment. Thanks again. So what I loved about
(55:41):
what happened was that he went from a place of
feeling helpless and like there was nothing he could do
about this situation to becoming proactive. And even though he
hasn't gotten a result yet and we were not expecting
that he would get a result at this point, it
changed his way of feeling about himself and also who
(56:04):
he is in the world, that it seemed to have
translated more generally for him, according to both him and Patricia.
That's the interesting thing about both helplessness and on the
other side, proactivity. They're a bit contagious, both of them are.
So when you feel really helpless in one domain, it
often spreads into other domains. But then when you want
(56:26):
to kick out of that, if you can get really
proactive in one specific area, it will spill over into
other areas as well. And it's great to remember that
that you don't have to address the issue in the
domain it's at. You can literally sometimes do it in
a parallel place and it will still carry over. Yeah,
And I think the piece it's important here is that
(56:46):
he was doing something, not just proactively, but differently, that
he was taking responsibility instead of defending himself and trying
to say, well, I don't understand I was there for you.
I tried to be there for you. You're the one
who didn't want to see me new approaches. I realize
that in some ways I failed you, and you're very hurt,
and I want to hear more about that. And I
(57:07):
am interested in your experience. And now I don't know
how much she's able to communicate that in the kinds
of messages he's leaving, but I hope that that is
the gist of his messages, so that she knows that
he's approaching her from that perspective. And the cherry on
the cake for me was when he said, I'm going
to try and vary it up so he doesn't get wrote,
(57:28):
so I've put thought into it so it's meaningful each time.
To me, that's the best thing he said, because it
means that his heart is really in it, and hopefully
that will come across to Julia. Hey, fellow travelers, if
you've used any of our advice from the podcast in
your own life, send us a quick voice memo to
(57:50):
Laurie and Guy at Ihartmedia dot com and tell us
about it. We may include it in a future show
that brings us to the end of our show for
this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you're
enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate and
review it. You can follow us both online. I'm at
Lori Gottlieb dot com and you can follow me on
(58:11):
Twitter at Lorie Gottlieb I or on Instagram at Lori Gottlieb,
Underscore author, and I'm at Guywinch dot com. I'm on
Twitter and on Instagram at Guywinch. If you have a
dilemma you'd like to discuss with us, big or small,
email us at Lorian guy at iHeartMedia dot com. Our
executive producers Christopher Hasiotis, were produced and edited by Mike Johns.
(58:35):
Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our podcast Fairy
Godmother Katie Curuk. So this episode marks the middle of
our first season, and we're going to be taking a
brief break, but don't go away because when we come back,
a woman struggles with resentment toward her sister, who always
seems like the perfect sibling to their parents. Sometimes I think, oh,
(58:56):
I should be better at this. I should ask them
more question because that's what Jill does when she's there.
She writes questions for the night and has people discuss
memories and labels, the antiques and oh my goodness, she
is Mary Puppy's Yeah, And it's like, I can't compete
with that. I don't know how to do that. Dear
(59:17):
Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio
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