Characters:
Julia – 32F – sister nr. 1; single mom of a teenage daughter,
Don – 40M – Julia’s boyfriend; living with the mother of his child, has a teenage daughter,
Rebecca – ?F – Don’s [former] partner and the mother of his child.
Lily – 30F – sister nr. 2, engaged and soon-to-be mother,
Mike – 30M – Lily’s fiancé, soon-to-be father.
About 6 months ago Julia met with a possible employer Don – they went to dinner and the job offer didn’t come through. After they had met, she got some very weird vibes from Don and to my knowledge nothing happened of the job offer.
A couple of months after that dinner I found out they had stayed in contact. For the time Julia claimed that they were only friends, but soon it turned into a relationship with Rebecca being blissfully unaware of their dealings.
4 months after they had met for the first time, Julia had some interesting news – they were going to buy an apartment together with Don. By that point in time, absolutely no one knew of their relationship (not their daughters, nor friends or family) and Don hadn’t ended the relationship with Rebecca. Furthermore, Julia had inherited a 3-bedroom apartment that she was currently living in with her daughter and the new apartment was smaller, so no clue why Don couldn’t have moved in there. Now Julia’s apartment was being put up as collateral for the new apartment, she is in the process of selling her old apartment for the down payment and the ownership of the new place is split 50/50. According to Don, he needed some motivation to move out/break up with Rebecca (renting was not an option for him).
Around the same time we started hearing about Don’s interesting theories on life, some examples:
people who can not naturally reproduce should not have babies (Lily was going through IVF at that moment),
people without a Bachelor’s degree should not have children at all (he keeps pushing Julia to finish her Bachelor’s – she already has a child so..),
he dislikes people from other countries (Lily’s fiancé Mike is from another country),
he believes all religions are complete bullcock (Julia and Lily were raised in a Christian household, their father is a minister),
that Don shouldn’t have to talk or have any form of contact with Julia’s friends and family, since it isn’t necessary.
So now it’s been about 6 months since they first met – in about a month they are going to move into the new apartment with both of their daughters, who still have no idea who they are moving in with. Julia’s daughter has (quite understandably) asked me about the man she is moving in with, but it is not my place to say as Julia forbade it. I’m not even sure that Don’s daughter wants to live with him or stay with her mother. Don’s current plan is to tell their daughters that they are moving on the day of the actual move.
Over the past weekend another incident occurred with Lily and Mike. Lily and Julia were driving home from a party and Mike was driving behind them. As Lily is with child and Mike felt that Julia was going over the speed limit a bit too much, he decided to overtake them to force Julia to slow down. After he finished the overtake, a deer ran across the road and he had to slam the brakes quite hard – fortunately nothing happened of it and all was good and forgotten by the time they got home.
The next day Julia called Lily and gave her an earful about how Mike is out to hurt them. That she doesn’t believe a deer crossed the road and his intention was to (somehow) injure them. Which is complete fiction in my opinion- I know Mike and the way he has been taking care of Lily throughout her pregnancy and how careful and caring he is with Lily.
So to sum up – to me it seems that Don is trying to drive a wedge between Julia and the rest of her family. It is hard to have an opinion on their relationship since none of us have ever seen or talked with Don aswell. There is absolutely nothing about Don on social media either, so the guy is practically a ghost to us. I understand that she is always defensive when it comes to her relationship with Don and that might put a lot of stress on her, but we’re all only interested in the wellbeing of Julia and her daughter. So any ideas or concerns that we have are immediately dismissed by her. It seems she will not listen to any of us and her conclusions about other family members (and Mike) seem to get more out of hand. How can I approach her to make her understand our point of view and that we are only trying to look out for her?
TLDR: Sister’s (32F) new boyfriend (40M) keeps gaslighting her. It seems that his goal is to have my sister cut all ties with friends and family members with his inane theories on life, relationships and religion; how can I reach her and help her understand that she is in fact being manipulated?
4 comments
So she meets this guy, sells her apt, buys another with him on the deed- did he contribute to the cost of the new apt?
Why isn’t he telling his D about moving? Chances are she’s gonna stay with the mom. No way she’s moving into a new place with people she has never met.
Why isn’t your niece asking her mom about don?
I hope her dads around and will take her in, I would not want my teen D living with some random guy her moms knows for 6 months and the D hasn’t even met.
You cannot help your sister see anything about this guy. She’s an adult and will make this mistake all on her own.
Unfortunately, the short answer is that you may not be able to reach her. You’ve tried, and what she may have is deep insecurities about being alone that this guy fulfills regardless of how shitty he is. I don’t know if there’s something so badly he’d have to do to shake her out of it, like evidence of a criminal record involving child abuse, but it seems unlikely (you could try to find dirt if there is. His lack of online presence suggests he might be hiding something).
I’ve heard that the main thing you *can* do, though, is maintain a good relationship with her. Resist all attempts by him to isolate her. If he wants to join your gatherings and she won’t go otherwise, let him, for example.
I remember a Reddit post where the friends (roommates) just kept being there for her, and showing her a good time. Propping her up, making her feel good about herself even when the abusive boyfriend was there. It took a while, but over time she realized she was having a better time with her friends than she was with her boyfriend, and ultimately built up the strength to leave him.
So that may need to be your long-term strategy. Give your sister all the kindness and love in the world for her. Keep that door open so someday when she does need to leave, she knows she’ll have your help & support. Show her what good, loving relationships are compared to her boyfriend.
This also may mean having patience and gritting your teeth while she goes through worse, though.
Good luck.
The amount of toxicity here would rival those chernobyl. This guy is such bad news.
I am concerned that he has no intention whatsoever of breaking up with his baby mama and never did, he is simply squirreling her away as a f*** mama who cannot go and complain to her little family who keep objecting to the arrangement and giving her a silly ideas like how she is being abused. (Sarcasm/his perspective).
You can’t move only on the day of the move. What is he going to tell his baby mama that he’s collecting his baseball cards out of storage as things start to disappear around the house and go into the boxes? If he is really this poor is he going to hire a moving company to come and clean him out? Technically isn’t that kidnapping his own children by not arranging everything with his baby mother?
This guy and his fear of other races and the way that he doesn’t appear on social media gives me some serious worries that perhaps he is projecting – and that he from another country and he is hiding here. Especially if you can’t seem to find him really anywhere.
I am not really sure how to help you with things, I am very concerned that everything is ramping up into a a dangerous situation where your sister is basically held hostage psychologically and everything is taken away from her so that she is dependent on him. He is already working hard on it.
One of the things that you can do is set your sister down with some kind of web page or resource that talks about emotional manipulation and go through the entire Playbook of emotional manipulators. Give her lots of time to think about what is going on and to identify each action, play by play. Let her tell you, this was the time when he used emotional manipulation, this was the time where he negated my feelings, this was the time when he lied, this was the time when he gaslit, and so on and so forth.
There are lots of resources on cults online and you will need to sort of scour through them and abstract what resources are available to help her.
I should warn you.
Usually these types of situations do not end well. Usually these types of situations end up with you not saying your family member until ten or fifteen years later when she is fleeing.
As upset and fearful as you are for your sister, it is absolutely imperative that you maintain Bridges with her. **Do not burn those bridges down**. If you burn the bridges down, when the time comes to flee, she will not have the strength to and she will not have anywhere to go.
I just don’t understand how don thinks he is just going to walk out of the family home with their daughter and Rebecca is going to let him, like oh your taking my daughter to live with strangers in a home I don’t know about……..Ok??? Does Rebecca know they are over because even that isn’t clear. Personaly if my sister was taking my niece to live with a person like this I would ignore any ban about talking to her about the situation and have a conversation with three of them, back my niece when she’s asking questions and make sure they’re answered.
Your sister is in deep so all you can do is keep communication open with her but also your niece, she needs to feel like she has someone she can reach out to apart from her mum.
He sounds like a conman.