Sandra’s Tactics
Let's talk about Sandra’s autocratic tactics.
Stephanie turned one in March 1989. It could only have been a month or two after that when Sandra uttered ‘I’ll leave and you’ll never see the kids again’. It wasn’t even in anger. It was matter of fact. Calm. I ignored it as I was used to her nasty streak when I had a different opinion. This was different from the norm though. She had the gun against my head and it didn’t stop. It hasn’t stopped. It got that bad that by October that year I was talking to someone involved in family liason. Someone known to me. For a while I wondered if it might have been post natal depression. It wasn’t. She knew what she was doing.
My mood started to dip. When I returned home from work there was no telling how she would be. We’d go to bed at night and she’d be all nice and cuddly. I would get up in the morning at 7.30am, Adam would follow me downstairs, I’d light the fire, make breakfast and sit down with The Courier. Sandra would then come pounding down the stairs, into the living room and pound through the living into the kitchen. No indication as to what was wrong. As the kids got older I often felt she did that for their benefit, as you may understand as you read on.
As Adam and Stephanie grew older it became apparent Stephanie would be used more so than Adam. Probably as Adam had bonded with me for the 18 months pior to Stephanie’s birth she couldn’t work on him.
Our differences were petty and blew up from nothing. We’d be walking through the Overgate and she’d get annoyed at something. She’d then take Stephanie under her arm and walk calmly away. This carried on and on until Stephanie was a teenager. But it was no longer ‘I’ll leave and you’ll never see the kids again’. It became ‘Never mind, we’ll get you a new dad’. It was constant.
We drove to the supermarket one day, not long after we’d bought a new car, a Peugeot 405, the most expensive car we’d bought. I drove into the car park and decided to park in a space with no cars either side, a wee bit further away from the store than Sandra felt necessary. She went mental. The shopping trip was hellish after that. And because I chose a parking space a few yards distant from the store the kids ‘would soon get a new dad’.
Not only that, she would make up stories. This one is typical. My parents were looking after Adam and Stephanie. We went down to collect them. On the way out Sandra said something to my parents about me. It was a lie but I let it go. When we got into the car I asked her why she’d said it. Her reply? ‘Because I wanted to’. That I’ve never forgotten.
As Stephanie grew older Sandra pulled her closer and the cuddles would continue when we had a difference. Arguments would start and Sandra would walk away with Stephanie. She’d storm away if out in town, she’d storm up to her bed with her at home. She didn’t do it with Adam. She didn’t have that bond with him. In fact Adam received more clouts than the others if he put a foot wrong.
It was more than a bond with Stephanie though. Over the years it became evident that Stephanie was being groomed to hate. Sandra was using her against me. She tried with Adam when he was young but as he grew up that bond with Sandra wasn’t there, to the point he grew to hate his mum. Sandra would eventually use Stephanie and Sophie in a most unpleasant and disgusting course of action. Keep reading. No parent should put their kids through the experience Sandra put them through.
Stephanie, though, was being brought up to hate.
She grew up hating one parent who loved her because that’s what the other parent wanted her to do.
Simply put, Sandra has spent many hours between 1989 and now with the sole intention of breaking down my relationship with my kids, commencing with and concentrating initially with the ruination of my relationship with Stephanie. Stephanie was, quite simply, an easy target as our first daughter.
One thing that does puzzle me, and it was put succinctly by a friend who knows my family well, when he said to me ‘I cannot fathom how three intelligent people (Adam, Stephanie and Sophie) have not sussed what Sandra did.’
I suppose that’s the hold she has on them, even given what was to come. In their eyes Sandra is beyond criticism, even given her lies, stealing and cheating. Oh yes, there’s plenty more.
