Stephanie
A close family friend, someone who has know Sandra and myself for a very long time, recently said to me ‘Your troubles started when you had kids’.
That’s true to an extent but the sad reality is our troubles started not lang after the birth of Stephanie.
My biggest mistake wasn’t marrying Sandra, we got on great and had a great laugh together.
My biggest mistake was having kids with her. Having children gave Sandra a shotgun that was rarely away from my head.
And that shotgun was never more prevalent than in Sandra’s use, manipulation and mental domestic abuse of Stephanie.
As Stephanie grew older Sandra began her alienation process. Sandra would often pull Stephanie to the side when we had a disagreement, whispering In her ear.
It was obvious Sandra was grooming Stephanie and bringing her up to hate me, acknowledged by Adam when we talked in October 2023.
Having studied and tried to understand the whole process it became obvious that Sandra is a covert narcissist and she used has triangulation throughout Stephanie's life to drive a wedge between us.
Triangulation is a toxic behaviour where a person (Sandra in this case) uses threats of exclusion or manipulation with the intention to divide and dominate. This manipulation often involves misleading communication behind one’s back (In Sandra’s case, my back).
The following note I found under Stephanie’s pillow one evening Sandra had gone to work and I was seeing the kids to bed. Stephanie would have been around nine or ten years old. I don’t think Stephanie ever saw the note as a child. The note is testimony to the hatred being promoted throughout our young family.
That's the writing of a mother who never deserved to be a mother in the first place.
Sandra was using Stephanie to create a hostile environment. She was promoting and encouraging hatred, and to this day she continues to do so, her attitude antagonised by her arrest for fraud in 2002, which she blames me for.
That note is also illustration of the fear she was instilling into Adam, Stephanie and Sophie. They were all well aware of being told they would get a new dad. Adam acknowledged that to me recently. But they always dismissed it with a pinch of salt. That's the result of grooming.
Sandra’s grooming of Stephanie is no different from the serious grooming of kids you see in the news. It is evil, with long lasting and severely damaging intent.
I was never been able to build a relationship with Stephanie due to Sandra’s manipulation.
As Stephanie became older Sandra would tell her, and Adam and Sophie, ‘We will get you a new dad’. I first heard these words, and others to the same effect in 1988, hearing it for the final time in 2002. Fourteen years I suffered Sandra's manipulation and promotion of hatred within our family. Within that fourteen year period there wasn't a month went by without her uttering these pernicious words, continually causing animosity, acrimony and alienation.
I spoke to a legal professional recently about another related matter and we touched on the grooming of Stephanie. The view was that Stephanie would deny having been groomed. My answer to that is, of course she will deny it, she is, after all, a product of Sandra’s grooming and manipulation. She will never, though, be able to deny that, from a very early age she, and her siblings were constantly told they would get a new dad.
The affect of arrest
After our separation Stephanie assisted me on a few weddings and my the studio opened in Aberdeen came up for a day to help out and meet the team.
I don’t think our separation had much of an affect on Stephanie as she had been manipulated, groomed and brought up with the expectation that she would eventually get a ‘new dad’. All of our kids were.
Sandra’s arrest for fraud changed everything though. Our divorce was dirty and bitter, Sandra doing everything she could to exact revenge, including lying to the court via her solicitor.
Stephanie stopped talking to me for several years after our divorce. She was staying with her mother though, where the manipulation would continue.
Speaking again
I can’t remember exactly when but I asked Stephanie if she would meet me for a coffee. It may have been around 2012, maybe a bit later. We met in Henry’s coffee shop and had a good chat.
Ever since then things had been fine.
Up until October 2021.
What happened? I don't know.
