The Parent Without a Conscience

The following "qualities" of a typical psychopathic parent come from my own experience and from reading many of your posts (survivors who also have to expose their children to a psychopath) here on the forum.

They know their own tricks and how to play them on the kids.

In other words if he love-bombed you, he can do it to your children, and then suddenly discard them as well. The extra bonus for a psychopathic-parent is that he can repeat this for a very long time and the child has no way of going NC, if the child gets as far as understanding what is going on then hard work has been done (mostly by the caring parent sometimes with the help of a good therapist).

They have a power-over relationship with the child.

In other words whereas in a normal relationship people influence each other, with a psychopathic-parent he exercises his power over his children and feels entitled to this - plus the psychopath has 'a legal right' to this, the law does not distinguish between types of relationships.

They will never co-parent with you, they will counter-parent.

In other words, he will make it his top priority to undo your parenting efforts with the children and make you fail as a parent. Not only is this a horribly tough battle for the caring parent (and a very long one), it is a nice 'hobby' for the psychopathic-parent, it is thrilling to see how (sometimes with very little effort) he can undo your hard work and make you suffer.

They will use the children as weapons regardless of the consequences for them.

Children are "remote controls" for a psychopathic-parent, he can use these at will to set off some drama for you and them, he can push the button and enjoy the show. Any clever psychopath will know his children (or you) well enough to know which buttons to push. Here you can make it more difficult for him if - in time (a long time) - he is excluded from the kids' activities as much as possible and gets more clueless about what they like and how their life with you is.

They do not love their children, but will demand love in return.

And even when the children do adore their psychopathic-dad it will still not be enough, it never is. It will not be enough to appease him, not enough to trust the children and not enough to be there for them. On the other hand, any lack of complete adoration from the children will give him the 'right' to retaliate against you.

They will use their children at will to prove themselves to a new partner.

But sadly this also means that after totally discarding his own children and treating them as strangers, the psychopath will then be able to 'prove' to his new partner what an evil person you are and put the OW in a triangle with you that you never wanted. You get her anger (as do the children at times) and he gets her devotion and overflowing pity. Very rarely (not, in my experience) does he actually show himself to be proud of his children even though he sees himself as the best ever dad.

They will see custody as a battle they should 'win', never as a serious responsibility.

This makes these horrible custody battles so bitter because he does not really have anything to lose, if he gets custody he can still have OW take care of the children or even drop them on you (after winning of course) because he knows you care and will care for them when he does not.

They will stick to their right of being in touch with you, using the children as an excuse.

This means that he gets this power of going totally NC with you at times when you really need him for important decisions in the lives of the kids, and then he will bother you day and night if he feels like it (or feels that you might be weak for whatever reason) using the children and his right to be their father when it is convenient to him.

To say it with a quote (from Indie Mom whose posts mean a lot to me):

Co-parenting with a psychopath is a special kind of hell.

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