Recent phone calls from adult SD to DH during a vacation of ours reminded me of the ongoing "Look at me" behavior of her mother from years past.  

Long after DH and I got together, he told me the story of when he and a GF went away for a short beach vacation, the last weekend of which fell on Father's Day. DH did not tell BM or the skids he was going away (apparently, he knew better). He knew he'd be home that Sunday afternoon and would talk with his kids then (they lived in another state). DH knew while on vacation to turn off his cell phone (hmm). 

In the meantime, BM began calling DH's home phone and cell phone in her then-usual frantic fashion. She called DH's office and was told he was on vacation. Envision fire coming out of the top of her head. At that point, BM began working to figure out where DH had gone! SHE ACTUALLY CHOSE A FEW BEACH TOWNS AND BEGAN CALLING HOTELS ASKING IF HE WAS STAYING THERE!!! (DH learned all of this later, of course--BM was very proud of herself for finding him). Beeeeeach -- if he wanted you to know where he was, he would have told you. My God!

So, DH and GF are on the beach either the Saturday before Father's Day or the morning of. They're going to check out on Father's Day and head home. GF goes back to the hotel room to get something and sees the hotel room phone blinking. She picks it up and IT IS A MESSAGE FROM BM AND THE SKIDS! GF "panics" and deletes the message and says nothing to DH. DH and GF drive home, GF goes to her house. DH receives a call from "the family" immediately thereafter (it was never just the kids...BM had to be on every call). Everyone is upset that DH did not return their call. What call? Then the explosion. GF gets pointed at as being the bad guy, GF confesses to deleting the call, BM tells DH that GF was trying to keep his kids from him on Father's Day and that it's not good to date a woman who wants to place a wedge between him and his kids--big blow up. That relationship did not last much longer (go figure). 

Fast forward to DH and I dating:  DH takes me to the beach for a long weekend (uh huh). I was unaware, but he had turned off his cell phone. We're on the way back home and stop for lunch. DH turns on the phone, and there is a message from his employer (I could hear it): "Your family has been looking for you and they are very upset because they haven't been able to reach you. Your ex-wife has been calling here to see if we have heard from you." That message--the whole situation (DH's end of it, too, believe me)--was RED FLAG NUMBER ONE. I remember it vividly.   

A few days later, DH tells me he wants to talk to me about something that is very concerning to him. He said that when he got home that day, he hadn't had the chance to unpack when the phone began ringing. It was his daughter, who had a screaming fit (she wasn't yet a teenager) about him going away, about him dating. He said she was totally out of the control and it ended with what sounded like her throwing the phone across the room. DH was shaken. It was the first time I "confronted" DH about his ex. I asked, "What mother would see her daughter in that frame of mind and be ok with her picking up the phone and calling her father when so upset, hmmm?" I asked why the mom had not followed up with him out of what should have been concern over that call. I watched a lightbulb go off in his head. I didn't doubt for a moment that SD was channeling her mother's emotions, which had obviously been building up over the weekend. SD was used, I felt, as the spokesperson for "the family," as SD would pull most at DH's heartstrings. 

Things were quiet for some time after that. I didn't ask what was going on or what had been said. I didn't want to know. There were instances here and there of a meddling or jealous or controlling and weird ex-wife. But it all exploded a few years later after we married. Each time we were pulling out of the driveway to either get on the highway toward a vacation or on our way to the airport, there was the then-predicted BM phone call:  SS was suicidal (bs), a bill needed to be paid NOW (bs), SD was having sex (sure), skids were doing drugs (partially true), or whatever the crisis-of-the-moment might be. After a few major upsets as we were heading for a get-away, we had to learn to navigate this pattern, too. I realized years later that it had all left DH with a sort of PTSD about vacationing. We'd happily plan a get-away, and when the day came to leave, he'd get jittery and grumpy. I used to ask him why he chose vacations to start arguments. Amazing how these things work. My vacations will cause crisis and emotional upset. (This worked with the holidays, too, come to think of it.) The crisis, controlling, destructive behavior that fed into this is, I believe, is borderline personality disorder.  

We are finally past this. Still, I have seen what I think is SD, now an adult, having taken the torch from her mother. Thankfully, she doesn't (yet) do drama, lies, exaggerations, and crisis. She at this point only appears to do a watered-down version, more like interruptions. Not anything we can't handle. Nothing huge. I'm just observing and seeing where this came from. It's interesting to look back and see the patterns and make sense of what ultimately is nonsensical. Thanks for reading.