The Beast Machine reared its ugly head yesterday, reminding me how it continues to put its hunger above the needs of the family, reminding me how its stupidity endangers the family, reminding me how it consumes many of the minds of those family members entering its den.

            I share my experiences through my website fatheriam.com and through personal contacts. People find me there or are referred to me by others for what little insight I can provide. My only compensation is the hope that other families do not relive some of the horrors our family experienced over the last decade.

            If I was to sum up my thoughts about conflicted divorce in one motto, it is “Always take the high road, always”. Divorce courts are full of liars, full of dirty tricks, full of thieves to such an extent that the judges usually do not recognize truth when they see it, they only sort through the various lies.

            Of course, some might argue Patricia’s mental illness made this easier for me. Patricia’s mental illness was degenerative and offset by her brilliance and charm for the first several months of the divorce. This and her willingness to lie about anything. It was not until she expressed her anger against Glen by putting his dog down that a little truth started making our way into the divorce. And I would laugh at anyone who might label my divorce easy.

            And you fall into classical rationalism – it is okay for me to act this way because he started it. Like Patricia telling the bond hearing judge that she had sought my death before I could kill her.

            Our society is wrestling with some of these questions at the moment. There is the wife who shot her husband with a shotgun three times while he lay sleeping with their young children in the house and fled the scene with the children afterwards. Her sentence – four months. There is a similar case pending here in Albuquerque.

            The use of the ‘high road’ and the employment of lawyers is typically a contradiction in terms. The legal profession is the only part of our cultural where ‘Victory equates Justice’ and often ‘Might equals Right’.

            Now to our story.

            One lady I have been talking to for the last five years continued to claim she wanted a divorce but found excuse after excuse to stay miserable and to share her misery with her children.

            At first I was supportive, but eventually came to realize that I was part of the problem. Our relationship became a classical ‘emotional affair’ and as long as she received emotional love and support from me, she could not move forward in resolving her relationship with her husband and healing her family.

            She refused to see it this way. To her, any friendship that was not physical and met her needs was okay. We argued and argued about this and she simply refused to see my point of view. Our relationship was additionally complicated by the close friendship between two of our children, so some communication is necessary. I tried again and again to reduce our relationship to that level but after a few weeks, she would attempt to scale it back up.

            Finally last month, I made some progress and got her mad enough at me to back off. She seemed to understand she could no longer turn to me for advice and support. She needed to move on.

            And right into the jaws of the Beast Machine.

            Last night I hear from my child who wants to go over to this lady’s house that the lady is busy filling out a restraining order against her husband against whom she has not filed divorce.

            Remember, I have been deeply emotionally involved with this woman for several years. Time and time again, I heard her complaints and stories about her husband. On one occasion, two or three years ago, she related an incident of the night before where he had been physically abusive to their daughter, about eleven years old, by slamming her head against the desk. I pleaded with her to report it to the police but she refused. Later, it became fuel in her ‘misery’ complex as she expressed time and time again her subsequent regret at not calling the police.

            And it is important to recall that I have been deeply emotionally involved with another woman in my past, my mentally ill ex wife. I kept in my mind that I was hearing only one side of the story and her refusal to act on her complaints and her lack of discretion with her own children attached some doubt to her creditability.

            But, I felt it likely her husband was emotionally abuse. She, without even realizing it, also related a few stories of her emotional abuse of him.

            Emotional abuse between adults is probably one of the poorest defined terms in the area of family issues. Either every insult and argument is an example of abuse or there are levels where we must assume adults are communicating harshly.

            It is a judgment call and of course the worst example I know is when Hearing Officer Lopez ruled that if Patricia felt threatened then she was.

            Adding to my concern is that I am hearing this from my child who is hearing it from her friend.

            One of the Beast Machine’s fantasies is the belief that children do not have to be told anything about a divorce. The idea is to spare the children as much as possible and to avoid putting them in the middle.

            Nice fantasy, put the reality is the children are more involved in the divorce then anyone else and need to be supported during the process. APS runs an excellent program for elementary school students called ‘Banana Splits’ to help with this.

            It is a fine line responsible parents need to walk. In my case, it is important to remember my children were the victims of their mother’s mental illness, more so then I will ever be. In addition, there was my children’s intelligence to consider, often greater then the adults within the Beast Machine. I remember the court psychologist chewing me out for some remarks fourteen year old Glen made about his mother’s ‘chemical imbalance’ and drawing the conclusion that Glen picked this up in conversations with me. Actually, it was Glen’s own thoughts.

            I have criticized the lady in question time after time over the years for communicating too much of her problems to the children. First and foremost, it borders on abuse to tell a child year after year that you are going to rescue them from their father by filing for divorce and then never doing it.

            Second, how the hell can you tell a child that you are getting a restraining order against the father although he has done nothing specific on the advice of your divorce lawyer?

            Aye, there is the rub. Apparently, after I managed to end my relationship with this lady, she was finally able to move on and made the decision to end her relationship with her husband only to fall into the jaws of the Beast Machine by filing charges of domestic violence against her husband only because her Beast Machine lawyer advices so.

            And the Beast Machine lawyer now takes what could have been a simple case, worth only a couple of thousand dollars into a high conflict case generating fees now in the ten of thousands.

            The vast majority of cases filed in Albuquerque are resolved without a single hearing; the vast majority of the remaining cases are closed with a single hearing. Complicated cases like mine are extremely rare, less then one out of a hundred.

            The very allegation of domestic violence disqualifies you from participating in the Family Court Clinic, a non lawyer way to work out the issues of your divorce.

            Even if there is domestic violence, bringing it up may not be the best way to proceed and requires deliberate thought.

            She files those papers and she enters my world and she is not welcome.