@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss My friend legit met this woman and lived with her and her two kids for like ten years. Then, when the mom had to stand up to the willful daughter, my friend and her formed a strong co-parent strategy...the daughter just started saying things like "oh, he looks at me weird" #done
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Thread: Daughter ruins marriage for the giggles
I used to have a friend, who met a single mother when he was a thirtysomething, and so was she. Her kids, a boy and a girl, were 5 and 8.
I used to have a friend, who met a single mother when he was a thirtysomething, and so was she. Her kids, a boy and a girl, were 5 and 8.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss We'll call my friend 'Frank' and let's call the single mom, 'Laura.' Laura had been struggling with being a single mom, and had found work in prison administration as a low level case manager.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss During the ten years Frank and Laura were together, both of them worked and helped provide a stable household for her kids to grow up in.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss They had the normal challenges any couple experiences, up and downs, curveballs in life...but they were always able to weather the storm, as it were, because they were committed to building that stable household.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss However, for the first five years, it was pretty well understood that Frank was Laura's boyfriend, and as he wasn't the father of the two kids, Laura was the authoritative - only parent - and that's just the way it went.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss It was tough for Laura, however, and as she spent more and more time as a case manager for the prison system, which demanded more and more of her time, she developed a troubling addiction to alcohol.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss I lived with the both of them during this middle period for a year, so this is first hand observation I'm sharing. Laura was dedicated to her work, and I still don't know how she managed to function during the day, but once she got home, she would drink herself into a stupor.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss And Laura was a very angry drunk. The longer this went on, the less capable of a single mom - with a live-in boyfriend - she became. Plus, the kids started getting older, and kids have misadventures. They test boundaries. They try to get away with murder if they can.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Somewhere in the middle of this period, in which Laura was having so much trouble being the sole authority in the household, Frank and Laura decided they should get married. I never had a conversation about this with either of them.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss I just observed that they seemed to figure it out themselves what they wanted to do, and about that five year mark, they got married. This changed the dynamic between the relationship with the kids. Now, it was more of a power couple sharing responsibilities.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Laura relied on Frank to back her up, and vice versa. Laura even got some help with her alcoholism and things were really looking up. I had high hopes for them. I had already moved on to another job and place, but I visited often.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Sometime in this period, Frank started teaching at a karate school for work, and through that new work, he befriended another couple, who had two daughters. Laura's daughter, let's call her Sadie, started hanging out with the other two girls, and they were all about 13 or 14.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss One of the other daughters was relatively responsible (the older one), but the other sister was an absolute disaster. And this is who Sadie, for some reason, gravitated to for a best friend.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss This period, and I witnessed some of this myself, including having to drive back home after a tournament, only to find that Sadie and the Devil had broken in to her mom's liquor and gotten so drunk that they had to be taken to the hospital for evaluation.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss They didn't wind up having full on alcohol poisoning, but they were a sloppy mess, for sure.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss This period of their lives just got worse and worse, with bad behavior - some initiated by the Devil (I'm not even going to make up a cute name for the friend...she was terrible), but Sadie also developed her own bad habits.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss They both ditched school, would get suspended from school, they'd steal money...get caught with...partners. Some might think this is just regular teenager stuff, and they'd be partially right, but these two girls always dialed it to eleven.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss They had absolutely no chill when it came to doing what they wanted, when they wanted. In any case, Laura had formed with marriage with Frank to further provide stability where she was coming up short as the single authority.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Sadie was walking all over Laura, and Laura had started drinking again. It was a stressful, crappy time I'm sure a lot of parents go through. What exacerbated the whole thing, however, was this friendship between Sadie and the Devil.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Laura and Frank tried various co-parenting strategies, got the other parents involved...but the two couples just couldn't control these two girls. And before too long, Laura needed Frank to help stand up to the situation with her, and they proposed moving.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Basically, the only solution they could come up with was to literally physically move Sadie far away from the Devil.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss A gigantic argument took place, and it was in the middle of this high drama that Sadie figured out how to assert dominance against this co-parenting team, in which she wasn't able to just steamroll over her alcoholic mom.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss She claimed, at first, that Frank would look at her lasciviously. Later, her story morphed into a claim that he sometimes would try to grope her. It was an unbelievably gross claim, but in that kind of a he said/she said situation, people divide up for their own reasons.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Laura, even though she knew very well that her daughter had chocked up lies upon lies in the run up to this final conflict, couldn't let this particular claim just sit, though.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Her work as a prison case manager often involved trial preparation for sex offenders and child predators, and once the claim was made, all the years of hearing case upon case upon case, which may or may not have been central to the development of her drinking problem in the…
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss …first place (my speculation), just heaped on top of all the stress - and she decided that even though she didn't know who to believe, she couldn't look at Frank the same way.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss Now, you don't have to believe me when I say that this charge of Sadie's was complete bullshit, that I was there and I had directly observed these people over a long period of time, or that Sadie's brother (who wound up becoming a paramedic) had challenged her claims and had…
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss …gotten his sister to admit that she had made up the lies just to "win the situation." This kind of thing happens too much in modern society, and often - it involves actual abuse, and that's a huge problem that devastates many families. But in this case, it was horseshit.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss And it ruined a marriage between two people who really only had each other, and once they separated, both of them didn't do well. Laura, in fact, continued to drink and declined in health. It is a sad fact that Laura passed away before even hitting fifty years of age.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss This thread has gotten too long, even for me...I'm going to leave it up to you to decide if it relates to the original tweet, and hopefully I'll get better about trying to compress so much context in the space of a 140 characters, while scanning Twitter and cooking chicken.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss It's been, maybe fifteen years since the divorce ended, and maybe...ten since Laura passed away. I didn't keep in contact with Frank after too long, because it was just too depressing and I'm an okay friend, but I'm not the greatest all-weather friend. Plus, he wrecked my car.
@CloudyGalaxyyy @wildtiktokss But, that's another story. In any case, I may be misremembering exactly how old who was when and whatnot, but these are the broad strokes of a terrible outcome I did witness, and struggling parents everywhere have my deepest sympathies. Because life is messy as shit.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
