I was an alienating mother. That's what it's called today. It's been a few years since I took my daughters father. My twin daughters were eight years old at the time. Now they are 25 years.  

I didn't know what else to do with the disputes about custody and contact. My husband had a new girlfriend and it just hurt so much. Suddenly he was leading the life that he really should have had with me. But I can't say that it was revenge in the first place. It was anger, disappointment and a lot of sadness. My whole life seemed destroyed to me, my life plan, our children and the beautiful home we had created for them. Although we were very different, we rarely had arguments, especially not in front of the children.  

The ground was pulled out from under my feet. And the only way I felt like picking myself up again was to show the whole world what a creep this man is. I wanted to do everything alone. I alone with my children. He had left me, then he also had to live with losing his children. I was of the opinion: they have it much better with me anyway.  

My family supported me, unfortunately also in the fact that "this scoundrel never sees his children again", as my father emphasized at every opportunity.
Luckily I had great colleagues who also supported me in this approach as a mother - after all, they were my children. I found a lot of understanding and support for my attitude among the children's teachers and the youth welfare office. Despite this, my ex-husband made sure that the children were with him every other weekend. That hurt: he became a father again and my girls thought their new brother was cute. And they told me that every time. I often thought, hopefully the new girlfriend will be nice to them so they don't suffer. At the same time, I wished that she was a witch so that they would want to come back to me. In the beginning I would stare at the phone the whole time I was visiting, hoping that they wanted to go home. It never rang. But my daughters got worse and worse with their father. At least that's what I thought at the time, without realizing that I was the reason for it. I made my daughters relationship with their father hell. At some point they didn't want to see their father anymore and my attitude was confirmed. They lost contact with him when they were 11 years old.

With the help of a therapist, I realized what was bothering me and what I was doing with my daughters and my ex-husband. That didn't feel good, I wanted to deny it for a long time and I was ashamed. I tried to come up with some justification that somehow it would have been okay after all. No, it wasn't, but it took me time to admit that to myself. It wasn't until the twins were 16 that I could allow my daughters to reconnect with their father.  

I met my current partner 13 years ago. He was also divorced and saw his children regularly. He had big problems with my behavior and held up a mirror to me. He told me how he would feel if his ex-wife treated the children like that - the children who, when we were with us, fit into our family life happily and relaxed. It almost broke our relationship, but in the end my new life with him was too valuable - especially the peace for my daughters. Luckily they found it after many years and really deserved it.