Episode Details

A father knocks on the door every week for his scheduled visit. Nobody answers. His daughter sits at the top of the stairs knowing she will not be allowed down. Eventually he stops coming. Years later, grown, she said the knocking had been the weekly signal that he still loved her, and that when it stopped, it felt like he had stopped.

Jon runs the Male Victims of Female Narcissists community and coaches men going through an abusive divorce. He has been a guest on this show several times. His own case involved a long marriage, four children, and a discovery he made on the day he said he wanted a divorce: his ex told him some of the kids would never forgive him, and he understood in that moment that she had been talking to them about him for years. He is three and a half years out and remains estranged from most of them. This episode was recorded heading into the holiday season.

Jon and Lisa spend the first half on how the ground gets prepared. Triangulation, where his children and eventually his own parents began routing information through his spouse rather than through him, so that he learned about his parents' retirement plans secondhand. The smear campaign that works through tone and implication as much as through anything stated. The difference between the version extended family recognizes immediately and the version that moves slowly enough to isolate someone from their siblings and parents before anyone notices. And the shame people carry when their ex is the one at their family's Thanksgiving table.

The second half is practical. Lisa explains why relaying your child's refusal to see the other parent puts you in the middle and can be turned into an alienation claim against you, and why a sentence as protective-sounding as telling a child to call if they feel unsafe at the other house does something else when it is said right before a handoff. She and Jon work through what to say when a child repeats the other household's version, which is to ask what they make of it rather than to correct it, because correcting is the same move the other side is making. Jon holds a line for himself: he speaks about his ex only in the past tense and only favorably, and he does not discuss the marriage with his children. They close on the holidays, and on his instruction to ask somebody now, weeks ahead, rather than arriving at the day alone.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• How triangulation puts your spouse between you and your kids, and your own parents
• Why a smear campaign runs through tone and attitude, not only through words
• Overt versus covert: why extended family spots one and misses the other entirely
• Why relaying your child's refusal to see the other parent can be used against you
• What "call me if you feel unsafe over there" plants, and how to say it differently
• What to say when your child repeats the other parent's version, instead of correcting it
• Why stopping contact is read by a child as confirmation of what they were told
• How to line up somewhere to be for the holidays before the date arrives

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why the holidays hit hardest, and the friends who stop calling
4:00 "Some of your kids will never forgive you": the moment he found out
6:00 Triangulation, and losing access to your own family's news
11:00 Overt versus covert, and why the covert version isolates you first
17:00 Why relaying your kids' refusal to the other parent backfires
23:00 The one consistent piece of advice, and the sentence that plants something
28:00 What to say when your child repeats the other parent's version
33:00 Why you don't give up: the father who kept knocking
43:00 The gaslighting question: what did I do to deserve this?
55:00 Lining up somewhere to be for