Advice from Annie Lane.
: Did you ever offer advice that you regretted because you were focused on one issue but failed to see the big picture? I did that recently, and my mistake was a doozy. A reader wrote to me telling how she had escaped an abusive marriage and found a new partner and had been happily married for many years. I chose to congratulate her on escaping from an abusive marriage, and that is all I focused on. I continue to be proud of any woman who escapes a domestic violence situation.
My oversight was in not addressing the fact that she had abandoned her 5-year-old son. She said her current problem was that her son, now grown up, only wanted money from her. Wow, talk about a blunder on my part! I could only see the husband’s abuse of his wife, and I assumed the boy’s father was loving to his son. I assumed that the father had issues with his wife and not their son. I overlooked the fact that the mother never mentioned missing her son, nor did she do anything to be a part of his life. This was the colossal mistake I made.
Of course, when a mother, albeit an abused one, abandons her little boy without ever trying to get him back, she is heartless and cold. Every day I receive letters from readers who tell me they made a mistake in the way they handled a situation. Now it’s my turn:” a woman who had to leave her abusive husband. She left her 5-year-old son behind.
She abandoned her child. What did he go through? I’d die before I left mine behind. She was all he had and she just left. She owes him every dime he asks for. A sorry human is what she is in every way possible. -- She OwesI am appalled by the response that you gave to the mother who left her husband because he was abusive. She left her FIVE-year-old son, too. A mother does NOT leave her children; she protects them. I would do anything for my children who are adults now.
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