When A Child Is Caught In The Middle
What happened after separation could have broken us. A blog about strength, healing, and a bond no one can break.
When a Child Is Caught in the Middle
“What happened after separation could have broken me. Instead, I built us both stronger.”
There is a side of abuse that isn't talked about enough. The part that happens after you leave.
You finally find the courage to walk away. You think that must be the end of it. The relationship is over. The door has closed. You can begin to heal.
But sometimes, the abuse doesn't end.
It just changes shape.
Sometimes, patterns of control can continue after a relationship ends. And when there is a child involved, parenting, communication, and the child's relationship with each parent can become channels through which conflict or controlling behaviour continues.
This can form part of what is described as post-separation abuse.
Here, I talk specifically about what can happen when children become caught in the middle. There will be another blog about other forms of post-separation abuse.
Sometimes, it is incredibly difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
Because from the outside, it can look like a father spending time with his child.
It can look like holidays. Photographs. Days out. Happy memories. An introduction to a new relationship.
Nothing obviously wrong.
But sometimes it is about what sits behind those actions.
After I left, there were things that happened that I experienced as deeply hurtful.
Photos of him with his new girlfriend were sent to our daughter. I couldn't know for certain why they were being sent, but at the time I experienced them as another way of reaching into my life.
Perhaps that sounds petty.
Perhaps someone reading this might think, “So what? He had moved on.”
But that wasn't what it felt like to me.
And then there were the places.
Places that had once been part of our story. Places we had visited together. Places where we had created memories as a family.
He began taking our daughter and his new partner to those same places. And then, somehow, I would see the photographs through her.
There were photographs of them together in poses and places that mirrored photographs we had previously taken as a family.
Our daughter would simply show them to me because she was a child sharing her experiences and memories, completely innocently.
And that is the part that hurt the most.
Because our daughter should never have been in the middle of something she didn't create.
She should have been allowed to enjoy her time with her dad without unknowingly becoming a messenger between two adults.
She shouldn't have had to carry photographs that held an emotional meaning she didn't understand.
She shouldn't have been placed in a position where something that looked like an innocent photograph could carry an emotional meaning she couldn't possibly have understood.
And then there were the photographs of just the two of them, when she wasn't present.
Holiday photographs.
Champagne.
First-class flights.
Luxury hotels.
And photographs that were far more intimate — photographs of them in bed together.
These were photographs of their adult relationship, appearing on her phone while she was still trying to understand and come to terms with the separation of her mum and dad.
There is an important distinction here.
It wasn't that he had a new girlfriend.
It wasn't that he was happy.
It wasn't that he was allowed to move on.
Of course he was.
It was the sheer amount of it, and the nature of what she was being exposed to.
She didn't need to see them in bed together. She didn't need intimate photographs of their relationship. She didn't need their adult life repeatedly placed in front of her while she was still processing the loss of the family unit she had known.
For me, those photographs were painful.
But for her, they were confusing.
And ultimately, that hurt me far more than anything he could have shown me.
Because I was an adult. I could begin to understand the behaviour, recognise the patterns, and eventually step back from it.
She was a child.
She didn't have the emotional tools to understand why she was being shown these things or what she was supposed to do with the feelings they created.
She was still finding her feet after the separation, and suddenly this new relationship was everywhere — on her phone, in her world, in photographs she couldn't unsee.
And that is the part that made me question everything.
When does moving on become oversharing?
When does introducing a new partner become asking a child to process an adult relationship they aren't emotionally ready for?
And when does something that looks completely innocent from the outside become harmful because of how, when, and where it is being presented to a child?
I didn't want her to carry my hurt.
But I also didn't want her carrying the emotional weight of anybody else's.
That was when I understood that this wasn't really about me being replaced.
It was about a child being exposed to things she didn't need to carry.
And that became far more important than my own pain.
Because I could heal from seeing a photograph.
But she shouldn't have had to heal from what she was shown.
This is where post-separation abuse can become so complicated.
The child doesn't necessarily understand what is happening around them.
They are just living their life.
They are visiting places.
They are taking photographs.
They are telling Mum what they did at the weekend.
They are loving both parents.
And meanwhile, those ordinary moments can become part of an adult conflict that the child never asked to be caught in.
That is what makes it so heartbreaking.
But something had changed for me.
I wasn't looking at those photographs only through the eyes of the woman who had been hurt.
I started looking at them through the eyes of someone who had begun to heal.
And I noticed something.
The patterns.
I realised that he wasn't creating something completely new.
He was repeating things.
The places we had been became places he visited with someone else.
The memories we had created became memories recreated with someone new.
And suddenly, I saw something I hadn't been able to see before.
It wasn't necessarily about her.
It wasn't even really about me.
It was about the pattern.
He seemed unable to create something entirely new. Instead, he recreated what had already existed.
And that gave me a strange kind of clarity.
Because for a long time, I had wondered whether I had been replaced.
Whether she was getting the version of him that I had always hoped would eventually appear.
Whether their relationship was somehow proof that I hadn't been enough.
But when you step outside the emotional fog, you start to see things differently.
Sometimes people don't change their patterns.
They simply change the person standing beside them.
And perhaps he had done it before me.
Perhaps he would do it again.
Because the common denominator wasn't the relationship.
It was the pattern.
And that realisation gave me something I hadn't expected:
FREEDOM.
I no longer needed to compare myself to another woman.
I no longer needed to wonder whether she was better, prettier, happier, or more worthy.
Because none of it was about her.
And none of it was about my worth.
But there was another realisation that was much harder to accept.
Whatever the intention behind any of it, I wasn't the only person being affected.
Our child was being affected too.
That is the part that stays with me.
Because children should never be caught in the emotional fallout between their parents.
They should never be made to carry messages between parents.
They should never feel responsible for one parent's feelings about the other.
They should never have to filter what they say, what they show, what they share, or what they love because they are frightened of hurting Mum or Dad.
A child should be allowed to love freely.
To have memories freely.
To enjoy time with each parent without feeling that doing so is somehow disloyal to the other.
And sometimes, as mothers, we find ourselves doing something incredibly difficult.
We have to heal ourselves while helping our children process what they are experiencing.
We pick up our own broken pieces while trying to make sure our children don't believe those pieces belong to them.
We learn to swallow the reaction.
We learn not to respond to everything that hurts us.
We learn that sometimes silence is not weakness.
It is protection.
And we learn that our children don't need us to win a battle.
They need us to create somewhere safe for them to land.
That is where the title of this poem came from:
Broken Threads, Stronger Tapestry.
Because abuse can unravel you.
It can pull at every thread of who you thought you were.
It can make you question your judgement, your worth, your memories, and even your own reality.
And when that abuse continues after separation, it can feel as though you will never truly be free.
But slowly, thread by thread, you begin to rebuild.
The person whose behaviour damaged your confidence doesn't get to define your identity.
The experiences that left you feeling replaceable don't determine your value.
And when your child becomes caught in the conflict, that doesn't get to decide what kind of mother you become.
You do.
And perhaps that is the greatest act of resistance.
Not becoming bitter.
Not allowing their behaviour to change the way you love.
Not teaching your child to hate.
But teaching them something different.
Teaching them that love doesn't manipulate.
That love doesn't punish.
That love doesn't use children as messengers.
That love doesn't require you to choose sides.
And that leaving an abusive relationship isn't the end of the story.
Sometimes it is where the real rebuilding begins.
I cannot change what happened.
I cannot undo the photographs.
I cannot erase the places or the memories.
But I can choose what they mean to me now.
Those places don't belong to him.
Those memories don't belong to him.
And neither does my story.
Whatever had unravelled those threads, I was learning how to weave something stronger.
Something different.
Something honest.
Something that doesn't need to look back.
This poem is for every mother who has found herself navigating the complicated, painful reality of post-separation abuse.
For the mothers who have had to smile when their hearts were breaking.
For the mothers who have swallowed their anger because their child was watching.
For the mothers who have had to explain things they never wanted their child to have to understand.
For the mothers who have felt as though they were being painted as the problem while quietly trying to protect their child's heart.
For the mothers who have wondered whether anyone else could possibly understand.
I see you.
And perhaps, more importantly, I hope you eventually see yourself.
Not as the woman who was broken.
But as the woman who rebuilt.
Because sometimes the strongest tapestry is made from the threads life tried hardest to pull apart.
Broken threads.
Stronger tapestry.
And a story that finally belongs to me.
Perhaps the greatest irony of all?
What could have driven us apart ultimately brought us closer.
Our relationship is stronger than it has ever been.
We talk.
We listen.
We understand each other in ways I don't think we ever would have without everything we have been through.
I couldn't protect her from everything she was exposed to, but I could be the safe place she came back to.
I could listen without judgement.
I could love without conditions.
I could give her space to have her own feelings.
And I could show her that she never had to choose between us.
So perhaps that is the real ending to this story.
Not revenge.
Not winning.
Not proving anything to anybody.
Us.
Stronger than before.
Broken threads.
Stronger tapestry.
And love that never asked her to choose.
Love Molly x