When An Abusive Relationship Produces a Special Needs Child
By: Matilda Fairholm
Tags: Life Lessons, Disability, Domestic Violence, Relationships, Parenting

When An Abusive Relationship Produces a Special Needs Child

How I lost my adult son, and found a way back to him.

Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

It’s a cool and drizzly spring afternoon here in Australia. I’m sipping a tea while my favorite scented candle burns away next to me. My husband is pottering around doing a bit of housework, and I am writing.

I could never have dreamed I’d be so free.

With the benefit of hindsight I now know that there were early red flags of serious problems in my first marriage. Of course I could not see them at the time. I was the proverbial frog in the pot, the abuse progressing so gradually that I could not pinpoint what was wrong. Instead I slowly fell into a web of confusion and despair.

I so dearly wanted a child, someone to love who would love me. I know that’s naive and desperate. I’ve learnt a lot about myself since then. After repeated miscarriages I finally had my beautiful son, my dream of motherhood was a reality. His dad treated me better, for a while.

As always it didn’t last.

By the time Jack was three it was clear that all was not well with my precious boy. He had lost what speech he had, was spinning in circles. Then the seizures started. In those early years I threw myself into my parenting. I desperately wanted to rescue my son from wherever he had disappeared.

He never came back to me, not the same anyway.

All the while my marriage got worse and worse, the time and attention I invested in my son enraged my husband who expected to have all his needs met, no matter what. By the time my son started school I was emotionally exhausted.

Jack was exposed to intense fighting between his parents. My ex would tolerate no dissent. Most of the time I acceded to his view to avoid the conflict. Sometimes I fought back, which enraged him.

That’s when things got violent. Expressing a view of my own triggered his wrath. Things would be thrown, tables upturned, holes punched in walls.

Many times he threatened to self-harm or take us all out. I watched him hold a kitchen knife to his chest, or threaten to stop the car and walk in front of a truck.

Constant trauma changes you, it changed me as a mother.

I became consumed by my career.

Through all this turmoil, I somehow managed to continue my studies that I had commenced before my son was born, and complete my law degree.

Looking back I think I instinctively knew that the qualifications I was working for, would give me capacity to eventually escape.

The year Jack started school I started my first job as a lawyer. I loved it. When I went to work no-one took their frustration out on me, no-one yelled and people valued what I had to say. Work became my refuge. Every day, when I got in my car, I felt like I was on day-release from prison.

I was escaping from the invisible bars that surround a relationship that is steeped in abuse. But it wasn’t only that. If I’m honest I was also escaping the relentless job of looking after my son. My energy and resilience, that should have been invested in him, had been sucked away by his father.

It turned me into a hollow empty shell with little left to give.

An abusive marriage and a disabled child, it’s a horrible combination. My love for and commitment to my son was constantly battling with my desperation to be free from abuse. It felt like I was being punished, for what I don’t know. I wanted to leave, but didn’t believe I had the capacity to care for my rapidly growing son alone.

I developed coping strategies during those years, ways to escape the reality that I hated my husband, hated my life. I retreated into work and books. I craved time alone, of which I got precious little.

Eventually I did leave, my son was 14.

Parenting a severely autistic teenager.

For a little over three years I barely coped with week about care of my son. He rapidly grew into a tall, strong young man. Puberty struck and he didn’t know how to cope with the changes in his body and I didn’t know how to help him.

His father, a man livid that I had got away, used Jack as the final conduit of control. He forced me to take him when he knew I could not cope, denied us access to the services that would have helped so much, that could have provided Jack and I with the support we desperately needed. Instead he orchestrated things so that I had to remain in regular contact with him. He would call and text all the time. Once again I was on eggshells, living in fear, sacrificing my freedom.

It just kept getting worse.

A little over a year ago I got to a point where I could not mentally or emotionally take one more moment of contact with my ex-husband. Just receiving a text from him would send me into a downward spiral of nausea, sweats and a feeling like the world was closing in on me. I was warned by my doctor and counselor that to continue contact was a serious threat to my mental health.

I begged for a solution that would remove our need for contact but still allow me to see my son. He refused and insisted that if I wanted to see Jack, I had to pick him up from him myself and manage him without help.

His conditions effectively severed my relationship with my child.

I wrote here about that heartbreaking decision.

There is a time for everything.

A year ago I wrote this:

If you are anything like me, you have no idea how to look after yourself, you have been so irrelevant for so long. Learn to look after yourself. For me that means a season of recovery, of rest so I can ready myself for the battle that is ahead. The battle I will fight for my son, just as soon as I have the strength.

I grieved for months, but I knew I had no choice. I had broken free from what was effectively a hostage situation. I had to find another way to have a relationship with my son.

The first step was retreat.

I pulled away from everything that was not essential. I gave myself something I had never had. The gift of time. Time to reflect, grieve and plan for the future. For eight months I practically hibernated, the pandemic helped with that.

I wrote, I prayed, and I confided in a very small group of trusted people.

Gradually my energy reserves returned.

Then I fought.

I took legal steps to have an alternative decision maker appointed for my son. I didn’t really want to take the day to day decisions out of his father’s hands. With the exception of his distorted thinking about me, he is a good father, but I had to force him to the negotiating table, so to speak, so we could, with the help of intermediaries, come up with a solution.

I knew my ex’s weakness, it was the same thing that kept me trapped for all those years. Ironically it was the same thing that ultimately broke down the the barrier between me and my son.

His father’s desperate need for control.

The possibility that he would lose control over Jack’s decision making was enough to force him to see sense. I know this man pretty well, and my experience gave me a way in. I had to be tactical and I was, I found a way to make an unreasonable person come to a reasonable solution.

I had to threaten him with the only thing that really scares him. The threat of losing control. That’s not manipulation it’s just using your experience to achieve justice. Justice for Jack and for me.

The most amazing demonstration of grace.

I’ve said before that my son is the most gracious human being I have ever known. Yesterday I saw him for the first time in just over a year.

I was prepared for the worst, for anger, for him to refuse to come near me.

But instead I got a hug and a kiss. I was a recipient of grace. We will be seeing each other regularly now, and I believe we will be okay.

Where to from here?

Relationships are complex, and the family unit that my son was born into certainly was. But humans are resilient creatures and have amazing capacity to forgive and move on. Jack could have been angry with me, but he wasn’t.

He has taught me that it is never too late to restore what has been broken and that all I have endured has been worth it.

My son, despite all his challenges, has shown me the truth that love really does endure. Today I am grateful for his resilience.