Was it only in March that I wrote the “Jail to Job to Joy” blog? That was just ten weeks ago. After six years of what I thought was upright living by my oldest daughter, I became convinced that I needed to relax my guard and celebrate her. I thought I could finally look into the future and know that she was really going to be all right. Posting the blog was a psychological step forward for me. I was saying to the world, “I trust my daughter”.

It is human nature to sometimes want so badly to believe something is true that we miss what in hindsight is a red flag. Some of what my daughter told me in terms of her job position and her work schedule seemed unusual, but I brushed it off in my mind. I told myself that she worked in a fast-food small business so that explained why she would need to work late hours.

I posted the blog in mid-March. In early April, a family tried to reach my husband and myself through a Facebook message. I rarely look at Facebook so that is a hopeless quest on the part of someone reaching out to me. My husband posts hiking pictures though and so is on Facebook every few weeks. A month after the family sent the message, my husband saw the Facebook message and contacted the family. From there, the carefully constructed facade that my oldest daughter had portrayed of her life fell apart like a “house of cards”.

Where shall I start? She delivered a baby girl a year ago this week and apparently the current situation started a few months later. Instead of settling into a “new normal” family life with husband, 4-year-old daughter and new baby, she went looking for an “alternate reality” as she now calls it. She met the young man through a dating website; I believe he was wholly innocent of the fact that she was married and raising two daughters.

Soon into this new relationship, she told the young man she was pregnant. She apparently led him along through the entire pretend pregnancy then used pictures of the baby she bore a year ago to make him think that she delivered “their” baby this past April. By the time the parents contacted us, she was essentially blackmailing him for baby support.

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Throughout the fake pregnancy, she preyed upon him for money. My daughter helped herself to the person’s credit card on at least several occasions and without permission. My understanding is that the young man has lost at least several thousand dollars.

Who does this? My daughter does. Unfortunately, this scenario is familiar to us.

She faked a pregnancy ten years ago to trap another young man into giving her financial support. During that relationship she also committed financial fraud. Then a couple of years later she pretended to someone else that she was pregnant with his child while carrying a different young man’s baby. That brought forth a paternity suit that was eventually dropped. Again…what kind of person does this? There is a cold cruelty in this pattern of baby coercion, apparently for both financial gain as well as an adrenaline rush or diversion from her normal life.

The difficulty of learning about all of this has been the realization that at 29 years of age, there is no longer any hope that she will “outgrow” this behavior. This is who she is and who she will always be. I thought she had learned to live within the law and that the positive affirmation she got from working hard at her job and being a mother and a wife was enough…but no.

Since all of this came to the attention of my husband and myself, I have been reading a number of articles on psychopaths in general and female psychopaths specifically. She ticks all the boxes.

The term psychopath tends to suggest an image of an axe wielding violent murderer. Many female psychopaths instead cause harm through manipulative behavior such as, lying, conning, scams, fraud and blackmail. It all starts with the same lack of empathy and absolutely no remorse. The harm done to the victim isn’t personal, it is more like collateral damage on the way to getting what they want; in this case, financial benefit as well as excitement.

When confronted by phone, my daughter stated that this was who she was. She conveyed that she was bored with her life, didn’t like her husband and kids and so purposely pursued her “alternate reality”. She said that she knew she would eventually get caught but pursued it anyway. I don’t agree with that statement of hers. Of all the times I have confronted her over past behavior, she has always said that she didn’t think she would get caught. I believe she still didn’t think she would get caught throughout all of the months of the scam. The young man has now filed a police report. I would venture to say that even now with the situation having “blown up” in her face, she still doesn’t think she will be brought to justice.

Sad Mother_PublicDomainVectors.org

My daughter is going to keep harming people without remorse until society is protected from her. There is no happy ending. Putting my daughter into the prison system will keep another family from being harmed. In this past month, I have run through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bartering, depression and acceptance. In truth though, I think I skipped bartering this time and went straight from anger to depression. In the end though, I ended up at acceptance. I’m going to have a daughter in prison. That’s the way it is.

Despite wanting her sent to prison to protect society, I am telling myself to hold onto loving her. Somewhere in that messed up psyche, is the woman God meant her to be. I don’t know if I can hang onto that but maybe this is the point that love is an action not a feeling.