Dear Readers: 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. I am eternally grateful to my readers who point out when I have messed up, and today’s column is my way of thanking the hundreds who wrote in to correct me.
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:
Dear Annie: I read the letter from “Emotional Blackmail,” a woman who had to leave her abusive husband. She left her 5-year-old son behind. While I can understand the urgency for her to leave that awful situation, I cannot understand how she can live with herself knowing that she completely abandoned her son to her abusive ex. That she never tried to gain custody or maintain a relationship with her son is truly terrible. Her son obviously wants nothing to do with her and is using her for her money. In my opinion, it’s the least she can do for totally abandoning him when he was 5 years old.
-- The Brutal Truth
Dear Annie: I just read a comment from your page to “Blackmail.” How can you leave an abusive relationship yourself but leave your child behind? There’s no excuse for that. She left her child who could not defend himself. Now she wants us to feel sorry for her. I don’t feel sorry for her for leaving her child in that situation. If you could leave, then I damn well believe you could have taken your child with you. That’s a bunch of hogwash. I would not commend her for anything because she left a young innocent child behind. She only thought of herself and not her child.
-- Don’t Feel Sorry
Dear Annie: How can you call a woman who left her child with an abuser and didn’t even try to contact him since he was 5 years old strong and brave?
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 Owes
Dear Annie: I 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. Maybe that’s why they turned out so well. They always had my support, love and guidance, which is clearly something this son never had. -- What a Shame
Dear Annie: The son is now reaching out for money, and your advice to her, after congratulating her on removing herself from the situation, is to distance herself from her son because, in her new husband’s words, he’s taking advantage of her. This woman’s careless disregard for the little boy she left behind, without a hint of apology, without a shred of remorse, without any explanation for not doing more -- you take this at face value. What about the feelings of a little boy left by his own mother? Perhaps he is now seeking in tangible support what she failed to give him all those years in love and kindness. I say, she owes him whatever he wants. -- Shocked in NJ