My husband used to always make funny face, stick his tongue out, open his hands and stick his thumb in his ears and wave his hand to make fun of me behind my back. My son used to tell me that all the time. I tried several times to surprise him and look back to catch him in the act but of course he would stop immediately and just look at me like nothing has happened.

He was doing it to make our son laugh at the beginning, but then he found power in doing so and he kept doing it. He knew it bothered me and frustrated me which he loved so he kept doing it. I tried to ask him politely to stop, he always denied it and he never stopped.

He used this tactic again to belittle me in front of our son. He was always jealous of my relationship with our son and wanted to ruin it. My husband could not stand that our son loved me. I had no problem with our son loving him, but he hated the fact that my son loved me. The environment he grew up in was always divided. If the father loved my husband, that would mean he did not love his brother, and visa versa. I never experienced this growing up in my family so I never thought to watch for it. I did everything I could to get my son and my husband to have a good relationship but my husband, the dad in this situation, has a very bad personality and was not cooperating.

Today, our son is an adult and has what I would call lukewarm relationship with his dad. The fact that they have any relationship is because I always instilled in our son the importance of having a good loving relationship with his dad. I always justified his actions, and I always told our son that despite all his bad behavior, his dad loves him more than anyone else in the world. That is what he is capable of.

I did all I could to make that father-son relationship work not for my husband ‘s sake, after what he’s put me through, I did not care one bit about his happiness. I did all that because I wanted our son to grow up as normal as could be. It was for his sake that I pushed him to be friendly with his dad and to spend time with him.