Hi Everyone. 

 

I just found this group and hope to be able to learn how to cope with my adult son.  Just a little background for you:  I've been in a strong, stable and loving marriage for 35 years.  My husband and I have 33 year old faternal twins.  Our daughter is everything anyone could ask for in a daughter while our son is; well, I don't really know what he is.  He is a very intelligent law school graduate who blames every problem in his life on his father and I.  He blames the failure of his first marriage on us because since his father and I don't fight he says he didn't learn conflict resolution skills.  He is currently trying to manipulate us by using he three small children as pawns. 

 

He first started having problems when he was 7.  He is suicidal(?), manipulative, angry, very good a twisting words, he has been in trouble with the law, always needs money, he would never talk to us, and is self centered.  He is the master of the dirty look.  He believes that every problem he has ever had is someone else's fault.  We was able to turn on the charm and fool every therapist we took him to see.  A year ago he told me he was coming by the house to get money for a car.  I told him no. We had loaned hem 4500 dollars three months earlier so that he wouldn't loose his car and house. (Guess I won't ever see that money again).Okay, I know I've been manipulated big time, but never again. Since that time he wouldn't talk to us until he got married for the second time.  I suspect he wanted a wedding present.  I've become cynical when it comes to his motives.

 

We last saw him a week ago at a dinner I hosted to meet his new wife's mother.  I was stunned by the way he looked at me.  There was so much hatred in his eyes.  His eyes changed from hazel to a dead muddy brown and I was afraid of him at that moment.  The moment someone else looked his way his face transformed into a kind, benevolent expression and his eyes returned to normal. 

 

This is not the first time he has frightened me but this time he followed up with a letter to us that was so hateful that I had all of the locks on my house changed.

 

No one else seems to be physically frightened by him so I wonder if I am simply overreacting.  The kind of rage I saw though is something I can visualize becomming violence.  Has anyone here had a similar experience?  Does anyone know of a way to predict the potential for violence?

 

Thanks for listening.