Question for parents who are ABDL?

Uhm just because someone is into ABDL doesn’t mean they’re a terrible parent. Don’t lump your crappy man in with the rest of us. I grew up as an unloved child and I plan to love my children more than I was ever loved. ABDL isn’t the problem here, it’s his lack of wanting to be a real father that is. Smh.
 
LilxFawn said:
Uhm just because someone is into ABDL doesn’t mean they’re a terrible parent. Don’t lump your crappy man in with the rest of us. I grew up as an unloved child and I plan to love my children more than I was ever loved. ABDL isn’t the problem here, it’s his lack of wanting to be a real father that is. Smh.
She isnt, she is trying to help him be a better parent knowing his past read tye entire.line up of posts before blasting people.
 
LilxFawn said:
Uhm just because someone is into ABDL doesn’t mean they’re a terrible parent. Don’t lump your crappy man in with the rest of us. I grew up as an unloved child and I plan to love my children more than I was ever loved. ABDL isn’t the problem here, it’s his lack of wanting to be a real father that is. Smh.
Honey I wasn't ever trying lump you or any ABDL's into any of this. This is an issue for me and my family. My husband is abdl and I was wondering that there maybe an unique insight from this community. I believe that you have grown from your experiences you will be a wonderful parent.
 
Confusing, but good luck anyway!
 
MrsZaronab said:
Like it or not the girls are coming for Thanksgiving! Yay!

I have been giving a lot of thought about hubby. I see hubby as someone who grew up with difficultly knowing love or how accept to love from others. I think he doesn't feel worthy of his children's love. Like he let them down and they know it. So in his mind, even if they don't know it now they will eventually figure it out and not want anything to do with him. Does that make any sense?

I that has caused him to have a confused sexuality. I think thats where ABDL comes in. He needs constant attention and reassurance from me that he is loved. Being humiliated by being made to wear diapers because it is for his own good is such a turn on for him becuase it is evidence that he is loved unconditionally.
Mrs Zaronab
In recent reading on psychology relevant to ABDLs I've come across a phenomena which may help explain the seeming contradiction between your husband's emotional estrangement from his daughters and his otherwise loving nature (with you).
ABDLs have a distinction in their personalities between their 'big' (adult side) and their 'little'. I believe that this is a form of dissociation. It doesn't involve amnesia like Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but it's still very real. For people with sub-DID levels of dissociation, like myself and many ABDLs, there is often a divide between an adult host which is often highly functional in their work or responsibilities but emotionally numbed and seemingly self-contained, and an 'little' which is openly needy and emotional. The emotional numbing is called depersonalization. At moderate levels it is common, subtle & little noticed, especially amongst men because it 'goes with the grain' of male socialization. It is sometimes experienced emotionally as being an observer in your own life, and physically, of not fulling inhabiting your own body. The estrangement from self makes it hard for the person to sustain deep or emotional bonds with others - typically except for a partner with whom they share their emotionally vulnerable and needy 'little' side.

Paradoxically the numbing in depersonalization is often combined with significant anxiety, which again causes the person to distance from others. It is an insidious chronic phenomenon. An ABDL has often lived with it all their lives. If so, we often think it's normal, that's it's the same for everyone, or at least that's it's just who we are. We don't even have a name for what we feel, or rather don't feel. Our 'little' becomes our feeling 'part', which for all its difficulties, becomes a welcome refuge and respite from our emotionally shutdown adult side. It is like two sides of a coin.

The depersonalization and the rest of the dissociation is commonly a chronic rather than acute state. For ABDLs it had its origin in broken (insecure) attachments with caregivers in childhood and often trauma in the 'ordinary catastrophes' of childhood, like temporary separations from mother, hospitalisations, bullying etc. If any of this is relevant, the good news is that depersonalization, dissociation and broken childhood attachments can be helped in psychotherapy.
 
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DylanLewis said:
Mrs Zaronab
In recent reading on psychology relevant to ABDLs I've come across a phenomena which may help explain the seeming contradiction between your husband's emotional estrangement from his daughters and his otherwise loving nature (with you).
ABDLs have a distinction in their personalities between their 'big' (adult side) and their 'little'. I believe that this is a form of dissociation. It doesn't involve amnesia like Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but it's still very real. For people with sub-DID levels of dissociation, like myself and many ABDLs, there is often a divide between an adult host which is often highly functional in their work or responsibilities but emotionally numbed and seemingly self-contained, and an 'little' which is openly needy and emotional. The emotional numbing is called depersonalization. At moderate levels it is common, subtle & little noticed, especially amongst men because it 'goes with the grain' of male socialization. It is sometimes experienced emotionally as being an observer in your own life, and physically, of not fulling inhabiting your own body. The estrangement from self makes it hard for the person to sustain deep or emotional bonds with others - typically except for a partner with whom they share their emotionally vulnerable and needy 'little' side.

Paradoxically the numbing in depersonalization is often combined with significant anxiety, which again causes the person to distance from others. It is an insidious chronic phenomenon. An ABDL has often lived with it all their lives. If so, we often think it's normal, that's it's the same for everyone, or at least that's it's just who we are. We don't even have a name for what we feel, or rather don't feel. Our 'little' becomes our feeling 'part', which for all its difficulties, becomes a welcome refuge and respite from our emotionally shutdown adult side. It is like two sides of a coin.

The depersonalization and the rest of the dissociation is commonly a chronic rather than acute state. For ABDLs it had its origin in broken (insecure) attachments with caregivers in childhood and often trauma in the 'ordinary catastrophes' of childhood, like temporary separations from mother, hospitalisations, bullying etc. If any of this is relevant, the good news is that depersonalization, dissociation and broken childhood attachments can be helped in psychotherapy.
I had to read your post 4 or 5 times before I could properly reply. OMG!!!! What you are describing is my hubby exactly! He is highly functional adult in the outside world, when he is behind closed doors he only wants to be with me. You should analyze me next for why I enjoy that so much? If he receives proper treatment will he still want to wear diapers?
 
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MrsZaronab said:
I had to read your post 4 or 5 times before I could properly reply. OMG!!!! What you are describing is my hubby exactly! He is highly functional adult in the outside world, when he is behind closed doors he only wants to be with me. You should analyze me next for why I enjoy that so much? If he receives proper treatment will he still want to wear diapers?
I'm glad it made sense. I've discovered there is a lot to know about the form of dissociation that is relevant to many ABDLs, and treatment outcomes. I'm still on the journey myself. If you have an interest I have a book on amazon.com called 'The Adult Baby: an Identity on the Dissociation Spectrum' (kindle or paperback). I am wary about citing it in case people think I'm hawking it for financial benefit. That isn't the case. I vest all the proceeds with the publisher to support their public education for and about ABDLs. If you download it and don't like it you can, with a day or so, return it for a refund. The book includes a discussion on relationships. There's also a good book by Rosalie Bent, called 'There's Still A Baby In My Bed: Learning to Live With the Adult Baby in Your Relationship' written from the perspective of the wife of an AB. She describes the positive emotional rewards of being the partner of a happy AB.

Re treatment outcomes. Psychotherapy for dissociation, and childhood trauma and insecure attachment needs a skilled psychotherapist who specialises in that area. Such psychotherapy can be deeply healing. It's about making peace with yourself and your past in way that allows you to live much more happily. A lot/most of that healing is self driven. A good psychotherapist empowers you to heal yourself, and to continue to do so, long after you have stopped seeing the psych. The psych helps kick off the healing but over the longer term the person themselves, and an a empathic partner is a much greater resource for healing than the psych.

Psychotherapy for dissociation aims for one of two treatment outcomes. One is 'fusion' that joins the (healed) dissociated parts of the psyche together. It takes years of weekly psychotherapy with an expert. With fusion you would no longer have a "little" and perhaps stop being ABDL. The other is 'cooperation' where the different sides, your 'Little' and 'Big', live happily together, recognizing and supporting each other. The sometimes damaging internal conflict is gone. Instead the positive emotional openness of the Little is shared across the whole personality and the 'Big' is less emotionally shut down. Your still ABDL. It's the person's choice which treatment outcome they want. For many of us, who have lived with dissociation all our adult lives, albeit unknowing, its more realistic to choose the 'cooperation' option. That's my choice.

Your husband sounds very lucky to have you in his life. I'm sure he knows it. Hope this helps. Best regards.
 
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When you have been through a serious divorce where children are involved, you will be surprised just how it affects you. With my wife using the children as emotional levers this seriously messed me up, and it continued after the divorce, at one point it left me around 2 minutes from committing suicide, fortunately someone/something stepped in and stopped me. The effect on the rest of my life is still there, you need to sit down and talk with your husband however, if he walks away or perhaps gets a little upset about the conversation you need to step away, tell him you will listen when he is ready but do not push the issue, he may never tell you. You are doing plenty by sending presents etc and you are a good person for doing this however, you may never know the reasons why he..........we are like this. As I type this it brings back the memories of my divorce from forty years ago, tears are in my eyes.................enough.
 
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DylanLewis said:
Paradoxically the numbing in depersonalization is often combined with significant anxiety, which again causes the person to distance from others. It is an insidious chronic phenomenon. An ABDL has often lived with it all their lives. If so, we often think it's normal, that's it's the same for everyone, or at least that's it's just who we are. We don't even have a name for what we feel, or rather don't feel. Our 'little' becomes our feeling 'part', which for all its difficulties, becomes a welcome refuge and respite from our emotionally shutdown adult side. It is like two sides of a coin.

The depersonalization and the rest of the dissociation is commonly a chronic rather than acute state. For ABDLs it had its origin in broken (insecure) attachments with caregivers in childhood and often trauma in the 'ordinary catastrophes' of childhood, like temporary separations from mother, hospitalisations, bullying etc. If any of this is relevant, the good news is that depersonalization, dissociation and broken childhood attachments can be helped in psychotherapy.

Interesting. Thanks for that Dylan. I'm generally skeptical of pschology, especially the therapy side of it, but a lot of this rings true.
 
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bounduptoplease said:
When you have been through a serious divorce where children are involved, you will be surprised just how it affects you. With my wife using the children as emotional levers this seriously messed me up, and it continued after the divorce, at one point it left me around 2 minutes from committing suicide, fortunately someone/something stepped in and stopped me. The effect on the rest of my life is still there, you need to sit down and talk with your husband however, if he walks away or perhaps gets a little upset about the conversation you need to step away, tell him you will listen when he is ready but do not push the issue, he may never tell you. You are doing plenty by sending presents etc and you are a good person for doing this however, you may never know the reasons why he..........we are like this. As I type this it brings back the memories of my divorce from forty years ago, tears are in my eyes.................enough.
I feel for you. It sounds like a horrible situation you were in. I am glad that you recieved the help you needed.

People keep discussing a messy divorce I really don't feel that it was that messy or as traumatic for him. His first wife discovered his relationship with me and kicked him out of their house. He moved in with me that night. Two days latter he filed for divorce. He seemed so much happier since. Through the divorce he let his lawyers handle it. I remember him telling them give her whatever she wants and them responding we'll try to make it with in reason. The only sticking point was he refused to give her his phone number and the judge requied that he had to give it to her.

I feel for the girls though. They never sat down together and talked to them about what was going on and the divorce. It must have been so confusing for them. Though I have never heard them talking about it either.
 
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One of the things I did was try to blank it out of my memory, I have got pretty good about it over the years, but sometimes things trigger the bad memories (such as this thread) and are strong enough that they get through my 'barrier'.
 
MrsZaronab said:
My husband is one of kindest good natured people you'll ever meet. Always has joke or something kind to say to anyone. He'll give anyone the shirt off his back if you ask. Coworkers tell me that he is the one the best bosses they ever had. I don't know anyone who doesn't like him. So let me get that out first.

Messy divorce? Not really? I think? The divorce was basically him and his lawyers asking how much money do I need to pay you to get you to go away.

Bad marriage yes. I don't think him and his first wife liked each other. I can't understand why they ever got married in the first place let alone had children. He had a string of affairs with other women from day 2 of their marriage. Sorry Mrs Zaronab was one of those women. He drank a lot too.

Since we have been together he has 100% devoted to me. He embraced being ABDL and stopped drinking. He did say before we were married no kids. He uses be ABDL as the reason. Is it?

I know that his parents were divorced when he was baby and didn't like his father and refused to have anything to do him. He didn't even go to his fathers funeral nor did he ever tell his father that he was a grandfather. In a baby way he doesn't have object permanence when it comes to people. People are either in his life or they don't exist. He has done this with his first wife, family, numerous friends, and others. On one hand he can be kind and caring to their face. Once out of sight he couldn't care less about them. I just don’t like seeing him doing that to his own children.

So I am late to this little party but wanted to drop some of my perceptions off for you. Let me first say that there is no malice in any of my observations. Deep concern for your well being, but definitely no malice or bad intentions.

My guess is he wants nothing to do with kids because they were used as a weapon against him. If he cares he'll just get hurt or manipulated. That or he suspects they are not his. But either way, he needs to be a better father.

He is also in no rush to pass on his bloodline because he already has progeny. He also doesn't want to pay for children and worse more alimony/child support if you two divorce.

Of course depriving you of the chance to have kids seems pretty awful and beyond selfish.

I think this has nothing to do with abdl. This is about him being selfish. A father who refuses to be a father doesn't deserve to be a baby. And no, paying alimony and child support isn't enough. Time he got over it and "daddy'd the hell up".

Me, I'd put on the mommy pants and tell him which way the sun shines. But that's a decision I am well aware that only YOU can make.

I am guessing he weilds the financial power in the marriage? Did he make you sign a prenuptial agreement? Because it seems like he runs things and leads the marriage without much input.

Hopefully you see the brutal irony in all this...

Refuses to be loving parent - wants his mommy-wife to shower him with love and attention as an adult baby.

And my guess is you want a real baby... and you wonder what will happen if you accidentally get pregnant?

It is not an abdl thing... I know plenty of wonderful loving engaged dads who are abdl. It makes them BETTER fathers because they know how much they wished they had a mommy/daddy.

Many ABDL's are egocentric and self absorbed. But there are many many more who are not.

I'd put that bratty husband over a knee and make him obey you. Don't allow him to make selfish excuses.

Wish you all the best.

Daddy Connor
 
A kid had kids and couldn't deal with it.
 
SO I'm a mom, and I have 3 kids under the age of three. Some evenings I am able to squeeze in some little time after my kids go to sleep and my husband and I retreat to the privacy of our bedroom. But that's on no set schedule and certainly never a day's long event
 
The girls came in for Thanksgiving, we had a wonderful time. We were mostly stuck in the snow. But its was fun because it was the first time they saw snow. Hubby helped them build their first snowman. Hubby was his usual extroverted self. Lavishing them with his attention and gifts.

We moved 2,000 miles away last year so we don't see them very often. This was the second time we had the girls since we moved. Not like we really saw them that often before. So they don't interfere with our ABDL time.

I'm not one those people who tries to delude themselves into that ABDL is a lifestyle and is not about sex. In the end its about sex, sexuality, and pleasure. I don't see my hubby nor does he view himself as an actual child. What do behind closed doors we do for the pleasure of it.

Nor do ever want to have my own children. That’s not for me. I enjoy the security of being in a codependent relationship with one special person. That may be not for many but its for me.

I feel like his children is the one area of his life that he shuts me out, and he shuts himself out too. I don't like being shut out! I am his wife and like it or not the girls are part of our family.
 
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You'd be surprised how little it has to do with sex for some people. There are abdl's and caregivers who are non-sexual in their interactions. I'm into caregiving as "regression therapy" not as a sexual thing.

Sure my wife and I have a healthy physical relationship. But those activities never occur in "headspace".

Eitherway what really matters is you are both happy with it.
 
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MrsZaronab said:
Their mother asked if they could come for Thanksgiving. We Skyped and they seemed really excited. After we were done the first thing he did was ask how could we get out of it? And went into Lil'space. If we have the kids for a weekend then he'll want to have an ABDL weekend the next weekend. Is this common for ABDL parents to behave this away?
First it is very unfortunate that your husband ignores his kids of a previous marriage. That alone is an issue of concern. His weekend suggestion seems somewhat (ironically) childish and hints at jealousness/resentment towards his own kids, which is very unfortunate.

Without understanding the complexity of your entire relationship it is hard to know why he wishes to barter this for that. That said his request to ask for the ABDL weekend suggests he is using it as a coping mechanism for stress (very common). I can’t explain why he stresses from having the children over to the house, but thats another question that no one here is qualified to answer...
 
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MrsZaronab said:
The girls came in for Thanksgiving, we had a wonderful time. We were mostly stuck in the snow. But its was fun because it was the first time they saw snow. Hubby helped them build their first snowman. Hubby was his usual extroverted self. Lavishing them with his attention and gifts.
I'm happy it went well

MrsZaronab said:
Nor do ever want to have my own children. That’s not for me. I enjoy the security of being in a codependent relationship with one special person. That may be not for many but its for me.
It occurred to me that perhaps his pre-visit attitude had something to do with fearing that having the girls over might change your mind about kids of your own.

I have to be the same way with Mrs. Maxx about dogs. If I show a moment of weakness, I just know I'll be stuck with one in a heartbeat.
 
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MrsZaronab said:
The girls came in for Thanksgiving, we had a wonderful time. We were mostly stuck in the snow. But its was fun because it was the first time they saw snow. Hubby helped them build their first snowman. Hubby was his usual extroverted self. Lavishing them with his attention and gifts.

We moved 2,000 miles away last year so we don't see them very often. This was the second time we had the girls since we moved. Not like we really saw them that often before. So they don't interfere with our ABDL time.

I'm not one those people who tries to delude themselves into that ABDL is a lifestyle and is not about sex. In the end its about sex, sexuality, and pleasure. I don't see my hubby nor does he view himself as an actual child. What do behind closed doors we do for the pleasure of it.

Nor do ever want to have my own children. That’s not for me. I enjoy the security of being in a codependent relationship with one special person. That may be not for many but its for me.

I feel like his children is the one area of his life that he shuts me out, and he shuts himself out too. I don't like being shut out! I am his wife and like it or not the girls are part of our family.
MrsZaronab
Thank you for your honest self disclosure. It is courageous to divulge something about ourselves or our partner where we risk being judged by others - where we push against the stream of what we know or suspect may be well received or popular. This is true even when we post under a pseudonym.

Honest self disclosure such as yours is a gift to others - even (especially?) when we may disagree with the perspective. Someone else's honesty about themselves allows each of us to ask of ourselves, is this true for me too? It may or may not be. That's not the bigger point. But in either case we have been given a chance to learn more of ourselves.

For many us being ABDL involves a lot of rationalization and denial. That's understandable. Partly that's because it's a stigmatised minority identity with a realistic fear of detriment from the misunderstanding or prejudices of others. At their best sites like this allow us to feel less alone and to feel supported by peers. On the downside they can be a means of confirming each others' rationalizations and denials. Honest self disclosure, like yours, gives all of us the gift to move beyond sharing rationalizations - for those uncommon days (for all of us) when we able and willing to do so.
 
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