Uh-huh

Grrrrrr. Just wrote a nice cleansing rant and Blogger froze up and I lost most of it. I'm not going to try to recreate the whole thing and it's even about a topic I don't blog about here much, but today it just feels like it's okay if I do.
I'm getting really fed up with the cumulative effects of my ex's efforts to discourage my daughter's relationship with me. I tried to call her several times last night, since I call and talk to her every night she is at her father's, and even left two messages, but she didn't call back. I called and spoke with her this morning and asked if she heard the messages. She said she did. I told her she could call me anytime at all. She said she knows. But she didn't call me back and she sounded monosyllabic and distant, the way she usually does when I talk to her when she's there. When I pick her up for the half of the week she spends with me, she starts talking a mile a minute and doesn't stop for an hour or more. Sometimes she goes on so much I have to ask her to stop for a while because I can't endure the barrage. But when she stays at her father's house and I talk to her on the phone she is absolutely monosyllabic. She sounds bored or angry or disinterested. Whenever I ask her about it she claims she's tired. I know what she's really doing is demonstrating her loyalty to her father. He demands that of her. I try not to pull back because I don't think it's right to make her spend her time figuring out how to please me when she should be learning how to understand her own feelings. The problem is that in her father's culture you are supposed to concern yourself with everyone else's feelings first. To consider your own feelings first is selfish. Of course, in this culture we believe that you have to understand your own feelings and know how to take care of yourself to be able to really take care of others. So it's a classic culture clash between a culture of interdependence and one of independence. I spent years trying to conform to those other cultural norms, but eventually it came clear to me that I needed to be true to my own beliefs that were formed long before I married into that culture. She's going to have to figure out as she grows up how much of each culture she wants to claim as her own, but I hope a few other things also become clear along the way.
My mom and my sister tell me my girl will realize what her father has been doing when she gets a little older and more independent. She'll realize that he's been trying to undermine her relationship with me and coerce her into a role of providing him with emotional suppport that is inapproapriate for someone her age. Eventually she will come around to see, they say, that I'm really not the bad guy he tries to make me out to be. He wants to punish me for leaving him and he wants her to punish me for it too.
I wish it could be different now. I wish she didn't have to go through this stupid shit now and that both of her parents could be grown up enough to at least pretend to be polite, say hello and look each other in the eye. Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going to have to be patient and have faith that someday she'll come to see things differenty.