not sure where to post this

[Think About It...]

Has anyone here been romantically involved with someone and their SO other has a teenager with BPD and all the stress this brings, has affected the relationship with the adults. am I making sense here. 

[dancinginthedark]

Has anyone here been romantically involved with someone and their SO other has a teenager with BPD and all the stress this brings, has affected the relationship with the adults. am I making sense here. 

[CaptainM]

Are you saying that the relationship that you're having is becoming difficult because your partner has a BPD teenager?

Sorry, just making sure I've understood you correctly!

[dancinginthedark]

I am the parent of a daughter with BPD, my ex partner left as he could not cope

[pallavirajsinghani]

I am so sorry to hear about your daughter and the effect of this disorder on your relationship.  Thank you for sharing with us.  We are here for you.

When you feel comfortable, please feel free to post more about yourself and your daughter.  The board that I would recommend for you is "Supporting a son or daughter suffering from BPD"

You are among loving and dedicated people.  Welcome to our awesome and strong family.

:-)

[jojospal]

I think you are searching for some perspective from a SO of a parent of a BPD child.
My dd30 was 17 when she was diagnosed. My SO had been her step father for close to twelve years by then. Giving that her bio-dad had disappeared from her life, he truly stepped in and became her father and they had a deep bond formed by the time she began exhibiting symptoms. Those symptoms were directed almost solely at him.
 I can tell you, I had a lot of guilt about that for so many years. At one time he was court ordered him out of the house and he spent a few nights in jail because of false allegations to the police.
It was such a mess, and dealing with family members and not knowing why my dd would do such horrible things to a man who truly loved and cared about her. When we finally got the diagnosis, he bawled. I kept asking why he would stay and he would say that he is committed to me and our dd. There were times when I felt I was pushing him away, and looking back now,12 years on, I did that because I loved him. He wasn't married to me, he didn't give birth to her, she was doing these awful things to him and he had every right, in my mind, to walk away from it all. He didn't.
This illness is so hard on all family relationships. It will either break them completely, or make them stronger.
I am sorry that your SO walked. It is so painful to lose someone you thought you could count on to help you through one of the most challenging roles this life has to offer- being a mom of a BPD daughter.

[heronbird]

The book I read says the divorce rate is so high among parents of people with BPD, as its so stressful.

Such a shame, really when that happens, but it is common.

You hear about it with parents who have children with other disabilities too, I know a girl with aspergers, her mum left her when she was young and she was adopted. Shame really.

[INFORMATION ABOUT THE 'SUPPORTING A CHILD' BOARD]

INFORMATION ABOUT THE 'SUPPORTING A CHILD' BOARD Our objective is to learn how to support our loved ones and to find peace and understanding in our own lives. There is real help and real hope available for families. For information and guidelines please click here :

[Forgetmenot]

My husband has had CPS called on him multiple times.  It is my daughter with BPD.  All of the wrath gets directed at him.  He struggles to cope.  He is such a kind and gentle man and to be accused of beating up a girl just blows his mind.  Of course it isn't true. He wouldn't hurt a fly.

For the past two years they have barely been on speaking terms.  The tension in the house is unbearable.

I would not blame anyone for walking away from this mess.  I wouldn't blame my husband either.  We made it this far but it has taken quite a toll on both of us.

It hurts my husband just as much, if not more to see what I have to go through.  She is quite abusive to me.

If I knew my daughter would grow up to have this I would not have married my husband, just to keep him away from it.

Ironically, my daughter left and is living with her dad and stepmom.  I am not on speaking terms with my ex because he is undiagnosed BPD. I'm hearing reports from my oldest son that their marriage is in a shambles after having her for 10 days.

I'm just going to enjoy my break from the chaos and wait for the other shoe to drop again.

So sorry to hear your SO left.  I'm sure it was a difficult decision for him to make as well.   

[vivekananda]

dancing in the dark, it is hard when those you rely on let you down and leave you in the lurch. I think all of us have struggled with our relationships in some way.

My dh and I have been married for over 30 years. Now we are happily married, but it has taken an enormous amount of work to get to where we are. I have no idea why we stayed together - except that I was too exhausted to get out.

The greatest source of my pain in life has been because he didn't agree with me over how to raise our daughter. I thought we could have prevented all this mess.

When she began to act out at the start of puberty, she and I were still very close. I have always set boundaries - not strictly so, but there was a clear structure to our lives. Dh is what you would call 'permissive' he doesn't want any rules, he wants to be able to do as he pleases, when he pleases. Instead, I was about doing everything for dd and she always came first.

When she turned 16, she broke the ties with me completely and that close relationship with me ended. She turned to her dad and he 'sided' with her. He reckons he was scared she would leave.

Well, she did leave when she was 18. Now we have no real relationship with her at all (she is 31). She now accuses me of emotionally and physically abusing her all her life and dh was complicit in this. She actually believes this.

Today, dh does nothing in relation to dd unless we have talked it through and we agree. But to get to here has been a long hard road. He still cannot accept she has BPD - but he is willing to act towards her as if she has.

So, dancing in the dark, it is almost accidental that we are together and I have so often thought about leaving - but I woud have taken dd with me. Thinking back, wouldn't that have been a rude shock for him if I did leave him and dd to each other!   

vivek 

[cfh]

Vivekanada,
One of these days I need to have a private chat with you!  You are awesome. 

[Thursday]

dancinginthedark,

I am in a committed relationship (we are not married for reasons surrounding Social Security benefits) after losing our respective spouses to cancer, with a man who has a BPD daughter. I've been living with him since she was 15, in his life since she was 13 (almost 14) and she is now 21.

She quit living with us a little bit over a year ago.

I'm sorry to hear about your partner...I read back a bit and it seems like your child's BPD has always been an issue for him. I hope you can find a way to move on because you deserve a supportive partner in your life.

I've tried to be a support to my S/O and early on took on a mother role with her but I couldn't gain a foothold with her. She keeps her emotional attachments on her own terms. We have almost always been very cordial with one another. Her BPD doesn't include accusing me of stuff...I guess when the step-parent is a man and the BPD is a girl it makes a bit more sense to accuse them of abuse...my SD is a lot bigger than me, taller, weighs more etc. and a judge would think it implausable if she accused me of some sort of abuse I think. In the past she once accused her Dad of hurting her but the courts listened to him and not her about the incident. It was not true of course.

She has done a lot of stuff that has negatively impacted me though (broken my stuff, stolen from me, done stuff that negatively affected my DD who has never lived with us...SD is very jealous of my very close relationship with my DD. My DD no longer lives in the same town with us so it isn't a huge issue. Generally I go and see my daughter  except at Christmas when she comes here.)

S/O and I have had so many fights and disputes about his DD. He is an enabler and it has been like pulling teeth to get him to understand that he does this, hard to get him to see it while he is in the midst of doing it...but I have stuck with him. He needs me, I need him...I love our time together when it has nothing to do with his daughter. We no longer take her on trips nor do we even see her all that much. I suppose my issues with his enabling her and my issues in general with much of her behavior makes it easier for him to maintain some distance. I feel like if I wasn't in his life he would spend more time with her. I think his life would be a misery if she was the only person in it as she is very self involved and self focused and his parenting style sort of exacerbates her illness.

Please post what you are feeling. I am happy to answer your posts but I imagine you would like to talk to someone else who has a romantic partner who chose not to continue living with BPD in their life. I can think of a few members here who fit that description, just not sure they are on here anymore, maybe lurking.

We are here for you in whatever capacity we can be!

thursday

[dancinginthedark]

 Hi! Thursday

Thank you for your post. It seems I have gone from one painful episode after another in quick succession and I am feeling as if Ive just got my head above water, so to speak.

The past five months have been the most confusing.  Within the same month that my d 17 got rehoused, my partner left me, dont know where he is, I could not get an answer from him, he would not answer his phone.  I know he is ok as he is constantly telling folk on various websites that he has a wife and kids and the new woman is helping him progress with his career  ?

Obviously this is all news to me. I was involved with him for 4 years and there had definitely been no wife or kids then

He refused to be intimate with me during the last 8 months or so, saying he was depressed and that it was affecting his libido.
Turns out he was blatantly lying to me.  He has been seeing another woman since last year and was just using my daughter as an excuse for lack of intimacy with me.  I feel so played.  Why all the lies?
He seemed to be happy that my d 17 moved out and was hopeful we could spend more time together.

What makes all this sound so awful is, that he is living with a woman who suffers from Bipolar?  And he is caring for her.  I feel very hurt as he did not behave very understanding to my circumstances.  I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks due to all the stress over the past 2 years or so.

Apparantly the other woman is quite wealthy compared to me.  I come from a working class background and this was not frowned upon it seems with him.

[vivekananda]

ahh d in the d, you are well rid of him then! Yes, I know it hurts and I understand about lack of trust and betrayal. All the same consider yourself lucky that you have learnt this lesson and escaped from what would have been a horrible relationship.

You don't want people like that in your life, just say a 'prayer' for the poor rich woman and get on with rebuilding a life worth living for yourself.

This is the website here to help you in that. We here, who are living with people with BPD, are rebuilding ourselves to be better so we can be there for our people with BPD. Your dd would benefit from a healthy, happy mother who understands how to cope with pwBPD, she is more important than some jerk who seems to be a chronic liar and parasite.

You deserve better 

vivek 

ps cfh - you'd be disappointed  - people always have such expectations of me, but I don't live up to what they expect - or that's how it seems to me... too many  s I think maybe? I dunno...