New step mom in our house is stressed out and over it all

[ProfDaddy]

Some of y'all must have followed my pathetic saga on other sub-boards.  My S10 diagnosed with "pre-borderline" tendencies (don't know the abbreviation for that... .maybe DBPDS10) is in an RTC.  My D13 is home with me.  xwUBPD lives across town, sees D13 EOW.  Remarried in June.  New wife has been struggling to accept the step-mother role in a home with dysfunctional children.  We are working with a very talented family therapist, just started a few months ago (after having not gotten anywhere with a previous therapist, then on a waiting list). 

Problem is that my new wife is trying to fix everything, she is over-committed, over-vigilant, and burnt out.  You can't fix children like ours instantly, and the fix is never storybook complete.  Real people are messy.  New wife accuses me of being weak and permissive, creating the children's problems.  That has been true to some extent, and I am working on that with our new T.  Now my wife is blaming the children for her wanting to leave the relationship.  Compounding the problem is that she won't go quietly.  She wants me to blame them out loud, with her present, and say that leaving is all their fault. 

D13 is emotionally behind, having previously existed in the shadow of DBPDS10, from his ages 4-8.  D13 has the moods an struggles of a 13 year old, but with the emotional maturity of a much younger child.  I am the primary residential parent, they live with me... .except S10 who is far away at an RTC. 

Last night, D13 was argumentative, moody, and childish over a few things.  We set limits, did not let her put her feelings on us.  I declined to argue with her, told her we would discuss it calmly in the morning, and would discuss consequences.  All was OK with the grown ups during and after that.  However, in the morning, when D13 and I sat to discuss it, using some techniques from therapy, my wife was rude and hostile, telling us "Your daughter blows up like this 3x a day, there's no point.  You can't do this all the time."  Then a few other hostile comments, and she grumped in the kitchen while I tried to continue working with D13.  Needless to say, we couldn't finish the conversation.

So, new wife turned a session that was supposed to be about behavior from D13 into a full blown crisis about her own behavior -- which she insists wasn't rude at all.  She has escalated, wants us to move out of the house into a motel immediately.  She is threatening to change the locks as soon as we leave.  She wants to take possession of the house, not sell it, and have me pay the mortgage while paying for a rental. 

Wife is being as unpleasant as possible, she can do this for days, trying to get us to blame ourselves and/or move out. 

In addition to the mess we are having now, I feel incredibly guilty for choosing another unstable partner after having gotten clear of XW. 

[trying2coparent]

I am sorry to hear about your predicament. My kids have special needs, not BPD (their mom, my ex does though). They do have behavior outbursts, specially the little one. This is one of the reasons I refuse to get entangled in a relationship. I have had gf in the past that couldn't handle it. Right now I'm just doing the best to get the kids ahead in life. I wish I could offer words of wisdom. The onlything I can say is that it may be time to divorce and focus on your kids. Sorry

[NorthernGirl]

Hi ProfDaddy - I'm a stepmom who stepped into a stressful role. DH's ex is likely BPD. They have 3 sons together. One has special needs (maturity level below his age), one is an addict who suffers from depression. I've been to jails, emergency wards, therapists, Al Anon, and the list goes on. Even though I came into the relationship with my eyes open, when we moved in together, the crises escalated and it was a wild ride. DH's guilt drove him to do some things that weren't always healthy for his kids. I was desperately trying to help him and was seeing things he was trying to ignore to survive. It wasn't always a great combination.

It doesn't sound like your wife is handling all is the stress very well. But I can tell you she wouldn't be the first stepmom who tried to "help" by doing too much! 

As stepmom's we see these kids hurting and we see all the things we believe would help. It took me some time to back off and just let DH parent his kids. Here's a few things that may help (no guarantees!):

* Sit down and ask her to talk to you. Ask her about the challenges of living with all the chaos. Ask her what the hardest things are about having the kids around. Don't try to fix it all, just listen. Use your best communication skills -- acknowledge what she says, repeat it back in your own words.

* Take her away from things once in a while! We try to go on a "date" once a week. When we were dealing with daily crises, we didn't always manage it. But we both knew we needed to be a strong couple to survive the madness.

* Tell her that you realize that being a stepmom is a thankless job (because it often is!). We get a lot of downsides (kids who don't want us around, etc.) Add in an ex with BPD and the job gets many times harder, in my opinion. OK, I'm biased. But the chaos DH's ex brought to our house was intense.

* Tell her that what would help you is to have her come up with suggestions for how you want to parent the kids only when you are ready to listen. I found that when things were calm, I could sit DH down and say "You told me you are frustrated when SS yells, can we talk about some ways we might make it happen less?" When he felt as though I was on his side, he listened. And he also made it clear that he would listen and then choose what he felt was the right thing to do.

You're wife may not be ready to listen to any of this, but if you think she is, it may be worth a shot. She may feel like the only place she can tell her story is with the therapist. In my case, my friends didn't always want to hear the stories.

DH and I had to work very hard to make our marriage work. It's been pretty messy but we are doing okay. He got frustrated when I told him what to do (he'd already been through enough of that with his BPD ex!) But he also wanted my help. He wanted me to drive his kids, cook, clean -- all the ugly jobs. But I wanted more than that. So we figured it out together. Once we became a team, we tackled things much better.

Good luck!

[highroadstepmom]

Prof Daddy - my partner is a prof daddy too and I adore his children.  I think northern girl made some excellent points - I too am kind of a type-A 'fix it' personality and I work very hard to not try to solve every issue and to integrate into the family as an adult of significance to the children.  When the uBPDx situation was making me particularly stressed, I spoke with a counselor at my place of work who suggested that, as a stepmom, I think of myself as a really cool Aunt. That my role is to support my partner in parenting but to let the parents be the parents.  This doesn't mean I don't dole out 'time outs' and chores - but it does mean I chose the man and all of his family. We can't control what the exes do (I wish).

What would make your wife feel good? definitely some time for her and some time for you as a couple.

Talk together about parenting and what role each of you plays - your therapist should be able to help you define some of these - I find that communicating clearly with my partner about what works in our home, what we feel is appropriate for the kids (I'm big on manners at the table, no talking back, no mean words, affirming when one of us feels angry or irritated) has really helped.

step moms can feel really powerless in the home and marriage - regardless of what the relationship is like with biomom. I have joked that being a stepmom involves all of the work and drama and none of the glory because we are not a biological parent, we are typically despised and sometimes demeaned by the ex.

for my part - I have committed to my partner that I will do my best to not contribute to the drama - the BPD exes create more than enough of that to go around. I try my best to make our home a place that is loving and supportive.  when I'm frustrated to the point of meltdown (it happens for all of us once in a while) because of the interminable custody and property issues, we talk about it when the children aren't around so that it can be a sloppy grown up conversation.

We engage in lots and lots of verbal affirmation. He let's me know how appreciated I am which helps me remember that he and this family are worth the BS. I let him know that there is a world outside of the 'crazy' of a BPD perspective and that he is a terrific father and companion.

It sounds like you are working hard to support your children and your wife. Don't forget to include yourself as someone who needs some TLC too.  Keep going.  Getting married - while joyful is a major and consequently stressful change  to our lives! keep working together to figure out you and the family work as a married couple.  Good thoughts your way!

[PinkieV]

Great ideas from the other step moms who have posted here!  I don't have much time and will post later, but please suggest these boards to your wife: www.stepmommag.com and www.stepsforstepmothers.com. The first is my favorite, but they are both incredibly supportive communities for step moms. I couldn't have done it so far without them!

[ennie]

As a step mom, I just want to say that I am VERY GRATEFUL that SD14 turned 13 when I was in the family already for 6 years, and well after custody litigation, and at a time when BPDmom was at her best... .she was really hard for a year, and I love the girl with all my heart and am pretty good with teens... .and she is a great teen.  But she definitely was mimicking some of BPD mom's worst behaviors, tho she is not BPD herself. 

One thing I noticed at our hardest times was that when dealing with all the most challenging stuff, I acted more difficult, emotional, irritable and erratic as well. I had never had a BPD person in my life, or any other seriously mentally ill person in my close family of friendship group.  I have worked with mentally ill people, but never had my sense of home and own well being threatened in the way it was when I started dating DH.  It made me have a huge amount of sympathy for the kids' BPD mom--if I was acting in really challenging ways after only a few years of a small amount of exposure to the scary and unpredictable behavior of BPD mom and the collaborative behavior of the kids, how did SHE deal with a much scarier and crazier BPD mom as a little girl and still have as much love as she has to give?  And how were my Stepkids dealing with this level of stress, when I would be a basket case after just a few hours with her?  I realized that the behavior I was seeing in BPD mom--black and white thinking, blaming, anger, manipulation, constant projection of fear of persecution by us--was the natural result of the kind of stress I was experiencing, times 1000.  That trauma creates difficult behavior. 

Fortunately, I came into step momming with a high degree of emotional well being, great family and community support, and wonderful counselors.  Still, I had never felt as unstable and threatened as I did about 3 years into my relationship with DH.  I was not a huge rescuer, but I definitely am a "can-do" person and thought that our work together could make a difference in they dynamic with BPD mom.  How wrong I was. 

So I suppose what I am saying is that it is hard to come face to face with our own limitations.  I had to tell the kids it was fine if they did not love me and mean it before they came to trust me absolutely.  I had to be willing to acknowledge that my own well being was more important than any relationship before I could say to myself, "If I need to be happy first to be with my DH, I better get to work, because I love the guy and am NOT leaving if I can help it!"  And I had to be willing to have no influence on BPD mom before I could allow myself not to be influenced so much by her. 

What I am saying is that your wife may be unstable, or she may be in over her head and not know what to do.  She  is facing a terribly huge challenge.  I think sometimes my DH in those times equated my state of mind, after months of being scared because of BPDmom threats, extremely big challenges with stepkids (an inherently alienating relationship), and the challenges of a new marriage, with the crazy behavior of BPD mom when someone told her her hair looked funny or whatever.  I was aware that my role was so vastly more challenging than that of a beloved mother, that I was dealing with threats of violence, kids threatening to run away because mom told them to, a husband who was unbelievably stressed and afraid he would leave the kids, accusations of all kinds of things... .

I do not know either of you, but suggest you try on the thought that maybe part of what she is experiencing is situational.  You do not have to stay with her or make your kids endure a truly unstable person, if that is the case.  But if you try out backing her up and loving her through it, you will get the best from her.  Because I have learned to do this for the kids, my SD14 is now mature enough that she does this for me.  When I have a really hard day, she says, "You are doing great.  This is a hard situation, but you are doing your best."  Some conversations just need to wait.  If all you are getting is blame, it is because the person is overloaded and does not have the inner support to feel okay about what they are feeling, so they need to make it the fault of someone else.  At that moment, no conversation about the object of blame can fix the feeling of the person that they are inadequate or that it is too much.  They need to replenish, to feel the support of others to be able to feel their own support. 

I cannot tell you how useful it is when I am spent, having a hard time, doing it all wrong, and DH or SD14 just gives me a hug and says, "You are okay.  You have done your best.  It is not your fault.  It will get better.  Just take care of yourself.  I love you."  Permission to be mortal. 

Also important to me is taking every 3rd night to myself; during the worst times, taking one weekend a month to go on an adventure/spa trip/along time by myself or with girlfriends.  I would return refreshed and able to have the hard conversations. 

You need to protect your kids from more blame and instability, but I think it is important to cultivate the "yes, and" attitude that gets so worn away by the BPD tendency to pit people and needs against each other.  All the people in the family count, and if your wife feels supported, she will be better at being supportive of your kids, no matter how stable she is.  She still may not be able to pull it off, but if she knows you have her back, you will find out if she can.  And if she can't, you can still have her back and support her in doing what is right for her.  No one has to be sacrificed, even if you decide not to be together. 

So my suggestion is, much like others here, that you help her find the support resources in terms of groups, online resources, counselors and other emotional support that will give her the tools to find out if she is up for this challenge, and that you support her as if she is capable of doing this, but just needs your love and support.  When she is more replenished, then negotiations can happen. When she has the support she needs, you can have a meaningful conversation about your D13.  There are my 2 cents worth.  Hope it helps, and hope you can be clear about what you and the kids need as well.

[ProfDaddy]

Constant negativity towards me and my daughter is nearing my breaking point.  I hate my life.