Having a close family member with BPD is a life long sorrow. Being a chosen scapegoat is also a life long sorrow. It is normal to want to escape the feelings we have as we walk on eggshells around disordered people who dump how badly they feel inside on others. The getting tired of it factor, can turn into spending less and less time around the disordered person and becoming less a target of the disordered person's feelings as we become more resilient in setting boundaries, especially not taking on feelings that are not our own.

It is a lot. Sometimes we repeat the patterns in our families of origin. You said your father was primary parent. Did you have similar dynamics in your family?

I understand your oldest child feeling uneasy about promises, and becoming aware that something may be going on with his mother. I think a counselor is in the best position to explain the situation to him when he's ready.

I didn't know- we didn't know about BPD and there was denial about my BPD mother's issues- so it was confusing. I saw what I saw and by age 12 - I knew something was different. We don't know the road not taken- but I do wish someone had spoken about her mental illness, because I assumed she was "normal" and treating me the way she did on purpose and that it was my fault (she blamed me). I was old enough to understand mental illness if someone had explained her situation to me.

What happened in my family is that each of us developed different relationships with each parent. It makes sense- BPD affects all relationships. It makes sense- every relationship is between two people. Your children will develop their own relationship with each of you over time.

I don't think anyone does parenting in this situation completely right. I think you are doing the best you can with it. That's about all anyone can do.

There will be pushback (extinction bursts) with agitation and guilting.  However, no one can predict how long there will be pushback.

On the one hand, we know how it will be if we do nothing proactive... what has happened in the past would just continue.

On the other hand, learning how to construct better boundaries and responses at least might improve things so life is somewhat "less bad".  The unknown is whether or how much or how soon life improves.

If nothing improves then that might be another signal you should to re-examine the relationship itself and weigh the cost to continue.

I was jealous as a kid. The preference was obvious. Now, I'm not. The GC has a lot of challenges too.

I agree- trying to chase a wish with a BPD family member- I think we've all done it and felt disappointed. In 12 steps the saying is "don't go to the empty well to get a drink of water".

If it helps, I would try to be kind to my BPD mother but without expectations of her being nice or not. I think I was more guarded around her than walking on eggshells. It wasn't safe to be vulnerable around her.

Also, if she was being nice to me, I still felt I needed to be guarded- as it could change any minute.

Yes, keep your guard up and look at every legal paper you can.

also...

in uBPDw's view taking care of one's own emotional health before protecting your partner's emotional health is extremely selfish

uBPDw has never been good with boundaries even in normal non-splitting cheerful circumstances - e.g. if there is a no photos sign in a museum uBPDw will absolutely take one cannot stop even if 10 family members dissuade her, no walking on lawn etc. has an inherent extremely strong urge to violate written/stated boundaries (except when there is real fear of law enforcement)

Thank you ForeverDad for your helpful reply. WhippingBoy it is and that too with an emotional whip which feels many times more unbearable than a real whip.

In the most recent episode I tried this in earnest, every time walking away for a reset and it just got her more and more agitated. She even accused me of "always protecting my own emotional health first, when I should be protecting her emotional health given her mental state which I am well aware of and fully responsible for". The escalatory ladder goes up quickly from there in my relationship and at some point I cave in. I guess I need to train myself and prepare myself for appropriate actions to take on each step of the escalation.   
It is all the more difficult when the incidents happen outside the home when travelling or car bound in a road trip. My head starts spinning at some point thinking about the possibilities of what would happen for each step I take along that escalation path in order to stick to my boundary. That is usually the caving point or when real word problems like an important appointment or picking up a child is imminent and the nonPD has to surrender in order to function.

Years ago I heard of a med being tested as a heart medication, propranolol.  Research indicated adrenaline causes memories to be stored more strongly and propranolol evidently lessens the effects of adrenaline, moderating strong memories and flashbacks.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=355579.msg13193344#msg13193344

The children growing up in dysfunctional family environment definitely are negatively impacted by their experience.  Even if they desire not to experience it in their own future marriages, they can so easily end up, by being so familiar and used to the chaos, choosing mates who are like one or the other of the parents, either the parent who misbehaves almost to the point of abuse or the parent who passively appeases the other.

So what you can do is set an example of what is healthy behavior and healthy boundaries.  The dysfunction does not have to be passed on to future generations.

Hi notwendy,

I agree with all you’ve said except I’m not jealous of my brother.  I’m happy being myself.

I’m unhappy to be walking on eggshells as we all are. I wish he was kinder and treated me with respect. I try to treat him like that. I hate looking over my shoulder and filtering my speech and sharing nothing with him for fear he will abuse me or make my life difficult.

I am jealous of people who get along with their mothers and siblings. I want their love and they cannot give it through no fault of their own.

It’s a common lament here. It runs through almost all the threads here. It’s unfair and we have to accept it. Chasing a dream of a happy life with pwBPD can ruin your own life. It seems to work out like that for me.

I think that mother-child bond will always have an emotional pull for us. Even if we cognitively comprehend that we need to protect ourselves, emotionally, it's a struggle.

In our situations, we are also wired to feel responsible for our mother's feelings.

NC isn't a complete solution. I think we need counseling for support. We also need to examine our own emotions. For many of us, we've been focused on our BPD parent's feelings and the drama that surrounds them. With less contact- we are left with a space for our own feelings.

I think we long for the mother we wish we had. Perhaps we have the urge to seek out the mother we have, in some hopes she might be that mother, and then we see it isn't that way.
 
I think we also struggle with our own moral foundation. We know we should "Honor our mothers" but we have to navigate what this actually involves according to our own moral guidelines. For me, one explanation that helped me to decide this is to honor the best in her, not enable her to do hurtful things to others. It isn't honoring her if I enable her to be verbally or emotionally abusive to me or my children.

As to whether to have contact or not, a counselor put it in terms of my own abilty to manage contact. Not "she is too mentally ill for me to have contact with her" but "I am not far along in my own emotional recovery to have contact with her". I didn't go NC with her, I did LC.  Short visits were more maneagable, and with someone else along with me. Visits alone with her were more likely to be volatile.

Distance was a boundary for me. I could manage visits because they involved travel on my own terms. If she had lived closer, I may have needed a different situation.

You are doing the best you can with a complicated situation. The feelings are a part of it.