False allegation

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

The background to this is written in posts elsewhere.   My  wife has been having an affair,  and I found out in August last year.  She said is was over. But in October I found out she was still having an affair.   She wanted a divorce... .that's when things started getting messy, threats, assaults, and eventually she had a police caution for assault just before Christmas.

Today... .got a call from the police.   She made an allegation today that I have been harassing her since last August.  They are investigating.   They want to interview me under caution on Wednesday.

I have been audio recording since last Nov.  I have all texts and whatsapp.

Foreverdad... .You predicted this.

Any advice please?.  

I'm in the UK.  I'll be taking a lawyer.   Have an appointment tomorrow morning To discuss further.

I am really stressed.

[SES]

The background to this is written in posts elsewhere.   My  wife has been having an affair,  and I found out in August last year.  She said is was over. But in October I found out she was still having an affair.   She wanted a divorce... .that's when things started getting messy, threats, assaults, and eventually she had a police caution for assault just before Christmas.

Today... .got a call from the police.   She made an allegation today that I have been harassing her since last August.  They are investigating.   They want to interview me under caution on Wednesday.

I have been audio recording since last Nov.  I have all texts and whatsapp.

Foreverdad... .You predicted this.

Any advice please?.  

I'm in the UK.  I'll be taking a lawyer.   Have an appointment tomorrow morning To discuss further.

I am really stressed.

[Panda39]

SES,

This isn't really my area of expertise but I did want you to know that I'm still following your story and I'm so sorry this is happening.  It absolutely sucks.  My SO had false allegations of child abuse thrown at him so I understand how stressful this is for you.  The good news is you are armed with documentation.  I guess my advice for now is get that documentation organized and ready to go to the attorney.

Thinking of you,

Panda39

[rarsweet]

Stick to what she is alleging. Do not embellish or stray off topic. It is her job to prove something. And yes document, document, document. Stay calm no matter what.

[ForeverDad]

I believe a lot of professionals would say to call it quits and leave the house just to avoid continuing or ramped up problems.  However, that would be abandoning your parenting strategy and defaulting to ex's strategy.

Her 'strategy'?  You made her look bad, the police gave her a Caution.  That might be a ding against her in family court.  She has to make you look as bad or worse than her, otherwise the court might not favor her as Mother.

She recently turned down an offer for the house, maybe her entitlement wants the full price, but surely there's more involved.  She probably likes being the passive-aggressive obstructionist (negative engagement) sabotaging your efforts to get it sold.

So a lot of this is about Control and Manipulation of her targets.

[gherkins]

Hang in there.  The only advice I can offer is to try to stay calm.  Let her true self show through the facade.  You've done what you can do by lawyering up and DOCUMENTING.  Having been through this with my husband, you have my sympathy!

[SES]

Thanks everyone... .  Yes,  she now wants more than the asking price.  The buyers have expressed doubt that she wants to sell. 

Me... .another sleepless night before my interview tomorrow 2 pm UK time.  I can have a free lawyer, but have instructed a criminal lawyer from the firm doing my divorce.  I've been going through my document,  and preparing myself.  As of yet, I don't know what the allegations are.  I'm a bag of nerves.  Lawyer says this is her not wanting to.move forward and sell up, plus she feels she owes me. 

Foreverdad... .You predicted this.  You have seen it all before. 

I'm not sure what to expect. I have been advised to make counter allegations based on my records.  I'm not looking forward to it.

[ForeverDad]

Well, she already has a history of sorts, the prior police caution.  You can take the stance that with the impending divorce she's trying to create a contrived history for you too.

Can you use this latest police involvement as leverage for court, that you get full control of the sale and/or she needs to move out (1) so the house can get sold and (2) you would have fewer in-person & in-house encounters that could blow up into confrontational incidents, either alleged, contrived or whatever.  After all, if she has a BF, she can go live with him.

We here are worrying that she will do anything to paint you as a perp and her the victim.  She is probably desperate to not just even the field but to make you look worse than her.  And too often the legal system errs "on the side of caution" in favor of the female gender.  That is why you have to be extremely careful around her.  The only witnesses inside the house are your recorder and the kids and minors often aren't asked about incidents between parents.  I recall one member said he was cornered in his house with the doorway blocked and he merely brushed past his spouse to exit and so that touch was transformed into an allegation that he beat her up, etc.  Matt here reported his spouse, after throwing things at him, lied to the police that he had thrown her down the steps.  Literally anything can be claimed to get an advantage, and truth is lost in the perceptions and intensely distorted feelings of a pwBPD.  (Some have even gotten in trouble when trying to stop their spouse from harming themselves and the spouse ended up with bruises.  Yes, restraining a person from doing harm can be characterized as DV too.)

[Panda39]

Well, she already has a history of sorts, the prior police caution.  You can take the stance that with the impending divorce she's trying to create a contrived history for you too.

Can you use this latest police involvement as leverage for court, that you get full control of the sale and/or she needs to move out (1) so the house can get sold and (2) you would have fewer in-person & in-house encounters that could blow up into confrontational incidents, either alleged, contrived or whatever.  After all, if she has a BF, she can go live with him.

We here are worrying that she will do anything to paint you as a perp and her the victim.  She is probably desperate to not just even the field but to make you look worse than her.  And too often the legal system errs "on the side of caution" in favor of the female gender.  That is why you have to be extremely careful around her.  The only witnesses inside the house are your recorder and the kids and minors often aren't asked about incidents between parents.  I recall one member said he was cornered in his house with the doorway blocked and he merely brushed past his spouse to exit and so that touch was transformed into an allegation that he beat her up, etc.  Matt here reported his spouse, after throwing things at him, lied to the police that he had thrown her down the steps.  Literally anything can be claimed to get an advantage, and truth is lost in the perceptions and intensely distorted feelings of a pwBPD.  (Some have even gotten in trouble when trying to stop their spouse from harming themselves and the spouse ended up with bruises.  Yes, restraining a person from doing harm can be characterized as DV too.)

To piggyback on this my SO threw a phone into the couch and that became... .shattering the phone into a million pieces... .throwing the phone at the kids... .blocking them from leaving the house... .child abuse charges (can you guess who he was talking to on the phone  ).  He showed up to court and she was out getting a manicure with their younger daughter... .obviously so verrrrry concerned for the safety of her daughters she didn't even show up   UBPDstbx was also running a Parental Alienation campaign at the time. 

My SO showed up in court and truthfully told his side of the story... .charges were dropped. (She said... .He said... .She didn't show up and He did) Based on his experience my advice is don't show any anger (even though you have many legitimate things to be angry about), answer questions honestly, calmly and rationally.

Let us know how it goes we're routing for you.

[martillo]

Another sad story... .my brother's uBPDexw asked him to leave their home while going through their divorce and she was supposed to maintain the marital home for their 4 kids.  Brother moved in w our mom.  His ex then essentially moved into her mothers home w her much younger affair partner and my nephews.  After a few months of this brother went back home one weekend since she was "abandoning" the house and spent the weekend cleaning (the wife left their little dog in the house for days on end so it was nasty) and was moving back in... .he had worked for 2 days cleaning and on Sunday afternoon he heard a car pull up (house was in the country in the middle of no where) and in walked his wife.  She was on her cell phone, saying "yes, I need help, now.  Brother's name, stop, stop.  Please help.  Brother's name, stop" as she walked over to the kitchen and started throwing and breaking dishes on the floor - the whole while still on the phone w the shrriff's dept.  They arrived, listened to both sides and told brother he would have to leave since technically she had "custody" of the house per their initial divorce proceedings.  So he once again had to leave the home and she went back to her mother's house.

It was just sickening, so be very careful.

[SES]

Interviewed on Wednesday.    No arrest.  No charges.  However, police still investigating.   Meanwhile, still in the house with her.  She is now asking the buyer for an extra 2000, a paltry sum in comparison to the whole sale.

[Panda39]

Interviewed on Wednesday.    No arrest.  No charges.  However, police still investigating.   Meanwhile, still in the house with her.  She is now asking the buyer for an extra 2000, a paltry sum in comparison to the whole sale.

Glad to hear No arrest and No charges.  Sorry you still have to be stuck in the house with her I know how miserable that is.  Hopefully the buyer will move forward even with the extra $2,000 (and hopefully the wife won't sabotage the house sale further  ).  I hope you'll tell us more about how things went when you have the time and energy (I know this has to be stressful for you).

Take Care 

[SES]

Still no news on police investigation.

Buyers pulled out of buying our house... .felt she wasn't prepared to sell the house.  Now the agent is feeling the same way.

[livednlearned]

Still no news on police investigation.

Buyers pulled out of buying our house... .felt she wasn't prepared to sell the house.  Now the agent is feeling the same way.

What leverage do you have? Is there anything she wants that you can dangle in order to motivate her?

[ForeverDad]

Two options.  As LnL suggested, what leverage do you have to give her incentive?  Alternatively, how do you legally limit her ability to obstruct?  Go to court to seek tie-breaker status to block her veto ability on the sale of the house?

Remember, you can't reason with her.  So don't waste time and energy doing that.  Use both carrot (incentives but beware of rewarding her for obstruction) and stick (court for specific limits and consequences)?

[SES]

Looks like next step is court.   Lawyer predicted it last week.  I don't know what she wants.  She made the allegations on the day we had a very healthy offer.  later in the same week her lawyer wrote asking for us to agree to put our court agreement re contact (ie no talking to eachother)  to one side in order to go to family therapy with her, and our kids.  I really haven't made this up... .it is just plain crazy.

Fair to say it feels like wading through treacle at present.  I am very wary if the risk of further allegations,  and also that the allegations from last week are still being investigated.

[livednlearned]

Fair to say it feels like wading through treacle at present.  I am very wary if the risk of further allegations,  and also that the allegations from last week are still being investigated.

Treacle is a good analogy. 

It always feels awful when there are false allegations, but you also have quite a bit going in your favor in terms of her behavior and documenting it. If this investigation turns up false, she is going to have a very serious credibility problem, and that could turn this whole ship around.

[SES]

Thanks.

She seems determined to not let me go.  I can't get my head around why she doesn't just let me go.  I know it's all craz,  and there is no making sense if it.  It isn't rational.   

[ForeverDad]

She seems determined to not let me go.  I can't get my head around why she doesn't just let me go.  I know it's all craz,  and there is no making sense if it.  It isn't rational.

That's what mental illness is all about.  It can be described, written up in textbooks, patterns predicted but it still won't make sense.  The sad part is a pwBPD or with another acting-out PD can walk around and appear virtually normal to most people who don't have close prolonged contact with the person.  BPD is a disorder most evident in close relationships.  The abandonment issues create a push-pull effect.  She pulls you in fearing abandonment, she pushes/drives you away to abandon you before you can abandon her.  There's a book, "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me!"

[livednlearned]

It doesn't make sense because feelings = facts. If you pay attention in your own thinking how very little of what you respond to is actually a fact, this makes a bit more sense. We all ruminate, and mull over the past (can't be changed) and the future (can't be controlled), and are rarely responding to things in the moment that are actual facts.

In pwBPD, this is even more acute. Many struggle with impulsivity, so feeling = fact = action in the span of a second with very little self-awareness. They also experience extreme rejection sensitivity, and return to emotional baseline much more slowly. In her mind, where she is extremely defended against shame, she is protecting herself from rejection. Which, by the way, is impossible to manage. As you probably know, nothing you did could make her happy, or convince her that you loved her.

My son has some of this sensitivity, probably genetically very similar to his father. It used to floor me how he would interpret my facial expressions as some form of rejection. If he got in the car when I picked him up from school, and I didn't look up and smile, he immediately thought I was mad at him, or didn't love him, or whatever. He's not BPD, but some of that behavior is similar to how my ex would feel. Except in N/BPDx, who had two extremely invalidating parents, his way to manage these feelings was to get drunk and mean, and push me away in order to protect himself from the grief of how he felt. Over what? Nothing. A look. A second too long to respond to a question. A dead phone battery or a cell tower that didn't deliver a text.

FD is right about the carrot and the stick. She wants to stay negatively engaged with you -- it's a way to feel something. Many people with BPD also have this awful sense of emptiness, an inability to feel things. It is preferable to feel something rather than nothing, and she can get that from you by simply doing nothing. I had to use a stick. My ex took over 2 years to refinance the house so I could get off the deed, and three trips to court. The only authority he respected was when the judge threatened to have the bailiff hand cuff him. 

[SES]

Livednlearned and Foreverdad,  thanks as always.

Yes, no sense in any of this.

... .There is still no news from the Police.  They had told me they would usually arrest,  but decided to deal with this like adults... .and that they were aware of her police caution for assaulting me,  and that she had contact with mental health services.   

[Pou]

I believe a lot of professionals would say to call it quits and leave the house just to avoid continuing or ramped up problems.  However, that would be abandoning your parenting strategy and defaulting to ex's strategy.

Her 'strategy'?  You made her look bad, the police gave her a Caution.  That might be a ding against her in family court.  She has to make you look as bad or worse than her, otherwise the court might not favor her as Mother.

She recently turned down an offer for the house, maybe her entitlement wants the full price, but surely there's more involved.  She probably likes being the passive-aggressive obstructionist (negative engagement) sabotaging your efforts to get it sold.

So a lot of this is about Control and Manipulation of her targets.

Foreverdad, would you recommend some type of appropriate lawsuit being filed for false allegations and such to the BPDw in this case?  I know this is where my FEAR comes in is that this gets out of proportion due to PDs unable to stay in boundary and stay honest.  There ought to be a criminal law against manipulation of the court system by these PDs.  If these PDs are in the Narcissistic spectrum, it gets even more difficult to handle.  How many people have gone down the road of divorce in PDs situation and come out winners? I know you handled your situation pretty well.   

[SES]

Well... .I didn't predict coming home to find a letter expressing regret for the hurt she has caused, professing her love for me, her disappointment for how things turned out, missing being a friend,  missing being a family, feeling lost without me... .

I know she doesn't mean a word of it.  I can't wait for the house to sell. 

[ForeverDad]

Save it.  You may need it some day.  Documentation.

[livednlearned]

Well... .I didn't predict coming home to find a letter expressing regret for the hurt she has caused, professing her love for me, her disappointment for how things turned out, missing being a friend,  missing being a family, feeling lost without me... .

I know she doesn't mean a word of it.  I can't wait for the house to sell. 

This could be an opportunity for leverage, although it would take tremendous emotional restraint to pull it off. Not sure I could've done it.

"Let's sell the house, too many bad feelings here."

[SES]

I did try to work towards that idea llivednlearned... .  She wanted a way back, but then she realised there wasn't one, and seemed to get a bit paranoid,  texting that she didn't trust me.  The moment of her regrets and wanting reconciliation disappeared as quickly as it appeared.

A week after reporting me to the police for harassing her, she had written a love letter,  and asked that I attend family therapy with her. Fortunately,  my lawyer has seen this all befor... .Without a doubt this will cost a fortune.   

Foreverdad & livednlearned... .I am considering moving out.  Lawyer advised that i start pricing things up... .The risk associated with staying seems likely to go up.  Any suggestions?  Thanks.

[ForeverDad]

If you move now before a parenting schedule is locked in, how do you know you can successfully take the children with you?  Many (but not all) disordered mothers have an exaggerated sense of entitlement as Mother of the Year (MOTY).  You could find out that all cooperation on parenting will dissipate once you aren't there.

Also, even though the house is listed for sale, what's to prevent her from moving her affair partner in once you're out?  I worry that once you're out and without a strong order with consequences if delays to the sale, then the sale will take much, much longer.

Local legal advice is very important.  As much as possible, get ahead of what she may do, whether grabbing more parenting than you expect or her moving in her BF.  Since both children are at or near school age, you need to try your best to be assigned as Residential Parent (sometimes for called RP for School Purposes).  Though that designation doesn't in itself carry declared weighting toward custody, but it does in subtle ways.  Repeated for emphasis... .don't assume it will be okay to let her be RP.  Yes, a court may give an order defaulting her to being RP, etc, - that's what my court did when I separated - but don't let it happen without your objections and providing solutions that you know are better.  One of our truisms here... .A temporary order can very easily morph into a permanent order... .so get the best temporary order that you can get.

[Panda39]

If you move now before a parenting schedule is locked in, how do you know you can successfully take the children with you?  Many (but not all) disordered mothers have an exaggerated sense of entitlement as Mother of the Year (MOTY).  You could find out that all cooperation on parenting will dissipate once you aren't there.

Also, even though the house is listed for sale, what's to prevent her from moving her affair partner in once you're out?  I worry that once you're out and without a strong order with consequences if delays to the sale, then the sale will take much, much longer.

Local legal advice is very important.  As much as possible, get ahead of what she may do, whether grabbing more parenting than you expect or her moving in her BF.  Since both children are at or near school age, you need to try your best to be assigned as Residential Parent (sometimes for called RP for School Purposes).  Though that designation doesn't in itself carry declared weighting toward custody, but it does in subtle ways.  Repeated for emphasis... .don't assume it will be okay to let her be RP.  Yes, a court may give an order defaulting her to being RP, etc, - that's what my court did when I separated - but don't let it happen without your objections and providing solutions that you know are better.  One of our truisms here... .A temporary order can very easily morph into a permanent order... .so get the best temporary order that you can get.

There was only one thing my SO regrets and that is moving out without his children (He was tricked by the wife & their landlord).  For 2 years (the length of their separation) he had minimal custody while uBPDex was neglectful of the girls, ran a parental alienation campaign, and used their daughters as tools to gather intelligence on dad.

I know how miserable it is staying in the house with your stbx but be very careful about how you handle the kids if you leave.  Have you talked with an attorney about a strategy or the pros and cons of leaving?

Also with your wife dragging her heals on selling the house I would be worried about the ability to sell it if she is in possession of it.

[SES]

Well, no news from the police... .I assume they aren't doing very much with their investigation.   

No more buyers for the house.

I had a letter last week from the W.   She said she had regrets, loves me, blah blah blah... .  Now she would like to talk to me.  I'm tempted to hear what she wants to say.  She feels texts are too easily misinterpreted.  I quite like texts.  I'm not too sure what to do.  I'm probably going to listen to what she says.  Fair to say everything she says is hard to think of as truthfuL.   I'll keep you posted.

Me... .Still stuck in the house with the adulterous wife, who spends half her week with her affair partner... .I still can't get over the injustice of it all.  I had been feeling quite low... .Now back to feeling angry.  Which feels healthier.

[SES]

Good news... .Police have closed the case. No further action.  No charges.   No arrests.  Nothing. 

[livednlearned]

Good news... .Police have closed the case. No further action.  No charges.   No arrests.  Nothing. 

Phew. That's great news. Last thing you need right now is legal drama.

How are you doing right now?