I wanted to re post and update you all on my situation. It has been a few months now at this point. Today my still wife admitted herself into the hospital because of SI. This past Tuesday she had a break down and I went to talk with her and spend the evening trying to calm her down. Now today that she was admitted I had an extremely long day at work and still went to the hospital afterwards to try and see her. I was not let in but they gave me her things.

Here is where I might have crossed a line. When I got to my car I threw her stuff on the passenger seat and her phone lit up. I saw a message from a guy I never heard about that said "I miss you." My heart sank. For the past 6 months I have been trying to make her life as comfortable to transition back to being independent as I can. What I mean by this is I have kept paying her phone, Health insurance, car insurance, and car payment. That is on top of me still paying her child support. I have been trying everything to sure her that no matter her episodes I will still be there.

Now I have been pretty sure these past 2 months that a relationship would not work out between us again but seeing that text really hurt. Fortunately, I have a decent relationship with her mom and step dad (has been in her life 9 years). I called them to ask if they knew. They said yes. Apparently it has been a thing for a few months. The last 2-3 months she has been seeing and sleeping with this other guy, who she seems to be using as a replacement, I have been trying my besst to cheer her up and make her feel beautiful and validated. Mother's day I took her flowers and got her tickets to Matt Rife as a gift. She still just was living a double life going to him every night. We are separated and we both knew that. I guess I am just upset that I was made such a big fool. After what I tried to do for her I think I deserved some honesty.

I have read countless blogs on here with people struggling with their BPD partner. It is amazing to me how every story is almost the same play by play. This whole last year I have read and almost had a foreshadowing of the next thing to come.

We do have a 2 and half year-old daughter. I know one of the pieces of advice here is to ask for custody while the person does therapy and gets better. After this last little thing that happened, I think it is the only right thing I should do. With another person in her ear, I do not know what she is going to try to do and that is a scary position to be in. Any advice on how to go about it from here? I do not want to keep her from her daughter physically but I think it is in her best interest and my best protection to legally have her be under my custody. I do not want to hurt my wife. I truly wish her happiness and for her to be better.

However, in trying to save her, I lost myself. I fell empty and this last finding was the final knife. She truly has left me a shell of a man right now.

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Thank you, I appreciate the reminder that I haven't done something wrong. And you're right I really don't know if this person has avoidant attachment, this is really just me throwing it out there to try and make sense of what's happened. I wish I had more information to go on, and I'd like to ask them, but I also want to make sure that I'm actually giving them space if they need it. I think what I'm learning is regardless of the reasons, I think we are probably not on the same page, and I'm trying to just accept that. And I think my reaction to this distancing is magnified by a LOT of other stuff going on in my life right now, and I think what I've taken away from this is that I am grieving SOOOO many things. I think I need to get a better handle on everything that's come up. I don't want to hurt someone because I'm not managing my own feelings (unintentionally of course). I know how that feels in my current relationship with stbxh and I don't want to do that to someone else. Now that I've realized this is happening, I'm just taking some time to just focus on righting my own ship and trying to deal with some of my own life stresses so it doesn't bubble over into other relationships, work, etc.

Hi BT400
Thanks for posting what is happening for you at this point in time. It's great the book has resonated with you - and I imagine that it is really, really tough at the moment.

There are so many factors involved in when and what boundaries we set in relation to our bpd children. Clearly you are at a point where you can't go on as you have been going and this is the moment to draw a line.

Do you mind telling us what boundaries you have put in place and how the reaction has been? Are you still in contact with your dd or is she with her mother?

H saw more of the body language than I did, and he thinks the guy is Mom's new boyfriend. So now I'm more worried -- what if she brings him in the house? (A), he's a strange adult man, and (b), what if it riles up Stepdad even more?

I know there isn't anything I can do about it -- but I worry for the kids if there is a new adult male around.

Yes, she could be anticipating (dreading) the upcoming exchange.

My Custody Evaluator, a respected child psychologist, stated preschoolers and elementary schoolers (he used up to the age of 10 years) did best with 2-2-3 schedules*, similar to what you have, splitting each week.

* 2-2-3 allows each parent to have an alternate weekend: Mon-Tue overnight with one parent, Wed-Thu overnight with other parent, Fri-Sat-Sun overnights alternated between parents.

What happened in my court orders:  When our order changed when my son was about 11 years old, I told my lawyer I wanted a change to alternate weeks.  That was for my benefit, my ex used exchanges to play games with me and disparage me.  My lawyer replied, "Do you want the court to believe your kid would do better apart from you longer?"  I didn't change it.

My court recognizes that children in their teen usually want a "home base" and offers that one parent step back to being an alternate weekend parent.  Unless your ex wants to be the one to step back, don't do it.  You need as much time with your child as possible.

If you end up splitting weeks until she ages out of the system at age 18, that's okay, you need to be there for her as much as possible.

I have been reading through a lot of the posts on here, and some past ones, and am gathering together things that seem helpful. Many of them seem mostly helpful in the angry explosion mode. For instance, I have written down:
-Do not accept blame when it is undue, and try to state this.
-Be non-reactive, respond without pleading, apologising or anger (that's a hard one!).
-Validate his feelings not his words, and if this is not heard enforce a boundary.
-Let him explode to your boundaries (this one has always scared me the most, that he will pull the nuclear plug and throw me out).
This is all really helpful, and I am learning a lot.

However, in the angry silence of a stonewall I am still unsure what to do. I have also written down:
-Let him manage his own feelings, politely disengage.
-Don't ride his rollercoaster (I like this a lot, but it is very hard to disentangle your own feelings).

Does this seem like a good interpretation of what I am reading? Is there anything else I can or shouldn't do? It's been over a month of silence, and I get awful waves of despondency.

I am learning to unpick my own issues. My own mother-in-law calls me a doormat. From childhood emotional abuse I have learnt to think that my own feelings are not valid, and that my distress is less value than other people's. Even now, my brother, who is a counsellor, gets competitive in telling me that his attachment disorder is worse than mine, that he is more messed up. That's not a fun competition to win.
I am terrified of opening up, and have never spoken of any of this to people in real life. Writing out a post here was an act of real vulnerability. For the last few hours I have sat her processing feelings of shame and anxiety. Though no one owes me a response in the slightest, having none does feed into my fear that I am posting out of turn, and I shouldn't have asked for help.

I'm working through seeing the line between the way I am and what I am experiencing, but this is hard as my instinct is always to blame myself and assume it was me, which makes strategies outlined above challenging. I have tried counselling a couple of times before, but been unlucky in that it has been very superficial. A worksheet on boundaries, does not help me work through why trying to enforce them makes me feel like I am going to vomit. I'm not currently in a financial position to try again right now.

I've dumped a lot out here, and getting away from my original question. Either way, any advice would be hugely appreciated.

Thank you.

I've been doing reasonably well and haven't posted here in a while. But I'm now again in some distress, so decided I'd post something.

I guess the basic topic is how feelings get stirred up when a serious health issue arises.

Just for background, my ex and I were together for 25 years. It was a tumultuous and difficult relationship (as is always true with BPD), but we had a lot of compatibilities also, and I loved her. Then a stressor occurred - her son (my stepson), who would also qualify for a diagnosis of BPD, became addicted to meth, suicidal, and homeless. That destabilized my ex.

Then, in the midst of all that, I had to leave town for a month, to take care of my dying uncle. When I left, another guy started pursuing my ex (even though he was married and in what his wife believes is a monogamous relationship). The guy fully qualifies for a diagnosis of NPD - readily meets the clinical criteria. He's totally full of himself, charismatic, manipulative, prone to explode in anger, etc. And I'll mention that over the course of her adult life, my ex predominantly dated highly narcissistic individuals, with a few exceptions (myself and a couple other guys). And I'm not stating this based simply on her descriptions - it's objectively true, and has caused her a lot of trauma. As a child, she was sexually abused by her malignant NPD stepfather, and that set her preferred "type". And she generally has chosen romantic partners in that same mold, who retraumatize her.

Especially given the stress of her son's situation, my ex recognized that she needed psychotherapy, but she was having trouble finding a therapist. The guy offered to be her therapist (even though he has zero background in this area). So they bought a book on trauma therapy, and proceeded with "therapy". People with BPD need structured therapy, and often will get worse with free-association "therapy". And that's doubly true when the person acting as "therapist" has absolutely no experience and their own agenda. And the guy was constantly love-bombing her, etc.

So they ended up in an affair (that he's hiding from his wife) and she dumped me to be his secret mistress. And the pseudotherapy and whole situation really messed with her head, so her BPD symptoms are far worse than they ever were in all our years together. She now has frequent severe dissociative episodes that interfere with her ability to function in life, etc.

After this, I did engage her into getting DBT therapy, which she continued for a year and a half, but she benefitted minimally, in large part because of her resistance to the therapy and unwillingness to do the necessary homework.

For two years after this all started, I basically remained with her, essentially as a platonic "husband", hoping she would leave that guy and come back to me. Seven months ago, I'd had enough, threw in the towel, and shifted to minimal contact. After some initial depression (missing her), I began to heal and feel better.

Periodically, since this all started, she would begin to make moves to break up with the guy, because she recognized the nature of their relationship was causing her pain (exacerbating her abandonment fears, etc.). The guy led her to initially believe they might one day be a couple, then later denied this, etc. And he's extremely controlling (like most narcissists), and people with BPD don't like being controlled. A couple months ago, it looked like she might be ending the affair - and she began to engage more with her son's situation (which was fundamentally a good/healthy thing).

I'll also note here that she has COPD. It started about 15 years ago. And COPD is a progressive illness, even though she no longer smokes. A couple weeks ago, she caught what would, for most people, be a minor cold. But it turned into a serious COPD exacerbation. She couldn't get enough oxygen and was afraid, and could hardly sleep at all for a week. Seeing this happening to her hit me hard. It made me so aware of her mortality and that she'd likely ultimately die from the COPD. I was flooded with feelings of how much I loved her - cared for her. I didn't say any of that to her, though I talked with my therapist about it. And while this was all happening, she told me that she'd dropped out of DBT therapy.

She's now largely recovered from that severe COPD episode. Then yesterday, she let me know that she'd be spending a couple weeks with her affair partner (where they'd be traveling to other cities, etc.). And that hit me hard (though I worked hard not to show it). I had hoped that she was ending that relationship.   

It's not even that I necessarily want us to be back together. It's that this guy is bad for her, and clearly messing with her head, with her BPD symptoms far worse than they'd ever been. I wish she was either alone, or with a decent partner, who actually could support and love her, encourage her into proper therapy, be there for her when she needs medical care, etc. And the thought of her dying from COPD in a number of years leaves me overwhelmingly sad - because I really love her.

I feel like you all are talking me off a ledge here; thanks, I appreciate it.

kells76:
Yes, I've been reading some of your postings over the last week (side note: holy freaking ugh. I hope SD18's trip is going well) and I remember the gist of some of your material from 2020/2021. Thank you for your reply.

---No issues with parenting schedule with respect to time with me. I have noticed that 4 out of 5 times, if there is a complaint about not feeling well for school, it's on Wednesday when I normally drop her off at school and then don't have her again until the weekend. I've brought up the subject of changing to a week-to-week or some other kind of schedule, but D11 says she's happy with the current setup.

---Only somewhat. D11 and I share interests that our own things, and she has a few of her own independent interests. I do my best to let D11 know/feel that she doesn't have to be a mini-me to be accepted and loved; I just worry a lot that she's not getting that same message when she's at mom's, and what that means for her.


---Wanting parental approval and love, yup. I saw that a lot with my ex and her mom (undiagnosed, BPD queen traits)  No matter what garbage the ex MIL put her daughter through, she still kept control through, in large part, the need for parental approval (and intimidation, but that's for another day).

---I really, really like these concepts. Like I said, I needed some perspective.

ChooseHappiness:
---Thanks, but I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to do more if it meant guaranteeing a successful outcome.

---I'm hoping for something similar. Trying to keep that sense of self preserved.

---Whew, that's a tough one. I think a lot depends on how mature your child is and where they are in the relationship with their BPD parent. You might also have to worry about alienation claims.
A) Is there a school counselor you could ask- they would have access to all sorts of age-appropriate materials.
B) "Understanding the Borderline Mother" might be accessible to a 14 year old, but that's not a safe bet. (If you haven't read it, though, it's worth a read. It is out of print and somewhat spendy, but a used copy off the Internet is really worth it. And I've heard there are free pdfs out there, and if you have a local library; that's another option.)
B.5) I don't really recommend "Surviving a Borderline Parent" in this situation. It's a good read for someone who is out of the FOG and has an adult perspective on relationships, but not for someone who is 14 and (likely?) still working through stages of grief.
C) You could also step back and focus on the problem from a toxic parenting perspective. If you're willing to start simple and sort of reframe BPD as an addiction to avoiding shame, there are a lot of teenager-appropriate resources that deal with having a parent with those sorts of problems. Might be a good place to start your Mental Health Book Club with your 14 year old.

ForeverDad:
I will have her back for as long as she needs me. :-)