BPDFamily.com

I have written before about having two personality disordered people in my family:  my mother and my MIL.  We also believe my husband's younger sister is personality disordered.  My mother is surely BPD.  The two women in my husband's family I'm not positive about, but there seem to be elements of both NPD and BPD, which I know is not unusual.

Anyway, some quick background:  DH and I are happily married for 31 years (in June) and we have three sons, all college students.  Our eldest is 22 and the younger two are twins who are 19.  Everyone in DH's family lives in a city about three hours away.

Our children and I have been in a N/C holding pattern for some years now with DH's mother and younger sister.  This suits us all just fine.  DH's mother and sister prefer to think of my husband as single and childless, so whatever.  He is in very low-contact with his mother and almost N/C with his younger sister.  Both have enormous capacities for cruelty and horrid behavior.

Unfortunately and sadly, DH's older sister has been fighting breast cancer for about three years and just entered hospice.  This is difficult for the obvious reasons, but complicated by the fact that there will no way to not see or interact with MIL and younger SIL as we move through this.  We all want to honor and respect DH's older sister, but the other two women never, ever miss a chance to make a difficult situation downright ugly.  When DH's father died in 1996, their behavior turned an otherwise sad situation into a nightmarish ordeal for all of us.  Thankfully, our children are young enough that they don't remember much of it.

I exist peacefully in a state of N/C with the personality disordered people on both sides of our family, but know that I cannot leave my husband on his own to deal with his sister's death and funeral.  He is a wonderful man and he needs and deserves the support of our sons and me.  But the very thought of it makes my heart beat fast in my throat and my mouth go dry.  I'm afraid of the damage and havoc they will wreak, and just the sheer ugliness of it.

I'm also afraid that our now-adult sons, who have never had to really deal with this up close, will react with an enormous amount of defensiveness for both their father and me.  Whenever I try to talk to them about it, about how things may go (I always put on a hopeful front for the boys), they become very upset at the sorts of abuse that has been aimed at their dad and me.  Their dad in particular, because they can't understand how a wonderful man's own family can treat him as they do.  I talk to them about the importance of "not taking the bait", to just ignore pretty much everything and anything that is said or done, and to just try to get through it for their father's sake.  They understand on an intellectual level, but when I try to role play with them, they quickly lose their patience and snap back.  This will serve to do nothing but escalate any situations that may arise.

I know intellectually that it is not my responsibility to "control" my sons, nor should I seek to.  My therapist would say I'm trying to fix problems and people over which I have no control.  But honestly, I am scared on so many levels.  At nearly 50, I know I can still be reduced to just a shocked, horrified, paralyzed lump of humanity.

I'd love to hear about how others who have been either L/C or N/C have handled it when they've been thrown back into the vortex.  Besides xanax - lol.

It sounds to me like you're doing some really great things, warning your kids and role playing with them. If your nuclear family can view it as a situation like a war, and all be together on the same side, it will mean so much to you and your husband and will be a huge maturational step for the kids. My only suggestion is to take everything one tiny step at a time. "Today we will be there for an hour and then we are leaving. We will then go to a movie together." So you're doling out the poison in small doses. Whatever you do don't stay at anybody's house.

Thank you, IAMR!  All of that is really good advice.  We will definitely be staying in a hotel.   And taking it one step at a time is something I needed to hear, as simple as it sounds.  The war thing is good, too; our boys love a competition, so maybe it will be more effective to encourage them to look at it like that.

SIL is in hospice now and fading very fast.  My husband was there to see over the weekend when I was out of town, and we made a quick trip yesterday, too. I did not see any of the other relatives, which was good.

What was so sad was he said to me on the way home, "When [sister] dies, there will be no one left".  What he meant by that is that all who will be left are his disordered mother and younger sister.  The alone-ness is hitting him pretty hard already, as he and this sister always had each other to hold onto in the face of the other two.  I'm sure he will grieve and adjust, but it's just sad.