BPDFamily.com

I am realizing what getting this divorce really means for me, after talking to a couple friends and my lawyer who has extensive history in divorce law and people with PD (mostly being on the side of the none's) I have come to realize some things.

The divorce only makes legal what was there for a long time... .a very broken "relationship" and is the final nail in the coffin of false dreams.

Having a child together it doesn't stop the craziness. It might legally determine we are not a couple, but the craziness will continue despite a parenting plan or court orders etc. Those things don't stop crazy. As my therapist and lawyer both said, it will be up to me to learn how to live with what i have been dealing with the past year because legal divorce is not going to change anything in that regard. It may make it worse. So for me divorce doesn't let me go from the crazy, it just adds a different dimension to it. That was a tough realization.

It may not let you "go from the crazy", but it does let you have more distance from it than before.  You can choose to engage in parallel parenting.  You can limit contact to emails only.  You can set boundaries that protect you and you child.

It seems to be a bunch of trial and error in setting these boundaries, but you WILL get into a groove, so to speak.  It helps my DH and I to think of it as a limited time... .the kids will eventually be grown and gone, and THEN we will not have to deal with the crazy at all.  

sanemom... .yes you are right it does give distance. The hard and frustrating part is having to really be on top of the boundaries all the time. Maybe that will eventually not be the case but right now it is. Right now she has no boundaries what so ever and I have to be super careful not to engage in that especially since they are boundaries I don't necessarily need with others so I don't even sometimes realize that this is a different situation and there will be all kinds of crap to deal with if I don't put up boundaries or enforce them. Which gets hard with the swinging of one day I am good and one day I am bad.

It's all about practice!

I used to physically separate myself as much as possible. No telephone calls, no face-to-face conversations.

I told BPD/Nxh that I would communicate by email only, and only if it referred to the children. and a family member of mine used to read it for me first to help me cut the drama and remove myself from the abuse. They would forward the email to me if appropriate or let me know the content without the abuse. This was the greatest help.

When BPD/Nxh moved on to a new GF, it cut down my involvement with his crazy making. It's limited to the lawyers and the courts, and new GF deals with the drama's he creates.

It's been 5 years from separation and 4 from divorce and I never knew it would be this quiet. I thought he would be firmly on my back, but time really did make it better for me.

Hang in there! Just take it a day at a time.