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My BPDh who has moved out now wants to join me and my daughter tomorrow. I am taking her to the zoo for the first time and I am freaking out. Actually, I have been doing better and better. I found this board, have wonderfully supportive friends and family. But every time I bring her to his parents (where he is living now) I get awfully nervous. I understand that he wants to be with his daughter (as long as he is in his suicidal mode we've decided that he should not see her alone) but why oh why did I agree to this "outing"?

He hurt me so horribly, starting with saying how horrible I was a few weeks before our girl was born, then rubbing his affair under my nose, telling me his best friend (a good guy actually) had been saying that I would deserve what I was getting (I asked his friend yesterday if any of that had ever been true, which he adamantly negated), letting me fend with a tiny infant right after the caesarian ON MY FREEKIN OWN. Coming back, leaving, getting crazy jealous about his best friend (who is the baby's godfather) and me meeting so he can spend time with the baby.

And now I agreed to this. I am a SHMAGEGGI. Truly there are no other words.

I still miss him. Up until this past summer I thought we'd had a great relationship. I thought he was simply a bit complicated but all in all very decent, caring. He always said he wanted a family with me. Wanted to care for me. We had the same interests, the same goals. Until I found out they were all my goals, all my interests and he simply hung on to mine.

Letting him go is so, so, so, so hard. We've been together for so long. I've never loved anyone else. And I am doing my very best detaching. And usually I am pretty good at keeping myself positive and happy. And now I am letting myself get hurt. AGAIN. ON PURPOSE. What the hell is wrong with me?

NewMom --

Thank you for posting.  No easy answers, but please be compassionate with yourself.  Your daughter is lucky to have you.   Your post title, "Meeting Up for Daughter's Sake" shows your good intention.   Sometimes I find myself thinking about behaviors I want to model for my children.   In that way, it gives me deep resolve to take action. 

Your own health, psychological and otherwise, is clearly very important for both you and your daughter.  One mantra I use is, "Be the person I want to attract."  Or, in similar vein, "How can I make my kids proud?"

There's a lot here.   You are balancing daughter's interests and your own, and you should give yourself tremendous credit.   Please go easy on yourself.

What would be an ideal outcome of the trip?  How do you envision it going?  How can you establish emotional boundaries to protect yourself?  Is there any way to decide not to take your ex at this point?  Include other people like his parents?

We're here for you.

Thank you for your kind answer LettingGo! 

I think your mantra sounds like sth I should try.  An ideal outcome would be if our conversation were only about the baby and the wonderful day we get to spend with her.  No r/s talk.  That will be so difficult because he tries to get us to talk about our break-up any chance he gets.  Or about how horrible he feels about what he did to me.  That it would be best if he simply killed himself and spared baby and me more pain than he has already caused.  And the next sentence is usually that he couldn't help acting the way he did, because he is ill and I enabled his behavior by not loving him as much as I should have. 

I tried to include his parents but they are both not really well physically and a trip to the zoo would be too strenuous for them. 

My goal for tomorrow will be not to take anything he says seriously.  Not the "romantic" things he tries to say (like, I am his best-friend, his soulmate, the only woman he ever really loved) nor the hurtful things (like, the woman he had an affair with is the only wish he has ever fulfilled for himself, she saved him from dying while I just looked from the sidelines caring for our baby, he will never be as "moral" as I am and therefore will never be able to not cheat).  He will talk, I will listen and after I take baby home I will place all of his words into the ... . I don't know trash?

"How can I make my daughter proud" will be what I will try to think throughout:  No disrespect towards him but also not toward myself.

Thank you again!

I'm finding it is good for me when I explicitly define boundaries for myself.   So, for instance, if my boundary is "no relationship talk" then I can have a number of different strategies to try, for instance:

1. redirecting conversation:  "it's very nice you are here for our daughter.  let's focus on her."

2. drawing boundary:  "i'm not going to talk about us today.  this is about our daughter."

You may find reading about the S.E.T. communication technique in advance.  It's a nice tool to have in your arsenal:  https://bpdfamily.com/content/ending-conflict (https://bpdfamily.com/content/ending-conflict)



Be kind to yourself NewMom.  Your daughter is very very lucky to have you, and one thing that may be helpful for further inquiry later is to notice and label what comes up emotionally for yourself tomorrow.

I have spent a lot of time trying to identify what "triggers" me, in order that I can see the trigger and not pull it.   I also try to label all of my emotions, like fear, anger, grief, love so I can hold and process (rather than my former default of numb or repress).

We're here for you.  Please check in after the trip.

Hi NewMom,

Why did you agree to the outing with him?  Not important right now.  You did, so unless you really feel strongly about changing those plans (which you, as an individual, have every right to do), just let it go.  I know how it goes, though.  You feel the guilt.  You anticipate the reactions.  And that is what keeps you walking on eggshells.  You are so trained to read and anticipate and follow and think their thoughts and feelings (and if you don't you are bad and mean and cruel and uncaring), that you feel guilty for like a bad person for not listening to your own.  But that is a lie.

I hope that you will hear some of the supportive and TRUE things people on this board are saying.  You deserve credit, not criticism, for enduring and making the positive and healthy decision to leave.  It is a long road, and the path is not straight and easy.  There are lots of things they do that make it difficult for you.  I still deal with my BPDexw, though it is much better.  We deal with each other regarding the children, and though she tries to hook me back into personal and emotional things, I do not go there.  I feel the sting when she wants to talk about how happy she is now and what other guys she's "friends" with.  I get texts every now and then where she asks me to pray for her.  Sometimes she makes outlandish requests, and she makes sure she can control certain things and then "invite" me along -for example, her son (my step son) has a child coming along, and you've gotta know that she is doing whatever she can to control the relationship with the mother and the soon-to-be grandchild.

But you know what.  That is their game.  It doesn't have to be ours.  Let them play it.  I refuse to jump back into it.  Let her howl at the moon if she wants to.  Let her gain a whole troop of minions who think she is wonderful.  I feel badly for them.  I'm never going back.

She'll "get" me again at some point, I'm sure.  I'll find myself agreeing to something ridiculous and wondering why I did it, but it has been less and less and less.  You will get there.  Keep going.  These folks do not live in reality, and the hook our compassion and our emotions in order to dominate us into imbibing their reality and forfeiting our own.  Keep taking your reality back, because it is reality.  You will stumble, but keep getting back up.

And seriously... . what's stopping you from saying, "I changed my mind. I don't think it is a good idea?"  I know you are going to list of a ton of things you anticipate him doing, but what if you just think about what you want, what you think, and what you believe is best for the baby?

Thank you all for your responses.

Mathetes76: After talking to my T yesterday, I realized I let him join us for various reasons. 

The first one being that I feel unbelievably guilty that our r/s went so downhill and I even brought a daughter into this mess.  That I didn't see the signs!  And after many sessions I realized that I already "knew" the mechanisms of "not triggering" due to the fact that my father had many BPD traits and my mother spent most of her time avoiding him getting triggered and then "having to react" as we disappointed him yet again.

The second reason was that I wanted to actively observe my feeling while being together with him.  We will never be able to totally be able to avoid each other, simply because we now have a daughter together.  But I wanted to see what being with him "does with me", how I react, what I say when he says things, etc.

What I noticed was that I do really care for him.  But somehow NOT in the way that I would fall in love with him all over again.  I see him as the father of my child, for whom I wish - for his and his child's sake - only the best and especially recovery and perhaps even healing.  But the "in love", infatuation was not there anymore.  In comparison to only months ago, I didn't feel sad when he left to go home to his parents.  Instead I felt happy to have time with my daughter again.  Without having to listen to how his therapy session went and how that made him feel. 

I definitely tried SET and I found it made our afternoon very tolerable.  I don't need to repeat this on a regular basis but now I know I CAN.  And I might of course have these horrible feelings about myself again but I also know that those feelings are my responsiblity and I am working on those with help.  My self-worth has nothing to do with him (or any other man) loving me.  And knowing that his "love" was actually only for him and not for me, makes it easier.  He didn't mean badly but his actions were downright cruel.  That is NOT sth I want to be subjected to.  I do deserve more.  And once I've learned to come to terms with myself and the issues I was subjected to as a child I might actually be able to find someone with whom I can have a grown-up relationship.

Thank you all for thinking of me. I am sure I will have another "bad day" full of crying and self-doubt but at the moment I'm really looking forward to finding myself!

Good for you.  I'm glad it seems like it went pretty well.

Just beware :).  I've done the "self-test" thing, too.  It's sorta like playing with fire, though. 

And I'm sure I don't have to warn you to watch out for that guilt.  BPD's are extremely adept and intuitive at reading emotions and reactions.  They'll smell that guilt on you and use it against you to somehow play you and get the focus all onto them.