BPDFamily.com

I am including an original post and reply for context to my current situation.


So after months of trying to get my wife help for her personality disorder, her discard, and subsequent multiple affairs, she wants a divorce and I want off the crazy train. We are living together still. We are trying to pay down some debt before the divorce. We have a four-year old. She now has a boyfriend,will leave at night and come home before I have to goto work, and spending increasingly more time with him. She isn't very nice to me personally. She acts like she tolerates my presence but wants to be somewhere else. We try to do things together for our son but it usually turns sour. She basically acts like a pissed off teenager that is forced to be at the mall with her parents. Scowl and all. Walks three feet behind me with her arms crossed. I was trying to be light and nice to her for my son but its getting more difficult. She isn't nice to me. It's not enjoyable to be around her. The longer she is in the adoration phase with her new boyfriend, the more I am devalued, painted black further, and reminded over and over how miserable her life is with me. I really just don't want to be around her any longer. I don't really want any contact with her but we HAVE to pay down this debt. I don't want to get a divorce just to declare bankruptcy with a four-year old.

How can I be nice in this onslaught? How can approach getting right with her and keeping my self-respect?


Reply:


For me, the debt is holding us together. I do love her. I wanted her effort to make it work but to no avail. When required to put in effort, she will not put it in. She will give up and find something else. I have spent so much trying to make her happy, during times when I was the sole provider for the household, and paying for medical bills for her psych help. I really have no confidence that she would actually pay her share if we split. She has said on multiple occasions that we should just rack up all the debt and declare bankruptcy. And shes a credit underwriter for a major bank. And how she thinks that would be a stable move for our son really is beyond me. Statements like these really make me question her ability to remain stable after we split.



We are renting. She currently makes more money than I do. She does help pay the bills. We couldn't make it without her. With the debt load, I couldn't really raise him on my own without being in the hole every month. Even though we are in the hole every month with her spending habits. She has at least agreed to pay off the mutual credit debt that's officially in my name. I am trying to find a better job to cover the portion of the bills she is taking care of. The entire family is interested in keeping my son's standard of living. I am almost willing to live in some horrible neighborhood to get out but I know, in reality, it wouldn't be good for him. But as my therapist says it's not good for him to be living in this crazy situation either.  




Since she makes more, she pays more as a percentage. Can she really be ordered to keep the household? What are these orders called? How can this be done?

We are barely treading water especially with her acting out over the last eight months. Paying for a lawyer, at the moment, is out of the question. If I paid the credit card debt off then it would all go back in to pay for a lawyer. Rough. She will play a guilt card with me. "So you're going to toss me out on the street, make me pay "alimony" so you can keep the house, and I'm going to be living in a dump somewhere, and you're going to take my kid away from me... ." She's a professional manipulator. She's been one for a long time. Problem is that I'm just not having it anymore. She does what she wants. She is accountable to no one.



I didn't before. I was invested in getting her the help she desperately needs. But that isn't going to happen unless I try to make it part of the custody agreement. I do now. I've already suffered one minor heart attack. The constant suffering she dispels on me with no accountability just can't be managed. The whole household suffers. She has checked out. I keep the house clean, dishes, laundry, care for the dogs, bathe the boy, take care of the yard, trash. She might put clothes in the washer and put them in the dryer for herself but that's it. She is a compulsive liar. When it's easier to tell a lie, she will. She just will and she's narcissistic enough to enjoy it in some regard. I've decided that we just have to break the household up. It's already broken.



Soo... .he has a wife and four children. One my wife's age. I have been told they are divorced. They live in the same house. I've learned from a rabbi, that this can be typical in Jewish families.They are wealthy so the size of the house allows them to basically live separately. My wife has even stayed over some nights and leaves early in the morning. But the idea of her moving in with him seems to be not be possible. At this point, I don't really care where she goes but that's not really good for our son without a court order in place. Instead, I'm left to suffer and take care of our son while she goes out and parties with him. I really want to kick her out. I can't legally do that in my state but she doesn't really know that. Plus, she is actively seeking to find a replacement. She has a couple in line. But this man is rich so she is in full adoration mode and he is falling for it. Despite her protestations that "it was over before it started", she is acting like she's in love with him.




Any talk of accountability is totally denied. No reason can be applied to her in order for her to see the effect she's having.




I tried looking this up and I couldn't find it. At a lower point, I was almost willing to go 50/50 with her on custody. But I've changed my mind on this front. I journal everything and I just don't think him being with her 50% would be a stable thing for him.  

Except for the BF/affair, your story was my story.  My son was 2 when my Ex started pulling away.  That was about the time she had driven away my relatives and most of our friends.  I concluded I had become the closest target with the others chased away.  When I started seeing her looking at me sideways as though she could claim I had become a child molester (she was paranoid about everyone being "probably" abusers) then I knew my marriage had gone from dysfunctional to imploding.

Although some behaviors indicated my spouse was having some sort of emotional affair, even if only one-sided, I didn't learn of BFs until years later.  That may be a difference between our spouses, yours has left (in short visits) to choose another, mine viewed our preschooler as almost an extension of herself.

Why is it so crucial that you pay down debt?  Is she working so that she is actually helping you pay down the debt?  If not, then what is the benefit to paying down debt first?  Shouldn't your child have at least some priority over the finances?  Sadly, there is no "perfect time" to divorce.  Waiting risks becoming a moving target, moving away, not closer.


This is where you need to realize you can't fix her problems.  If you divorce sooner and you both have to split debts, then so be it.  If she wants to rack up debt and declare bankruptcy, then that's her choice, she can do it after the divorce is final.

Don't be the 'hero' and volunteer to assume more debt than necessary.  And of the debt that she assumes, make sure it is debt that you're not a co-signer on.  Even if a court says she gets debt, lenders often ignore the order releasing you and come after you anyway.  So make sure the debt the court assigns to her can't bounce back to you!


Frankly, that's her problem.  She's an adult.  Being an adult has consequences.  You have to face your consequences, so must she face her consequences.  I'm not being cold and heartless, I'm being brutally honest.  If your keep cushioning her life she'll never improve.


Good.  That's not mean or vindictive, it's practical.


Is your therapist helping you counter her guilting and manipulation?


Most family courts treat people the way they are not as they or you want them to be.  They know therapy is no guarantee of success.  Sometimes they will order Anger Management (which may not apply here) but even that is a few classes and then it's done, probably no requirement to actually pass the course.


You can't reason with someone who's not listening or is out-shouting you.  Determine which Boundaries to set and Move Forward, Move On with your life.  It took me a long time but eventually I learned that Boundaries aren't for the other person, they're for me and you.  Ponder that.  Look up our lessons on setting practical firm boundaries.  Boundaries are about us, not the other person.

Do you need a Custody Evaluator?  It sounds like she is more concerned with her adult life (work and pleasure) than with parenting.  That doesn't mean she will easily let go of course, she will probably fiercely defend her Public Face as a mother.

As for 50/50 parenting, that didn't work for me, my Ex was just too entitled.  I was the Residential Parent for School Purposes but that didn't reduce her controller entitlement.  Back in court, I was even granted full custody but it refused to change our equal parenting time and she was still just as entitled.  So I had to go back to court yet again and got majority time during the school year.  Finally, co-parenting was at least somewhat manageable.  You may not have that hard of a struggle, but you would do better with at least a slight majority... .and don't forget about being the Residential Parent for School Purposes.  It may not swing the tide, but it should help.  (Why?  If she was RP and decided to move away then you'd probably have to go running after her.)

Hi Concerns,

You are probably right that she won't pay down her share of the debt, and may even go through with her plan to declare bankruptcy after you divorce. She may also stiff you on alimony, or at least not pay you consistently.

It's not uncommon for people here to have tenuous financial situations when they divorce.

However, when you play out your current scenario and see it through to the end, with the two of you living together and paying down debt. What is the likely outcome?

You may feel like your finances are stretched thin right now. Even so, if you haven't already, I recommend you talk to a family law attorney and/or accountant to come up with a plan to stop the bleeding. Bankruptcy might be the nuclear option. There could be other arrangements that are less drastic. An accountant might help you put together a plan to pay down the debt in a strategic way so that you can divvy things up in a way where she is solely responsible for whatever debt is pinned to her during equitable distribution in the divorce process.

Also, when you have some time -- take a look at Lesson 5 on the Coparenting board about raising an emotionally resilient kid when one parent has BPD. Your son is learning what love is from his parents and how the two of you interact. More than having two intact married parents, he needs to know that one parent is there to help him make sense of what is going on. Me, I had a lot of good behaviors as a mom, and also a lot to learn about validating feelings in my son. I do think we can get our kids through tough situations if we practice these skills. You want him to grow up knowing what feels right in a loving relationship, and what does not, and there is a lot he can learn if he has you helping him learn to trust himself.

It's hard, and I know it feels like all of it is awful. There will probably be a period of a few years where it's really really tough, and then slowly it starts to get better. You walk through the door to your humble home and no longer feel that sense of dread. It's just you and peace, and your son, and no drama, no anger, no fighting.

|iiii

wow. . .i just had to leave a footprint ... so i can read again later...

  This is just my opinion. F... .the debt. I would not give that a second thought. The court can not order anyone to stay in a house, they do sometimes, but it is not constitutional and would never survive a challenge. They can order one party out of the house. My experience is the the courts role in divorce is to bankrupt both parties until they get sick of fighting. Our ex's never get sick of fighting though. 

  This may sound harsh but your job now is to protect yourself, stay alive and out of jail. A lot of us went to jail for things we didn't do. When you get away you will start feel better and it wont be such a big problem if you have to file bankruptcy. That is the least of your problems right now.  Stress is very damaging to your health. I could be wrong but I believe that reducing stress is much more important in the short term than debt. Your son isn't going to care if his dad is in debt or not but a stressed out dad is not good for a kid.

  Plainly, I have been there too, I came up with all kinds of reasons why I needed to stay. I look back now and don't understand why I did that.

 

To add to what sfbayjed is saying, you have a few precious years to help your son learn some new behaviors. How he deals with his frustration in the home is how he will deal with it at school. The longer he learns these patterns, the harder it will be to turn things around. Dealing with behavioral issues at school is in many ways more heart breaking than dealing with them in the home because peers start to matter a lot more and a lot of often nameless adults begin to shape his experience of himself. Schools don't typically respond well to kids who act out, and my son started to think there was something wrong with him, a problem we are still working on (depression) in his teen years.

I can't say enough about talking to an experienced lawyer, too. Often when we are stressed beyond what any normal person has experienced, our problem solving abilities are under siege and we don't have all the information needed to make fully informed decisions. You may discover a solution that minimizes the pain if you talk to people who are not as emotionally invested. They may see paths that aren't visible to you.

Also, this may be different and not apply to your situation, but I dropped a sociodemographic class when I left my ex and while we did not end up in a dangerous neighborhood, we did have to adjust to a very new normal in a three story apartment complex with sketchy characters and a very different standard of living. Our new home had two beds a futon and a tv until I was able to earn enough to start buying new cheap furniture.

My son was 9 at the time and he adjusted just fine. Having one calm house without conflict had a profound effect on him. He also loved that we folded down the couch for "slumber parties" while we watched movies. It was like living in a fort for him, and we made it fun, or he made it fun and I joined him  :) His response to the new living conditions and divorce in general was not at all what I expected and even now, 5.5 years later, he still looks back on that experience as a challenge he rose and overcome. What he really wanted was an attentive, unstressed parent and less conflict and moving out allowed us to create that. Definitely we had challenges and not all was peachy... .overall, though, the divorce has a positive impact on him.

It may be different for your little guy, just wanted to present a slightly different possibility.