BPDFamily.com

Hi all,

I have been posting on BPDFamily for a little over a year and a half. Most of that time, I have been posting on the "bettering" board, although I have had one or two posts over here. At the beginning of my journey on this site, I was in acute crisis and was struggling to place boundaries to keep myself and my S3 safe from my dBPDw's outbursts, which are sometimes physically violent. Over the past 18 months, I have been in individual therapy and made one more failed attempt at marriage counseling with my wife. Individual therapy has been a lifeline. The MC, who specializes in BPD, told my wife point blank that he could not work with us until she worked on herself in counseling and said to contact him again for further help only if this happens.

The boundaries have (mostly) worked. It has been 18 months since my wife's last DV incident. That ended only because I called the police as soon as she started throwing things at me, but before she could physically hit me. The police came and talked her down. No one was arrested because I had made the call on the non-emergency line and had said that it was a mental health incident. The cops told me that if I had waited until she had hit me to call, they would have had to arrest her. That scared her enough that she has not tried to hit me again since. However, the verbal and emotional abuse have only slowed down a bit, but have not stopped. She (mostly) does not scream and swear at me in front of S3 (a boundary) but she still sometimes will make snide remarks or disrespect me in front of him. He turns 4 in June and I can see that he gets upset when she treats me this way. My wife is also drinking nearly every day.

It has become evident to me after having done all I can do from my 50% of the relationship to make things better, that things cannot and will not improve unless she shoulders some of the burden and does some work on herself. We have been together for 13 years, and I do not see that happening. As I have been working on my CPTSD from this marriage in therapy, I have begun to regain control over my life. I have started to see friends again. I have stopped being afraid of her. As the fear, obligation, and guilt (FOG) have lifted, I can now see clearly. What I can see is that my wife is a very sick woman who is in deep denial of her illness. Instead of embracing her diagnosis, she has forgotten that she ever got it. She will not even entertain the idea of going to therapy and is very dismissive of my suggestions that it would help her with her self-admitted "anger issues" and frequent nightmares tied to her childhood abuse.

While I feel sorry for her, and pity how much misery her illness must be causing her, I also see how much damage she has done to me, and how much damage she is doing to our son. As a part of my recovery from this toxic marriage, I have been getting my finances in order. This is because my wife has guilted me into buying her expensive gifts and taking her on vacations that we cannot afford, all of which I did to try to appease her and buy some peace in our home. What it has done is drive me into credit card debt, which made me financially reliant on her to help pay the bills. Whether it was intentional or subconscious, she succeeded in putting me into a position where I literally could not afford to leave her. I have been paying down debt and will be debt-free, with the exception of the mortgage and my student loans, by next January.

Another thing I can clearly see now that I am out of the FOG is that I am a survivor of DV. It has been very hard for me to come to terms with that. Being a man in a world that puts women in the default victim position and men in the default perpetrator has made it hard for me to say it out loud for fear of being ridiculed and mocked if not outright disbelieved. This is not just one incident of DV either. My wife has been hitting me for years. She often attacked me while I was sleeping, and therefore defenseless. She has broken a large, framed picture over my head while I was asleep. The glass shattered all over me and could have easily punctured my temple, killing me. She has hit me in the head with other large objects, has thrown heavy things at me, and has grabbed whatever was near at hand to use to club me with. If I were a woman and she was a man, no one would be telling me to stay and work on the relationship. Everyone would have said to run and not look back. It has finally dawned on me that a divorce is inevitable. I cannot reconcile with someone who has physically abused me for years. Even a heartfelt apology and commitment to do the years of hard work and therapy on herself that a recovery would require wouldn't be enough for me to feel safe with her.

Now, I am in the position of knowing that the marriage is over, but financially unable to leave for at least a year. We currently sleep in separate bedrooms and have for several months. That is fine with me, but it makes her uncomfortable. She can't watch me, corner me into late-night "discussions," or control me when I am sleeping in another room, but she at least has tolerated it. I think that the new me with strong boundaries confuses her and that she is a little freaked out and scared by me no longer fearing her. While I am getting my financial house in order, I am documenting everything. I am documenting the time I have spent with my son. I am recording her when she is dysregulated. I am keeping a journal about her behavior and her daily drinking.

What is bothering me is that this makes me feel duplicitous. I am planning my exit, how to keep the house, and how to maximize custody of our son, and all the while, I am acting like nothing is any different than before I made this momentous decision. In a way, nothing is different. I had been getting my finances in order for more than a year now. I have also been documenting her outbursts for several months. What has changed was that before, it was all "just in case." Now, the doubt has been removed from the equation. It is no longer a question of if but when. It still makes me feel very dishonest and uncomfortable not to tell her that I have had an epiphany that our marriage is doomed. I won't let my instinct to be honest make me do anything so stupid as to announce my plans to her, but I still don't like the "icky" feeling it gives me.

I am still not sure on the exact timing of when this will happen. It might be more than a year. Some of it depends on finances. Some of it depends on how much mental and emotional bandwidth I have (I am a little over two years out from defending a doctoral dissertation). Some of it depends on where our S3 is developmentally and emotionally. He will be 4 and a half at this time next year. I don't know if there is ever an ideal time for a child to go through what he is going to have to go through, but I want to make it hurt as little as possible.

I have read "Splitting" by Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger and am planning accordingly. My therapist has suggested an attorney who used to be a social worker and has worked with many people who have BPD. This lawyer has seen their ugly side, knows the ins and outs of CPS and how it can be weaponized, and knows how to take steps to prevent that.

I am indebted to ForeverDad and his posts about the hell that he went through as a cautionary tale. Because of him, and others like him, who have shared their stories, I am not planning on going into this blind or unprepared. I also want to thank Skip, Kells, Notwendy, and the many others on here who have supported me through this journey of healing and strength. I will need you all as I continue down this path.

A part of me feels like a failure. A part of me still wishes with all my heart that my wife would have the scales drop from her eyes, see that she needs help, and start therapy tomorrow. A part of me still longs to keep my family intact. However, I know my first and most important job is protecting my son. While the actions that I have to take over the next year or so will end up hurting him in the short run, I am doing it to prevent him from having a lifetime of dysfunction. I would rather he come from a broken home than live in one. I would rather that he spend half of his time living in a house that is completely safe rather than full-time living in a house that is only half-safe. I also hope that my wife uses this opportunity to take a real self-assessment and get the help that she needs. If not for her own sake, then for our son's sake. Her custody time with him very well may depend on whether or not she goes to therapy (if I go scorched earth on her...and I may have to).

I am not giving up, I am just changing the focus of the mission. I am still trying to save my family, it just looks like I will have to save them in a different way than I initially planned.


Thank you all. Any advice or words of wisdom that you could share with me would be much appreciated.

HurtAndTired

It is what it is.  At least you know what steps to take so you're prepared as best as you can be. There is nothing wrong with that.  You do what you have to do, for yourself, your child and your parenting future.  Of course, within legal bounds.

Your spouse is an adult, just as you are.  Society and the law states that she is her own responsibility, not you.  Yes, there may be consequences, but that's on her, not you.

This is part of Grieving a Loss (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=292033.msg12746704#msg12746704), it is understandable that it took a while for you to arrive at Acceptance of What Is.

Be forewarned that until you do take legal action - and even afterward - you will encounter assorted hurdles and trials.

You may feel pressured to reveal or delete your documentation and recordings.  Be sure you have multiple copies in safe places where your spouse can't access them either physically or electronically.  You also need to keep the long-term perspective in mind.

And beware of our natural inclination as Nice Guys and Nice Gals to be overly fair or share TMI (too much information).  Follow the guidance and advice of your counselor and lawyer.  Ask them first before revealing new information to the other.

ForeverDad,

Thank you for the advice. I am already making great progress on leaving my "nice guy" tendencies behind with my dBPDw. After all, being nice to her has never gotten me anything except more abuse. I am not hostile to her either. I practice being positive/neutral with her and keeping communication as surface level and BIFF as possible. It turns out that we have very little in common to have deep discussions about anyway, and in the past when I would open up to her to share hopes/dreams or deep thoughts/observations those moments of vulnerability were always stored away somewhere in the back of her mind to be later twisted and weaponized to be used against me.

I now see her very much as an annoying roommate that I co-parent with, and do not interact more than is absolutely necessary to maintain those two roles (roommate and co-parent). I have plenty of other people in my life who actually appreciate me being a nice guy and reciprocate by being nice back to me. I save my niceness for them.

I am also keeping a copy of my documentation with my lawyer, and will be giving another copy of all documentation to my parents. I am trying to follow the rule of ABR (always be recording) both for my own protection and so that I can gather more ammunition to use should it ever be to my advantage to do so. I am trying to prepare as much as possible for her to go scorched earth on me (false accusations of abuse, smear campaigns, contacting my employer, trying to triangulate friends and family, etc.). The only thing that I can predict about her behavior is that it will be both extreme and totally unpredictable in a predictable way.

The only thing that is still nagging at me is my conscience. I know that I am a victim of abuse. I know that what she has done to me is in no way shape or form acceptable. In fact, had the police witness some of what she has done to me she would have had a lengthy stay in jail. However, she is still my precious son's mom and I can picture his anguish at being separated from her. Does this get easier? Is there anything I can and should be reminding myself of to make me feel like less of a cold, calculating monster for planning my exit so far ahead of time?

If money were no object, I would have left yesterday. However, I don't want to lose my house as it is the only home my son has ever known. Being able to buy out her half of the equity in the home is important to me so that I can help preserve some sense of normalcy for him. Also, even if I were to be ok with moving, the housing  market in my area is awful right now. It is the worst time in recent memory to be house shopping and I want to avoid that if at all possible. If someone has to deal with pain and bother of finding a new house, let it be her. I found this one and have made 2/3 of all the mortgage payments on it over the last five years. She doesn't deserve it or to drive me out of it.

Because of my desire to stay put, I necessarily have to wait for a minimum of a year before my finances are robust enough to do this divorce the way I want/need to. It is just that the delay between making the decision that it is necessary and being able to act on that decision is causing me cognitive dissonance. I feel like I am playacting and deceiving her each day that I continue to be civil and act as if nothing has changed, when in reality I have made a momentous decision.

HurtAndTired

I don't have any experience with divorce but I have experienced the discomfort of hiding personal information and my feelings from my BPD mother. We want to be transparent in close relationships but if these relationships are abusive, we have to take protective stances.

I do think it's a good idea to consult an attorney so you are aware of the laws and process in the state- so that you don't inadvertantly compromise yourself. Consulting an attorney is not the same as initiating a divorce, it's informing yourself.

From what I have read about abusive relationships, the advice is to not disclose plans to leave as it is potentially dangerous.

Thank you Notwendy,

I have no plans to disclose anything to her. I have, in fact, gotten quite good at hiding things from her over the years through necessity. Sharing anything that is not 100% necessary for her to know has only opened up the doors for her to dysregulate on me. I have learned to be very tight lipped for my own protection. I agree that it is uncomfortable to hide things from those close to us, but that is something that I have learned to live with over the past few years. However, those have been relatively small things. Conversations with co-workers, visits to see friends, time with my parents are all things that she does not need to know about and would only cause interrogations if I shared it with her.

It is the magnitude of what I am hiding now that is causing the discomfort. Not enough discomfort, mind you, that I would be foolish enough to share anything with her. It is just enough to be causing my conscience to bother me. I am hoping that I will learn to be ok with it and that it is just because the decision is so fresh that it is bothering me. I think that I need reassurance that this does make me a bad person so that I don't start questioning my own "goodness." Does that make sense?

HurtAndTired

*does NOT make me a bad person

Hi Hurt and Tired,

It's understandable that you feel conflicted, given that you're living in a sort of purgatory, a life full of contradictions.  You've been victimized, and yet you're now in control.  You're temporarily trapped, and yet you have set your hopes on freedom.  You're a nice guy, and yet you have to act tough to protect your child and yourself.  You put yourself first, and yet you have to protect your child above all else.  You're honest, and yet you have to keep your plans a secret, or else your plan won't work.  It's no wonder that it can be confusing.  And let's face it, having to deal with this day in, day out, with all the uncertainty pulling at you in multiple directions, is wearing indeed.  Since you're a nice guy, you probably don't feed on conflict the way some people do, especially people with BPD.  Thus the conflict within you might be a manifestation of the conflict you're living in, as well as the pressure of acting in a way that is contradictory to your genuine self.  I bet you feel like you're living in a war zone, inside and out.

I'd say, try to stay strong, and try not to beat yourself up too much.  You've been cruelly beaten down enough already.  I wouldn't worry about any stigma associated with being a man abused by his wife--abuse is abuse.  You tried your hardest to make it work, for the sake of the family.  But if she doesn't cooperate, that's on her, not on you.  I know it's painful to be in purgatory, but I think you're thinking clearly now.  Knowledge is power.  You're moving in a direction you want to go.  Taking a first step, and then another, and then another, can help you build momentum.  You're doing what's best for you and your kid.  In fact, what's best for you IS what's best for your kid in my opinion, because if your kid were old enough, he'd say that all he wants is to be with a happy parent, to feel safe and loved.  I know this is really tough.  Sometimes life comes with bad patches that last for a year or more.  You've got this.

Please do not fret over something that hasn't happened.  There are a lot of variables that can impact how a child might react.  I will share my experience since, for all you know, it's possible your child may be relieved to spend more time with the calm parent.

When the police arrived after I called emergency services, I was holding my quietly sobbing preschooler in my arms.  He refused to go to his mother.  A week later when she was gone, we were making cookies and he didn't want to talk about her and redirected me to mixing the batter.

For the next few years at exchanges he would literally run to me and jump in my arms.  But returning him was usually stressing, he would plead to stay with me and would be crying at the exchange.  (Of course, she would blame me, "What did you do to him?"  She never admitted it was him not wanting to return to her.)  Eventually he became accustomed to the exchanges.


We understand your thinking.  A thought to share is that once you separate, Home for your child will be where you are.  Home is not a house, apartment or even a trailer.  Does that perspective make sense?  The top priority is to provide a safe place for yourself and your child.  While there are some practical factors that impact your decisions, don't feel bad if you need to put yourself and your child as a higher priority over precisely where you live. |iiii

I think a feeling of failure is common. Because the pwBPD is perceiving the situation from victim perspective- they do blame us and because of that, we feel it's our fault and so we need to fix it. But we can not fix their feelings or perception.

Everyone here is making difficult choices in challenging situations. They are not without their pros and cons. Mine have not been the same as a divorce but it is still a decision to maintain boundaries with a significant relationship that I wish could be different but know it isn't.

It's a like the Bridge story. Nobody chooses to let go of the rope because they are a bad person, or uncaring. I don't believe anyone here is a bad person. I think we all are humans doing the best we can with what we know to do.

Thanks ForeverDad and Notwendy,

ForeverDad, your advice about my son's home being wherever I am at really hit home. Your story about your preschooler was also strangely timely. Last night my wife dysregulated and stormed into the guestroom at around midnight. She flipped on the lights and started screaming at me accusing me of watching porn on my computer (there is no computer in the guestroom and I had fallen asleep watching a sci-fi show that was still playing on the tv). She then proceeded to try to grab my phone off the charger and unlock it with my face and hand to "prove" that I am having affairs. I had to take my phone back away from her and physically back her out of the room so that I could lock the door to the guest room. I checked and forcibly grabbing a phone from someone in my state is considered assault.

Long story short, I had to go in to my son's room to comfort him after my wife stormed back off to the master bedroom, and locked the door. I tucked him back in and got him off to sleep again. This morning he asked me about the yelling and I had to tell him how sorry I was that he got woken up in the middle of the night. I said that sometimes grown-ups have mad feelings too, but that it doesn't make it ok to yell. I promised him that I was going to do everything I could to keep him from being scared again. He already knows that Mommy gets mad and yells sometimes and definitely sees me as the stable parent. It breaks my heart that he has to listen to and witness the dysregulation, but it does strengthen my resolve to protect in the long run by fighting for the best custody settlement possible.

Notwendy, your reference to the Bridge story was also very powerful. It is a story that I shared with my therapist and she thinks that it is a wonderful analogy of how we can get "stuck" trying to save someone who is not doing anything to save themselves. I have been holding that rope for years and it is past the point that I let it go, especially because the rope is being held not just by me anymore, but by an innocent child. He might not be pulling at it as hard as I am at the moment, but I am sure that he will be expected to shoulder a heavier part of that burden as he gets older. Your stories about your mother and your dad have shown me that. I can only protect him so much as it is, I need to demonstrate what having healthy boundaries looks like instead of teaching him to walk on eggshells.

Thanks again,

HurtAndTired

Our member yeeter posted such an excellent analogy that I copied it to The Bridge's topic.  In case you hadn't seen it, here's the link.

The Backyard Black Hole (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=65164.msg13138572#msg13138572)

Your son will have a relationship with the both of you, and your being an emotionally stable role model, role modeling boundaries, will make a difference. As he matures, he will also decide on his own boundaries. It's his own boundaries that will also serve him well in all his relationships, including the one with his mother.

I think that disclosure and honesty can get mixed up. One is not the other, and there is no linear correlation between the two (it's not like honesty increases as disclosure increases).

I never fully disclose everything that happened to me at work to my H -- but that's because it's physically impossible. I'm not being dishonest, though.

Some liars disclose a lot of info... but not the crucial part. More disclosure doesn't equal more honesty.

Are there things you can say if necessary, that are honest?

"I feel stuck... I feel like our marriage isn't working right now"

"I feel like our family needs more help and therapy"

Agreed that full disclosure of your plans won't help you, her, or S3. I would certainly not advocate being actively dishonest/lying, if it's at all possible to avoid.

Has she asked you anything specific or direct -- along the lines of "are you planning to divorce me"?

That may take some different brainstorming, if you want to do that here.

Also, please remind me -- have you contacted a local DV hotline recently, now that you are thinking of divorce?

Kells,

As always, your advice is golden. I can see how not being honest and not fully disclosing everything are two very different critters. I absolutely see myself as an honest person and am ok with holding things back. After my wife's latest split and being particularly nasty to me, I have started to realize that not fully disclosing things is a matter of survival. I am preparing, after all, to go through a protracted and potentially very nasty legal battle with her. I have to force myself to see her as an adversary and treat her accordingly. This does not mean that I need to stoop to her level and be nasty, though. I will continue to be polite and decent. Not only because it is the right thing to do and aligns with my personal values but because I don't want to inadvertently give her any ammunition to use against me in the future. I am going to do my very best to be a model father, teacher, and to the extent that she makes it possible husband/roommate. I am operating under the assumption that anything I say is being recorded and that all text messages and emails are being stored as evidence.

Your suggestions of things to say are all appropriate and could be useful if and when it becomes necessary to have those discussions. However, right now I do not want to "tip my hand" to her at all, as it may spur her to strike first. I want to make sure that all of my financial ducks are in a row before I say anything to possibly push her into "offense mode."

When I have things financially ready to withstand legal action, I do plan on having some sort of conversation around these issues and giving her a chance to seek help. Something along the lines of what you suggested. My thoughts were saying something along the lines of "we are both clearly not happy. I know that the constant fighting has to be wearing you out as much as it has me. Our MC told us that he could not work with us until you went into therapy and did some work on yourself. I have been in therapy for a few years now and it has really helped me. Can I help you try to find someone who could help you work through all the awful stuff that happened to you when you were a kid? If our marriage is going to succeed, I feel like we both need to be putting in the work to make counseling possible."

I spoke with my therapist about this last week and mentioned how I was feeling guilty about planning to hit my wife out of left field with a divorce. My therapist wisely pointed out to me that there is no way that my wife could have not seen it coming though. I have made my wife aware of how deeply she has hurt me and in all the ways that she has done so. I have also told her, point blank, that the reason I am sleeping in the guest room is because I do not feel either emotionally or physically safe sleeping next to her, given the multiple times that she has physically attacked me in my sleep. If she is surprised, it will be because she is choosing to be in denial of the obvious facts of our marriage.

As I get closer to "D day" I will probably take you up on your offer of how to workshop the discussion. I know that you and all of the other wonderful people on here will be able to give me insights and angles on the discussion that I would be unable to see on my own.

Thanks again,

HurtAndTired

Also, I have not contacted a DV hotline yet. I am waiting until after my consultation with my attorney next week before I do anything else.

Hurt and Tired, Hello. We exchanged posts around last spring/summer. I recall we were in a similar space, I wasn't dealing with DV but everything else tracked. I was trying to get to a place of filing. I did it. The verbal and emotional abuse got to much and it was impacting my kids.

If I am honest reading what you say I feel "Oh god here is another lamb to the slaughter". I hope you take this as I am trying to help. I only know how to be real. But you are NOT prepared for what you are about to unleash. I don't think your therapists gets it either.

Statements like "She must be expecting it". Whether she is or not, once you reject her, and tell her it is over all bets are off, you trigger a BPDs abandonment you are going to feel the wrath, in my experience it was 10-20 X what I had seen before. At the moment she firmly has you in "I hate you don't leave me". She won't believe you will ever leave. Call it entitlement I am not sure. But when you leave her, the second you do, or she suspects it the worst split of your life will come your way.

I am talking DV accusations, emotional abuse accusations, financial abuse accusations, you abused your kids etc etc.

I did what I was told by my attorney when I filed last June as I didn't want to abandon the kids, so stayed put.  So she filed a TPO with all the above to remove me from the house, said I was going to kill her and the kids etc etc. A house I had paid everything towards she had paid nothing. So no you won't get to keep the house, unless agreed later..

 I was removed from the house and it's been 7 months and I never got back in. She has control of all marital possessions, refuses to give court agreed possessions is generally non compliant, non corporative, and lies constantly so I spent half my time providing evidence she is lying.  I've spent 20k just defending her BS allegations. Which her s bag lawyer refuses to acknowledge and gas lights too even when its a clear lie. Don't expect the opposition attorney to be reasonable. SO don't you be too reasonable. I tried that and failed.

I sent her 14k as she said she wanted to use it for an attorney to mediate, and she used it to have county sheriffs remove me from the house in front of my crying children, it was very traumatic.

So I tell you this to prepare you, and hope it isn't that bad. But if she's done the things you say, it is worse than my wife did during the marriage, so expect the 10X escalation to be horrific. I firmly recommend:

-Record everything, every minute of every day, every single minute, EVERY SINGLE MINUTE. Never let your guard down. I had a 10 minute gap without recording when I got out the shower and she knew it so used it. SO I had no evidence she was lying. Courts will always believe a women stating her husband hurts her. They won't even give you, your say until Court 2 weeks later. You will be removed. The first you will know is the county sheriffs police are at your day giving you 10 minutes. ( I say this as I believe you are in the US)
-Prepare somewhere to go if she files a TPO. Do you have friends/family a room you can stay in. Being removed at 9pm at night while returning from walking the dog and having nowhere to go would be dreadful. Luckily I did have a place but I hadn't planned it.
-Get all documents out of the house or copies right away
-Report her to the police for DV and get a case file. That is part of your defense. paperwork often asks if the police have ever been called and if there is a file number
-Make sure you have emergency cash, and transfer 50% of the savings somewhere into your own account right before you file.
-Be prepared you may not see your kid for a few weeks if you get forced out. Lawyers will help her make it happen even if it wasn't her idea to get an advantage.
-Collect all evidence of what a great dad you are, document everything, write a journal. Make a google drive of every photo with your kid. Take photos of everything you do together, make sure they are selfies.

I wish you all the best. It has been the hardest 7 months of my life, but I don't know how to explain to you how safe it feels waking up in your own bedroom without her there.

So true.  It happened to CravingPeace, it happened to me and so many others here who had no choice but to eventually end the relationship.  Just remember that if and when the adult relationship does end, your parenting never ends.

Each of us experienced slightly different events when our marriages imploded, but the patterns were so very similar.  Be aware that the greatest risk of allegations of DV or child abuse, however unfounded, are typically sudden and possibly unpredictable.  Often it is when the other realizes "the end is at hand" that the sabotage, obstruction and allegations increase tenfold.  That is why you need to be very careful how and when you inform the other.  (The old wartime saying, Loose Lips Sink Ships, is so true.)

My ex immediately began to try to cast me as worse than her.  I didn't lose the house since our separation coincided with her facing a charge of Threat of DV and for a few months I was granted possession of the home in a temporary protection order.  But at the end of the divorce I was required to give her legal half the equity in our home.

Unlike CP, I didn't give her any funds for an attorney, her attorney got paid from the money she received in the final decree from the home equity and her split of my retirement account.

I didn't face DV allegations, probably because she had to face her own DV court case.  But the endless child abuse and child endangerment allegations continued throughout the two year divorce and even for a couple years afterward.  Sure, it helped that at the first court appearance the CPS rep stood up and stated they had "no concerns" about me but CPS still had to investigate each one of them, after all, maybe on the 51st allegation there might be something actionable.

My ex had abuse in her childhood from her stepfather and her mother sided with him.  That was the biggest factor in my ex's triggers, she suspected child abuse of our child from every direction and her world of trust had shrunk so much that at the end even I wasn't trusted.  So in her perceptions any allegation against me however unjustified was fair game.

CravingPeace and ForeverDad,

Thank you both for your warnings. I have spent months reading posts on this board about experiences like yours, and doing extensive research on what to expect from a BPD divorce. I do not have any rose colored glasses on when it comes to how my wife will be once she finds out. That is why I am not going to disclose anything at all about what I am going to do until it is done. When my wife is dysregulated, she is a monster. She has had her hands wrapped around my neck with murder in her eyes, which turn black as sharks' eyes when she rages. In that moment, she is not trying to hurt me, she is trying to kill me. I have no illusions that this monster is what I will be facing in court.

To that end, I am planning on filing a TPO against her BEFORE I file for divorce. She is on the record for DV against me with the local PD. I have a lot of evidence against her. I plan on doing a preemptive strike on her in civil court to extend the TPO to our son. I plan to be the one sitting in our house with him while she is kept away by a protective order. Only after the TPO has been filed will I file for divorce (I am running this plan past my attorney first to make sure that I don't have any blind spots).

The point is, I know that I am the abused party here and have justification for seeking a TPO. I also know that due to my dBPDw's childhood abuse at the hands of her stepfather, she is likely to accuse me of physical or sexual abuse of our son. I cannot and will not let her strike first. I will be requesting limited and supervised visitation with our son via a GAL appointed psychological evaluation showing that she poses no threat. She is an alcoholic with severe BPD and a history of DV. I plan on letting this be known. I know that with TPOs you are "guilty until proven innocent" and she will have a tough time showing that she is sane, safe, and sober when she is none of those three things.

I also know that if I don't go scorched earth on her first, she will undoubtedly do it to me. I want to beat her to the punch. The difference is that while her accusations would be false and done just to hurt me, mine are founded in fact and are long overdue. I am a nice guy, but this is no time to be nice. It is time to be fierce and fight with all I have for my son and myself.

That being said. I am very careful, and will continue to be even after the divorce is done, to not say anything bad about Mommy to our son. She is and always will be his mother. I will never hurt him by saying disparaging things about the person that is half of him in his presence. As he gets older and has questions, I will talk to him about his mom's condition in age appropriate terms as approved by a therapist. I also plan on having him in therapy and just being there to listen to him and love him if he has had to experience her dysregulation. Even then,  I will remind him that his mother does and always will love him with all her heart. Just because I have to be a tiger in court doesn't mean that I have to be one at home.

I am prepared for this to be the two or more of the $^&#iest years of my life, but I am glad to hear that there is peace waiting on the other side. Thank you for letting me know that it will be worth all the pain once it is over.

HurtAndTired

* Correction. In my state they are called Temporary Restraining Orders or TROs. I have been defaulting to the TPO because it was the lingo I was most used to reading. I also have found that TROs in my state can prevent a person from contacting you, your work, and family/friends via calls, texts, or social media. Doing so would violate the TRO and be considered harassment. In my experience my wife would naturally try to triangulate everyone she can against me, so I can see that getting a TRO would likely lead to multiple violations, all of which would work in my favor when the hearing to change the TRO to a RO happens.

I would advise going to the court house, there should be free legal aid there and ask for the TRO paperwork.

In TPOs there are questions they ask and you need to make sure you are saying the right thing. Such as have the police ever been called, what is the case number. If you familiarize yourself you will know what to add to get it rubber stamped. Obviously when you file it do it with your attorney. Also in my state it took 5 days from when she filed it to it being approved, so prepare if there is a timing snaffo she could get served divorce petition and the TRO might not be in place. So treat carefully.

My ex clearly had her attorneys guidance and said everything she needed to say to get it approved. It was all lies but as you said guilty until proven innocent. That's why they are abused so frequently. My friend has had 7 TPOs filed against him by his BPD ex. Generally timed around holidays to screw him up.

Also TRO might be different, so you need to check. In my state a TPO if breached is criminal, the offending party will be arrested and charged and get a criminal record. A TRO (which we have in place now) is just civil and doesn't do alot pretty much everyone gets a mutual one in divorce and a breach would need a court hearing at the family courts, police would not involve themselves unless a crime is committed. A TPO is far more powerful and hence destructive if abused, and would need a court hearing in 2 weeks for the commissioner to decide whether to cancel it, or keep it in place. It could even need an evidentiary hearing. $5-10k in attorney costs for that process.

@HurtAndTired, I'm wondering if you felt painfully, repeatedly, profoundly unseen and unheard in your marriage. It's an odd question to start with here, but I think it's an important piece to your situation.

I'm also reflecting on how here on the Conflicted/Divorce/Custody board, members (myself included) often focus on one high-priority "battle" -- the legal side -- when in fact there are three going on at the same time: legal stuff, your child's heart, and your own woundedness.

The legal side is not nothing, and not everything. It's important to go in to the legal stuff pragmatically and to be long term goal-focused, and to get as effective a plan as you can. Really awful things can and have happened to members here. That's just reality. There have been "okay to good" outcomes for members, too. Also reality. Important to acknowledge there are worst case scenarios, yet generally speaking, the legal side of divorce/custody will be neither as bad as you fear nor as good as you hope. I bring this up because often unconsciously, there can be a belief that if the legal battle is "won", then that's the same as winning the other two battles... and it's really not.

Staying balanced and centered in this whirlwind is critical. You likely won't get everything you want -- you likely won't lose everything. Like Family Connections says:


I could paraphrase that for legal situations as:

believing I have airtight evidence to get full custody is normal -- tone it down. fearing that I will get steamrolled and denied everything is normal. tone it down, too  *)

When BPD is involved in a family system, staying centered and balanced is so important, and the pwBPD won't be able to do that.. so it falls to us. We can work with each other here to depolarize, center, and strengthen, and start practicing our "legal language". The way we talk about things in legal settings matters. My guess is that legal professionals can pick up on when a plan or proposal is child welfare focused and when it's punitive towards the other parent (intentionally or not). Taking the energy of "scorched earth" and "beat her to the punch" and transferring it to "wanting our son to have the safest possible relationship with both parents" is a mindset shift. What you do may remain the same -- how you think and talk about it is crucial.

The second "battle" going on has to do with the heart and mind of your child and has less to do with legal outcomes.

It's good to hear that your goal is to not badmouth your son's mom and to get him in therapy  |iiii Are you thinking play therapy right now?

Another thought I'm having is that as you start the journey of parenting in a separated family situation, it can be important to remember that our "instinctive" parenting moves, even when well-intentioned, can be inadvertently invalidating (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=81442.0) to the kids. "Normal range" parenting often isn't enough and it's on us to level up our skills, even if we think we're doing OK. 

A huge part of true emotional validation is really, really listening to what the kids say, and returning the focus of the conversation to how they feel, not to our pronouncements about the situation.

A former staff member here had an ex who told her son "Mom loves the dog more than you". Her son came to her and said "Dad said you love the dog more than me".

There are a few of "instinctive" directions that parents might go.

One is JADE-ing -- to try to convince the child that it isn't true: "That's not true at all! I actually love you way more. Remember how I always _____ with you?". The issue there is the erroneous belief that there's a content-level misunderstanding, and that making a pronouncement or reminder about the situation resolves the problem.

Another is the tennis match, with blame and returning the conflict over and over: "Dad shouldn't say those things. He needs to stop being hurtful." This puts the child in the middle of adult conflict -- Dad says mean things, then Mom says Dad is hurtful... no resolution at the level of the child's experience.

Another is the well-intentioned but accidentally invalidating "taking the high road" response: "Dad didn't really mean it! I love you, and you know he loves you, too, right?" I've done that before, too -- I thought I was "being the bigger person" by saying the kids' mom loved them, when really, I was invalidating the kids.

The reason that's invalidating is it does not focus on the child's emotional experience. All three approaches are adult-centric, when what kids in BPD families are desperate for is genuine validation of their emotions, whatever the emotions may be.

The way the member handled "Dad said you love the dog more than me" was: "Wow... how did you feel when you heard that?" It really centered her son's experience as important, and communicated to him that Mom could handle it and wouldn't fall apart or put him in the middle of conflict. Someone in the family was hearing how he felt without telling him what to feel.

All that to say -- it's a new journey parenting in a separated family with BPD in the family system. In addition to educating yourself about the legal side of things, educating yourself on resources like "Ju-jitsu Parenting" (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=320051.0) and the power of validation (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=166930.0) will be so important -- you can have the most airtight parenting plan in the world but that's not the ultimate purpose.

The purpose of the legal "battle" is your child's wellbeing, whatever the custody/parenting plan looks like. Definitely dive in to those resources and feel free to share them with your T and your son's future T as well.

The final "battle" will remain even after the legal stuff dies down and you've built trust with your son. Your emotional wounds will flavor all of this and I can say that because that's exactly what we all go through here. My childhood experiences of pre-verbalized terror played a significant role in how I interacted with the kids, what I hoped the legal outcomes would do for me emotionally (whether I articulated it or not), my rigidity and fear of flexibility around parenting time, and many other aspects of (step)parenting. Circling back to the top, I'm thinking that awareness of the presence, for you, of years of profound invalidation will be important, so that instead of that driving decisionmaking at a subconscious level, you bring that to the surface and acknowledge it's there and active. That's not to prescribe what to do about it -- more to say that if we aren't aware of the way our wounds direct and drive our decisions, then we remain passengers instead of drivers of the process.

I think what I'm pondering for your situation is -- really tease out whether the (real, valid, and natural) desire for yourself to finally be seen and heard and strong and safe and treated fairly, is in play in your legal decisionmaking.

Can that stay in its own lane in therapy, and can you bracket those valid core needs as you work out what's legally effective (which is often really unfair and emotionally both draining and unsatisfying). I'm thinking of the house situation, for example. Yes, it's your house, and it would be unfair for you to move out (with Son) and her to "get" the house. Can you be emotionally ready to trade that for something even more important (full legal decision making and majority parenting time). Not saying that will happen or needs to happen -- more constructing an example of how the three strands in play for most of us here on Conflicted can be intertwined. If we don't know that our needs and wounds are in play, we may make ineffective moves both legally and in terms of our relationships with our kids.

In our situation, H had to swallow the feeling of being the "less important parent" when he let Mom have every Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and Halloween, every year -- for a bigger picture win in terms of net time with the kids. We've made it work but it's another example of how if he'd been trying to meet his emotional need to feel like an equal parent, he could easily have dug his heels in, said "we're doing EOY", and maybe won short-term but lost long term goals.

...

That's a lot... so I'll wrap it up by saying I'd encourage you to find a way to find awareness in yourself of the three strands (legal stuff, relationship with your child, your own woundedness) and where they intertwine and impact each other.

This is a difficult road, and I'm glad you're still posting and sharing here  |iiii

Kells,

Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful reply. You are correct. I have felt profoundly unseen, unheard, and unappreciated in my marriage. There is a song that I love by the group Daniel, Me Estas Matando (with Mon Laferte) called "Hoy No" that really sums up how I feel. The lyrics (and translation) are:

Hoy no
Me siento cansado
Mi siento perdido, vacio, y olvidado
Contigo a mi lado

Hoy no
Ya fue demasiado
Ya no necesito mentiras, traiciones
Que estoy destrozado

Y ya no importa lo que fuiste o fui
Tú me pagaste con lo peor de ti
Pues yo te amaba más allá de mí
Y ahora me tienes con el alma así

Devuélveme la vida
Y el no querer odiarte
Alíviame esta herida
O dame de perdida
Mi corazón por partes

Devuélveme la vida
Pa' ya no molestarte
Lo nuestro fue divino
Fue hermoso, inolvidable
Pero eso era antes
Hoy no

(Not today
I feel tired
I feel lost, empty, and forgotten
With you by my side

Not today
It was too much
I don't need your lies, betrayals
that have destroyed me

And it's not important if it was you or me
You paid me with the worst of you
And I loved you more than myself
Now you have me with my soul like this

Give me back my life
And not the desire to hate you
Relieve me of this wound
Or give me, at least
My heart back in pieces

Give me back my life
So I won't bother you anymore
What we had was divine
It was beautiful
But that was before
Not today)

I have learned the hard way how lonely it feels to be with someone who makes you feel invisible, or worse, like a sad shadow of yourself. I would feel less lonely by myself. I also know that this has wounded me in a profound way that will take me years to recover from. However, I do not think that what I am seeking is to finally be seen and heard in court. I know that she will never see the real me, and I don't see court as the venue to get validation at all.

I am, though, profoundly afraid of this woman. I have feared for my life with her. There are times when I know she wanted to kill me. If there had been a knife or gun within hands reach when she was in the grips of a rage, I might not be typing this now. My main objective is to protect my son and myself from this dangerous woman. She is very sick and refuses to get treatment.

Yes, I do want my house, but I would be willing to give it up as a compromise as long as I had a home for my son and myself. My concern here is that she is not able to use the system to lock me out of my house and away from my son by filing protective or restraining orders against me. I know that she is capable of doing that and fully expect her to if given the chance. She has deep delusions about me and has threatened to spill "my secrets" to the world. These include the delusions that our son was conceived by me raping her, that I am a pedophile, that I have affairs with my high school students, and these are only the delusions that she has told me about. I am sure that there is a long list of others waiting, coiled to strike, in her head.

I have read Splitting by Eddy and Kreger and this tactic was brought up again and again. I feel 100% that she is not only capable of using falsehoods and delusions to try to take everything in my life away, but is likely to. Perhaps I the language that I was using was too combative, but I feel strongly that if I am not the one to file restraining/protective orders against her, she will do it to me and I will end up living with my parents and only seeing my son in supervised visits while the very long court process plays out. Beating her to the punch, or cutting her off at the pass seems to be cavalier phraseology in retrospect, but the sentiment remains true. I want to preempt her from doing this to me. Perhaps I am guilty of catastrophic thinking and things will turn out to not be as bad as I thought they would. I do think that planning for the worst while hoping for the best is the wisest course of action though.

All of this could change, however, depending on what my attorney tells me to do. I am going to trust her and listen to her advice. She has done high conflict and BPD divorces before. She was also a social worker before becoming a lawyer and knows the ins and outs of restraining/protective orders in my state. I cannot overstate that I am afraid of my wife. I sleep in a different room with the door locked (door is now locked because she burst into the room in the middle of the night last weekend, disregarding all boundaries). I am not planning on going back to sleeping in the same room, or having the door unlocked ever again.

I do need to examine how my own wounds might be affecting my interactions with my son though. That is a topic for my therapy going forward. Right now I am just trying to love him and be the stable parent. I had not really thought about it in terms of whether or not I am validating with him. I will start trying to notice whether I am validating enough, or if I need to step up my validation game with him. The next few books I read are going to be about parenting with a BPD parent and raising resilient children.

So much is unknown right now. I am scared. I am tired...exhausted actually, and I just wish this could all be over yesterday. I know that it has to be a process. I know that I am not ready to start it yet. I do not have the resources saved up that I know I will need. I also know that I might not have a choice. Her behavior could force me to start the process much sooner than I have planned. That is why it is so important that I meet with my attorney next week. I hope to walk out of that (rather expensive) hour long meeting with a lot more answers than I have now, and a game plan.

I will continue to update you all as I learn more, or if things happen before my meeting on Tuesday. I just want to be as prepared as possible. I was a Boy Scout a long time ago and still try to live by the motto "be prepared." I do not know what will happen, but I do know that I do not want to be caught unprepared.

HurtAndTired

I totally hear you, and Kells is right there is more to it than legal. Much more.

However if your wife makes you fear for your life, then you need to get out in front. Otherwise you will be like me. I tried to be reasonable tried to mediate, filed "irreconcilable differences". The first I knew this was going to be bad was when her response to my petition quoted all sorts of abuse... A few days later the TPO, 5 country sherriffs covering their guns asking me where my firearm was and giving me 10 minutes to pack my bags in front of my crying children. It was the worse time of my life.

Everything I knew was gone. I was on minimum custody and out of the house, with no possessions not able to call my children to explain. She tried to have the kids added to the TPO but the judge refused and put me on minimum custody. I didn't sleep for 3 nights straight. Constant heart palpitations. I had to exercise 4 times a day just to calm my nervous system or I feared I would keel over dead. That is how bad the panic and fear was.

What you need to know is if you file a TPO/TRO, it will escalate the conflict big time. But if you don't you will be on the back foot. Your wife whether it is valid or not will likely feel like I did above.

It is a hard call to make, but TPO/TROs are there to protect people in danger. You have said she attacks you and you fear for your life? You have no choice the way I see it.

I also slept with the bedroom door locked. Now my ex claims in court paperwork I did this so the children would not disturb me as I was a bad father. She hated I locked the door. It was a boundary she did not like. She has conveniently changed the story ignoring that she used to rage at me, and barge in telling me off, and looping over and over about my issues and I locked the door as I did not feel safe. Trying to sleep not knowing if she would burst in verbally attacking me was too stressful. So I locked it.

The same reason I removed the firearm from the house before I filed to protect. Which she used to say I was an armed threat in the TPO

So yes you must be calm, but you also need to know if you don't protect yourself and do what you need. She will go after you hard. I know every situation is different. I tried to tell myself my wife would never do the things I read on this forum but she did.

My friend also divorced a Borderline. SAME EXACT STORY. You know what she will do already so you are one step ahead of me. You will feel guilty but you must get out ahead, don't sit back and wait for her to attack. I have spent 7 months on the back foot positioned as an abusive alcoholic, druggy abuser. None of which is true. But commissioners tend to listen to a women's victim cry to air on the safe side. No commissioner or judge wants to be the one overseeing a murder if they get it wrong. So they throw out TPOs like candy and ask questions later. In my state at least.

If it was just me this happened to I would say maybe mine was just a bad story. I was at a kids bday party the other day, chatting with 3 dads. All three divorced, all three had been removed from their houses by TPOs. I am not an outlier in my state.

Hi HAT;


Today's meeting was with your attorney, correct? How'd it go?

I met with my attorney today and it was refreshing to be able to get a legal perspective on everything that I am going through, and to be able to make a concrete plan going forward. After asking me questions that kept coming back to the DV aspect of my marriage, she asked what I was doing to protect my son during the DV incidents. This took me back a step because his physical safety had never been a concern of mine. My thinking had always been that my wife has been targeting me physically and that our S3 has never been in physical danger himself. While this is true, she pointed out that a judge would want to know why I was locking myself away from the danger, but not taking S3 with me.

I have perhaps been naive in thinking that because my wife has never been physically abusive (to my knowledge) to my SS26 or S3 that the kids don't need to be shielded from the violence being done to me. I have also not wanted to grab S3 in the middle of the night (when the assaults usually happen) because I don't want to wake him up and/or scare him any more than what he is already hearing through the door. The attorney said that in the future it is incredibly important to grab S3 and go as soon as dBPDw gets dysregulated and things are not safe. If things aren't safe for me, then they aren't safe for S3. If I am leaving S3 in his room to try to "keep him out of it" I am sending the message that I think that his being in Mom's care is totally fine. This is not a message that I want to send to a judge.

She said that I can't be a good parent to my son if I am dead, so I have to be careful and take care of myself and to take the DV very seriously. She said she understands why I need to get my finances in order before moving forward, but that I need to document, document, document. She supports me getting my watch camera rolling and capturing audio and video of my wife's dysregulation. Even if I don't capture any physical violence, the lawyer says that audio of my wife insulting me in front of our son needs to be recorded. She also supports my idea of putting a "nanny cam" in my bedroom to capture it if my wife breaks in or tries to break in to the room in the middle of the night. If an assault is captured, she wants me to press charges and get the assault on the record. If it is drunken ranting and raving, she wants video of me and S3 locked safely in the bedroom while my wife bangs on the door and screams. Basically the attorney acknowledged that I have been living in a nightmare, but that it has been a private nightmare. I need to have evidence that a judge can see so that the nightmare becomes public.

She also printed me out a civil restraining order form. She told me that if my wife gets dangerous and I have video or audio evidence that she is being dangerous, I need to file to show that there is a real threat in my home. She said if it is in doubt, get out, and call the police if I can't. She said that she has faced pwBPD in court and that to never doubt their ability to lie, to blame shift, and to try to make the court think that they are the victim. I am an actual victim, but I have to bring the abuse out into the daylight to get it to end. Trying to hide things from S3 isn't protecting him. He can still hear the abuse even if he can't see it. I need to be getting him away from abuse and be able to demonstrate that I am protecting him, not only physically, but psychologically.

I left the office with the instructions to let my lawyer know if any major event happens, and to take care of myself and S3. When I am ready to move forward, the retainer is going to be $5K, which would end up paying for the last $5K of attorney fees at the end of the case. My lawyer said that she will provide me with the resources to do a lot of the busy work/leg work on my own so that I can reduce the number of billable hours I end up racking up. I strongly got the feeling that she (as a former social worker) wants my son protected above all other priorities and am glad that she gave me actionable advice about what to do to demonstrate that I am a good parent and am doing all in my power to protect S3. She said that she hopes that I will be able to keep to my timeline of 12-15 months, but that if push comes to shove that our safety outweighs any kind of financial concerns, and that I may have to move up the timeline if my wife's behavior continues to deteriorate.

This is in line with my prior comment that your home is where you live, wherever that may be.  The safety of you and your child is the much greater priority.

Personally, I would be surprised if your 12-15 month timeline works out.  All it takes is one major incident and you'll have to switch to Plan B or Plan C.  You do have contingency plans, right?

That's a big discussion.

How are you feeling after hearing all of that?

And can you remind me if you've had a chance to call a DV hotline yet?

It was a difficult conversation to have. Mostly because I have been thinking of myself as diverting my wife's anger away from S3 and thereby protecting him. I still don't know if I am 100% comfortable pulling him out of his room and into "the line of fire" if my wife is raging at me, but I can definitely see how that can look bad from a judge's perspective. I do, of course, realize that S3 is awakened by the yelling anyway, and is scared, but my perspective was that leaving him in his room was less scary than grabbing him and dragging him into the guest room where he would have to see Mom raging as I brought him across the hall. It would also increase the chances that a blow meant for me could fall on him. It is a lot to process and I'm still not sure how to feel about it.

I think that a better solution would be to lock myself in S3's room with him. The issue is that I am in the guest room, and S3 is in his room across the hall. If my wife is outside my door raging at me in the middle of the night, waking me up from a deep sleep, I would have to open the door to her (which is a danger) and then cross the hall to S3's room (another danger.) The rages tend to happen late at night when both S3 and I are asleep. In the cases when my wife has dysregulated during the day, or while S3 was still up, I have taken him and left. The issue is that the drunken dysregulation usually happens when we are both hunkered down in our separate rooms for the night, and I'm not sure how to safely navigate that.

I have not yet called the DV hotline. I have been putting it off. Coming to the point of being able to admit that I am a victim of DV has been a long and uncomfortable journey for me. Unfortunately our society does not make it easy for men to come forward and admit that their wives are beating them. I don't feel shame anymore, but it is still hard for me to talk about. I will make it a priority to call during a time when my wife and S3 are not around so that I can talk freely. Hopefully they can give me some actionable advice about my specific situation.

Please call. I hope that more men in this situation are calling. They won't judge you. First of all- call for yourself and then also- call for the other men like you who are afraid to call for help- because men in your situation deserve consideration. Call for your son, because you are his primary role model for how to be a man and you don't want to normalize seeing you be abused. You'd want him to also know it's OK for men to reach out for help and support  too.

Hi there,

Would it work better if you put a bed in your son’s room and slept there with him when your wife is raging?  Or maybe you fetch your son when you go to bed, so that he sleeps with you in your guest room?  That way you wouldn’t expose him as much when she rages. Just a thought.

My sister suffered domestic violence, and her ex beat her when she went to fetch her young son out of the room where her ex was experiencing a drunken rage. When she went to court to get a protective order, the uNPD husband accused my sister of hitting him first!  His lying and blame shifting is constant. Fortunately the court didn’t believe him, as my sister had evidence:  a doctor’s visit, pictures of bruises, and leaving the home with the kids immediately after the altercation. But even after years of legal work and significant non-compliance with the parenting plan, the uNPD ex still has unsupervised visitation rights, and he won’t agree to a divorce. The legal battle has been very difficult on the kids, because their visitations with dad are stressful and chaotic (lack of food, dirty home, skipping scheduled activities, dad sleeping all day, many visits to the health clinic/emergency room during visitation, kids staying up all night with screens, etc.). He is a no-show for about half of his parenting days, which distresses the kids, too, as they have to wait around for dad until they figure out he’s simply not coming.

You're an adult, you have had years to mature but your child is so young, he doesn't know what is normal and what is not.  He's senses a lot but not nearly with the ability of an adult.

Also, what is considered as "legally actionable" misbehavior for him to witness or experience is at a different level from what is considered actionable for you.  You would need local input to determine precisely how behaviors and actions are viewed in your area.

Hello all,

I am sorry that it has taken me so long to update this thread. I struggled to call the DV hotline. If I am being honest, I procrastinated doing it because I was dreading that as a man I would not be listened to or helped. I am currently on spring break as a teacher and ran out of excuses this week. I called yesterday and spoke to an advocate. I was pleasantly surprised at how well she listened and how reassuring she was. We spoke on the phone for nearly an hour.

This was also not just a DV hotline, but a local resource center. I have a follow-up appointment with her tomorrow. She has agreed to be my advocate going forward. She is going to help me get my son into play therapy. She is also helping me strategize about how to document the abuse going on in my home. She has worked with many people in my position and wants to help me protect my son from being exposed to the chaos that all too often exists in my home. She asked me about my relationship with my SS26. I told her that I helped raise him from the age of 12, that I was there for him more than his bio-dad was, and that was why it cut me so deeply when my wife triangulated him against me when he came into our home and physically threatened me last year. The advocate said that we would work to make sure that my wife was never able to do that with S3, which is one of my greatest fears.

As a trained social worker, this advocate is an incredibly powerful resource who has promised to help me prepare for leaving this abusive marriage...for free! My lawyer is great, but she costs $375 an hour. During the 12 months that I am preparing for my divorce, I can't afford to use the lawyer's services to strategize these things except in an emergency. For day to day concerns, this free advocate can help me navigate this long and difficult pre-divorce period in a way that will be admissible in court. I now can see myself walking into my attorney's office when I am ready to pull the trigger on legal action with a thick dossier of ammunition to use in court. Could I have done this on my own? Yes. Would it have been a lot harder and would I constantly be in doubt about whether I was doing things the right way or not? Absolutely!

I will touch back tomorrow after my meeting with the advocate if there is any pertinent new information, but for now I am just super relieved to know that someone will be helping to guide me through the process of leaving before I am ready to file for divorce. I am already looking at spending $15-$20K in legal fees once I file. I am beyond ecstatic that I don't have to dig any deeper into my pockets for guidance right now, especially when the whole point of this pre-divorce period is to get my finances in order.

Thanks to all who encouraged me to call!

HurtAndTired

This is wonderful news and I am glad you called- for yourself and for your son!

Great that you have local resources to help you, above and beyond the remote support here.

Keep in mind that your Plan A will certainly face some hurdles and turbulence in the months ahead.  It's almost as though our disordered ones, as messed up as they are in many things, can sense small changes in our behavior and decide to sabotage us before we're ready.  All it take is one incident to pop up and sabotage it.  So stay on your toes, prepared to implement Plan B or Plan C, etc if and as needed.

Thanks Notwendy and ForeverDad,

I appreciate both of you encouraging me to make the call. I was afraid to do it, but am sure glad that I did.

FD, I know how unpredictable my wife can be in the best of times, so I am prepared for her to become even more unpredictable as I get closer to "D" day. She is already responding to changes that I have been making.

I quit drinking altogether several months ago. I used to enjoy having a few beers on a Friday to relax after a long week, but I noticed that she was more likely to blow up on me if I have had a few drinks, so I just quit. It hasn't slowed down her drinking in the slightest, but she sure doesn't like me not drinking.

I also have stopped buying her alcohol. If I am headed to the store, I ask if there is any food that we need. If she says buy me a bottle of margaritas (the large bottle, golden style with extra liqueur...beyond just the tequila, which costs around $20) I just tell her that I am budgeting just for food due to increased grocery costs so she needs to make a stop at the liqueur store if she wants that. She doesn't like that either, but I am no longer paying for her habit.

I don't know how long I will be able to ride the "plan A train" but will continue as long as I can. My credit score is already up significantly and I am paying off debt faster than I thought I would be able to. I will shift to plan B, C, or whatever is necessary. If an emergency requires I bail early due to safety concerns, my advocate said she can help set up emergency housing with putting my S3 and I into a subsidized apartment.

No matter whether I ultimately can physically stay in this house or not, it is of utmost importance to me that I am in a strong financial position when I go in front of a judge. I am going to push for
primary physical custody. My wife has a weird work schedule where she works 7 AM to 7 PM M, T, F, Sat, Sun one week and 7 AM to 7 PM W, Th the following week. This rotation repeats over and over. She has had this schedule for over 2 decades. I don't see that changing anytime soon and she hates change.

This schedule makes it impossible for her to drop off and pick up S3 soon to be 4 from school either 2 or 3 days each week. I am planning to ask for her to have custody on her weekends off of work, which is every other weekend. Her schedule makes one week on, one week off impossible logistically. Shuttling a little one back and forth between houses multiple times per week, as I understand it, is highly uncommon for courts to grant given that young kids need a stable routine. As long as I am financially stable and can fend off false abuse claims, I don't see how she could reasonably go for primary (or even 50/50 custody) short of quitting her job and getting a M-F job with regular hours (she has longed to do this since I met her, but has too much fear of job interviews to follow through on changing jobs).

Basically, I want to make everything as much of a slam dunk as I can, and as seamless as possible for my son. Even if I have to shift plans, repairing my finances is a key part of making sure that a judge sees me as the most stable and safe parent between the two of us. If I have to move up my timeline, my parents have told me that they would loan me the remaining money I owe on CCs to get my accounts squared and my credit above the 750s to have the best chances of good interests rates and mortgage approvals.

Thank you for reminding me of the need to be flexible and roll with the punches though. It is something that I will go over with my advocate tomorrow and get her take on things. Maybe after giving her some more specifics about my plans, she can give me advice based on what she has seen in other cases. I will update you all as I get more info.

Thanks again,

HurtAndTired

With keeping in mind that we can only control ourselves - I think you have made some very positive changes (in addition to reaching out for help)

You stopped drinking-
You stopped buying her alcohol ( stopped enabling her to drink)- Great boundary because it doesn't address her drinking- it's your resolve to keep to a budget- so you aren't "blaming" her- you are  responding out of your own values.
You are getting a better handle on your finances.

These are actions you are taking for your own well being and values.

Your wife may vary on her behavior or agreements but your values don't waver. These are boundaries- actions we take that reflect our values.

Hi all,

It's been a while since I have checked in, so I wanted to give you an update on how things are going and get some feedback from everyone. The past few weeks have been relatively quiet. My dBPDw has been low-level passive-aggressive, snarky, and generally unpleasant, but no overt yelling or screaming (until last night that is...more on that in a bit). She is still making occasional accusations of me watching porn and masturbating. Normally, I would just ignore this, but she is starting to make the accusations in front of our S3 (soon to be 4). He doesn't really understand what it is that she is accusing me of, but he can sense that she is not being nice to me, and that gets under my skin. Then last night happened.

I am on week 11 of no drinking and am feeling great, but my wife's drinking has increased and has increasingly gone underground. She is now hiding multiple bottles of liquor in her room at any given time, and the ones that I do know about are being drained and replaced pretty quickly. It seems like now that she knows that I am no longer drinking, she's more self-conscious/embarrassed about her own drinking. While I think that in a way this is good (at least she is being forced to confront that what she is doing is not normal and is shameful...why else hide it), it does have me concerned because it is getting increasingly hard for me to know just how drunk she is. Lately, I don't know for sure that she is very drunk until she starts slurring her words because she is building a pretty high tolerance to alcohol. This means that she can be very disinhibited due to drinking (which makes her much more dangerous), but is not yet slurring her words, and I have no idea because she is getting so good at hiding her drinking. I suspect that is what was happening last night.

Last night started out pretty normally. I got off work, picked up my son from daycare, stopped by the store, and went home. My wife was cooking dinner, I found out later that she had invited SS26 over for dinner. SS26 is late as usual, and we are still not on good terms since she triangulated him against me about a year ago, and he threatened to beat me up in my own home (he's a 26 year old competitive weight lifter on steriods and I'm an average to thin sized 50 year old man). He didn't show up until about an hour and a half before S3's bedtime, so we ate dinner fairly quickly and retired to the living room. My wife invited SS26 to stay for a while and asked if he had to get up early tomorrow. He did, and she was disappointed (she wanted him to stay and drink with her). As he is getting ready to leave, she asks him to help her set up a Snapchat account. He does so, and minutes later, she turns on me, asking why I have a Snapchat profile. I told her that I had set one up many years ago, had never used it, and forgotten that it even existed. I have honestly not even touched it since maybe 2013. That, combined with SS26 declining to stay and get drunk, was enough to send her into a split.

She started accusing me of using Snapchat to hook up with my students' parents and even my students. Demanded that I add her to Snapchat as a friend (I don't even have the app on my phone and wouldn't remember the username or password if my life depended on it) and demanded to see my phone. I remained calm and reminded her that she would not be accessing my phone or any other electronics ever again (an established boundary) and tried to go about the business of getting S3 ready for bed and tucked in.

During the whole process of his bedtime, which is very routine and regimented as he likes to have things be predictable and stable, she was bad-mouthing me in Spanish. I kept ignoring her and focused on our son. When it came her time to give him a kiss, she started telling him "Daddy is not a good father" in Spanish over and over again (I have an audio recording of this). I told her to stop scaring our son and let me finish putting him to bed. While I was doing so, she entered my bedroom, pulled the TV's plug out of the outlet, unhooked my Roku, and hid it in her room. I went to her room to confront her and told her that she needed to give me my property back or I would have to call the police. I also told her that she needed to stop saying awful things about me to our son. She said that it was ok because she was saying it all in Spanish. I reminded her that we have been speaking to our son in Spanish since he was born, and although he is mostly speaking in English at this point, he does understand what we say to him when we speak to him in Spanish.

We were at a standstill. I stupidly had made the empty threat of calling the police over a $65 Roku (although taking it was illegal, it would have been petty to call them over something so minor), and was not going to follow through on calling them. She was holding the Roku hostage to try to make me talk to her. She basically said another version of the same thing she has been saying for years now, i.e., we need to get divorced, I need to move out, she won't go to therapy to work on her issues, she won't stop being mean to me until I agree to move out, and she doesn't care that bad mouthing me in front of our son is damaging to him. If I really wanted the behavior to stop, I just needed to move out, and she would stop bad-mouthing me in front of him. This was all recorded as well, however, there was a new wrinkle at the end.

In this new iteration of her divorce fantasy, I just go away and leave her and our son in peace (just like her first husband did with her and SS26), but she now is saying that she will liquidate her 401K to buy out my equity in the house and pay off the rest of the mortgage. It would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. The tax implications of cashing out your 401K early are awful, and I believe she would lose a third of it to the government in early withdrawal penalties. However, making rational decisions is not her forte. This now has me concerned that she will indeed do something stupid and impulsive with what she sees as her secret weapon. I know that she has north of 200K in there, but not exactly how much.

Should I be worried about her using this money, as self-destructive as it is, to fund an ongoing legal battle against me? If she is serious about paying me off for my share of the equity, should I consider taking it, letting her have the house, and then fighting her for custody of S3 in court? Part of me loves the idea of being able to get out of this situation sooner rather than later. Maybe it was just something that she said in the heat of the moment (and drunk), and she regrets making the offer? Maybe she has come to her senses and realizes that she would be torpedoing her retirement by doing this?

I would love to be able to keep the house and keep our son in his bedroom, but if this house is a hill that she is willing to die on, my credit is good and getting better by the day, I have a stable and good-paying job, and I am working on my doctorate. Her paying me my share of the equity would wipe out any remaining debt that I have and leave me with a neat sum of money as a down payment on a new house. I am confident that I can get approved for a new mortgage, but with her spending habits and income, I am also equally confident that she could not qualify for a mortgage without me as a co-borrower.

Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated.


HurtAndTired

Long story made short... Due to the way she was removed from our house, I had possession.  Two years later we settled on Trial Day, she got half the equity and half my retirement account.  We handled the retirement transfer in a court-ordered QDRO.  (Lawyers know about this.)

QDRO must be done in the correct way if the giver doesn't want unintended tax consequences.  The retirement company opened up a new retirement account for my ex and the agreed amount was transferred there with no tax consequences.

What did she do with it?  I assume she withdrew the money and spent it starting her own business.  Presumably she had tax consequences but it was not my concern and I was not impacted.

General lesson: You can't fix her and you can't live her life.

What you can do: If at all possible, you do have to ensure the other's choices don't boomerang on you.

Hi HurtandTired,

We have been posting here about the same amount of time.
I just got done with Mediation. It worked it took over 15 hours we finished in the middle of the night. So my divorce took about a year. Most painful year of my life, but a great learning experience.

It is costing me 7 figures with alimony for 50% of the marriage length, I no longer have my house, lost over half my assets even some premarital ones that got comingled, am financially hard up. But it was worth it. Even now she threatens me constantly with court hearings when I am doing everything the stipulation and soon decree says! I don't care. I can't control her. I can only control me. Same goes for you.

Just an observation. Your posts follow a similar vein, about her, her bad behavior etc etc. How she wants a divorce, how you do.

The only question is why haven't you? Once you accept it needs to be done life gets easier. Yes there will be the worst splits you will ever see, but you can get through it and come out the other side.

It isn't worth staying in this type of relationship IMO, it's easy to use money, or any other reason not to do it. But ultimately what is more important your and your children's peace or excuses?

I am good with being cash poor, but emotionally at peace. My children already start to comment mom is crazy, or she's lying. All I have done is give them the tools to work it out for themselves. They told her the worst thing and most upsetting thing that ever happened to them was when the Protective order was filed and I was removed. She tried to tell them that wasn't true and they didn't feel that way and it wasn't that bad. My job is to explain to them their feelings are their feelings and nobody can tell them otherwise and to trust themselves. Point is only once you are out can you properly help protect your child. If you are in that situation as your child grows older, it will be hard for them to see who the problem is. It will be hard for you to guide them, and show them the real way as you are part of the toxic situation .

SO rather than worry about all the toxic things she does, bring the focus back to what you can control. What can you do and what will you do?

CP

The first step on a new path is the hardest one.  Subsequent steps become clear and no longer as huge emotional hurdles.

An insightful point... which is why, once we accept the relationship continues worsening, so many here have decided it is better to divorce, that post-marriage life would not be such as bad thing after all.

I call BS on the liquidating the 401K threat. However, it is possible and if she did it, what could you even do about it. My BPD mother made all kinds of threats but rarely followed through when it actually took a process to do them. This would require going through the process of liquidating it, buying that share of the house.

So much easier to destroy property. That did happen. So holding it hostage was a more believable threat.

Sometimes she'd make an outlandish threat to see if there's a reaction to it. We learned that the best response is to not react emotionally back to the threat. If she did it, we couldn't control that any way.

Thank you all for the replies,

Here is an update. Last night, as my wife was tucking S3 into bed, her bedtime story for him was about how she was going to buy him a new racecar bed that would be in a new house for just him and mommy. I also got a text from our old realtor today about her wanting to see a property in town, address of the house included...oops. She is making serious plans in this direction...at least in her delusional thinking. Now for the reality check.

The property she is looking at is brand new and is listed at $320K (our current house is 30 years old, was purchased for $230K, and is valued at $300-$310K, and she couldn't pay the mortgage here on her own). I just did our taxes, and she made a little over $50K last year. Even liquidating her 401K would not allow her to buy my share of the equity in our current house and purchase this new house. Even if she was approved for a mortgage on this new house, she couldn't afford the monthly payments. She has a shopping addiction and is not good with money. I'm not sure what her current credit score is, but it was low enough that I had to co-sign for her used car a little over 4 years ago. I am fairly confident that her credit wouldn't be good enough to get approved for a mortgage.

CP, I am so sorry to hear about the hell that you have gone through, but I am glad that things are looking and feeling brighter for you on the other side. To answer your question, what am I waiting for? I am trying to be responsible and put myself in a position to get primary custody of our son. I want to be able to show the court that I am able to provide a stable home for my son. That means I have to get my financial house in order. My wife can have her fantasies about dream houses she can't afford. I have to have an actual place for my son and me to live. I also have a special needs dog who requires a fenced-in yard. An apartment won't cut it, and I'm not going to put the dog down (his problems are bad enough that he is in effect unadoptable, plus I've had him since he was a pup, eight years ago).

In the last year, I have paid down a good portion ($15K) of the credit card debt that I racked up trying to make my wife happy. I will have another $10K plus paid down by the end of August. I will be at my financial safe spot in another 8 months (near 10% credit utilization) if I stay on this schedule. I've made it 13 years, I can make it another 8 months. I have fully accepted that divorce is the right thing to do. If I had the money right now, I would file papers today. I don't mind being cash poor either, but I do need to have enough to put a roof over our heads and pay an attorney. I am a public school teacher with no savings, at about 45% credit utilization, and no retirement fund to tap into (we are on a pension system).

FD, I agree with you that I have to let her do her own crazy thing as long as it doesn't boomerang on me. I don't want any part of her retirement money in the divorce as long as she keeps her hands off my teacher's pension. I'm pretty sure that if she nuked her retirement money before the divorce, that would be seen negatively by the courts (I think?)

As far as taking the first steps, I feel like I am pretty far down that path already. I have hired an attorney (I paid for her consultation and have agreed to pay her retainer as soon as I am ready to file divorce papers), I have a domestic violence advocate/social worker working with me to help document the abuse going on in my house to help with the custody battle, and I have annouced my plans to family and close friends to let them know I will be leaning on them for support in the coming months. Perhaps sooner, if things get dangerous/out of control. The only thing missing at this point is the financial aspect. I could borrow the money from my parents in an emergency, but I don't feel like I need to do that at this point, when I can dig myself and my son out in 8 more months. I will, of course, reconsider if things start to deteriorate.

Notwendy, I think you are correct about your calling BS on the 401K liquidation. She has elaborate divorce fantasies, and this is just another one of those. The fantasies fall apart when things would have to start getting real. One involved her wanting to fly out to Idaho to stay with her family for two weeks and taking our son while she contemplated her next moves in life. I put my foot down on that one because I suspect it could have led to a case of parental kidnapping, plus I don't trust her with his care for that long. That fantasy fell apart when she realized I wasn't going to buy a plane ticket for her and our son, and that her family wasn't going to either.

This house-shopping fantasy is another delusion. She can't even file her own taxes, let alone navigate liquidating assets. Before we were together, my wife always had a professional do her taxes. She would have to ask a financial advisor to help her with her $401K, and I have to believe that they would tell her that it is a very bad idea. I think she is flirting with the idea because she badly wants it at this moment. I have to remind myself that she was smiling and joking with me on Monday night at around 6 PM, and by 7 PM she had split. I had done and said nothing to provoke it. This behavior is a part of the split of two days ago. This divorce fantasy will dry up and blow away like the prior ones have once the split is over in another day or so.

This brings me back to the concerns about why I don't just up and leave right now. The difference between my wife and me is that she has divorce fantasies while I have divorce plans. I am methodical. I have always had to be the responsible one to clean up her messes, and this is no different. I can't afford to just run off willy-nilly because I want to. I have to make sure our son is taken care of. She is a financial wreck waiting to happen. My paying the vast majority of household expenses has been propping her up to the point where she can afford to have a shopping addiction. I want to make sure that when I exit the marriage, I will have sufficient resources to support myself and my son. I got excited when my wife mentioned paying me off with her 401K money the other night because that might have been a way for me to exit faster than I had planned, but I now see that this is very unlikely to happen.

Thanks to FD for reminding me a few posts ago to have a plan B, plan C, and so on, so that I can fall back on them if my plan A timeline has to move up due to escalating/dangerous behaviors. My plan A timeline is actually moving faster in a positive direction than I had anticipated, and I am tentatively moving my D date up a few months to December.

I think my plan for now will be to just let this split blow over and let her reset like she always does. I will keep on saving money, paying down debt, and gathering evidence. I am counting the days until I can get off this roller coaster and just live in peace.

HurtAndTired

Sorry to put it so blunty but "No plan survives first contact with the enemy".

Sure you should plan. But i'd caution to waiting till you saved up this or that. When you do this, you can't predict what you she will do. All you can predict is it will likely be worse than you expect.

I was very very naive. We had 30k in savings I thought that'll get us throigh. I gave her half as she said she needed it to mediate. She used it to file a protective order after I said I wanted a divorce. The rest is history. I tried to be fair and the good guy and got burned.  Instead of spending 15k ish mediating a solution I spent 40k, plus the 15k I gave her on attorneys in 10 months. Most was spent defending against the 4 court hearings she filed for. So my point is doesn't matter how sorted or well planned you have it, bpd will totally screw that up.

As for the dog I hear you but a ground floor apartment would be fine. My dog needed spinal surgery right before temp order hearing. Commissioner said "with all that was going on was it wise to spend that on a dog". My answer "the children love that dog dearly and they have been throigh enough". Commissioner left that there... best interests of the children and all. Point is don't let a dog stop you doing what you need. A safe apartment on the ground floor for the dog. Sounds harsh compared to a house. Trust me on this it's 1000 X better than living in a house with a bpd. You have no idea how much your nervous system was shot until you get out and start to heal.

My ex didnt work for a few years some how the family law system thinks she should get to sustain her lifestyle without working. So i pay her 50% of my income and live in an apartment. That is STILL better than living with her any longer .

I'm just saying don't gaslight yourself into the fact you are being sensible and planning when infact you may be stalling as its much easier to do that than pull the trigger. As you know as well as anyone what carnage that will unleash. But it's STILL worth it.

PS just to be clear I am not advocating rushing it, just make sure you don't stall.

Your bpd has been violent, so when you file you need to get her served and be well out of reach with your child. Protective order was used to abuse me in ny case. In your case you need it to stop the violence or risk of that i, thid is what they are supposed to be used for .

CP,

Thanks again for expressing concern, especially when it comes to the DV aspect of the relationship. I am very aware of the danger, but have not been physically attacked since the first week of September 2023. This was when I first followed through on my boundary that physical violence would result in the police being called 100% of the time. I know that she is still capable of losing it, especially if she has been drinking, and acting out violently despite knowing the police will be called.

This is why I am taking care to record as much as I can. If/when she acts violently, it will be recorded, the police will be called, charges will be pressed, and a protective order will be filed. Filing a protective order was one of the first things I brought up with my lawyer, and one of the first things my advocate/social worker brought up with me. I want to, if at all possible, avoid having my wife file a false order against me and have me locked out of the house/away from our son. If she does anything that gives me grounds to file a protective order, one will be filed immediately.

If this happens, I will have to move up my timing on filing for divorce. My attorney made it very clear to me that if I have to call the police, my next call should be to her. My wife being arrested for DV would require us to pull the trigger on everything. The lawyer told me that BPDs she has encountered in her practice have no hesitation in making false accusations of all kinds of abuse in order to try to get a legal advantage in a divorce. If we have grounds to act, we need to do so first, or she will surely do it to me.

I do want to make clear that I will only file a protective order if/when one is justified. I know that I can get a temporary one without having to prove anything, but when it comes time to make the temporary order permanent, I need to have enough evidence in court to warrant keeping her out of the house and away from me. If not, all I have done is make her angry and then let her back in close enough to hurt me/accuse me of abusing her.

I also don't want to imply that I am waiting for my wife to attack me. If I can get enough evidence of parental alienation (bad mouthing me in front of our son) and her threatening me, destroying property, etc., that would be good enough for a permanent protective order. This would keep her away from me during the divorce process and would insulate me from false accusations of abusing her. This is one of the reasons why I am recording all that I can get recorded.

I also assure you that I am not going to drag my feet or stall. This is not my first rodeo. I was married once before, to a woman with BPD traits. I know how bad that sounds, but I have been working on myself in therapy to make sure that there will not be a third BPD woman in my future. However, at the end of my first marriage, I found out that my wife was having an affair. I had zero hesitation in leaving her. I waited until she was at work, packed up my stuff, and moved in with my parents until I could get an apartment.

In that marriage, there were no children, no house, and no real financial issues to worry about. It was a cut-and-dried divorce with nothing to argue over. The reason I am being so cautious this time is that I am terrified of losing primary custody of our son. I need to make sure that when it is my time to step up to bat that I hit the ball out of the park. My goal is to have 70/30 custody with her getting every other weekend with him. That works with her weird shift work schedule, where she only has every other weekend off, and would actually probably be more convenient for her anyway (not that she would ever admit it).

HurtAndTired

A person with BPD traits is typically more concerned for self than for the marriage, spouse or children.  So of course if the spouse looks bad, then she'll use exaggerated allegations to make you appear even worse.  (Denial, projection, Blaming, Blame Shifting, etc.)  And when one allegation fails, expect more.  Be aware and beware.

A weird thing about allegations.  In our experience an "unfounded" or false determination is a rare outcome.  Even if you have reasonable support to negate the allegation, almost always it is listed as "unsubstantiated".  And it seemed to me that no matter how many of my ex's allegations were closed or regarded as unsubstantiated, that had no bearing on the next ones.  I sometimes quipped, it seemed so endless maybe on the 101st allegation they might find something.

FD,

Thanks for the heads up about the allegations continuing to roll in regardless of what precautions are taken. In your experience, if there is a protective order in place that mandates the stbx keeps a distance of x number of feet from the person who filed, not contact them via phone or text, and limits exchange of children to be with an observing third party at a neutral location, etc. does that limit the amount of damage a pwBPD can do via spurious accusations? In other words, if my wife is told to stay 500 feet away, she is at her new residence, and I am at home with my son, can she conceivably still make an actionable accusation of me physically abusing her? I have been thinking of a protective order as being something that would insulate me from having to wear a body cam 24/7 once she goes nuclear by legally forcing her to keep her distance from me. I am naive to think this?

HurtAndTired

Well, she could make claims about prior undocumented events but without substantiation they shouldn't make too much of an impact.

My lawyer warned me that if my ex was to stay away, then I had to do the same, so essentially I had to comply with the order too.  Let lawyers or other professionals be the intermediaries.

My lawyer told me of one of his prior clients who was obligated to provide wood to his ex by prior agreement.  Then he faced a stay away order.  The two conflicted but he didn't realize the new order took priority.  He should have sought legal advice or found someone else to make delivery.  Unfortunately he delivered the wood and was thereafter arrested.  That was my lawyer's warning to me.

If you have a minor child or dependent child together, then the court may decide on a shared schedule.  That would necessitate appropriate caution during exchanges or transitions back and forth.  We can discuss that further if necessary.

Quick $.02 on paying off debts. Of course you don't want to have to pay a ton of interest, but whatever debts are present at the time of divorce could potentially be divided between you. So if you pay off 30K in credit cards and she still has 30K, you could end up having to pay another 15K.
Consider instead moving debt onto cards with 0% interest on balance transfers and developing a payment plan instead.

Everyone else has said all the things! Stay safe, plan what you can, be ready.

I spent two years in the divorce process, a bit longer than most.  The main issue was custody and parenting since she was initially so entitled.  In one day, on Trial Day, we settled.  The Custody Evaluator set out the custody/parenting framework.  The financial matters were maybe an hour, probably less.  At that point the lawyers were focused on wrapping it up as quickly as possible.  Yes, they were a bit fast and loose in their rush but it worked out.

Ask your lawyer on how your state handles debts versus assets, since each state can have different laws and processes.

I should probably add that all of my credit cards are mine and mine alone. Ditto with my wife. We do not have any joint cards, nor do we have any joint bank accounts. Each of us has been married before, and our previous spouses were bad with money. The only thing we have jointly is the house. Our state is an equitable division state. While there is a small chance I could argue that the debt I have incurred on the credit cards that are in my name alone was debt that was incurred buying things that amount to marital property, I would not want to do so. I would then be opening myself up to "owning" half of her debt.

I have no idea what that debt is, but I do know that her shopping addiction-related deliveries appear on the doorstep every day, she has two walk-in closets filled with designer clothes (and more in storage), and an insatiable desire for more stuff. I am guessing that she has a very high percentage of her credit utilized. I do know that it was bad enough that she took money out of her 401K to pay some off a year or two ago because she couldn't get a consolidation loan. If I had to guess, she bought herself some breathing room on credit cards that were nearly maxed, and then has proceeded to nearly max them again. I know how much pressure she put on me to buy her things that I couldn't afford (hence my current credit card utilization of 45%, formerly above 70%!). I prefer to dig myself out of my own debt and let her worry about her own.

I just want to make clear that I am not trying to get "perfect credit" or anything that is a "nice to have" rather than a "need to have." A little over a year ago, I was in really bad financial shape. This was due to my wife's pressuring me to constantly try to buy her happiness. Whether it was intentional or subconscious, it had the same effect. It made me financially dependent on her. I have since come to realize that the pressure for the expensive gifts, vacations, and other things that she pushed and pushed me for is a form of financial abuse.

I was paying more than $1000 a month in credit card bills and working extra hours just to make ends meet. Without her income, I could not have afforded to pay the bills on my own. If I hadn't been so deep in debt, I could have easily paid them on my own. I was deep enough in debt that opening up a consolidation loan was out of reach. Same for 0% interest credit cards to pay things off. I have really had to buckle down and make a superhuman effort to dig myself this far out of credit card debt. I was drowning in debt, and I feel like I am finally able to begin breathing again. I either had to do what I have been doing or declare bankruptcy.

I don't need to have perfect credit, but I do need to have good credit, with a credit utilization rate below 30% to be able to qualify for the most basic things in life (mortgage/rental application, car loans, etc.). I would like to get closer to a 10% utilization rate, but that is a "nice to have," not a need to have. I owe it to my son to get my credit fixed. I cannot properly provide for him until I rectify the financial situation that I got myself into. I know that my son and I will have to rely on my income alone going forward, and I cannot afford to continue to spend such a large amount of my monthly income servicing high-interest debt.  It has been eating me alive over the past few years. This is a matter of financial survival that is just as important as my physical or mental health.

I don't have experience with divorce but I have experience with seeing the out of control spending of my BPD mother.

Are you in a state with joint property and joint debt? Because what I have heard is that the debt of one spouse is actually debt of both. Hers is also yours.

Also, in joint property- money you save is 50-50 - so half is hers.

There were many divorce threats- but BPD mother, with her poor executive function would not have been able to arrange that. She was also financially dependent on my father. The only way she may have done that was if she found someone else to meet her needs but that didn't happen.

Because the topic was brought up so much- and I could see the dysfunction- I asked my father- why not divorce? His reply- it was too expensive to divorce, but from what I could see, it also was expensive to stay married to her. My conclusion is- yes, finances are an important consideration but they probably are not the main reason to stay if someone wants to leave.

After my father passed away, BPD mother owned all finances and was making poor decisions with this.  I did step into the (impossible) role of trying to discuss finances with her in a rational manner. When this didn't work, another relative attempted as well- and also couldn't do it. I looked into any legal possibility of intervening and since she was legally competent, I could not. The concern was- she was compromising her own resources which she needed for her own care. But this spending was like an addiction for her. There was no controlling it. and so we watched, helplessly- while she went through it all.

So I wonder- if finances are joint property- and debt is joint debt, how can you possibly gain some stability if this is the situation.

To clarify- I am not countering your decision to get your financial ducks in a row. Lawyers, divorce- this is expensive. You also need to meet your needs and your son's needs.

I grew up very mindful of financial security due to the issues with money with my parents. But there was no control over BPD mother's spending.

The question was about - how feasable is financial security in this situation? I don't know the marital/divorce laws over money and debt in your area.

For my father- not necessarily anyone else- the money reason didn't make sense- because he never did make plans to divorce as far as I know of and he didn't threaten it. I guess he felt he had to say something when we naively asked him- but because BPD mother threatened divorce, we did wonder what was going to happen.

The reason i encouraged you to find out the specifics of your state's laws and procedures is that you need to know what is likely in the financial divisions in a divorce.  For example, what if you do clear your debt when she is buried in debt (excluding retirement) but then state law says you split debts and assets?  Could you be forced to shoulder some of her debt since it occurred during the marriage?

That is a question we can't answer but your local lawyer should be able to provide informed advice.  We understand you want to be forward thinking and protecting yourself but please be legally informed on precisely how a divorce's financial process might impact you.  That should be a part of your decision making.

FD,

In my state, debts incurred on individual cards are treated as personal debts rather than marital debt. There are cases that have been argued that have asked the court to treat the debt as marital debt if it can be shown that the debt was incurred buying things that are marital property (groceries, medical expenses, household items, etc.) however these are generally only granted in extraordinary cases. I could argue that my debts were just that. I've bought very few things for myself over the years. However, I don't want to open that can of worms forces she would try to do the same. I'm happy to remain at the default position in my state that says her cards, her  debt; my cards, my debt. I already ran this past the lawyer at the initial consultation as it is one of my main concerns.

HurtAndTired

That's good to know. One concern is that since your wife is destructive with property- finances are a property too. I suspect that a part of my BPD mother's financial destruction was both an addiction for her and also in part, a form of abusive/punitive behavior.

If there was joint debt, then there'd be the potential for your wife to go nuclear with a credit card if she was angry. So it's good that this isn't possible. I'm not a lawyer but I think it is prudent to stay with the law that yours is yours and hers is hers and not question it.