BPDFamily.com

I made one post a while ago about my adult son. I suspect he either has a mild form of BPD, or else I am just a PLEASE READ (https://bpdfamily.com/safe-site.htm) mother.
For context, I have 4 children. 3 are biological. My other 3 are well adjusted but do suffer from differing levels of anxiety and/or depression. I am starting to believe that some of this is handed down biologically, but I could be wrong.
Could I have handed this BPD down to my adult son? The more I learn about it, the more I suspect my mother had it, and that I potentially do, also. I know that some of the ways that I behave when I'm stressed and/or fear abandonment were not healthy.
So did I do this to my son? He was certainly the most sensitive child I had, and certainly the one that was the most anxiously attached to me right from day one. I sometimes wonder if I was his favorite person for a long time, and that he kicked me to the curb when he fell in love with the woman he's married to now. The family he married into is also a religious cult, so that doesn't help with the complicated situation I am now in.
But my son, even as a late teen, would become very agitated if he didn't know where I was. He would get aggressive, abusive (verbally), and DARVO every situation.
He loved deeply.  Very deeply.
But then one day, when me speaking out against the cult he married into (because they were harassing my other children) came between us, he just checked out it seems. He would still try to keep up with the facade, but he clearly had to take sides with this family he is now married into and in this religious cult with.
As recently as January, he would contact me to see if I was angry at him. He would do it surreptitiously, but I knew what he wanted. But I believe that the pressure of this cult and his wife, against us, became too much. Now he doesn't speak to any of us in the house unless he needs to for something.
He did attend Mother's Day and father's day at our house. He acted normal, like his old self, but then "disappeared" again. It is very confusing. It is painful.  Very very painful.
I have let him know I love him. I have let him know I'm always here for him. I have paid his debts that he can't pay and that are ruining our credit...which is another story. He at least has a compulsive shopping addiction that has caused a lot of damage, and I hope he isn't gambling or anything, too.  Our credit was pretty wrecked for over a year due to him, and they just closed another one of our accounts because of his failed payments he promised he would make.
I have paid out over $15,000 in the past few years.
He used my debit card many times without my permission. He admitted to stealing the money. I suspect he also stole cash from his brother's stash in the house. He told me he hates himself because of all of this. He told me he is depressed.
But yet he won't talk to me anymore. He doesn't respond to texts unless it's a reminder to make his truck payment, or to tell him I had to sell his lawn mower because they threatened to repossess it.
I don't know what is happening. It's like he presents himself to his wife and new "family" as this fine upstanding, hard working christian man, but in reality he is this person that has abused, betrayed, and stolen from his own blood family that loves him unconditionally. I don't understand. Please someone help me understand. He is not cold, it is like he is just two people, or living a lie, or faking it, or something. I just don't understand.

I want to add (I'm the OP) that for years, he bullied his younger brother. Mercilessly. He was mean to him unless he wanted something from him. This other family did the same, and he went along with it. Extreme people pleasing. He would not stand up for him. Then when he needed his younger brother to work for him, he would be nice on the surface, or in front of me, but still used him and bullied him. He was mean. His younger bother defended him for years, as he loved him and wanted to believe in him, but my older son just hid it better. He would leave him out of things by lying about where he was going, and eventually sold his brother out for this family that he married into because his wife's sister is my younger son's former BEST friend (they grew up together) and he stabbed his brother in the back by siding with this other girl when she did some pretty horrible things to my younger son.
I'm ashamed of who my older son is. But yet he is just the most amazing person to this other family.
They don't know about the abuse, the stealing, the lying, the betrayal, the ignoring texts, the other things he has done. So IS he really two people? Which one is real? How did he spend $5000 on a vacation when he had just stolen money from his 60 year old father because he couldn't pay his car payment? His 60 year old father that helped him financially and physically to start the business he destroyed due to depression and not working, but lied about working?

Who is my son? I know his heart. I really do. But what has happened to him, where did he go, why did he go, why is he doing this....I have so many questions and so much I wish I could say to him. I just want to understand at this point. I want to know if he still loves me but is falling apart with the stress of this conflict, the cult, the money, etc, or if he hates me. I want to know how he can go from so attached and loving to me to literally not speaking to me and acting like he doesn't even know me. Who can do that?

I hope you can come to some understanding that you didn't cause this. We have no control over our genetics. You are no more responsible for the genes in BPD than you are for the color of your son's hair. We have thousands of genes in the mix when a human is being made, and don't control a single one of them.

Having a mother with BPD doesn't mean the child will have it. I have a mother with BPD and I don't have BPD. What we can have- and that is something to work on for ourselves- are learned behaviors that we thought of as "normal" in our families growing up, and some emotional responses to the dynamics in the family. This part, we can work on.

That your son married into a religious cult is also not your fault. These are difficult situations for families if a family member gets into one. One consideration is that he's married- and puts the marriage first, but even without being in a cult or having BPD, the attachment to a mother changes for a young man. They can still love their mothers but will be more attached to their partner. I think he still loves you but now has chosen his marriage.

My first thought is that you would benefit from counseling. I say this- as a daughter of a mother with BPD who has done that. Even if we don't have BPD- we have the experience of growing up in a family with disordered family dynamics. The genetics are not 100% but it helps to look at our own learned behaviors and emotional responses.

Nobody is at fault for this. Your mother did what she knew to do. So do you. You don't know what kind of environment your own mother experienced as a child.

You can not change your son's feelings or his choices, but through counseling you can learn to relate to him in a different way from what you learned growing up.

One suggestion from reading your post is that- your son appears to be showing one side of himself to his family but you don't know what goes on between them in private. This aspect is not something you can control. What you can control is to stop enabling his spending addiction. By being a financial resouce you are enabling him to continue spending. The only thing that will stop your son from spending your money is - stop allowing it.

My BPD mother was an addictive spender. If there was money in her hands- it would be gone. There was no controlling it. We can not control an addiction. She did a lot of financial damage to herself. This isn't personal to you or your husband. It's got nothing to do with if your son loves you or not. Groups like CODA can help you learn how to deal with a family member who has an addiction and why enabling doesn't help them.

Please don't blame yourself for this. You didn't cause this, but you can work on your part in the dynamics as they are now, and give yourself some self care.