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I was going to reply to my old thread but just wanted to share a new thread with brighter news..Well over a year ago I filed for divorce and posted here when I was afraid of what my ex was going to do.   Since then she had hired an extremely aggressive attorney and took me to court multiple times in attempts to extract huge concessions, and all of them failed.   It cost me about $15-20k in attorney fees to deal with that it probably shouldn't have.   Recently though, I learned that in the process she had run up a much bigger legal bill than I had and she had no choice but to drop her attorney and self represent.  After one final motion where she requested that I pay her legal bill and was denied, she had no choice but to settle.   She may have been scammed by her attorney, but I don't really know.   She's getting roughly what I originally offered, and spent most of it fighting with me.   Meanwhile I met someone new that does not have a PD, and I am having the best time of my life.

Good for you!  Sounds like a pretty good outcome, after all. 

I think the myth of the "aggressive attorney" being the same as a "competent" or "good" attorney needs to die.  Legal work is a grind, and a long struggle; the people that want to come out "guns blazing" are often not going to be good at it, after a hearing or two. 

I'd just be cautious about branding your new partner non-PD.  I was in another relationship post-divorce that started out wonderful, and was wonderful, for most of a year before I started to see the signs of PD again.  Fortunately I did not marry her, and it didn't last as long as my earlier marriage to a pwBPD, but longer than it should have. 

I'd also note that in my case, my new GF was very supportive of my issues with BPDxw and my commitment to parenting time with my daughter (about 8 months into our relationship I went back to court to get additional parenting time and limit some of the rights BPDxw was abusing), and would often comment how wrong it was that my XW behaved the way she did.  But over time, her attitude changed on this issue to lumping BPDxw and me together (rhetorically) as like an example of how I made a mistake, and now how our current relationship was "below her" and I needed to be better if I wanted to keep her happy... more trips, household help, more spending, nicer house, etc.  After a further miserable year and a half together, I finally got out. 

How long after 1st marriage did you date again

It’s good to hear these stories of people on the other side of it. I probably will do an update post myself, but I’m just getting started with this whole process. Finally got my burner phone set up on boost Mobile last week so I’m gonna start contacting attorneys to interview.

I’m all over the place, but mostly super high anxiety of how this is going to go… My biggest concern is she’s going to make false accusations against me to friends, my employer, possibly police and/or just drag this out and make it very expensive for both of us. There’s been a lot of financial damage caused by my wife’s impulsive, spending and refusal to cut expenses so we ultimately have no savings, we have a significant amount of debt already in any legal fees are gonna either be more debt, taken out of IRA or borrowed from retirement accounts, family may be able to help a little bit, but it’s gonna be pretty nominal I think. And unfortunately, my wife’s mother is an enabler and will probably be willing to give my wife a lot of money.

Anyway, yeah I’m in the state you were before you started this process. I’m just afraid of what my wife might do. I mean I’ve seen what she can do.I have some hope that we can split this pretty much down the middle. We don’t have a ton of assets, mostly a couple of retirement accounts, and the house. We’ve been together for over 25 years so my expectation is we would just split everything pretty much down the middle and come up with a reasonable alimony payment and duration. We have an adult disabled child which we both have a joint guardianship over but no minor children.


If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find your attorney and were they knowledgeable of borderline/cluster B? How long did the process take for you from the time you started meeting with the lawyer and filed to now? When do you think everything will be finalized?

 I have read splitting by Bill Eddie, I’m just curious for some real life examples. 

That's great to hear! 

I went a similar path; the divorce to my BPD ex took almost two years (mainly due to COVID backlogs with the courts) and I have moved on to find love again. 

I've been married for about 18 months and it's been so night and day different; there are a million little things that my wife does for me that never would have even crossed my BPD ex's mind.  I still catch myself at times thinking, "I can't believe she remembered that..."  For instance, she travelled for work today and searched to find a pizza franchise there that we had on a vacation when we were first dating.  So she hauled a pizza home from three hours away just to surprise me.

That's what happens in a loving relationship when you give everything to someone else and they give it right back.

One more thing I'll add- the skills I learned here over time absolutely, positively play a daily role in my current marriage.  While my wife isn't disordered or anything, I've learned to lean with empathy and consider her feelings before jumping into an argument over something dumb.  If she gets mad over something, I'll let her be mad...but still show her I care in little ways.  Then she comes to me a bit later laughing, apologizing, and all is well in the world.

I can't say when to move on after a BPD breakup, but I can say that you'll be pleasantly surprised when you find someone that loves you for you and it just works.  Sometimes it feels so easy I wonder if I'm missing something, but I think that's learning to let go of those past fears of anxiety.

My divorce took about 2 years.    It was finalized recently, though in the 11th hour I found myself in a position of getting a deal with some concessions I didn’t like vs pushing onward with the legal process.   I decided in the end to pay more money than I probably should have to end this on the theory that the legal costs were going to approach what I would save anyway.  I should have gotten a prenup, and that was a very expensive thing to learn the hard way but it could have been so much worse. 

The attorney I chose had seen all kinds of situations and mental health issues, and seemed to understand but also thought it didn’t matter from a tactical standpoint.  He kept us looking reasonable and went by the letter of the law.   It may have made a difference that I chose an attorney who was well known and respected by the judge, and my ex hired an out of town high priced attorney that the judge did not know.     I started feeling ready to date someone else about a year later.    I wish none of it had ever happened and really feel for all you guys, nobody deserves this.