BPDFamily.com

Hello -

My adult children have told me that they will not come for the Christmas holiday if my partner is in the house. She doesn't live with me and has her own home, but expects to spend Christmas as a family. When she did live with us as a family, it was very volatile and the children watched me maneuver some not so great interactions. They also feel that she manipulated them when they were younger and through therapy, have made the decision as adults not to engage with her. My partner knows this and has given them an apology for all the things that happened in the past. It wasn't specific, and there didn't seem to be any action toward those things not happening again. From my own and my children's perspective, there has been quite a bit of drama, arguing, storming out, etc. on every holiday. When they were kids they didn't have a choice. Now that they are adults they do.

My partner would like to get married and I am unwilling partly because my relationship with my children is very important to me. They do not like who I become when with her as I have to navigate all the time. To add to things, I have a family wedding to attend over New Years. She was of course invited, but did not want to stand next to me and watch someone else get married when we are not. She is understandably very upset about all of it and I am feeling very guilty about it all.

Any advice you can give is much appreciated! :help:

Hello and welcome- there's no easy answers here since you're not getting what you'd prefer.  But honestly, I don't see any choice other than having the holidays with your kids at home.

Why?

If it was one adult kid, then I'd say to make everyone get together.  But if it's multiple kids who have cut her out of their lives completely, that's a very tough pattern to ignore.  You love who you love, I get that, but in my book the kids always come first.

However, if you were to marry...or even get engaged...then I'd be the adult in the room and ask everyone to sit down and talk things out.  Family is not about right or wrong, it's about being an actual family and extending forgiveness.  I don't know what happened in the past or who did what, but you can't have an actual family with all of this in limbo.

I agree with you that in order to take the next step, something has to give.  Your kids have every right to feel how they feel, but hopefully there's a compromise somewhere.

I have made the decision for the holiday and I know it is the right one for my children. I have not been able to say yes to marriage, however. We lived together and it seemed to get worse. The blow-ups were more frequent and I had a hard time navigating. She seems to believe that marriage is what she wants and needs and if we were married, it would get better. I find myself believing her words and then what she shows me is often different.

As an adult child of a mother with BPD, I stand with your adult childrens' right to have their own boundaries with your partner. It's good that they have boundaries because, this protects them from being treated poorly in their relationships with others.

Just as you have the right to choose to marry this person or not, your kids also have the right to decide the course of their relationship with you if you do proceed with marriage.

While you may feel this puts you in an uncomfortable situation, it's not really them vs your partner or you. What this has done is lead you to look inward at what is going on in your relationship and hold to your own concerns and red flags. Your partner may want marriage but you are hesitant. That's something to pay attention to.

From my own experience, I am glad you chose your kids for the holidays, but looking deeper- this was you choosing your values and your boundaries- your reality about your relationship. When they say they "don't like who you are when you are with her" - this is insightful on their part.

In your partner's defense, she isn't wrong either. It makes sense that someone in a long term relationship would want to be married and it would feel hurtful to be in a relationship with someone who didn't want to marry them. Two adults can decide to maintain separate households and not combine their lives in marriage- if this suits both of them. You aren't "wrong" to have it the way it is now. Neither of you are "wrong" to want what you want.

The issue is that she wants marriage and you don't, or you are unsure. Your parner wants to know where this is going. At some point in any relationship the decision- where is this going- is going to come up. It's ideal if both want to be married but if one or both don't- then there's a decision to make. It seems this is where you are at.

As to the kids, they will decide accordingly. In my situation, my parents were married and BPD mother was my biological parent as well. The decision was already a given- they were a pair. Any event that included my father was with both of them.

However, even without family disorder, grown children eventually make decisions to have their own holiday traditions. Some may have to compromise between two sets of parents- one holiday with in laws, one with their parents.

Pook mentioned forgiveness and compromise- and these are a factor, but all adults have choices to consider when planning a holiday. I assume your partner is not your children's mother and so they may not be as inclined to compromise while the two of you are not married. If you do marry her, then they will have their own decisions to make about including the two of you or neither of you.

BPD mother required more attention and patience during family get togethers. I could also tell a difference in my father when she was present (on some other occasions when we were with just him). It wasn't that we didn't like who he was, it was that he was more relaxed when the focus wasn't on my mother as much.

Sometimes we did choose to get together just as our own family. It wasn't that we were excluding anyone or wishing to be hurtful, we wanted our own get together.  All grown children sometimes make these choices even when there isn't disorder.

As I mentioned before, your dilemma isn't as much about the children as it is about you. They don't decide who you love or who you marry or not. You do- and you are on the fence about this. That they have concerns about her is also significant but the choice is about you- and what you want, and your own reasons for being hesitant.