BPDFamily.com

First post here. Here's the story so far...

Late August, my wife tells me that her therapist is cutting her off her meds. I thought she was taking an occasional sleep aid and anxiety pills when needed. Shortly after, she tells me that she's going to New Orleans with her friends for her 50th birthday. I get upset that she's planning on leaving me home alone again to take care of the kids. The next week, we do a rare date night. It goes well. A week later, we drop the kids off at my parents for yet another night together.

We watch the movie 'The Courier'. It's a true story about the guy that helped prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis. The man's wife assumed her husband was having an affair. She was horribly wrong and didn't find out what was happening until the CIA/MI-6 tell her that her husband was in a Soviet Gulag. My wife is sullen as we head to bed.

When we get into bed, she asks me 'why I never apologized for that night'. Five years earlier, she had almost driven me to suicide... she held it against me ever since. She asks the question in a voice I don't recognize. She then tells me she's 'having a mid life crisis' and that she never wanted the responsibility of having a family. I'm startled and decide to sleep in another room.

In the morning, she presses for a divorce. I try to suggest counseling or other ideas. She takes off to pick up my children from my parents house. After work, she returns home and starts telling me about how 'we had discussed me moving out of the home.' We had no such conversation. I'm confused and tell her I wouldn't be doing that. She seemed to genuinely believe what she was telling me.

I initially figure that this is yet another one of her 'outbursts'. Still, I contact lawyers just in case. One suggests that I check the phone records to see if she's contacting counsel. I see that she calls one firm. She stops by the home later that week and I infer she's in contact with a divorce lawyer. It's the first time I'm aware my wife is lying to me. She appears convinced she wasn't. A week later, I'm served with divorce papers.

That night, my 13 year old daughter reaches out to me terrified. Her mother has taken her to an AirBNB with her grandparents. She's told to 'turn off location tracking'. Her friends are telling her she's being kidnapped. Her grandfather (who happens to be the source of my wife's trauma) attempts to break into her cell phone during the night. The next day, in contempt of my wife's own divorce decree, she removes $45,000 from our bank account. I call the police. They reach out to make sure the children are safe, but there isn't much else they can do.

My wife concocts a bizarre child sharing arraignment. There's no concern for the kids. My daughter hates it. My 6 year old son is exhausted. I put up with it hoping to appease her. I'm hoping for reconciliation.

My wife comes over the next week to watch the children while I'm out. We had bought concert tickets before Covid and the show had been rescheduled to then. I had originally hoped to take her, but reach out to a friend I hadn't spoken to in years (like all of my friends, actually). We go to the show. My phone keeps alerting me to my Ring camera going off. The kids are asleep when I return home.

The next morning, while I'm driving them to school, they both start telling me about what their mom had done the previous night. It took me weeks to figure out the story, but it basically goes like this. My 6 year old insisted it was going to rain. His mother pushed back until she started screaming at him. He screaked in anger and then my wife had an rage outburst. She floored our Alfa Romeo through a red light and almost struck the car in front of her. I'm so startled that I start to record them telling me this on my cell. No one ever believes the man.

Later that night, my son is crying no over and over when I try to put him to sleep. I leave his room briefly when putting him down only to have my daughter approach me. She tells me that she started making videos of her mom's fits of rage three years ago. She tells me she recorded her mom the previous night. My daughter says that she always deleted them because she was terrified my wife would find them.

I spend the next hour trying to calm my son. In the back of my head is the terror of knowing my daughter has been doing that. After my son finally falls asleep, I return to my daughter to talk more. Almost immediately, she tells me she knows how to recover the deleted video. She forwards it to me.

My wife is out of focus at first. My son is crying in terror in the back seat. My wife is going on about how she always gets into accidents. She talks about how she's lived in the area 20 years and still gets lost and confused all the time. Then my daughter focuses the camera on her. It's startling to see how practiced my daughter is at filming her mother.

Later, I string together the Ring camera videos with the video my daughter took. My wife looks to be spiraling out of control that evening. I forward them on to my lawyer.

The next hit comes weeks later. I'm starting to review my finances for the divorce. I keep seeing Walgreens. Over and over. Why so many trips to Walgreens? We only get her pills there...

Forty-five trips for prescriptions in a year? I let my lawyer know I suspect my wife is abusing pills. We immediatly demand a drug test, medical and prescription history. My wife gets tested. Nothing illegal. She doesn't pass on the medical history, but she does give us 18 months of prescriptions. 180 pills a month. Lamotrigine is for extreme mood swings and bipolar conditions. Citalopram is a SSRI used to treat depression. Risperidone is used for schizophrenia, bipolar conditions and is an antipsychotic. And then there's the benzo. Clonazepam, or Klonopin, is a highly addictive drug that can cause mental issues when discontined.

I pour through our records... It falls into place. Her therapist cut the meds because my wife hadn't been in therapy for over a year. She was in withdrawals when she left. Then I notice something else. One of the friend's that she had planned on going to New Orleans with hadn't talked to my wife in over a year. That friend works at a mental health clinic. My wife called that friend on the way to pick up my kids the day she left. The next day, my wife goes to her friend's clinic and gets her benzo pills not only refilled, but increased.

This friend, who rarely spoke with my wife, is suddenly in constant contact with her. 400 plus phone calls and texts over the next few weeks. My daughter tells me that the friend is suddenly around her mom constantly. The friend had a nasty divorce of her own. Despite working at the clinic, she isn't a licensed therapist. I'll never know what was said between them, but I know for a fact she convinced my wife to leave.

The reason I know that is because my wife used her friend's voice when she asked why I never apologized the night before she left. It was why I was so startled when she said it. It took me weeks to realize.

After figuring out the pills, it wasn't much longer before the next surprise. Forwarded from our previous home was a letter from an insurance company. Since I'm in the finance industry, I assumed it was some sales brochure. Instead, it was a letter about my wife's term life policy.

The life insurance company said 'thank you for submitting your application to **** Life Insurance Co. At this time, we are unable to provide insurance protection you have requested for 12 months due to mental health history with recent exacerbations. Basically, there's a high chance they would have to pay out on a policy due to her death in the next year.

I'm already freaked out that my wife is driving the kids around. The Clonazepam is listed as a controlled substance and my state considers it a DUI to drive while taking. I'm terrified she'll have another outburst in the car and kill the kids. I'm terrified that I'll have to tell my children that their mother is dead in the near future.

A week after the letter arrives, I'm leaving my son's soccer game. Mom was there with the Alfa Romeo. Sure enough, I look over and see body damage. I snap photos and pass them along to my lawyer. My daughter had told me her mother was hitting curbs and jumping speed bumps. My wife would joke to her saying, 'opps, I damaged daddy's car!'

All the while this is going on, my wife is sending brutal lawyer through her lawyer. She claims I'm an abuser. She says I've been gaslighting her for years. It's full on projection. She's doing everything she can to attack, hurt, and provoke me. Despite this, I'm still trying to save the marriage.

The final straw was a few weeks ago. I went to our storage unit with my son only to find out that she had drilled the lock out and replaced it. My son hears from the manager about the latest crazy thing she has done. I'm ashamed. I grab the key the next time she picks the kids up.

I spend a day and a half emptying my stuff out to our new home (yea, we just moved into it 6 months prior). My family helps me move her stuff out of the house. I have to suffer the emotional toll as I separate our keepsakes. I also quickly realize that my wife has been hoarding most of her life. It takes five days to clear her stuff out.

We had an old bedroom set my wife's grandparents gave her. When we moved, we bought another set and used the old furniture in my son's room. I return from the storage unit to find my mother and aunt sullen and stunned. My mom sits me down. She tells me she found my wife's journal. My mother has read it. My wife talked about what she was doing to my daughter.

It took me a while to build up the courage to read it. I had seen it once or twice before, but I always gave my wife her privacy (despite her not reciprocating). The journal starts a few years before we met. The second page is from 1999. It's a to do and to don't list. Item #2- no more temper tantrums.

The journal continues on. Incoherent, hateful, angry passages are spread throughout. There's several 'normal' sections in the middle. I can tell the part where she met me. It was shortly after my experience at the Columbine Massacre (yea, that happened to me). I was coming out of a dark place. Five years younger than her. She loved the anger and vulnerability. She could control me.

The intense idolization was evident. I was getting my masters degree. I was picking up my professional certifications. No one understood me, she claimed. Oh, and that friend I mentioned earlier... she was worried I had offended her. The journal ends shortly afterwards. The last entries are from 2012 and 2013.

My daughter had just turned four the first time she mentions her.


Yea, I know what the 'way I shouldn't have' means. An outburst of rage against a child. That 'scratch', I know what that means too. Always minimizing. Later that year...


Childhood trauma. My wife's father abused her. She was conceived out of wedlock in a Catholic family. Her father has outburst's like his daughter. He blew up at my daughter after the divorce started. He blew up at his wife on their 50th anniversary earlier this year. He'd actually ran up to with his fist balled, threw a punch at his wife and stopped an inch from her nose. No one in the family seemed to notice. Everyone acted like nothing happened after. Childhood trauma indeed.


Each time. More than once. Often. My daughter has developed so many issues. I never notice. My wife hid her outbursts towards the kids from me. My daughter was the one who told me about the pills. She'd seen her mom punching the dashboard of the car after she forgot to take them. My daughter has seen her mother pull the knife out, point it at her chest and scream 'KILL ME!'. My daughter has witnessed her mother punching herself in the face in anger.

My wife's latest attacks almost seem quaint in comparison to all that I've uncovered. She stopped depositing her paycheck, so I'm covering all the joint expenses. She abandoned the damaged car on our property when I wasn't home. She went out and bought a new car with the cash she stole. She even stole the family Christmas tree knowing that I'd have the kids that morning.

I'd read 'The Body Keeps the Score' earlier and was pretty dismayed to realize childhood trauma is extremely difficult to overcome. It was about two weeks ago that someone gave me the book 'Stop Walking on Eggshells'. I work with several doctors who pointed out the possibility of BPD. My wife hits seven of the nine criteria. She's high functioning. She's already turned several friends against me... they just don't know her that well. My next door neighbor from the old house pointed out that he barely knew her after 20 years of being neighbors. My daughter actually said the same.

If you've made it this far, thanks for listening. I'm still processing what I've gone through lately. I started journaling because I assumed my wife would do this to me. I'm on page 200... I'm terrified that she'll try and fabricate any proof of her reality. I'm hoping that this post will do some good. Either for someone else in the situation or for myself.

At this point, I don't know what will happen next. A custody hearing is Feb 3. I can't imagine a court siding with her, but it's still a concern. For my part, I need to better understand how to help my children through this. My 13 year old has finally been freed of her shell, but the 6 year old is too young to understand. I'll be sifting through posts here to gain insight. Please feel free to offer any here for me as well.

Unfortunately, a number of forum members have experienced similar situations, including the heavy medications (prescribed, non-prescribed, abused).

A couple of questions...

Do your children have a GAL (guardian ad litem), A lawyer engaged to represent their interests in the divorce and custody motions? If not, you might want to request one?

Are you and the children seeing a therapist?

What is your lawyer's strategy for your custody motion? Are you asking for full/primary custody?

Exposing the kids to violence can be a crime. What does your lawyer say about this? Can your D13's word be admissible? It sounds like the kids aren't safe with their mom. At. All.

Will your spouse demand her journal back?  This reminds me of a prior divorce case my lawyer handled.  The wife has asked for all their NSFW photos back that they had taken in the past.  My lawyer said he handed them back one at a time, there was a large stack of them.  One even had one of the little children in the background.  Then he grinned and winked at me while saying he was sure the husband - clearing throat - hadn't made copies.

Maybe you have to keep yourself squeaky clean and not archive that journal, but perhaps others, such as the ones who discovered it, can ensure it does get documented.

And if it contains admission of illegal activity, especially child endangerment and similar, that provides basis for it being held or reported as evidence.  Your lawyer can advise you.

Beware of an otherwise fine quality we Nice Guys and Nice Gals have... a sense of fairness.  In our sort of cases where the ex is willing to lie endlessly and even endanger the children, we can't "gift" our ex-spouses anything that would enable them to sabotage us.  Yes, that goes against our grain but we have to preserve our own safety, our parenting and our children's welfare for the years to come.

While we certainly aren't malevolent or nasty, we just can't volunteer ourselves to continue to be victimized because we try to be "fair".  Ask for and follow your lawyer's guidance before extending anything that favors your stbEx.

For example, her snatching $45K, evidently from a joint account, needs to addressed in the divorce.  Most courts don't see it as a big deal, assuming all such claims will be worked out in the final divorce settlement or decree.  However, be aware that a lot gets overlooked in the rush to get a settlement.  Your lawyer will be focused on wrapping things up and walking out with other cases on his/her mind and appointment book.  You have to be the one to ensure her actions, including financial misdeeds, get added to the final financial calculations.  Sure, it's not as critical as your family's emotional and mental health welfare, but still deserves not to be forgotten.

Hello.  Long story.  Many red flags.  red-flag red-flag red-flag

The number one priority is safety for yourself and the children.  If you are worried, then act on the worry and find a way to keep them safe.  If something bad happens, the question will be asked why you did not take action to protect the children.

Getting a GAL is mentioned above.  Are you and the children in therapy?  Do you have written safety plans? 

It's a massive load you are carrying.  Break it up into small tasks and start on the journey to a safer, and happier life.

Good luck.  CoMo