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Sometimes I just want to scream!  Since Saturday my uBPDh has either been in a bad mood or nat talking to me for who knows why…cause my son had basketball games that were canceled because of the snow or because I had mentioned trying to work on Monday’s…??  Your guess is as good as mine.

He literally will not speak to me or my kids, his step kids. Throughout this time, my kids and I have all been very cordial (a lot has gone on like I had to take our cat to the emergency vet and in the middle of that the school nurse calls as my daughter needs to come home since she is sick and he didn’t offer any help or ask if either were ok). We have said hi and bye as we are mandated to do by him. He will not respond to any of the 3 of us. He says hi/bye to all but the 3 of us. (As a side note, my stepdaughter left on Saturday to go to her moms without saying bye to any of us and none of us but my husband knew where she was…including the 3 year old).

We get home from school today, my older 2 said their usual hi, my 5 year old did his usual grab his iPad and laid on the couch. An hour later, he went up to chill in his room. My husband goes up to his room and all I hear is my 5 year old screaming crying I give it a minute, hit record on my phone, then go up to see what’s going on. My husband is yelling at my son because he didn’t say hi to him. He is leaving the room as I go in and he then starts in on me as to it is all my fault and to stop telling the kids to ignore him or be mean to him, etc. I have never said anything to the kids except to always be the bigger person and that non of this is their fault.

He continues to ream me, with all of the kids there. I mention that he isn’t responding to me or the kids and he said to leave our crap out of it. He then transfers this to calling me a slut on repeat. I said I don’t know what you are talking about, he continues to call me a slut so I walk past him and go sit with my son. He continues his slut talk then finally leaves the roo. The other two kids that were home come up to be with me. I tell my son that I understand how he is feeling and how hurtful it is and finally get his crying under control. My 5 year old asks to be alone. So I leave, my husband then goes up to him and apparently apologizes to him. I don’t understand this hi/bye obsession!  

What am I supposed to do?  He and my stepdaughter don’t have to say anything to us, but we get reamed if we forget or dont say something the second we walk in the house…what am I supposed to do??  I don’t get this obsession!  Though I do know that he needs to explode beef he can return to baseline so hopefully this is his explosion…ugh!

Hi dtkm;

What a frustrating situation. The "rules for you but not for me" mentality gets old pretty fast -- I understand  :(  Double standards would make anyone want to scream!

Some parts of the situation sound like "quick wins" or "low hanging fruit" for a solution. Other parts sound more challenging to figure out.

Fortunately, you won't have to get his cooperation or agreement, or get him to see your point, or have him think your solutions are good ideas, for you to try them. I can't imagine trying to convince a pwBPD that the rules should be the same for both of you -- a losing proposition for sure!

Let's take a look at this:


This looks like a "quick win" to me. He is allowed to cope with life by not talking to you, and he is allowed to have irrational reasons or unknown reasons to do so. That doesn't mean it's a functional coping mechanism -- but he controls how he responds to life.

Can we reframe this as a break for you. You get a break from interacting with him, and you can give yourself permission not to try to figure out why he's in a mood. His mood may actually have nothing to do with any rational external event. All the energy that would've gone into focusing on his mood and wondering why he's in a mood... can you do something nice for yourself instead, while you get a break from him talking to you?


This is hurtful behavior that isn't under your control. This is kind of just who he is going to be. It doesn't matter whether you and the kids always said Hi and Bye to him 100% of the time, that won't impact whether he interacts with you or not, because his feelings and motivations come from inside of him, not from anything you and the kids say or do "right" or "wrong".

What is under your control is whether you consider it behavior that you can live with. Maybe it could help to look at four options:

You consider it behavior you can live with, and stay, but remain frustrated by it (Conflicted board)
You consider it behavior you can live with, and stay, and find a way to depersonalize it (Staying/Bettering board)
You consider it behavior you cannot live with, so end the relationship, but remain frustrated by it (Detaching board)
You consider it behavior you cannot live with, so end the relationship, and find a way to depersonalize it (Detaching board)

There are no right or wrong answers -- only what you decide for yourself is OK to have in your life. Everyone's boundaries for what's livable are different.

Probably the most frustrating position to be in, though, would be staying in the relationship with a leaving mindset.

...

It is concerning how he treats the kids.

Can we come up with some boundaries (rules for you, not him) that would protect them from his hurtful behavior?

Thank you for the response Kells, it is always nice to have someone else "get it"!  I am open to any and all boundaries to set up to help protect the kids.  Prior to recently, it was mostly my 12 year old son who was getting his crap "thrown" at him and occasionally my 9 year old daughter, but within the last couple of weeks, I can see him starting to project his stuff at our 5 year old son. 

Our son and my husband have always been very close, with him always wanting to play with his dad, cuddle with his dad, etc.  Our 5 year old loves to be at home doing stuff with family only, he is not big on any "outsiders", similar to my husband.  The start of school came and he loved kindergarten.  After a bit, he started to "get out" of going to school, about once a week.  He knows that if he pushes enough, his dad will cave and let him stay home.  So he did this.  I started to stand against this, as I felt like no matter what he needed to go to school, you let him get away with it once and he will forever fight for it, but my husband gets mad if I "make our son mad" so would push against me and then I began walking on eggshells with this.  His teacher sent us a message saying the same thing, he really needs to come no matter what.  I then got the school therapist involved.  We...me, my husband and the therapist agreed on a plan that rewarded him positively if he went to school.  He went with only a little push back.  Then my husband had a scream fest at me on a Sunday and we ended up back at square one on Monday with my son not wanting to go to school.  I had a talk with him, or as much as I could with a 5 year old, and he just kept telling me how much he loved me and didn't want to leave me.  I asked him if he was afraid and he said yes, he is afraid that he will come home from school and mom won't be here.  I didn't push it any more than that, as to what that exactly meant.  Since then, he has been pretty attached to me.  He still wants his dad, but not nearly as often as before.  Since this time, my husband has started in on him.  He pulls him in and then yells at our 5 year old...or the other way around by yelling and then tickling him like crazy. 

It almost seems like he is trying to assert his control over the other males in the house.  As the 3 girls (outside of me) don't get half as much as the boys are now getting.  I thought this was a "your" kids vs. "my" kids thing and to a degree I think it is, but I now feel like he wants to assert dominance. 

As mentioned before, any suggestions as to boundaries I can set would be great! 

Also, in the future, what do I do in this same situation.  He is yelling at me about something that he says I did but I didn't.  Do I respond in any way or do I just walk past him?         

The important thing I want to throw out here is to make sure you do not skew your own perspective toward thinking the boundaries are for other people. Boundaries are for you. It is easy forget sometimes. In the beginning, setting boundaries will seem difficult and you'll want to set boundaries for other people, but you can only set boundaries for yourself because you can only control yourself not anyone else.

The best thing to do is to not engage and escalate situations. Try to practice being firm and indifferent. The point being not to allow emotionally charged situations happen.

Anyway, I am going to leave it right there for now so as not to overwhelm you. Just lettting you know we are here for you and we do hear you.

In the meantime please be kind to you and please take care of yourself.

Cheers and Best Wishes!

-SC-