BPDFamily.com

I’ve posted here before but not in awhile now. My early 30’s daughter wBPD and I have not been in much communication for the past few years although she does send me verbally abusive emails a couple times a year. I learned a long time ago to never respond to the abuse and I’m very wary of her still when she’s extremely nice to me because it usually means something even worse than the normal abuse is coming. For reference, she was dx’d as a young adult after a very tumultuous childhood. Shes married now to a husband whose ex-wife (my daughter’s former best friend) is also BPD, she has children and won’t allow us to see her kids. Well, one time she’ll say we can’t see them and the next time she’ll accuse me of neglecting them because we never visit them nor even try to. The reason we don’t even try is twofold; we try to respect the boundaries of others and in the past she has physically assaulted both of us in one way or another. And perhaps most of all, I just can’t take being around her anymore. I haven’t seen her in a few years and the mere idea of doing so …yah, it’s not good. In the past few years she’s slowly cut us off along with her siblings but says we all abandoned her.

Anyway, the last year or so has been quiet. Mostly because I forgot the password to the one email I’d still allow her to send email to. I let her send email to this random Yahoo address so she wouldn’t email me at work where the IT dept previously had to block her. I told her the Yahoo email would be checked when it worked for me. In other words, when I felt like I could mentally deal with her hostility and accusations.

I finally was able to come up with the email password and found a few emails from her, all the same crap as all the other times. I haven’t written back. She contradicts herself from one email to the next; you can’t see the kids/why the eff won’t you be a grandma to my kids or I’m sooooo happy to see you are still a mother to my former brother and sister and still grandma to my former nephews. Very typical. She expects me to dump our other kids and if I did (I wouldn’t) she’d berate me for doing that too. There is no winning with her. I’ve surmised over the years when something bad happens in her life, such as when she was not long ago fired from a very good job for financial fraud, that she’ll take it out on me or try to. Her husband (2nd marriage for both) has been led to believe I’m an alcoholic, I drink a little on vacations and maybe a bit during the holidays, where she’s had at least two possibly three DUI’s. Her husband also believes I’m on my 4th marriage and I’ve actually been married to my 2nd husband for 30 years. I don’t even know what the point of that lie was. He’s so enamored with her that my other kids telling him both of those things were complete fairy tales didn’t make a dent.He thinks they’re just out to get her.  I wouldn’t bother but showing him a copy of our marriage cert likely wouldn’t convince him either We are no contact with him too.

As long as I don’t see anything from her I do really well so the past year was mostly great. But when I do I tend to either feel guilty for refusing to deal with her and/or angry about her email content. This last time I felt angry enough to want to tear into her but I didn’t.

Obviously  the choice is mine but my therapist has told me she doesn’t believe it’s a good idea nor safe for me to deal with her at all. She’s also concerned about the potential for physical violence toward me and my elderly mom who lives in the general area. My daughter refers to her as “Satan” even though my mom has never done anything to her but ask for the several thousand dollars back she shouldn’t have loaned her to begin with.

All that being said, I still feel somewhat guilty and also very worn out. Does this ever get better for those dealing with the fallout?

Hi KitKat68,

Over time, and focusing on your own life, I must say that a day doesn’t go by that I do not think of her, but to be honest, I would not want her back in my life unless she was back in her right mind. And, while it may seem mean or unkind at times, you are actually doing the children a favor by not pushing contact with them, since it would really just confuse them more as you develop a loving bond and your daughter talks bad about you to them. I hope they will have a desire to contact you in their adult years, if they are not messed up.

My story:
My 38 y/o daughter (only child) completely shut me out 11 years ago.
At first I did not realize that she had a problem, I had just seem the traumatic type of things that happened when she went away to college and then she ended up marrying the tattoo-man.

He never cut me off and we messaged now and then (he said this really pissed her off), she left him last year while he was in a psychotic state from severe MH problems he got while serving in the special forces for the military. He’s much better now, he lives near and has chosen to get thorough treatment appt the VA, and we usually converse each day, and from the things he has told me about her behaviors, memories, and beliefs I realized that she was messed up and that is what brought me here. He is actually a pretty nice and level-headed guy (but he told me he probably wasn’t when he was in psychosis (he doesn’t remember anything). The sad part is that this was probably brought on from how she treated him (I would never say that, but he probably realizes it).

Out of the blue, without my asking, he sent me her current email address-this is something he never would have done when they were married. After reading and learning things about BPD and what she could be going through I decided to send her an informational-type of email. To my surprise she actually wrote back, unfortunately it confirmed my suspicions with the blaming, accusations, and saying everything was my fault and I needed help.

Keep the prayers up and live your own life. Hopefully someday her right mind will return again (that’s how I look at it). One time when I mentioned talking to my daughter again, my Mom, who did not really know what was going on with her, said ‘I don’t think you would want her in your life right now’.

Hang in There, OurWorld

Sorry about my typos, but I meant to say that when she first cut me off, and I was unaware of her problems, I thought about what I did that could have possibly caused her to cut me off. And after a few years I finally came to the conclusion that I did nothing and something was troubled in her mind.
I am just thankful that she is self-sufficient and hopefully safe and comfortable now. She was married for 12 years.

OurWorld

Hi kitkat.

" Keep Calm and Carry On" became my mantra when my own udd was perhaps at her very worse.

I think you are doing the right thing in limiting your interactions with your udd. What really would be to gain if you responded to everything she said?. My udd liked the interaction with me because she liked the one upmanship and would take every opportunity to berate me and bring me down. I honestly believe it became the highlight of her day as she doesnt have many friends or go out much. One thing though is that funnily enough has never put it down on paper or email because it would be proof of her delusions. Try not to feel guilty. You are doing what you need to do to protect yourself and your family.
Iam not sure if i would say that it will get better. My thoughts are that unless our udds recognise themselves that there may be a problem in their thinking and get therapy for themselves nothing will change, but things have certainly quietened down for me by having NC with my own udd.