BPDFamily.com

I just electronically signed my Agreement for Temporary Orders, so I think that just has to be filed with the court and it goes into effect. And it looks like I got a good deal. I got the Standard Possession Order with me as the custodial parent, and I'm also going to get interim child support of 20% of his income starting September 1.

As I understand it, this is all the standard stuff that I could reasonably hope for. The really good thing is that I got to be the custodial parent and not him (or doing some weird 50/50 schedule). I still think the standard possession order is generous to him for parenting time, but non-custodial parents don't get less than that without proof that they're a bad parent.

So part of me is relieved, but part of me is also really starting to feel the grief of taking this next step. This coming weekend is going to be the first weekend where my stbxH gets D4. I've never spent a night without her for her entire life. I already know this is going to be hard on me. How hard it is on her remains to be seen. She hasn't really been missing her dad all that much since we moved out. Actually, she's been missing a friend of mine who came to stay with us for a few days to help out with babysitting more than she's been missing her dad. She keeps asking about my friend and when she's going to come back and visit us again.

During video calls her dad has been talking up all the fun things they are going to do this weekend. He's also been getting upset on evenings when D4 doesn't want to talk to him. I'm sure he thinks I've been spending this whole time trying to turn her against him and will spoil her as much as possible this weekend to show how great he is.

Speaking of showing how great he is, he's also suddenly been messaging D4's preschool teacher, wanting to know about D4's therapy, and overall suddenly trying to get more involved in D4's life (or at least look like he is). You know, stuff he should have been doing this whole time! I suppose it's better than him misbehaving, and I should try to enjoy him being reasonable all of a sudden, but on the other hand I worry how that will look to other people. Like they'll wonder, "Why did she leave such a great guy?" Or maybe they'll be able to see through it.

As for why I left him, he still doesn't get it. He's been texting me multiple times per day asking me for "reconciliation," and making all these promises that he'll do this or that if only I come back to him. The promises he's making are things I had complaints about before, but he still isn't getting to the root of the problem.

For example, when we were together we split all our joint bills 50/50 (utilities, mortgage payments, childcare, etc.), even though he makes almost twice as much money as I do. I brought up that we could pay our bills based on a proportion of our income, because as it is I'm paying half of my income on bills while he is only paying a quarter of his. Of course, that made him blow up into a rant about how if I don't like it, then I can find a better job where I make more money. I even tried reminding him that one of the great perks of my current job is that I have a schedule that mostly matches D's school schedule, so that frees me up to do more of the parenting, and I think I should get something for that. I told him that if I tried to find a better paying job, I'd probably have less time for D4. And then of course he'd blow up about how actually he does do just as much parenting as I do, and taking care of D4 isn't even real work anyway, and so on.

So now he's saying that if I got back with him, we could split our bills 70/30. But that's just one example. He's been doing that with lots of our recurrent fights before. Now all of a sudden he'll do whatever I want as long as I take him back.

The thing he doesn't understand is that the main problem with our marriage is not disagreeing who pays what bills, or who does what chores, or all those other things. The problem was that whenever we had one of those "normal couple disagreements," instead of being able to talk it out reasonably, he'd fly into a rage, threaten to punch me in the face, smash things, throw things, punch the wall, etc.

I finally got fed up and tried to mention that to him once the other day, and you know what he did? He denied any of that stuff ever happened! That's new. Before he didn't deny it happened, but he'd justify it. He said it would have been self-defense if he had punched me, or he said and did those things because I just pushed his buttons so badly, and "there's only so much a man can take." Now he's saying none of it ever even happened.

I don't know why that changed. Maybe he's smart enough to realize that now he could get into legal trouble for admitting to any of that stuff.

Well, a provision in the temp orders says we are now only supposed to communicate about parenting-related stuff through this app we're both supposed to download. StbxH texted me saying he thinks this means he can't text me any more about anything, and demanded to know if that means we are not going to reconcile anymore, and he's not allowed to text me anymore, and so on.

I told him that's probably for the best, at least for right now. And he hasn't texted me again since then.

That made me feel unexpectedly sad. I guess I still had a tiny bit of hope that maybe, in all this begging me to come back and reconsider, that maybe he'd say something about how he was sorry for the abuse. Probably not call it abuse, but at least say something about how he has a bad temper, or anger management issues he needs to work on, or something like that. But no, and when I tried to bring it up, he denied it even happened.

It just boggles my mind that he has this blind spot there. That the most serious issue was not who unloads the dishwasher, but the fact that I couldn't mention anything about wanting him to unload the dishwasher more without being afraid of him flying into a rage. Does he really think that's normal? Does he really think things like that never happened?

I think in most cases, they see through it.  Most adults have been around divorced couples - especially teachers and school staff! - and understand there are two sides to every story.  I think most also realize that the parent going on and on about it after the fact is the guilty, or at least guiltier party. 

Regardless, it's something you can't control, so you have to let go and not worry about it.  Figure out what you can control, and make sure you and your daughter's needs are being met, and take care of those issues.  Rumors, third party opinions, etc. are not important. 

You can of course, confront people on the spot if they're spewing nonsense, or spreading rumors, but there's no sense going on the offensive, or stirring up issues if you haven't heard anything directly. 

That was my approach.  I knew (because several people told me) that my ex was badmouthing me and making up absurd stories about what I did.  I never said anything about it, except if/when people asked or mentioned something specific she said.
 I only did that once.  Everyone with half a brain figured out pretty quickly who was really at fault. 


This is really just the nature of BPD.  I don't think they can admit their faults because then (to their black-and-white-only way of thinking) they're bad, and they can't be bad because if they're bad, then they'd have to treat themselves the same cruel way they treat everyone in their lives when they've decided that those people are bad, and so they engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics to re-write what happened, or explain away others' anger towards them so they can pretend they're the victim.  When they hit an event or memory that they can't explain away, well, that's when "you made me do it" comes out.  They'll never hold themselves accountable for their actions; if they could, then they probably wouldn't be pwBPD.  It's like a Catch-22.   

As with the things he'll say about you, you just need to let go of this as well.  There's no sense in trying to set straight a disordered mind.