BPDFamily.com

This is my first post here I am glad that I found  this forum.

Me wife’s BPD seems to always come out when it involves our children. Do others experience this as well?  Our kids are now young adults but when they come to visit, her insecurity always comes out in ugly ways. I think she feels insecure that I have a good, healthy relationship with them and she does not. If I do not share absolutely everything I discuss with our kids or use the wrong word she immediately accuses me of alienating her from our children and that we purposefully exclude her. My kids have learned not to speak with her about conversations they have with me.

Why does this happen every time our kids are involved?  It kills me that I have to be very careful about speaking with my own kids. I find myself doing things with them without my wife to avoid blowups and to speak candidly with them. Just sad.

Thanks

Hi and welcome :hi: It may be due to fear of abandonment / alienation which is common for pwBPD. I don't think it's wrong to have some time just you and your kids as long as there's also time with your wife involved.

Can you share how a conversation goes when your wife accuses of alienation?

*welcome*

So glad that you took the step to start posting your story.  I'm definitely curious to hear more.

One thing to realize about BPD is that it's a "disorder of intimacy".  So it "comes out" in close relationships (like spouses, kids and close family) and the same person may be though of as a "saint" by casual acquaintances. 

Now...there also could be things in particular about your children and the way everyone relates that could be "triggering" or "exacerbating" this.

I would encourage you  to come back soon and post more.  I'm confident we can help.

Wouldn't it be nice to not "censor" your relationship with your kids around your wife?

Best,

FF

This is sad indeed, but not uncommon. If your W truly has BPD, people with this trait often de-compensate when there is a change in the family dynamic. In my case it was the arrival of a grandchild. It was very disturbing to see how my W had zero interaction with the baby after he was born. He's now 3 and she's never once touched him. And her treatment of me changed drastically.

Yes, this is an insecurity/jealousy/fear of abandonment issue. You can't approach it directly, as she will deny it and likely become angry. There is no easy solution, but there may be things you can do that can help the situation. As FF says, if you give some for-instances we may be able to offer ideas.

Hi going bananas,
Welcome to the group. Congratulations on raising your children with bpdw. If you have any tips I’d be grateful, as our children are still very young. If my wife was jealous and controlling before we had kids, (she was), having babies made her ten times worse. We are a lesbian couple so they have two mothers but biologically they are hers. I worked with children for over 20 years before we met (I’m much older which is why she had our babies by ivf). I have always been a confident parent and that’s one reason for her jealousy. She would shout at me for doing everything wrong in the first year with our baby. And I’d shout back. The only good thing about her behaviour worsening was that it drove me to seek help and then I joined the group here and it has improved things so much. My wife’s jealousy was even worse after our second was born as the baby was very sick in hospital and the older child became closer to me (my wife had always been so possessive over her, wanting to do everything with her and be the first to do things with her). Although my wife is a loving mother, she is prone to being quick to anger and shout at times and I think the children feel closer to me because of this because they can never quite trust that she won’t do this. Her behaviour has improved since I started learning so much on here, but I can’t totally stop her anger. Also when the older child is spontaneously affectionate towards me with kisses and cuddles, my wife is like, “don’t I get kisses and cuddles? Come and give me a hug!” I can already see how much this irritates the child and sometimes she refuses, which upsets my wife. She used to scream at me to put her down in the middle of reading her a story. And I did it to keep the peace :( fortunately things have moved on since then. But despite everything I’ve learnt, I do wonder how things will be as the children grow up and become adults. I hope these wonderful people on here can advise you. I found it really helped to give lots of detail of what went down in conversations etc. It was so confusing at first getting my responses right, but I’ve got better at it. I always say, trying to remember what I’m supposed to say when my wife is ranting helps me to say nothing for a while and that in itself seems to help…