Mixed feelings. Trying to focus on the long term and the peace I will have, the happiness I’ll feel. Already thinking about trips I can take solo or with my kids without a blowup. At the same time it’s very scary. I haven’t been ‘alone’ for 27 years. I know this is just the beginning and I’ll have a lot of therapy/healing to do for a while.

It’s strange… we’re going out as usual and some of the places we’ve gone recently ive thought to myself “this is the last time I’ll be here with her”

Thanks, FD - I don’t want to tell my daughter too soon before my wife. Right now I’m thinking the closer the better, I do not want her to have to know and be around mom. I’ve been talking with my daughter’s therapist (my D signed a release) and will be taking a lot of her advice. My main objective is my daughter not  hearing some ugly distorted version from my wife while she’s becoming unglued and dysregulated. She will probably but at least she can hear a calm version from me peacefully.

My daughter has an out of state trip planned for 5 day later next month to stay with a cousin. I’m thinking that may be the best (least worst) option. At least she’ll be out of the house for the immediate explosions. I hope to talk or even have another private session with her therapist in the next couple of weeks.

As far as the false accusation goes… I don’t know what I’m doing with that. I just know it’s probably the tip of the iceberg for what’s to come. I have some sounds bites already of her threatening to make false accusations. In my head if I have something recorded where she admits she’ll say lies and it was a lie then I would use that sparingly with close people if it came to that.

I’ve come to terms that after this I will likely not talk to or see a lot of people in these circles again. I don’t really talk to most of these people anyway so why do I care?. I have a handful of friends, extended family and of course my kids that I mostly do. And my employer as well - who I will be giving a heads up to. Although it would shoot her in the foot because she would lose any alimony… not that she can think that far ahead.

Here is a link to common abbreviations here:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=26601.0

Also, many of our practical tools and communication skills are discussed on our Tools and Skills Workshops board, just one of our many boards here.  It includes a better view of boundaries, why logic doesn't deal with the other's feeling "in the moment", and so much more.

Even though she is aware of BPD, the idea of that label can be triggering, so be aware that some of what we discuss here might trigger as well.  For example, while Borderline was once viewed as not treatable, that's decades old.  Experienced therapists should be well aware of Dialectical or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (DBT or CBT) but not up to us to name them lest we trigger some more.

As much as we wish otherwise, we can't "fix" the other.  Borderline is known for it hallmark traits of highly inconsistent feelings and perceptions, Denial, Blaming and Blame Shifting, among others.  Your daughter has a long emotional history with both you and her mother.  That emotional baggage may make a difficult for her to truly listen to you, especially when she's in rant mode.  Hopefully an emotionally neutral and experienced therapist can help her in complementary ways you can't.

My final months living with an increasingly argumentative and disrespectful spouse were so distressing to me.  I didn't want what was coming but I could not avoid it.  Still, I was not mean nor nasty.  Those were my boundaries.  Good to see those are yours too.

I would suggest you don't confront her with her false allegation to her friend, at least not until you're ready to file.  Confrontations typically don't end well and what is the purpose anyway?  (Claims of infidelity aren't even a factor in most divorce outcomes.  Look at it this way, she's trying to make you look worse than her.)  You'd likely just trigger more lies and blaming... when you're not yet ready to file.  (Even so, despite your preparations, she may do {something} that shortens your careful timeline.)

Same for informing your daughter too soon.  Don't put her in a position where she might feel torn between whether to support you or her mother.  Your daughter is barely out of her teen but, even with the her custody and parenting not a legal factor, kids ought not feel stuck in the middle.

How does that sound?

cc43,

This hit home most with me...


This is the part that I read so many times in this post, cc43. It was about 3 or 4 years ago that I was sitting in the living room with my daughter and a friend who was about her age but going through landlord issues. She and I were talking about her options in NYC and who to contact. All of a sudden, my daughter burst out, "this is what you always do, you talk about things that I can't participate in." This was HER friend. I was only giving basic 311 advice to this friend. It was a bizarre outburst that she had to make the conversation about herself.

My daughter recently told me "I have no friends". She didn't say it in a way that was sad, just factual.

So much of what has said in the near and far past resonates with everything you wrote. She DOES expect me to continue funding her life. She actually said that she expects "compensation" for her childhood.

Her mother (ex-wife) is a problem in she won't and didn't share ANY information about her diagnosis until I found out on my own. I wonder how long my ex has known but has kept it all from me.

Her final texts to me were all about her knowing she's being manipulative but that she's jealous that she'll never have a "normal" life and that I need to take care of her for that.

All of what she said was bizarre. Most of it was just unhinged. I tried to remind her of her past behavior and she just ignored anything I told her. Now, I know why. A lot of what she ranted and raved at me about makes a lot more sense now that I know what the issues are (somewhat).

I suggested going to a family therapist together. Her response, "I don't want us to heal" yet she signed off her last text with that she would find a therapist. Any therapist I'd found she insisted that I was finding one that would just gaslight her.

I am not looking for validation for anything. I am looking for coping mechanisms. What I am also finding is that others have dealt with this with their own kids. In some ways that's comforting. At the same time, it's saddening.

I hope there's hope. I can only wait and see.

Thank you for the response. Your message was very informative as have everyone else's. I very much do appreciate all the responses.

Hi there,

I hope you're in one piece.  Look, what your husband did was out of line.  But what I see is that in all liklihood you are BOTH hurting, you are BOTH in distress because your daughter is acting out.  Maybe your husband wants you to take the blame, just so he can get his old daughter back.  Maybe he thinks you're coming between him and her, and he's starting to blame you.  Maybe he thinks your boundaries are stupid, and that you shouldn't feel hurt by your daughter in the first place.  Maybe he thinks you're just adding to the mess by talking about your own despair, and he just can't take it.  Or maybe he's just confused, and anger is his default response.

I can relate because my husband and I don't always see eye-to-eye on how to deal with his BPD daughter / my stepdaughter's negative behaviors.  Having different opinions can lead to more stress, on top of the horrendous distress the BPD daughter causes.

Sometimes it helps if I ask the question, Was my husband's response a "trauma" response?  Is he acting out of love?  Fear?  Confusion?  Distress?  All of the foregoing?  Or is he being mean?  Threatening?  Controlling?  Domineering? Usually those sort of questions help me see the reaction for what it is.

Hi there,

You've come to the right place, even if it's not a meeting in person.  Many parents here can relate to your posts.  This may sound strange, but I see some good things here.  First off, your daughter is young, and she has a diagnosis.  It seems like she's aware she has issues, and she's young enough to get some help before BPD derails her entire life.  Secondly, she has her mom and you.  Obviously you care very much, and you are still in regular contact with her.  At the end of the day, if you remain the calm and rational ones, you will be her biggest allies in the treatment journey.  And thirdly, through your daughter's projections of discontent, hatred and blame, I see some glimmers that she's TRYING.  Now I know she feels hopeless sometimes, but she confesses she's trying to "get her act together."  It's just that, without therapy, her volatile emotions get in the way and she feels like she's failing.  She'd rather blame YOU than face that fact, because it's utterly painful to her, and her thinking is too negative and distorted because of BPD.  A worse scenario would be if your daughter fully embraced a victim mindset and was determined to blame everyone else for all her problems--believing THEY are the ones who have to change, not her.

My apologies to the other active readers on these boards, but I'm going to copy an older entry of mine, in which I try to explain what I think is happening in the mind of a young adult with BPD:

I bet your daughter is blaming you for a terrible childhood, for ruining her life and for not doing enough for her.  She might start out sounding like she's not delusional, but as she gets riled up, I bet she turns mean, calling you a terrible parent and accusing you of all sorts of transgressions, most which are highly distorted or patently false.  Is she stuck in the past, dredging up the same old complaints, over and over again?  No matter how much you apologize, or you try to put things in perspective, it's never enough, is it?  In fact, once you start validating her, in an attempt to get her to calm down, she takes that as an invitation to try to get you to validate things that aren't even true, right?  Once she's riled up, she seems to spin out of control, and all logic gets thrown out the window.  She doesn't know how to calm herself down.

I have a few theories about this behavior, and they might clash with some of the classic recommendations on these boards (e.g. validate the feelings, not the facts).  First is that your daughter is blame-shifting.  She's not really mad at you for what she's accusing you of, even if that is what she THINKS she's mad about.  I bet what's really bugging her is fear about the future.  She knows she's an adult in age, but she still feels like a dependent adolescent, and it's killing her.  She doesn't really know who she is (she lacks a stable identity), and she doesn't have stable relationships (friends, co-workers, family, romantic partner).  Without the high school routine that was forced upon her, she feels rudderless.  Is she having trouble in college, and does she have a hard time finding (or keeping) a job?  Has she lost her friends?  She is discovering that she's not functioning well as an adult, and that makes her SCARED as well as inferior.  "Everyone else" seems to have an easy time making friends, finishing college and/or working, whereas she completely falls apart.  This induces in her a deep SHAME.  Rather than take setbacks in stride (failing a class isn't so bad, having a fight with a roommate can happen, but apologizing goes a long way; everyone has to start at the bottom in the work world, getting fired isn't the end of the world, there are a million other jobs out there), and rather than take some responsibility (I'll never make any money or friends if I stay lying in my childhood bedroom all day), she regresses in AVOIDANCE.  What does she do?  She dredges up ancient history from childhood and blames her dysfunction on that--terrible/unsupportive/abusive family members, they are the ones who make her dysfunctional.  This thought pattern makes her MAD, because she doesn't have what she wants today.  When she sees you, she sees an opportunity to lash out and unleash all this anger and frustration onto you.  If you're up for listening to her, you become her punching bag.  This is all just to avoid acting like an adult and taking responsibility for her life and her decisions.  That is simply too scary.  She RESENTS you because she still NEEDS you desperately, and it's killing her inside.

On top of that, generally speaking, her expectations are totally unreasonable and unrealistic.  I think this is rooted in adolescent or childish thinking patters.  She's impatient.  She's demanding.  She still expects adults to over-function for her.  She still expects to be the center of attention at all times.  She expects too much devotion from friends.  She wants to make decisions, but if something goes wrong, she expects you to face the consequences and "rescue" her, because you "owe" her.  Now, when she was a kid, this was normal.  But now that she's an adult, she's having trouble adjusting her expectations, and at the same time, her childish expectations simply aren't being met.  She still probably expects that you continue to pay most or all of her living expenses.  She's resistant to doing adult administrative tasks, and she's frightened because she doesn't necessarily have the know-how, either.  She's afraid to ask for help, say from a friend or an employer, because she'd be "exposed" for her lack of knowledge, for the fraud she feels she is.  She wasn't really prepared to do autonomous, self-guided study in college, or to figure out how to apply for jobs, or even how to accept coaching from a supervisor.  Any "criticism" would be taken personally, and she'd completely fall apart.  I bet she hasn't really embraced the notion that she's responsible for herself now, because she's probably blaming you, full-time.  Let me guess, your daughter says she suffers from anxiety?  My bet is that's because she feels incompetent, inferior and scared.  She's so afraid of a failing and a little stress that she gives up before she even tries, and to cope, she's lashing out at you.  Does this sound familiar?  If it does, it's because I've lived though it, all of it.

If any of that rings some bells, it's because it's classic BPD.  You did not cause it, and unfortunately you cannot cure it.  Believe me, I've wanted to be a fairy godmother, wave a magic wand and have all the negativity, pain, frustration and anger instantly disappear.  Unfortunately, BPD doesn't work that way.  Your daughter has to be the one do get therapy, believe in it and work hard at it.  In the meantime, you're doing great, educating yourself and learning more, because dealing with BPD can seem perplexing and counterintuitive sometimes.  All my best to you.

jsfriend, just like you didn't know what a TLA is...

TLA = Three-letter-acronym.

Using acronyms that exclude anyone else knowing what the other person is talking about is difficult to follow.

Thank you for the clarification for the TLAs.

Hi again Samss,

Im not sure what a TLA is but these are the abbreviations I have used with no particular reason other than I just find it just quicker when doing a longish post.

dx diagnosed
dd diagnosed daughter
udd undiagnosed daughter

Thank you everyone for your support.  I really need it.