BPD affects all relationships, and it affects the most intimate ones the most. Spouses and children tend to be the closest ones. Grandchildren are a step away from this closeness, and so your ex may be more attentive to them.

In this context, it would be easier for a pwBPD to maintain a more superficial relationship with people they are less close to. However, if that relationship gets closer, there may be more issues. Eventually the pwBPD may discard the relationship or the other person chooses to not continue it.

The "monkey branching" would fit this concept. You were the spouse, the other man is is a new person, she knew less about him, and so could "paint him white". Now that their relationship is progressing, the "white paint" seems to be chipping.

I would also feel empathy for the new man's children. It would be up to him to protect them.

I think one of the best things you did for your children was to become clean and sober. You've given them a much healthier father and role model by taking care of yourself.

 

Strategies and legal decisions are yours.  Sharing or revealing them to a stbEx in a futile effort to "soften the blow" would enable the other to sabotage or obstruct your goals.  It will already be hard enough for the other not to sense your changed disposition and try to gain the upper hand.

Well that sounds familiar (don’t they all)
My ex is undiagnosed but I strongly suspect bpd. If not she is just toxic and from what you have described it is exactly the same. I can certainly relate to the lying and being judgemental.
At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter if it’s diagnosed or not, toxic behaviour is toxic behaviour and do you want that in your life?

My situation is a little different, married with kids and in the relationship for nearly 30 years so contrary to what I just wrote if my ex was diagnosed it would give me some relief to know the behaviour was fuelled by a disorder, but if the relationship only lasted a month I’d just be happy that I’d recognised the toxic behaviour early, bpd or not.

Based on my experience with pwBPD and NPD, my general takeaway is that they do not play fair.  They have all sorts of expectations and rules for others which don't apply to themselves.  So the example you give of trying to have an important discussion about finances, when your wife is stonewalling/delaying/avoiding/fighting back--that's a very typical response.  Indeed it's ironic that if you did the same to her, she'd punish you severely and accuse you of all sorts of vile things.  My guess is that she doesn't want things to change, and so she's avoiding the topic altogether in the hopes that you relent.  Like Notwendy writes, expecting a pwBPD to behave rationally about an emotionally charged topic is basically impossible.  And my corrollary is that expecting a pwBPD to treat you well because you treat them well won't work.  You could give your wife a million dollars with the stipulation that she end all arguments, and the next day she'd "forget" the deal and demand something more of you.  She generally won't honor agreements, at least not for long, because her unending needs override her.

I'd say, instead of hoping for cooperation, plan for no cooperation and act accordingly.  You need to put yourself and your kids first in my opinion.  That doesn't mean you should be mean, but do what's right for you in the long run.  Indeed I think you're on the right track about getting your finances in order, protecting your important belongings, taking care of your kids, setting up cameras and even putting a lock on the door if that's what it takes.  The way to be careful is to assume that anything you do, say or write/text could be reviewed by a judge or court.  So don't do anything that would put you in a bad light, including disparaging your wife in front of the kids.  

I'd say, don't feel guilty about keeping your preparations to yourself, because you know perfectly well that if your wife found out she'd react badly.  Your safety and that of your kids should be prioritized over full transparency.

It seems you are at the point of no turning back with your wife. No longer are you able to pretend that the marriage is going to work out. When we just can't do it anymore with the disordered person/people in our life, we naturally start to set boundaries that are going to get a lot of pushback. It is so hard to maintain that balance of what is just going to come out because you can't do it anymore which gives your wife a heads up that something has changed in your relationship, and she will definitely act out to the changes.
When I hired a lawyer to deal with some legal issues with my sister with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), I refused to have any direct contact with her, despite her continuously sending me letters through her lawyer. You are living with your wife, so you do have direct contact with her. It might make sense to tell her the new boundaries and then walk away without staying involved in her meltdowns, letting her know she is in charge of her dysregulated emotions. Clearly there is no point in letting her know about the divorce proceedings until you have your ducks in a row, your finances organized, and are in agreement with your lawyer on how and when to proceed.
Good job in finding a lawyer who understands high conflict divorces! Your lawyer is probably going to advise you to reveal as little as possible to your wife. My lawyer did not share nearly anything with my sister's lawyer whereas her lawyer who came from a top law firm, seemed to think that intimidating me was the way to go and it did not work. I was way to aware as you are, that there is no such thing as any kind of peaceful reasonable negotiations with an extremely disordered person.

Maybe you are right. However she monkey branched and was in the relationship with her boyfriend straight after our breakup. Whether empty nest syndrome played a part, as she likes to mother children. She would look after other people’s children as well as our own quite often when they were growing up and even wanted to adopt a friends child that was being abused. And now the relationship she is in her partner has a son the same age as our youngest but has autism, and a younger child that was 14 years old when she started that relationship (the father would leave the 14 year old at home alone over night while he stayed at my ex’s house) so I guess the amount of children can be included in the enough not being enough too.

I had a little chat with my son last night, as I’ve mentioned in my other thread the problems he had the other week and has gone away this morning for a few days abroad with his mum.

The first Christmas we had split up, she asked my son if he wanted her to wrap the Christmas presents he had bought. He told her he wanted her to, but she completely ignored them but wrapped all his kids presents up instead, which kind of relates to your last comment. I did read one of your posts recently about your mother befriending a girl a similar age to you and the way that made you feel which I guess is quite similar.

So she was supposed to go away with her boyfriend but he apparently couldn’t go so she asked our son instead. What he did say last night was that he wasn’t sure they are getting on too well and she doesn’t seem happy. She has told me in the past that his youngest son is a little [very strong expletive] and told her sister fairly recently that both his kids do her f’ing head in.
However, my son gave his youngest son a lift recently and said he seems very downbeat but a good kid. He has given up playing sports and doesn’t want to do anything any more. I asked him how he felt when he knew my ex and I were suffering from drug addiction, and he felt the same way, depressed and neglected but since splitting up with my wife we have a far better relationship, I am living a far healthier life and he is much better off living with me instead of his mother.

My fear is I am certain they are both addicted still and it is now starting to have a detrimental effect on his kids. It is them I feel most sorry for as I’m afraid they are pawns in her, or their mental illness.

If it helps, I found that logical discussions with my mother about money weren't effective. What drove her behavior was some kind of emotional need of hers. It seemed similar to an addiction- and all addictions are about seeking relief of emotional distress. She perceived proposed restrictions to her spending as somehow "hurting her", it was like trying to take alcohol or drugs away from an addict. Her needs were like a craving for her.

I mention this because, if logical discussions about finances with your wife haven't been effective so far, they probably won't be. Taking action to protect your finances is likely to be more effective than trying to reason with her.

My BPD mother had this behavior. I think it is common with BPD.

My own explanation for this is that pwBPD don't perceive their sense of discomfort as coming from themselves- an internal sense of discomfort. They project it on to something external- from victim perspective, someone or something else is the reason for it. They would also see something external as the solution. Their perceived "need" for this is intense, persistant, they have to have it because they believe that will solve their internal feelings- either their poor self image, or emotional distress, or need for affirmation.

However, the external "need" isn't enough because it isn't the actual solution. They may feel a sense of temporary relief but then the focus becomes something else they need. The needs may not make sense to us as the reason given for them isn't the actual reason. It doesn't make logical sense that someone who already has a car would "need" another one, but the need is emotionally based and emotions aren't logical.

My impression about Rowdy's ex and the puppies is that joint ownership of the puppies met an emotional need in the relationship. Maybe a way to make it feel more secure. Now that she's in a relationship with someone else- they have new puppies. The other dogs no longer meet this need for her.

It's not about the object or the puppies themselves, it's about what meets a need and if it doesn't meet a need, interest in it wanes.

I’m trying to make sense of this girl I was seeing and whether she might have BPD traits. I’ve dated someone before who clearly did (suicidal threats, massive fear of abandonment, really unstable relationships), so I kind of know what that can look like, but with this girl, I’m not sure.

She does tick a few boxes since she can get paranoid, she seems impulsive, and she’s fallen out with loads of friends (she told me she’s lost a lot over the years). She also has an eating disorder. The weirdest part for me, though, is how much she lies. She told me she never lies, but I kept catching her out, and then she’d just say that it was obvsiouly a joke and how I am the one who can't be trusted.

What throws me off is that the fear of abandonment doesn’t really seem to be there. If anything, she’s the one who drops people and moves on to another guy straight away. She also constantly put me down and insulted me even though we were only seeing each other for about a month. It was insanely intense. Sometimes she’d straight-up lie about things I’d supposedly done in the past to make me look like the bad guy, and she’s even admitted she’s manipulated men before.
She was also obsessed with me and her having “low body counts,” which doesn’t add up because she tried to sleep with me on the second date, so it makes me wonder if she’s lying about that too. Now she’s in my college class, so I see her all the time, and since she dumped me she doesn’t even look at me.

Another weird thing is how pretty she thinks she is and tells herself but then she has insane body dysmorphia and is constantly judging and making little comments at every girl she sees whos overweight or not that pretty. She judges EVERYONE who walks by her.

On top of all that, she told me she dated her therapist (a 26-year-old woman) when she was 16, even though she says she’s straight. Honestly, nothing about her story fully adds up, and it really messes with my head because the intimate moments were amazing, and sometimes she genuinely seemed sweet and caring.

I'm. not 100% sure why I am writing on this forum, I guess I would like some sort of clarity on if she is a borderline or narcissist or if anyone can relate to the lying and how judgemental a borderline partner or ex has been. It is strange because having previously dated a clear borderline before this new girl is confusing me and my nervous system has been completely in tatters and I am not sure how to deal with it since I still see her in class 4 times a week.

These are good questions for me to ponder, thank you for them. Yes, she has supported me with her remote job as we've moved abroad to another country. So I definitely have some dependency/feeling of being both indebted and grateful.

In part, I think the grief is over the good things I may be losing - we're deeply connected intellectually and could talk and joke for hours, we've been through so much together (idk, could be a trauma bond, but we've also supported each other), and she has a novel and artistic approach to the world. It's also my first really long relationship, and I found that I liked the camaraderie and the feeling of knowing someone deeply.

But also in that deep knowledge of her, I'm coming up against this strong sense that I'm not capable of facing and sustaining the turmoil. We've been to couples therapy, tried many breaks, different living arrangements, different relationship structures, a few moves, etc. And I just don't feel okay anymore. There's a lot of sadness that arises for me in sensing that I take the turmoil very hard - it hits on my depression and family history, and as I've recoiled from the conflict, my feelings of safety and desire within the relationship have withered. I would've liked to be the person that could handle this, I think - for her sake, and for the part of me that wants to be able to do relationships on hard mode (another desire arising from my family system). But I don't feel a lot of willingness anymore, and she is in a stage where she doesn't think the BP tendencies are a factor. Makes me feel hopeless and isolated in the relationship. Anyway, that's what I'm currently mulling over.