Hi Samss,

First of all, let me share a few resources for NY support groups- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/groups/ny/new-york?category=borderline-personality
https://emotionsmatterbpd.org/

I'm so sorry that you're in this position and many of us have felt exactly the same way.  I can remember the long, drawn-out battles with my BPD daughter that appeared out of nowhere and went 0-100 in mere seconds.  It still baffles me, to be honest.

You mentioned "Stop Walking on Eggshells" and that's a great first book to read.  It helped me a lot and made me realize that so much of what happens with BPDs is in the moment as they're facing personal crisis. 

A lot of the time, the words are true for that moment and fueled by unstable feelings and emotions.  It's so easy to defend or argue, but this can often be counter-productive because the BPD doesn't remember what they said 30 seconds later.  They're just exploding with emotion and words come out that feel right in that moment.

So please don't take this personally, it's not a "you-thing" as much as it is mental illness at its worst.  Your kid hurts deeply and erupts, often saying "unforgivable" things that you must not hold onto.  It's painful, it's unfair, but unfortunately it is your daughter's reality when she's unstable.

Here's a place to start.  The next time your child lashes out while unstable, pay less attention to the words and more emphasis on the emotions behind them.  If they're upset, focus on what it's like to feel upset and try calming them down. 

We validate the valid...which is their feelings in those unstable moments.  However, we don't fight the invalid...which are the accusations and/or demands that accompany those feelings.

Does that make sense at all?

Hi samss,

Sorry this first time reading your post. What stood out for me from your original post is that your dd actually told you that she has a dx of BPD. To me that is huge!!!!.
 
My udd32 is undx and the mere mention that she has a personality disorder would send her into rage mode. Once when she was a teenager and I began to put 2 and 2 together she saw that I had left  the book "stop walking on Eggshells" on a side table as I had been reading it. I had other children at home at the time so it could have been general reading and not about her(it was btw) and she totally lost it, shouting, accusing, cursing etc, so I think that your dd actually telling you about her dx is actually a big step. How you can actually encourage her to get the help that she needs I dont know.
You say that she already has a therapist, she can recover if she is serious about putting the work in, but only if she has a good therapist who is  versed in challenging BPD behaviour or is her therapist just someone that she can have a moan to about all the people who have been a problem to her in her life???

When it comes to your dd telling you that you owe her for her childhood my udd has said exactly the same to her father who was out of her life for a few years. She actually added up how much money believed that she had missed out on while he was away and said that he owed her that amount. She told him and was totally serious about it. I honestly think it was just another thing to hold against him and it wasnt something that he could never really make up for even though he tried. 

I know that it doesnt make sense to us as we would rather love than money but I think that being seen as having money eases their pain. My udd loves driving nice cars, designer clothes, hair and nails done reguarly and is always spending on stuff she doesnt need, buys the kids way too many toys but finds it hard to show affection.

I think for now that you need to concentrate on your mental health and keep your boundaries in place. No way do you need to accept a tirade of abuse because she is your dd and in emotional pain and dysregulation. Its ok to to take a break and tell your dd that you will speak with her when she is being respectful.

Hi Confused,

When I saw your "7,000 miles" comment it made me curious, since I'm right at 7k miles from my home in the US.  For my journey, we're going through the marriage visa process and I'm waiting for the final interview in Manila, which could be a few months or another year...it's hard to guess currently.  I've lived here for almost 2 years now and I really enjoy it.

So you know, the average Filipina's expenses here are around $200-300 per month, although many live on a lot less.  My current expenses here are around $750 a month all-in (house, car insurance, food, utilities, gasoline, etc), to give you an idea. 

Some have joked that the Philippines national pastime is young women stealing married men, so jealousy is a cultural thing here and it's very common.  On the flip side of that, everyone local would know your fiancée is dating a foreigner and they'd look at her like she's filthy rich and expect to share in that wealth.

So she is likely getting comments from her sister and neighbors asking about you...hoping that she'll give them money.  Before I moved here, I had two of my wife's relatives/neighbors reach out to me on Facebook Messenger just to say hi and ask about my life.  My wife was furious and ready to fight them since  this was when we were still dating.  That's so common here though and there's so much jealousy since families have very little.

If you do plan to marry, do you have actual plans on what that looks like?  With the current administration, you'd either have to move here to get married OR bring here there on a fiancée visa.  Some of that jealousy will subside once you're in person, but it could be a long-term challenge as well due to family/culture/etc (plus the mental illness aspect).

My advice would be to just keep doing what you're doing but also be more aware of the money you're sending each month.  It's so hard because everyone here needs help and women are looking for a better life.  Before I met my wife, she worked in Saudi Arabia and Qatar as a maid in horrible conditions.  It was her only choice to support her family though since there's zero opportunity here.

Hi Samss,

Going from being close to suddenly being “the enemy” is incredibly painful. And hearing something like “I deserve compensation for my childhood” would knock anyone sideways.

What really stood out to me was what you said about putting your own mask on first. That’s not selfish - it’s necessary. If you’re constantly bracing for the next hurricane of texts, you’ll burn out.

It also makes sense that you’re trying to pace yourself. In the beginning it’s easy to over-read and overwhelm yourself. This is a long road.

You’re handling this more thoughtfully than you probably realize.

It's the standing on the sidelines while she's with her mother who sees and interacts with her daily is the heartbreaking part. We had a close relationship until I became the "enemy". I'm blamed for a lot of things and a lot of them are just insane to consider. The fact that she said "I deserve compensation for my childhood" was just jaw-dropping. Along with all the other things she wrote to me were just a lot. A lot a lot. I showed the ranting texts to friends and some of them couldn't even understand why I'd even respond and others still said I was "too nice".

My one theme in dealing with her ranting was, "I'm here when you need to reach out". That was all I could think. She only slipped in the line about her diagnoses (there were a few of them) at the end of her tirade before she stopped sending me any more messages.

Finding ways to respond and techniques to cope with the outbursts and the unreasonable demands coupled with threats of self-harm is what I'm trying to do at this point. Educate myself, train myself on how to respond, and make sure I take care of my own mental health. It's like that line when the flight attendant says "put your mask on first before you help anyone else." I don't believe I'm  any good to anyone if I am not any good to myself first.

Thank you, Mutt for your encouragement and your resource leads. I've been doing TOO MUCH surfing and reading about this and need to pace myself so I don't burn out.

Hey, all, it’s been a while since my last post. Just an update and advice on a couple of things.

I think the last time I posted I mentioned that I did hire the lawyer. I’ve just completed the extensive financial affidavit. Wow, was in depth. Going through that - there is absolutely NO WAY my stbx would be able to do that. I don't know how other couples do this. But either I need to help her (as I've always done), or she'll go through it herself (and will absolutely not be accurate and be low in her income and high in her expenses), or she will need to hire someone which will cost money from our limited estate. I would be fine with getting her financials and doing it but what's the chance of that right?

Meeting with my lawyer this week for our first one-on-one following the initial 1 hour consultation. I’ve done my best to be very detailed and filling out the financial affidavit. I’m trying to do as much work as I can to keep billable hours down. I definitely appreciate any other advice on this. I’m not afraid of doing leg work, research or comp completing documentation.

My wife still has no idea that this is happening. My target right now is still mid March. I feel a little like Julia Roberts in that movie sleeping with the enemy… Making plans and have everything lined up before I move ahead with anything officially to escape. I’ve got a UPS mailbox for an alternate mailing address. I’ve also just opened a storage unit.  I have a couple of life insurance policies and now that I’ve got an ultra mailing address. I’m changing the beneficiary to my daughter with a letter of intent. I didn't want to update the policy before updating the mailing address in case something came to the house. I have the storage unit to move important items out of the house and have things protected (so she doesn't destroy a bunch of stuff) or in case she does make a false police statement and I get removed temporarily.

Despite all her BS I am feeling some guilt keeping this charade on. Even though she’s done horrible, really despicable things to me. I feel guilty going on with this pretense that I’m still invested in keeping the relationship alive and working through things. I know it’s not for ill intention, I have to do this for safety purposes and to keep the peace until I’m ready to file/tell her we’re divorcing. But there was a marriage conference at our church the other week. We went to that, talk about awkward. It’s one of those things where me not going would put up so many red flags. But I'm trying to win an academy award an make her think it's business as usual. Right now it’s about keeping the peace as much as possible and not letting on we're divorcing. Got 3-4 weeks to go...

I don’t have any reservations about proceeding with the divorce. We had another episode the last few days. I say we, but I really mean she had an episode. Just for context, my wife drinks daily. If she drinks less than a bottle of wine that’s very out of the ordinary. She also vapes marijuana every night. Usually by around dinner time. She’s just high and drunk most of the time in the evening evenings. The other evening she was in her altered state, talking into her sister, mostly venting about me but it was getting late. I’m usually up by 5 AM, so I really try to lay down by 9 to 9:30. Finally in about 10 PM she was still on the phone and I just told her I was going to sleep. I needed to get up early. She comes to bed not too long after that, I’ve already got my eye mask on the lights are off and my White Noise is on. She’s feeling horny and wants some intimacy so starts trying to cuddle me. I don’t really want to be physical anyway but at this point I’m trying to wind myself down for sleep. I say exactly that - I’m tired, not in a sexy mood. She gets upset, starts talking about feeling rejected and we haven’t been intimate lately. Wants to start getting into it. I sat calm and say I’m not talking about this now, we can talk tomorrow. I reiterate I’m getting up early and so is she.

She presses, so I say I’m going to sleep and not talking about this. If she won’t stop talking I’ll need to go to the spare room.

I went to the spare room and locked the door. Was wound up now but tried my best to relax. She starts calling my phone over and over. I pickup on the 4th time to tell her I’m not talking about this (in hindsight I realize it was a mistake to pickup at all).  Then she comes to the door. Sad/angry/drunk trying to convince me to fix this tonight. I respond I won’t but will come to bed if we can go to sleep. Back in the room after laying down she starts talking. I say ok, since she won’t let me sleep I’m staying in the spare room. Now she sits in front of the door. Telling me she won’t leave and I’ll just have to hit her if I want her to move. After egging me on for a while I finally lost my cool for a moment and called her a psychopath… that’s how she was acting. After realizing I wasn’t talking she moved away from the door.

I make it back to the spare room. She again followed this time screaming and crying loudly. Begging me to come to bed and not lock her out. This is almost 11pm now. My adult disabled son is upset yelling for her to be quiet. She promised she would go to sleep if I came to bed. For my kids I tried again and went to the bedroom. She actually stayed quiet and we were able to go to sleep.

Since then it was 3 days of how badly I mistreated her etc. Her demanding I see her side and apologize, make promises I won't stonewall her again and will not lock the door. (during the episode she also threatened to remove the door off the hinges and tried to tell me I can't use that room for safety because its the room her mom stays in when she's with us). I can’t even describe my frustration. It’s all the same pattern. She wants unlimited access at any time of day or night. Any reasonable boundary - such as no getting into any discussions when alcohol is invoked or depriving me of sleep is me being mean or not giving her space or stonewalling. She used that a lot so probably something she recently learned from her therapist. The crazy party is I did NOT see this for years and years. Makes me sad for the time I've lost. Grateful for more and more clarity.

Nothing really changed. I just held out until she got to baseline today.

But there was another disturbing development from all this. I think the 2nd night of her episode she told me the some old friends through church from where we lived like 10 years ago just got divorced and she was texting the wife.  Making a little passive aggressive innuendos that maybe she’ll be her new texting buddy (insinuating that she could get tips, or maybe she would leave me) - I could only wish...  That night when she was drunk and high and went to lay down early, she left her phone out in the living room. So I went through her messages and saw the exchange. Right near the beginning of the exchange she flat out told this woman that I stepped out on the marriage and cheated on her! That is complete fabrication and a lie. I wanted to yell and run to her right then... But didn't. Being strategic.

Every time something happens, especially that last bit it’s just so much validation that I’m absolutely doing the right thing. I’m mean this so insane, the steps I’m having to go through. How secretive I’m having to be. 

So yeah, my next steps are to meet with the lawyer, figure out next steps there. I think the biggest thing for me is to figuring out the proper set and setting to have the conversation with her. And how to tell my adult kids. Right now my intention is to tell them ahead of time, my daughter for sure. I wanna make sure she hears it from me in a calm way. I know she’ll be sad, but I cannot imagine she’ll be that surprised…

As far as the message to someone spreading a false rumor about me and making a complete false allegation. I did take a picture of it so I have a record of it. And I am going to confront her with it probably in a week or so. I just want to hear what she has to say about it and make sure I record it. My other thought was wait until I tell her I’m divorcing. I figure there’s a good chance way of getting something on a voice recording with her incriminating herself, stating something like she’ll lie or say whatever she needs to say to ruin me or she’ll tell everybody I cheated even though it wasn't true. Or she might retract and state she knows I didn't cheat. Anyway - the particular person she told I don't really care about but that could eventually get around and spread to people I do care about (plus she will probably tell others the same thing) I think she's either painting herself as the victim to garner sympathy or projecting something she's done in the past. I think the former is more likely. Either way it would be beneficial to have something recorded to defend myself moving forward...

Anyways, happy Sunday! Lol

Hi Samss,

That line -  “Parents are wired to care and protect. I can’t do either.” - really hit me.

The rapid-fire texts, the swings between anger and reassurance, the threats… that’s a lot for anyone’s nervous system to absorb. Of course you feel overwhelmed.

One small shift that helped me in my own situation (different relationship, I know) was deciding when I would engage instead of reacting in real time. I stopped responding to waves of messages as they came in and chose a set time to read and reply. It didn’t fix anything overnight, but it helped me stop standing in the middle of the storm.

That wasn’t about caring less. It was about staying steady.

Understanding the diagnosis helps make sense of things, but it doesn’t make it easier emotionally. You’re allowed to feel heartbroken about that.

You’re not alone here.

Hi, Mutt,

Thank you for the link. I did some more digging.

Heartbreak is definitely where I am now. My daughter's threats and accusations and remonstrations and anger are overwhelming. They come at me like a hurricane all at once. She won't "talk" to me and instead sends me massive amounts of texts all-at-once and in very fast succession and then once she gets what she wants whether it's to abuse me, call me names, tell me horrible things about me, in the same breath telling me she doesn't "blame me for who I am" and then threatening to hurt herself and then telling me that I have to support her. I haven't said I won't support her, I'm trying to get her on her feet but she vacillates between saying she's trying to get her act together and that it's all hopeless and nothing will get better.

Knowing the BPD diagnosis helped a lot with all of the confusion I've had the past 5 or so years. It made a lot of sense. Reading posts here and reading as much as I can about the disorder has helped a LOT about making sense of the last few years. Everything makes a LOT more sense but that doesn't mean it makes it easier.

It was like I was putting together a jigsaw puzzle about my daughter's behavior and I had no frame to put it in. I couldn't figure out the corner pieces or the edges to put the other pieces inside. Once I started reading about BPD a LOT of things fell into place.

A friend said that knowing about this is both a curse and a blessing. I can put a name to what she's going through and how to better manage my reaction to her and her outbursts but it doesn't lessen how debilitating it feels being unable to do anything about it.

Parents are wired to care and protect. I can't do either.

Hi Samss,

The question “Did I do this?” really stood out to me.

Many of us have asked that same question. BPD isn’t caused by one parent, one mistake, or one childhood event. It’s much more complex than that. Guilt is a heavy thing to carry, and it doesn’t help you or her.

What I hear most in your post isn’t anger - it’s heartbreak. Loving from the sidelines can feel disheartening and futile.

You’re not alone in that feeling.

Hi, Mutt,

What's been weighing on me? Let's see...

Did I do this?
What made her go from a loving child to one that is all-at-once ranting and manipulative and raving and demanding money as "compensation for her childhood". Seriously, that was part of last exchange to me. Once I gave her the money, even AFTER I gave her the money, she continued to rant saying things like "do I know I'm being manipulative, yes", or "I'm jealous of you, you've had a child and a home and a marriage" (even though I'm divorced many years now), and "I'll never have any of that".

Everything was so all-at-once hopeless and completely devoid of any hope for her. She spends too much time online reading about "things" and it is nuts her views on things that she didn't used to have before. Everything is only her opinion as the right one. No one, especially not me, can tell her anything. If I try to have any sort of opinion about anything, I'm immediately to be discounted and attacked all-at-once.

Until I read the line from her last exchange that she had this and a host of other issues, I didn't know what the diagnosis was because she won't share information with me. I have her on my insurance and told her to use my insurance to pay for the therapy and her response was, "you'll know who my therapist is then". I don't get what that would get me. I just wanted to make sure she had what she needs. That's it. I just want to make sure that what she needs for therapy and medication is covered. She can't seem to hold down a job, or I don't even know if she's looking. She makes comments about applying to places but when I give her leads, she ignores me.

It's all very frustrating watching from the sidelines and only hearing from her when she's manic in one direction or another. Although, now that I know what the diagnosis is it puts her behavior for the past few years in perspective. A lot more things make sense. I've been saying to friends that she goes from one extreme to another and it's bizarre dealing with the jekyll/hyde personality. So much more stuff makes sense now.

That doesn't mean any of it is easy though. I want to wrap her up in a big fluffy blanket surrounded by bubble wrap and make sure she's safe but she won't let me so all I can do is watch from the sidelines while she listens to her mother who is probably the worst person in the world to enable whatever she's dealing with.

Honestly, it all feels very disheartening and futile.