Hi there,
That's a tricky situation. I'm not sure if I'm reading things correctly, but you think that your man increasingly sees you as content and self-reliant. He thinks you appear to be indifferent to whether or not he spends the night with you, whether or not he helps with bills/chores/kids. In short, you're not phased by his moods, and you let him have his space to calm down and do as he pleases, while you try to live your best life. Rather than interpret the situation in a positive way (you are giving your man freedom to come and go as he pleases, to take the space he needs to self-regulate), he's thinking you don't NEED him, and he finds that upsetting. After all, he appears to be losing his control, his power over you and your feelings. His reaction? He tries to provoke you, with passive-aggressive hostility, anything to get a rise out of you, to force you to MATCH his emotions. It sounds to me like he's actually upset that he's not getting under your skin as he usually does. Even your young child detects that he's in a mood and unfairly picking on you. Does that sound about right?
I guess I'd advise to hold your "boundary" (not to get sucked in to his negative behavior/attitude, and not let his outbursts get in the way of you going about living your life in a healthy/productive way). My thinking is, don't "dignify" his little meltdown with a text message. I'd say, wait until he returns and is in a good mood, and then provide praise and reassurances. If you jump the gun, he might still be in a funk and take your message the wrong way. Worse, he might take a message as an invitation to start a text war.
Now, I'm not saying that you should stonewall him whenever he wants to broach an important topic, such as the divorce he brought up. It's just that it sounded to me like he wasn't trying to have a real discussion, but that he was making a scene, an empty threat, in front of your young child no less, just to unleash some of his anger your way, pique you and get you riled up. I think in that situation you did well to remain calm and defuse the situation by going upstairs.
I imagine that by now you've seen on these boards the advice not to JADE--justify, argue, defend or explain--whenever your loved one with BPD is having a meltdown. I've found that avoiding JADE is helpful when loved ones are dysregulated, and instead I pretend to be a gray rock (still, solid and boring), and I usually give them some space as soon as physically possible. I think of this as an "adult time out."


