Hello all!
Back when I was discovering the BPD of my now ex and the process before and during the separation/divorce process, this forum was a life saver. I still exercise extreme boundaries with my ex thanks to all I have learned here, but I've had a recent trend of disturbing events and I wanted to get some feedback and brush up on my BPD skills.
I'm coming up on 5 years of separation and about 3 years of being divorced. As to be expected is was a drawn out and lengthy and costly battle over kids, business, etc. Thankfully, the the good Lord was looking after us and I got the kids, now D11 and D8. They struggle with many of the same issues I struggled with for so many years and still do to a degree, but nowhere like it was when we were in the same house.
Over the last 6-8 months she has lost a lot of weight, she is below where she was when we separated, even though she had gained 100+ lbs since then. She has been on a high horse lately and has started dropping random comments and actions that would be typical of someone that wasn't your enemy. It all started with a comment about my new house (well, 8 months after moving) that I should plant bushes in the front of it. Then I made the mistake of smiling at a funny musical my daughter was in, and my ex said, this is the first time I've seen you smile since before the separation. I knew I blew it totally then. Last week, my grandmother died and the funeral was 3.5 hours away. My ex hasn't seen her in 8 years and literally maybe 3-4 times ever. Without asking myself or my mom, she showed up for the family time, 2 hours before the funeral started, 5 minutes after I showed up. I was in shock, disbelief. My girls had the same reaction. We left a minute later, out the side door w/o any drama of incident and went on our way, missing the funeral. My mom was upset, but it is sort my moms fault because my mom has made small talk with her at events like the musical and the few times my ex contacts my mom via email. I've made it very clear to my mom to do a no-contact and only say "hi" if you run into her and thats it, but my mom just didn't get it, and hopefully now she does. Then I really didn't hear much from my ex for a week (which was odd) and then today she emailed me and said my business website was nice and that it had some grammatical errors that needed fixed and made a big ol diagram with lines showing what was wrong and what it should be and told me what a great grammar person she is.
Literally, for the last 5 years I have followed this policy without exception... .
a) Never respond to her anger, and never show any emotion. This worked well as she never yells at me like she did the first few years after separation. Occasionally I get a few jabs via email, but thats about it.
b) Never answer her calls unless the girls are with her. If the girls choose to answer the phone when she calls in the evening, then thats fine, but they rarely do. This has caused her to call 3-4 times in an evening to try and reach them, but it never works. That pattern has subsided now she doesn't call much, because it has been replaced with email (more on that later)
c) Never respond to her texts unless it needs a response, even if its about the girls. Ive gone through periods of at least one random text per day, but it goes in bursts and cycles between that and email and sometimes nothing at all.
d) Never respond to her emails which are usually much longer than they need to be. If it absolutely requires a response I will respond with the shortest answer possible and if one word works, I will do that.
My oldest daughter has been getting flooded with emails and has asked me if she can have a different email address and just not give that one to mom.
Lat year she went to court over what she was paying for child support. Between the time she filed and the time court was scheduled, she lost her job. The day before court she advised through her attorney that she wanted to pay $0 in child support since she was jobless. My attorney wanted it to be a minimum amount but I said, Thank you Lord, make it $0. This will keep her from going to court every year to get child support changed and might even keep her from going to court for other reasons of fear she would have to pay child support again. It was set at $0 with the stipulation because she didn't have a job. Well, she has had one now for 6 months. I don't need that money and it would cost more to deal with legal expenses than what I would get from it anyhow. So far so good.
I assume her thinking of going to the funeral was a way to inject herself into a situation to be around me and I would have to stay, thinking I wouldn't leave a funeral, but I did. I suppose her offering advice for my website was her way of being kind or nice to me in some sick way, and a way to toot her own narcissist horn. On fathers day, she told me I was a great father and thought it was great how much I loved the girls. She told me she wanted to get down to the weight she was when we got married.
I have only dated a little bit and it's really been behind the scenes as to not expose my girls to it or anyone and to not fuel anything from my ex either. Although, she has accused me of dating and various things to the girls, but it really goes over their head since they really don't understand what all that is since they have not been expose to it. My ex hasn't dated to my knowledge, but only in the past month or so has she really even been at a point that any male might consider her. Well, thats my opinion anyhow. I still don't see how anyone would, BUT, she isn't as gross as she has been.
Do I just keep holding steady with what Im doing and just weather this like I've weather everything else? Have I forgotten something over the years that I need to brush up on my BPD handling skills. My ex, in addition to BPD, is Bipolar and she was going through a bipolar episode a few months back where she was going to write a book, complete her masters degree online, get a dog (she did), become a physiologists to help others, and this was all things my girls shared with me that she has talked about doing, and there are more but I forget them. What happens is when her depression is successfully managed by her bipolar meds, then the BPD comes out and thats what I'm dealing with now. For the last few years, the depression was really leading the way and I didn't get a lot of the BPD exposure.
Thank you all!
