Our whole family just can't seem to get along with our daughter-in-law with BPD.

[huskergirl]

My husband and I have been married for 30 years.  We have 3 children, all in their 20's.  Our son, the oldest, has been married for almost 5 years and he and his

wife are expecting their 3rd child.  It is the wife of our oldest son who has brought much misery to my husband and me and the rest of the family. I always felt that we had a close family, but things changed when our oldest got married. The posts I read about others struggling with a daughter-in-law with BPD have been an encouragement to me and describe our life with this daughter-in-law. I don't feel quite so alone.  I have found helpful books and talked to professional counselors a few times in the past, but this website was a boost today.   One question I would really like to hear from others on is this: How does

your daughter-in-law get along with her family?  Maybe our situation is unusual because our daughter-in-law is very close to her parents and siblings.  It does seem

like an unhealthy closeness because her parents are SO involved in my son and daughter-in-law's life.  They help support them financially (my son's in-laws are

very wealthy and able to retire in their 40's), just bought a house in the town where our son lives, and are together constantly.  Our relationship gets consistently

worse with our son and his wife, but with her family all things seem wonderful.  We are no longer allowed to see our grandchildren and our daughter-in-law has not

seen us for 7 months and has spoken to us briefly just 2 times in those months.  Our son rarely talks to us and his behavior fits the descriptions given by others. Does anyone else have this situation with such closeness with the daughter-in-law's family?  Of course, it makes it all the more painful that the other grandparents spend

so much time with the grandchildren. We were close to the first grandchild for awhile, but that got taken away.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Rapt Reader]

Hello, huskergirl & 

Your story is tugging at my heartstrings, because I was really in the same position as yours, except for the part about your son's In-Laws; my own D-I-L (whom I suspect has undiagnosed BPD) is close to her parents and family emotionally, but not in location. Her parents live very far away from my son and her, so we do see them more often than they do--even in the past during the times of No Contact, which were put in place by my D-I-L.

I, actually, didn't find this site because of my D-I-L; I came here because my other, older son was diagnosed with BPD a year ago, and I needed to learn all I could about this disorder so I could communicate and deal with him better. Lo and behold, after reading all I could around here, I realized that the myriad of problems our family has been having ever since my younger (non-BPD) son got engaged to and married his beautiful, charismatic wife, were most likely due to her having--at the very least--High Functioning BPD behaviors. Since my BPD son's symptoms and behaviors are unlike hers in many ways (he is Low Functioning BPD), my D-I-L hit our family like a tsunami with issues that we've never had to deal with before within our little nuclear family. These issues were familiar to us--outside of the 4 of us--because of my (most likely) undiagnosed BPD Mother-In-Law.

There has been No Contact put in place with our family, many times, by D-I-L over the last 10 years. It always seemed like it came out of nowhere, for no reason at all. When my son, in his desperate attempt to support and keep peace with his wife, went along with it, it hurt even more. I always handled it in the "wrong" ways, and was never able to "fix" things in a timely manner. It was stressful, hurtful, confusing and frustrating for all of us in the family.

Once I found this site, the communication tools and techniques I learned about and used with my BPDson (who lives with us--and they worked!), I started using what I learned with my non-BPD son and my D-I-L. Here are the links that I read first, and that helped me right away with them:

Communication using validation. What it is; how to do it

TOOLS: S.E.T. - Support, Empathy and Truth

This Workshop: How do we become more empathetic to the pwBPD in our life was a turning point for me and my family. Once I realized that I needed to take my own feelings out of my interactions with her, and I needed to get beneath the trauma and drama going on and validate the child in her that was driving her anger at us, I handled things with her differently. We were actually still in No Contact with her at the time I participated in that Workshop, but I was able to make things better. Today, several months later, we are still in contact with my non-BPD son and D-I-L, I get to see my new (and first!) grandchild regularly, and things are going well. When you check out that Workshop you will get a more detailed idea of what my problems with her were, how I worked out in my head how to deal with her, and how things got better. I really do highly recommend you read it 

[huskergirl]

Thanks so much for your caring comments and the suggestions that might help us.  I really appreciate it! I will keep you posted.

[Stella1425]

Wow. We really can see identical situations around here can't we. My D is divorced now but her ex's family caused (in my eyes) our family so much misery. Now that I have reexamined that my D has a BPD (I just knew years ago but put it on the back burner and forgot it) I realize that a lot of what they know was the "stories" that our pwBPD told. (In fact now I'm realizing that many people looked at me differently over the years~~ now makes sense) Regardless I have so much disdain for them. Our D mostly does too. Our ex son in law has narcissistic personality disorder diagnosed by a counselor that he was ordered to see after he hit our D and she put him in jail (5 years ago) she didn't leave him for 2 more years and that was the first we were brought into the loop. Our D tried to call them to help her and they passed her to us by telling her to tell us about it now. They were done dealing with her.  They all live in some city area 2 hours from us. Anyway nice folks huh?  My point was the inlaws added to the mix to make our lives harder. Rapt reader, I read the workshop you referred to in your answer and all the conversation that followed. It was a good one. I obviously need to look more into myself to resolve things before I can work on relationship with D. My empathy is not where it should be. I am hurting from BPD behavior that she did hide somewhat in the last years after the divorce. She needed us so much and we were there got her too much.