What have I done wrong?

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Hi, my wife has been charged and now convicted of a serious attack on her 6 year old daughter, my step daughter.  The child was left with two black eyes, cuts bruises, and very very upset.  I called our local child youth and family services the day it happened and they separated me and two children, daughter 6, and our biological child 1, the same day.

I have also been assaulted over our five year relationship, mainly cuts, scratches, but violence always extreme.  It is like she is possessed by a demon.

We had no contact for 3 months, then family group conference about 6 weeks ago.  My wife has been counselled and helped by local church.  After conference we had a few moments together and she was very very sorry, said she loved me, etc.

Her support people from church also told me that although she had been very hard work, they believe they had got through to her.  Main issue was her understanding hurting her daughter (this was not the first time but most serious).

I was told that even though a protection order was in place, I could contact her and we could still have relationship.  At this time she was on bail waiting sentence.

So I started seeing her again.  She not allowed any contact with daughter but had been given one hour a week with Son, supervised.

All started well, lots of loving messages, a lot of passion and emotion.  I let her spend time with son, trusted her, had daughter have sleepovers so we could have some time together.

There were issues over last few weeks, since she has gone I have had all money ( I work and have business).  When we separated she had all our savings in her account.  At the time I was just happy to escape.

When we started seeing each other again she had already spent half the savings on lawyers, accommodation etc.  one issue she wanted me to now start paying her rent. I said no, I was doing good job looking after both children, going to work, paying day care, after school care and any money left I was saving for the children. 

This caused a major blow out.

Her sentencing was last week.  Probation services didn't like where she was staying as had young children (family with flat in house).  She was almost certain to get jail.  So I asked around and one of church members a widow, 35 (and attractive) offered to take her in.  Judge delayed sentence for probation to review new address.  This means with my and lots of other caring people support she avoids jail.

So is she happy?  Today we seem back to square one.  She accused me of secretly having this widow as girlfriend (illogical, if we wanted to get rid of her we could have let her go jail).

She then said if she lived with this woman, woman would get relationship with our son (her daughter who currently with me will be fostered by very nice family who have done lots help wife) then I would replace her (wife) with this woman.  She said she would rather go jail.

We had lunch today, I brought our son.  She not happy so I said shall I just take you home? Daughter with friends today.

So I took her home, she got out car, slammed door and stalked off.  No goodbye, no love, not even goodbye to 1,year old. Just angry, insecure, bitter.  Now risk of prison is receding she doesn't seem to love me so much any more.  I tried to neutralise all her anger, not respond.  She also now feeling a bit safer says it is all my fault, I set her up, called authorities, etc.

What she seems to be missing is nothing would have happened if she hadn't beaten up her child.  Daughter does not want to see her at all.

She also now accusing me of getting everything and poor her has nothing (she still has what left of savings).

I have tried to help her despite violence against me, daughter (and I suspect son).

I have been willing to re-engage and accept her promises.

I have given her lots of time with our son.

It's only six weeks back with relationship and she does this ___ behaviour to me.

Actually I hold all the cards, protection order, children, still have business, life has been pretty good for us without her crazy making. 

Child youth and family 100% don't trust her.  They have made restraining order against her daughter (who she will probably never mother again).  They have warned me that if I get back with her they may take son as well.

All she had to do was be moderately nice to me, show some progress with her courses, accept the help and support offered by our community (some very good people).

So why today, why the money issues, why can't she see some sense.

I know she hates idea of me having money, power, independence. 

She was married for ten years, failed. Daughters father married man, never paid 1 dollar.  I suspect that first two men ran.

In my heart I still care for this woman, she is mother of our child, when she is being nice things can be great.

I wonder now how much of an act she has been putting on for me.  She doesn't accept that for her to have something back of her family, means lots of hard work.

So after only six weeks, criminal conviction, and me still helping her, we have this horrible day.

I also begin to worry safety of our child.  She is capable of violence.  When she "blows" all logic is gone.  As I said like demonic possession.

Unlike a lot of men's posts, I have got my son, protection order, and choice.

Tomorrow she will send me loving message, she will be heartbroken, miss me, miss son, make promises.

I think I should leave, cut my losses.  I feel like I will be abandoning her to her fate.  I don't want to stop her seeing our son, but will she end up hurting him as well?

She is illogical, jealous in the extreme, ungrateful, violent, angry, controlling, and seemingly incapable of even pretending to be nice (for more than a couple of weeks).

I feel like I already know the right answer, leave, but a big part of me still wants to accept her promises.

I am no angel, I have symptoms of BPD myself, I am worried being a one parent family.

I am worried if I leave I will make another bad choice. 

All in all it's a bloody mess.

Some advice, clear directions, simple plans, would be greatly appreciated.

[Camlo]

Hi, my wife has been charged and now convicted of a serious attack on her 6 year old daughter, my step daughter.  The child was left with two black eyes, cuts bruises, and very very upset.  I called our local child youth and family services the day it happened and they separated me and two children, daughter 6, and our biological child 1, the same day.

I have also been assaulted over our five year relationship, mainly cuts, scratches, but violence always extreme.  It is like she is possessed by a demon.

We had no contact for 3 months, then family group conference about 6 weeks ago.  My wife has been counselled and helped by local church.  After conference we had a few moments together and she was very very sorry, said she loved me, etc.

Her support people from church also told me that although she had been very hard work, they believe they had got through to her.  Main issue was her understanding hurting her daughter (this was not the first time but most serious).

I was told that even though a protection order was in place, I could contact her and we could still have relationship.  At this time she was on bail waiting sentence.

So I started seeing her again.  She not allowed any contact with daughter but had been given one hour a week with Son, supervised.

All started well, lots of loving messages, a lot of passion and emotion.  I let her spend time with son, trusted her, had daughter have sleepovers so we could have some time together.

There were issues over last few weeks, since she has gone I have had all money ( I work and have business).  When we separated she had all our savings in her account.  At the time I was just happy to escape.

When we started seeing each other again she had already spent half the savings on lawyers, accommodation etc.  one issue she wanted me to now start paying her rent. I said no, I was doing good job looking after both children, going to work, paying day care, after school care and any money left I was saving for the children. 

This caused a major blow out.

Her sentencing was last week.  Probation services didn't like where she was staying as had young children (family with flat in house).  She was almost certain to get jail.  So I asked around and one of church members a widow, 35 (and attractive) offered to take her in.  Judge delayed sentence for probation to review new address.  This means with my and lots of other caring people support she avoids jail.

So is she happy?  Today we seem back to square one.  She accused me of secretly having this widow as girlfriend (illogical, if we wanted to get rid of her we could have let her go jail).

She then said if she lived with this woman, woman would get relationship with our son (her daughter who currently with me will be fostered by very nice family who have done lots help wife) then I would replace her (wife) with this woman.  She said she would rather go jail.

We had lunch today, I brought our son.  She not happy so I said shall I just take you home? Daughter with friends today.

So I took her home, she got out car, slammed door and stalked off.  No goodbye, no love, not even goodbye to 1,year old. Just angry, insecure, bitter.  Now risk of prison is receding she doesn't seem to love me so much any more.  I tried to neutralise all her anger, not respond.  She also now feeling a bit safer says it is all my fault, I set her up, called authorities, etc.

What she seems to be missing is nothing would have happened if she hadn't beaten up her child.  Daughter does not want to see her at all.

She also now accusing me of getting everything and poor her has nothing (she still has what left of savings).

I have tried to help her despite violence against me, daughter (and I suspect son).

I have been willing to re-engage and accept her promises.

I have given her lots of time with our son.

It's only six weeks back with relationship and she does this ___ behaviour to me.

Actually I hold all the cards, protection order, children, still have business, life has been pretty good for us without her crazy making. 

Child youth and family 100% don't trust her.  They have made restraining order against her daughter (who she will probably never mother again).  They have warned me that if I get back with her they may take son as well.

All she had to do was be moderately nice to me, show some progress with her courses, accept the help and support offered by our community (some very good people).

So why today, why the money issues, why can't she see some sense.

I know she hates idea of me having money, power, independence. 

She was married for ten years, failed. Daughters father married man, never paid 1 dollar.  I suspect that first two men ran.

In my heart I still care for this woman, she is mother of our child, when she is being nice things can be great.

I wonder now how much of an act she has been putting on for me.  She doesn't accept that for her to have something back of her family, means lots of hard work.

So after only six weeks, criminal conviction, and me still helping her, we have this horrible day.

I also begin to worry safety of our child.  She is capable of violence.  When she "blows" all logic is gone.  As I said like demonic possession.

Unlike a lot of men's posts, I have got my son, protection order, and choice.

Tomorrow she will send me loving message, she will be heartbroken, miss me, miss son, make promises.

I think I should leave, cut my losses.  I feel like I will be abandoning her to her fate.  I don't want to stop her seeing our son, but will she end up hurting him as well?

She is illogical, jealous in the extreme, ungrateful, violent, angry, controlling, and seemingly incapable of even pretending to be nice (for more than a couple of weeks).

I feel like I already know the right answer, leave, but a big part of me still wants to accept her promises.

I am no angel, I have symptoms of BPD myself, I am worried being a one parent family.

I am worried if I leave I will make another bad choice. 

All in all it's a bloody mess.

Some advice, clear directions, simple plans, would be greatly appreciated.

[sweetheart]

Hello Camlo, your post makes for very distressing reading, this must be a truly awful situation for you and your children to be in.

My deal breaker for my eight year marriage with dBPDh, my absolute 'line in the sand' is if any of his dysregulation, any aspect of his disorder were to be directed in any way toward our six year old son, our marriage would be over. It is ironic that in amongst all the chaos that living with someone with BPD brings, our son and my dBPDh have managed to sustain a positive, loving reasonably normal parent child relationship. The reason for this, and probably the reason I am on the undecided board is because the amount of energy I have to invest in creating 'normal' for our son is draining the life out of me. In fact there is not a lot of me left that I recognise. Don't get me wrong our son is completely aware that his dad is different from other dad's and does have to do some emotional care taking from time to time. When my dBPDh is dysregulated or even just moody and irritable nothing is ever aimed at our son and I mean nothing, not even verbally. I am not suggesting that bringing our son up in an family where his father has BPD is by any means perfect, but thus far he is a well adjusted, bright, beautiful and happy little boy.

So when I read your post I was absolutely horrified that your wife had attacked one of your children and I don't think if I read your post properly that this is the first time. What concerns me is that you still have some confusion about whether you should leave her. Yes you absolutely should leave her, your job as a parent is to protect and safeguard your children from harm and to provide them with a safe home environment. It is important for the well-being of your children and you that you keep them away from her. If you do not you are knowingly placing yourself and more importantly your children at risk and this is not okay.

You have outlined a history of extreme behaviour including violence toward a child, so this is information you have about what your wife is capable of.

You do not say whether your wife is in any form of treatment or not, or whether there are any health professionals involved with her, does she have any formal diagnosis? Hopefully for her and your children is that all her future contact with children will be supervised by Child Protection Services. It may also be possible for the courts to make treatment options compulsory for her if she has a formal diagnosis. This could then be used as a way of assessing all future contact with her children.

This is a very serious situation that you are in with your children, but for me there are no grey areas where children are concerned, their safety is paramount.

[Camlo]

Thank you sweetheart.  I think I know the answer.  Yesterday it was like a switch went in her head.  Quite scary actually.  I have almost believed she has changed, but it is not that simple.

Probation have had her do anti violence course.  She is starting parenting course next week.  She is actually a sweet petit woman on the surface.

With daughter, I believe she terrorised the child for some time.  The reason I am not in jail (she tried to frame me initially) is because we were separated so fast, daughter had all the child interviews with police and ended up opening up completely. 

I also had quite a lot of evidence, I had started recording some incidents on my mobile phone.

It was only when presented with this evidence that her lawyer did an about turn and told her to plead guilty (with mitigating circumstances) and hope for leniency.

What did she do.  She slapped and punched daughter head many times.  I remember saying this was illegal and she could go to jail.  When the explosions came, her face would change, there was real scary madness in her eyes.  Daughter told police that one time when daughter would not take some medication she put knife to her throat and threatened to cut her head off. Another time when daughter couldn't understand some homework, threatened to cut off her hand.  Our baby when six months old (18 months now) was crying in bed a lot.  Wife was tired and angry.  Baby was lying with head against side of cot, wife started kicking cot with every ounce of strength in her body. Only reason baby alive today is his head wasn't actually touching the bars on the cot.  Other times she would hold him out and threaten to drop him on the floor (this if I was uncomplient with her wishes).  This happened at least three times.

Since we separated children have got better.  I am not perfect and have some demons myself, but it am not violent and quite kind person.

Son sleeps with me, and now sleeps all through the night, before we woke up every two hours of so.  Daughter has gained weight, happy, doing well at school.

When I let wife back in 6 weeks ago, even though she hasn't seen daughter, she has spent some time with son (with me).  Sons sleeping started to break up again.  He is only 18 months but seems scared of mummy.  This makes her angry.

Her attacks on me were always around extreme and irrational jealousy.  Two occasions had to have time off work.  She always went for the head.  Threatened me with knives.

If I stood up to her you could see the red mist descending in her eyes.

Yesterday part of the problem was I would not give in and take any blame for what happened.

I also told her that she did kick her daughters head repeatedly on that day, and she only stopped when daughters nose exploded with blood all over the carpet.  Once we separated I and kids moved, I had to get carpet cleaners in and so much blood stain still left on floor (even after I had cleaned up).  I gave statement to police saying all of this.

Yesterday she angry that I made statement. She said it wasn't that bad and she and daughter had nice day together.  I think daughter was so scared that day that she did anything to make mummy happy.  Now daughter doesn't miss mummy, definitely doesn't want to see her.

The three of us, lived in terror when wife blew up.  Other times and most of the time she was OK, breast fed baby, very attentive bordering on obsessive with children welfare, food etc.

Violence on daughter took off when it became clear that although daughter a lovely girl, and talented at dancing and art, was not academically bright (average), this made mummy mad.

Today I am with kids alone.  I feel I have done all I can for wife.  She will get home detention not jail.  May be the sudden end of the relationship meant I didn't have closure.  I also felt guilty that I actually kind of won.  I got kids, job, hope.  She has no job and when our savings run out no money either.  I still feel responsible for her.  She is strong willed, sounds like she was beaten herself as a child.  I feel sorry for her.  I wanted her to be mum to our son at least. 

I don't think she can change.  She might be good for a year, two, five, but what's there underneath is dangerous and hasn't been cured.

I know I should leave look after kids and make my life for them.  I have her daughter at moment, even though I not girls biological father.  Daughter will be fostered (to very nice family).  I am 48 this year and worry about looking after son alone for next 16 years at least.  If something happens to me he will have no one ( I have no family here). 

I suppose son has better chance with me, than with me and mummy together.  He is much happier now.

I suppose I need validation of what I know I should do.  Take this opportunity with all the cards in my hand to escape and get back a normal life.  I have been growing in strength these last few months, and started enjoying stuff.  I bought a parrot for the kids.  Wife hates parrot and says it makes them sick.  Just another bit of her obsessive behaviour.

Anyway thanks for post.  I think you are right line in the sand is hurting children.  This wasn't a minor thing.  She could easily have killed the child.  Kicking head was extreme.

Thanks

[Camlo]

  Today she is calling me saying she should look after her children (she doesn't trust me).  I still have both.  Txt saying she need them, if she don't have her children she will kill herself.

I spoke to her this evening.  I said she is thinking wrong. Children are actually safe and happy.

If she love them how could she kill herself.  She has lost control, I think she wants it back.

Saturday daughter went to friends house, is met wife for Yum cha. Start was accusing me of talking about her to some distant ex, who I haven't seen for years.  We got into "no I didn't" "yes you did" circle.  I had enough and said shall I take you home.  She said "I don't care".  When we got to her place she got out car and stormed off.  Didn't even look or say goodbye to our 18 month son.

Back to today, I wonder who she thinking about, herself or children?  They both safe and happy.  Daughter does only trust her at all and doesn't want to see her.  She says it is different for man, woman need to look after her children.  I said to her that it was her extreme violence that led to this, not me.  This made her angry again.

Am I being played?  I don't think she will kill herself, just a sympathy threat.

She demand I help her get children back.  I say with her daughter already out of my hands, daughter belong to government now.  Only they can decide.  She sent daughter card saying all her fault, she just want to hold and kiss her daughter.  I could see daughter found this idea very scary and as usual said she does not want to see her mummy.

Wife is either setting me up or is actually seriously mentally unstable.

She says she wants to look after our son, have him for herself.

Suddenly I am thinking, would she kill herself and our son.  Her attitude and tone, really worry me now.

I don't trust her.  I let her back, now she putting me under so much pressure.

Our boy is lovely.  I can tell he is uncomfortable with her.

This is getting very serious and worrying now.  I am too weak, only reason I am safe with kids in restraining order for daughter meaning unless daughter staying with friends or out the house wife cannot see us.

I go back to what I said.  Wife terrorised her daughter, hurt her badly, now can't understand that if she promises to never do again why she can't have her back.

I tell her both children happy, healthy, and if she loves them No1 then that is what is most important.  Not what she feels is good for them. Not what she feels is good for her.

This situation is getting out of hand.  I am protected by law, but I have been weak and let her back to some extent.

I now really worry.  I cannot see any way we can ever be family again.  Today I am supposed to feel sorry for her and her desire to kill herself, but instead start thinking if this is her mind, she would take our son and hurt/kill him as we'll.

I need some advice.  Is this behaviour typical.  Is her violence common?

I am safe now, but will I get sucked back into her crazy world.

Yes I feel sorry for her, I care about her, but now she really scares me.