I'm back, and boy, have I had an adventure

[claudiaduffy]

Howdy, folks.

It's been since late 2012 that I was last here, and in that time, all the following happened -

• My relationship with my uBPD mother has remained mostly decent and well-boundaried



• I dated and fell in love with a man



• He went through his own journey of discovery and change in learning that his relationship with his parents was intolerably unhealthy and abusive



• After serious counsel from spiritual and mental health professionals, he made the changes he needed and wanted to in order to get out from under their umbrella (this included telling them that he was moving out and selling the house that they all had been living in)



• We were engaged to be married



• His mother's uBPD/NPD flared hugely as she and his father were faced with having to handle their own lives for the first time in ages (they had the resources they needed - including a house they own in another state - but had been unwilling to stand on their own feet as long as they could rely on my then-fiance)



• His father died suddenly one week before our wedding



• We married anyway, despite his mother's protestations, and moved into our apartment



• We patiently handled my MIL's theatrics because of her bereavement, but when she couldn't make us puppets, she amped up manipulation attempts, including serious suicide threats, and landed herself in a psychiatric ward, and became so verbally abusive to us in front of professionals that our patience ended



• She was released and decided to leave to go live with her sister across the country



• We emptied the house of MIL's belongings (my husband's belongings were already with us), changed the locks, put it up for sale, and sent the storage key and payment info to her. We told her, in a letter, that we were not going to be in contact with her for at least a year and that she was not to email us or contact me in any way. She had our mailing address for any true emergency need.



• She came back to town and launched a barrage of attacks through mutual friends, who eventually quit listening to her claims that I and my church cult had brainwashed her son



• We steadily refused contact with her, severed the cell phone family plan, blocked her on social media, graciously but not evasively explained to any intermediaries sent our way that MIL was in need of professional help and that the public report she put out about us was largely untrue, and enjoyed several months of peace (though we knew we were still receiving a barrage of emails from her, which funneled automatically into our trash folders.)



• We received a letter from a man we'd never heard of, in a neighboring state telling us how wonderful MIL thought we were, and asking us to come to their wedding the following month. We wrote him back that we hoped and prayed the best for them and would not be in attendance. The attached note from MIL we left unanswered.

They did marry on schedule. We know this because we've received more emails and letters from her since- the emails we've ignored and left unread; the letter we answered only to tell her that her second vehicle that she'd left on our property was impounded by the police as abandoned (we didn't want her going on our silence to conclude that we'd kept or sold it)

We're currently discussing remaining NC for good, once this first year is up in January, and will be discussing this with our counselor over the coming months to make sure we know what we're doing.

Annnnnnnnnnnd we're having a really, really great first year of marriage. My husband had to grow up a lot, and quickly, once I saw what was going on his family when we were still dating, and asked him if he was aware of it and if he planned to let it be that way forever. I would not have kept dating him if he hadn't, at every juncture, done his own research and manned up about taking charge of his own life. I knew what it was like to have to make the changes he did, in his own mind and heart, and it spoke very loudly of his character and his growing love for himself and for me that he was able to make all the changes that he did.

He's still barely beginning the work of really grieving his parents, and we're still trying to get that blasted house sold (so many bad memories there - plus it's too big for us), but both of us are so very grateful for the mature, healthy, unconditional love and respect and support we receive from each other. Not to mention the fun and laughs and good sex and companionship and mental and spiritual stimulation we find in each other. I've had good friends in my life - and still do - but my husband is a deeper good than I ever expected to find in my life.

I'm looking forward to catching up around here and will particularly be listening to conversations about going permanently NC with your BPDs.

[claudiaduffy]

ahahahahha and let me tag on a yelp of anger over the postcard we got in the mail this evening. It was addressed to my husband alone, and simply said,

Love like Jesus is coming back today, boy!

-your dear Mother

 

OH MY GOSH HE IS NOT A BOY GIVE IT UP ALREADY

Ahem. Let me go gather my serenity. I dropped it on the sidewalk as we hurried to shove that blasted postcard in the dumpster.

[happyfingers]

Wow, what a story!  Well, I'm glad to hear you and your husband have each other.  My husband had no BPD experience until he married me, poor fella.  He's had a crash course ever since.

I've tried to be NC with my uBPD mother since last November 2.  Since I'm halfway across the country from where she lives, it's going pretty well.  She tries to call occasionally, but I have her blocked on my iPhone.  She sometimes emails my 19yo daughter because she doesn't like my email address (which starts out mrs.astronomy@, and she hates my husband) and I refuse to use the email address that she started for me on her AOL account.  Yes, we have a battle of the email address going on, because that's what normal people do; right?

I think she's getting ready to stop by our house soon, however, because she's saying suddenly in her emails to DD that she wants to go to Disneyworld in Florida.  I'd hate to call the cops on her, but that may be upcoming. 

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is I understand what your husband is going through, grieving for his parents.  I'm dealing with the same thing, and I'm so grateful I have my husband to lean on.  It probably sounds really odd to outsiders, but maybe here all of you can understand that I still love her and miss her, even though I can't have a relationship with her and still be my own person.  Also, when you've had one person making most of your decisions for 40 plus years, once that person is no longer around, it's hard to know what to do with yourself, if that makes sense.

Nice postcard you got.  They've just got to have the last word, don't they?

[claudiaduffy]

Happyfingers,

Thanks for the encouragement! You sure do have a lot to grieve, yourself (by the way, I read some of your other posts - my husband and I were also competitive pianists in high school. Weird.  )

Question: does your daughter WANT to get emails from your mom? I'd block that craziness in a heartbeat if I were her.

I do understand a bit about loving and missing your mom, though I'm about ten years into my healing process over my mom. I've felt her illness since I was a very young child, and in my early twenties I began grieving the mom I never actually had. I can now be pretty much stable in dealing with my mother as a limited and dysfunctional human that gave birth to me and remains mostly innocuous toward me now that I've maintained healthy boundaries (she's kind of afraid of me, which I am fine with.) My husband doesn't miss his mom at the moment because he's so angry at her hatefulness and cruelty over the past year or two, and her ongoing refusal to respect the autonomy of any human being. Both of us feel that "love" is an odd thing to define when it comes to our mothers. Both of us would love to never have to deal with either of them ever again. We don't really like them, at best. But we do hope the best for them.

[healinghome]

wow!  congrats on your marriage and having such inspiring strength to face that situation.  your husbands uBPD/npd mother sounds like she put you guys through the wringer.  I always think that if they put as much energy into their own lives instead of their obsessions with controlling others, they would be inspirational as well!  well done for being so strong.  I wish you much happiness and peace to continue always in your futures.   

[HappyChappy]

What a cracking story. Well do you both.

[claudiaduffy]

Daisy4,

Yeah, it's be nice if she could even recognize that others have a life apart from her own life. She thinks she is putting all her energy into her own life... .it's just that all her dolls aren't doing what she's telling them to. "The wringer" is right. I will say, though, that her ridiculous and hateful behavior was a good thing in that it made it really, really obvious what our right choice was to be in severing ties with her. If she had been nicer we'd still be trying to put up with her more moderate offenses.

HappyChappy,

Thanks!

[healinghome]

Yeah, it's be nice if she could even recognize that others have a life apart from her own life

I know what you mean, its not as though they ignore the lives and feelings of others... .its not even a reality that made it anywhere near their rear view mirror.  when nons bring up how they have been emotionally affected by a situation created by someone with BPD, (in my experience) they look at me as if I caused it (they are able to flip reality so expertly with no awareness of doing so), or look completely confused at the notion that I might even have feelings!  I think that's related to the whole 'their feelings are facts' reality they live.  ie; if they feel a certain way, then it must have actually happened that way. 

it is sad to have to walk away, but above all else we have a duty to look after ourselves.  not at the cost of others (as with npd and BPD), but if someone is abusing us, we do have to protect ourselves.  its just not healthy to endure abuse and I have tried everything with uBPDm and uBPDsis to make it work, but they only seem happy when I am suffering, which is cruel, unfair, unhealthy, abusive and a waste of life.

so on good days I fill try to rebuild my own life and on the bad ones I repeat the buddist mantra: 'let go or be dragged!'      kudos on being able to see the situation for what it is.  I hope your good days out number any bad ones 

[Progress Not Perfection]

Wow, what a story!  Well, I'm glad to hear you and your husband have each other.  My husband had no BPD experience until he married me, poor fella.  He's had a crash course ever since.

Happy fingers, I can totally relate! My husband's family was all about strict boundaries and was somewhat cold (probably one of the reasons we are so good together -- we each represent what the other one never had; me = warmth, him = boundaries). And after 8 years together he really gets my BPD mom and is even able to help me see some of the dysfunctional stuff that I always thought was "normal". Just last night, we were talking about how my mom would make me sleep in bed with her (and she always has slept naked... .) and how that used to seem so normal to me, like doesn't everyone's loving mother do that? What the heck, right?

Anyway, it's so great to have a loving and supportive partner and ClaudiaDuffy, it sounds like you and your husband have great supports in one another! Congrats on your marriage, and especially on prioritizing the sanity and health of your new family over the demands of your families of origin!

[happyfingers]

(by the way, I read some of your other posts - my husband and I were also competitive pianists in high school. Weird.  )

Is it just me, or are a lot of children of BPDs attracted to the arts?  The main thing I liked about practicing when I was a kid is that it made me less available for my mother to talk to.  Well, scream at, since that's how she preferred to communicate.  Not that she didn't interrupt my practicing, but the music seemed to slow her down a little.

Question: does your daughter WANT to get emails from your mom? I'd block that craziness in a heartbeat if I were her.

She's nearly 20, so I let her decide how she wants to handle her email.  She told me she doesn't want to see it at all but I'm welcome to read it, so I have her gmail set up so that emails from grandma go right into her archive and are forwarded to me.  Other than the occasional emails, which we don't reply to, we are NC.

@Pr0gressn0tperfecti0n: God bless the husbands of daughters with BPD mothers, huh?  Talk about having a horrible mother-in-law.  My mother said at first that he just wanted me for sex, then he just wanted me because he wanted to get at the family money, and then he wanted me so that he could have sex with my daughter.  Of course, this is the same woman who advised me to have an abortion and who told me she didn't want any children herself, that my father and grandmother talked her into having me, so I guess nothing that comes out of her mouth should surprise me anymore.

[claudiaduffy]

Is it just me, or are a lot of children of BPDs attracted to the arts?  The main thing I liked about practicing when I was a kid is that it made me less available for my mother to talk to.  Well, scream at, since that's how she preferred to communicate.  Not that she didn't interrupt my practicing, but the music seemed to slow her down a little.

My mother highly valued, but did not really understand, both music and reading; so I did a loot of escaping by practicing piano, and by sticking my nose in a book. There was a family joke about how zoned-out I'd get with a book... .I don't think they realized how much of my "inability" to hear people talking to me was by choice.

She's nearly 20, so I let her decide how she wants to handle her email.  She told me she doesn't want to see it at all but I'm welcome to read it, so I have her gmail set up so that emails from grandma go right into her archive and are forwarded to me.  Other than the occasional emails, which we don't reply to, we are NC.

Sorry if I came across as suggesting that you should dictate your older-teen's email life. I was only expressing surprise because I thought she was still reading emails that creeped her out.

My husband and I had our emails set where anything from MIL goes straight to the trash folder, but he was finding that he had a morbid curiosity about what she was sending, so he ended up changing his email address to one she has no clue about. Now he doesn't even have her craziness in a folder that preys on his mind. (She would only email me once in a blue moon once we went NC, and I'm not as tempted to look and see if there's anything from her in my trash.)

@Pr0gressn0tperfecti0n: God bless the husbands of daughters with BPD mothers, huh?  Talk about having a horrible mother-in-law.  My mother said at first that he just wanted me for sex, then he just wanted me because he wanted to get at the family money, and then he wanted me so that he could have sex with my daughter.  Of course, this is the same woman who advised me to have an abortion and who told me she didn't want any children herself, that my father and grandmother talked her into having me, so I guess nothing that comes out of her mouth should surprise me anymore.

^^^This. This is why I know that these women cannot be worked with when it comes to trying to have a loving relationship with them. In one day, they'll send stuff saying how much they love you/your children/et cetera, but then also show that they are incapable of understanding the concept of love without abuse or at least ulterior motives underneath it.

MIL is constantly ranting about how unloving we are, sending flowery emails studded with cute acronyms (IWALY - I will always love you, etc), scolding about the loving Christian duty of caring for family and praising herself for all the sacrifices she made for her son, but when she still lived near us and we were attempting to have a relationship with her, she'd come out with stuff like the following -


At the dinner table (I had cooked for them), with my then-fiance and his dad and me - "Well, if I still had legs like Claudia's, I'd wear skirts too. And my darling wouldn't be able to keep his hands off of me. He's such a lech." [tosses her hair]

In the hospital, as her husband lay dying, to me with a nurse right there - "... .and then Claudia came around, wearing those shirts of hers... ." [accompanied by a pointed look at my breasts. I never even show a hint of cleavage.] (me: "What shirts, specifically, are you referring to?" MIL: "Oh, well, I mean, you're always dressed nicely enough."

In the psych ward, to the counselor, in front of me and my husband - "My son married that and I understand he was charmed by her. After all, he's a youngest, and she's an oldest; she knows how to get her way. Oh, she's intelligent. She saw that she had nothing but a few sticks of furniture and wasn't getting any younger, and she wanted his salary."

Ha. I hadn't thought about those things in a while. Gosh, am I glad we're not putting up with this crap anymore.

[littlebirdcline]

Interesting connection of children of BPD and the arts.  I took piano for twelve years, was in a band in high school, a theatre major in college and have an MFA in acting.  I think theatre was so attractive to me in part because it gave me a place where emotional expression was valued and encouraged.  It has given me an outlet, but it took me years of training to stop letting my emotional damage affect my acting.