My Significant other's 22 YR OLD ADULT SON has BPD

[lotusblossom]

Hi everyone…

I’m new to the group.  I’m the 51 yr old significant other to the parent of a 22 yr old son with BPD.  I’ve sought out this support group because my significant other (hereinafter “the father”) feels tortured by his son (describes him as a cancer that he just has to deal with by himself), but feels helpless and alone.  He won’t seek help for himself to deal with his son’s issues, so I’m reaching out in hopes that eventually he’ll see that there are others who are dealing with the same thing and can provide advice on coping and setting up boundaries with respect to dealing with an adult child with BPD.  I’m afraid that my significant other is enabling his son and becoming co-dependent.

The father has done everything in his power to try to make his son successful and independent. He sent him to college, to trade school, assisted him in finding employment, supplied him with a car, and has provided constant financial assistance.  Yet his 22 yr old son has dropped out of school, trade school, and quit jobs with countless excuses as to why they weren’t working.  He is now unemployed, homeless (sleeping on the couch in the living room of his father’s one bedroom place), and no longer has a car due to repeated poor decisions.  He won’t listen to his father regarding important decisions, and refuses to go to a doctor to get his medication refilled, yet he expects his father to save the day when he makes all of his bad decisions.  He has huge mood swings, goes on rages where he yells and curses his father and breaks things, threatens suicide, and then apologizes after he’s inflicted physical and emotional damage.  He blames his father, his 19 yr old sister who lives independently in another location and has no relationship with her brother, me and my 13 yr old daughter… who have very little direct contact with him, and anyone else he can think of for all of his problems.  He thinks of everyone close to his father as “the enemy”.  He takes no responsibility and is irrational and immature in his thinking… he thinks like an adolescent child.  He also calls or texts his father non-stop while his father is at work, or whenever he’s away from his father and is depressed, and does disruptive things if his father does not immediately respond or give him attention.  During the rare times my significant other’s son is away and in a good mood, things are great.  But, once he returns to our living environment, or is away and depressed, it’s a living nightmare.  Please help us!

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

[Thursday]

Hi lotusb-

I feel a lot of empathy for you. The person with BPD in my life is my step-daughter. She is now 23 and I've been in her life since she was 14. It was easy to see, when I first got involved, that there were problems and that one of the problems was that her Dad (now my husband) was enabling her. He was a widower and she lost her Mom when she was 12 and he coped with her by giving in, even when he knew it wasn't his best move to do so. By the time I came around and felt comfortable enough to say anything to him he had, more or less, convinced himself that the bad behaviors he was seeing in her were "typical teenager stuff". It was very hard for him to "hear" from me that he had other options than always saying "yes" to her. There were very few, if any, consequences for her bad behavior and their lives were very chaotic.

We continued on this way for many years with lots of conflict- he was often seeking opinions from his friends, "checking out" if my thoughts were not too extreme, would not hurt his daughter or if the things that I was able to put together to answer strange occurances in the house (missing money, things moved, etc) could possibly be accurate. We found a sort of uneasy equilibrium until after she graduated from high school and her behavior towards me, previously cordial, started taking a downward turn and I got very vocal about her attitude TO HER and we started having conflict after conflict. Soon after it became known that she had addictions to drugs and alcohol (which were fueling the stealing and lying) and he got feedback from professionals involved in her treatment and they told him, loud and clear, to stop the enabling behavior or he stood the chance of her not recovering.

It took awhile for the heat to cool, she moved out, she has made amends, I've made amends and he has made amends but most importantly, he has given her a chance to recover by finding his voice and finding his courage to parent her in a more meaningful way.

She is doing well now, working, lives with a family member, is clean and sober and while still immature and often experiencing anxieties and maladjusted behaviors these are lesser and lesser and she is by far happier than ever. She and her Dad work on their relationship. I actually enjoy her now! She wouldn't be where she is if her Dad had kept making excuses for her, kept allowing her to do as she pleased with no consequences. He quit footing the bill for her life. Other's still do this for her to a certain extent but she is successfully paying for her own car insurance, phone plan, clothing, eating out and cigarettes as well as her car note and pretty much everything but rent and food other than eating out.

She no longer rages against us. She isn't always the most thoughtful person and I find her to be very pushy and bossy but it doesn't affect me. It would have been too hard to make all of these changes if she still lived with us. She and her Dad just needed some distance between the two of them. She still texts him "too much" but he doesn't always keep his phone right next to him as he used to and these days I can actually tell him I think he expects her to call him "too much" for a kid her age. I have an older daughter and although she lives in another state I don't speak to her as much as he speaks to my SD... .and he knows how close I am to her. She and I have a more natural flow and I've accepted her as a grown up with her own life, which I can't say for my SD yet... .I think things will continue to improve as she gets older and it is true, she is so immature it seems like she is more of a 16 year old a lot of the time.

It is very hard for these kids to function in the world if there is anyone enabling them. They need to feel the reality of their good choices in order to keep making them but more important, they learn by their experiences. Rescuing takes away a lot of meaningful lessons they can learn by failing. It takes her more examples to learn that others but she does eventually learn.

It was hard for my husband to change. One thing I recommend is al-anon. This 12 step program can be applied directly to dealing with someone with BPD (they don't have to be an addict) and maybe he can find a meeting where he finds a good fit. Will he accept your wisdom on giving this a try. Will he do any reading about BPD? My husband was into reading any of the books but he really likes al-anon. We started going to their meetings before we knew about her addictions!

Keep posting and telling us your story. We can help!

Thursday

[jellibeans]

Dear lotusblossom

I want to welcome you here. I am sorry for the struggles you are all going through. It is hard to watch and sometimes easy for people to see the mistakes when dealing with a pwBPD... it is not always easy for the person in close contact with the pwBPD. Sometimes our emotions get caught up in the drama and it clouds our decision making process.

I think the first thing you can do to help the situation is to educate yourself about this disorder. That is key in understanding this is an illness. I want to recommend a book by Valerie Porr "overcoming BPD" it really is a great book and it is one I go back to over and over again to reread. I also want to encourage you to read the right side bar. There are many tool there that help with communicating with a pwBPD. That is the one thing I have really worked on and seen improvement with. The raging is hard on everyone involved so reducing the conflict is very important.

Please try to encourge your bf to join our group and know that we really understand and are here to listen and to offer help when we can.

[lotusblossom]

Hi Thursday and Jellibeans,

Thank you so much for your insightful messages.  Prior to joining this forum, I had done quite a bit of research on BPD... .in fact, my bf had never even heard of the term before I mentioned it to him.  He was relying on a childhood diagnosis of ADHD and bi-polar disorder. I just happened on it because I was casually talking to a girlfriend about my bf's son's behavior and his situation and she stated that he sounded just like her deceased sister (who ended up committing suicide), who had pd.  The problems started after my bf's ex, the mother of the 22yr old and his 19 yr old sister, left the kids when they were about 4 and 7 yrs old because she didn't want to be a mom anymore.  She liked when they were babies, but was not into parenting adolescents.  So my bf was left to bring up the kids on his own... .he had 100% custody and they rarely saw their mother.  Their mother went on to marry another man and have 2 kids who are pre-teens now.  However, she has never taken an active role in parenting her 22 and 19 yr olds.

His 19 year old daughter is very adjusted, independent and living on her own over 400 miles way.  She has no relationship with her brother.  She does however have some issues from the abandonment i.e. she avoids close romantic relationships and is very detached. His 22 yr old son however drops out of everything after a short period of time, quits jobs for no rational reason, is irresponsible with money, has no car any longer, nor does he have a place to live.  My bf reluctantly let him stay in the living room of his 1 bedroom place 5 months ago because his son said he had no money, no food and no where to live anymore. He spends his days playing Sony Play Station when he's not irritated and raging.  On those days he berates his father, curses him, texts and calls his father nonstop while he's working, and either threatens to disrupt his father's employment, or commit suicide, in order to get attention.  This goes on for about 3 to 5 hrs before he finally calms down... .usually after convincing his father to do something that he wants.  So basically, negative behavior is being reinforced. 

Our main challenge right now is getting his son back on medication because his condition has deteriorated greatly since he's been off the meds.  Until he can become somewhat stable emotionally, nothing else is going to move forward.

Does anyone have any advice, success stories, tools, etc... .that could assist us in finding a way to get an adult child with BPD, who doesn't think he needs medicine, back on his medication?  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for the warmth and support.  It is greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

Lotusblossom