POLL: Do you/did you share children?

[Skip]

Do you/did you share children?

How is the relationship with the kids?  How is the co-parenting going?

[clydegriffith]

She trapped me with a child very shortly after we first started seeing each other. The last guy before me was also trapped with kids (2) as is the latest. She's up to 5 kids in 6 years. She is the poster child for sterlilization if you ask me.

[Skip]

Understood.

What is your relationship with the child?

[Pingo]

Fortunately we didn't have children together.  He was a stepparent to my s10. 

[Waifed]

I had children from a previous marriage. In 3 years she met my son 2-3 times (very little interaction) and never met my daughter. She was scared to meet them and I always felt like the relationship was unstable so I really didn't want them around her.

[Elpis]

My uBPDh had custody of his daughter from a previous marriage, and she and I got close pretty quickly which was great. Then we had a daughter together, then adopted two, a son and a daughter. The adopted ones we had as foster children first, the son as a baby and the daughter as a teen.

How it's going now is quite the conundrum--my h has tried to poison all of them against me and make me out to be the irresponsible abandoner. Our children range in age from 26 to 44, so they're all quite adult. He has found willing teammates in the adopted daughter and her husband--they live in a different country, so they haven't seen how he treated me in more recent years. He's quite persuasive and that daughter and son-in-law with whom I've had a really close relationship (I thought!) over the years via my visits to them and skyping and texting have chosen his side and will barely speak to me and when my daughter does she's mean, rude, disrespectful and will tell me off.

I even remember trying to tell them that there are no sides in family, but I guess they needed to belong to Team Dad.

Fortunately I have been more able to make it clear to the other 3 that our relationship is still our relationship.

Somehow I thought it would be easier with adult children.

[clydegriffith]

Understood.

What is your relationship with the child?

As much as i despise the mother for forcing fatherhood on me when i wasn't ready, that's not my daughter's fault and i don't hold it against her. Things ended very badly with the mom when my daughter was less than a year old and the mom ended up having to move back home which is some 7 hours away. Because i have to take a few days off from work to physically have my daughter, i am only able to do that every 2 months or so. Aside from that, i  facetime with her a couple of times a week whenever she is with the BPDx's mom, who is a very nice person.

[Panda39]

My SO has an UBPDxw and they have 2 daughters.  My SO and I have been together 4 years but live separately in most part because of where we work and where our children go to school.  My son is in a community college near where we live and my SO's younger daughter is in middle school near where they live.  We live about 40 miles away from each other.

I can say that in the beginning I was very angry at his children because the falsely accused him of child abuse, they spied on him, they went through his things and read his text messages... .all reported back to their mother.  This was all in the days before I knew about BPD.  I of course now know it was uBPDxw pulling the strings.

My relationship with his children now is mixed.  I think the younger daughter has always been more open to me.  She was curious in the beginning and we have since developed a nice friendship that includes a lot of common interests.  I wish we could spend more time together but it's hard living so far away (it becomes 60 miles away if I leave from work - can be a 2 hour drive in rush hour traffic just to get to their house) and her only having one weekend with her dad further limits the opportunities to see each other.

The older daughter is another story.  She has been very passive aggressive, not very welcoming, and I find her level of energy and loudness rather overwhelming. She also pushes some of my personal buttons.  We are polite to each other but it is very awkward and I fear she and I may never make a connection.  Neither of us trusts the other so there is no foundation for a true friendship at this point.  She is currently attending her first year of college in another state.

[Rise]

2 Daughters with mine.

How is the relationship with the kids? I'd say overall, positive. She clearly loves our kids, and they love her. She can be quite good with them. She tries very hard to stay positive with them, encourages them in their pursuits and interests and schooling, and is really good at talking with them about their feelings. The tough part is, she doesn't really like the less fun parts of parenting. She's irresponsible at times (she constantly wants to have fun with them, instead of doing what's best for them), and when she's not with the kids she has trouble thinking about how her actions can impact them (although she's does that with everyone).

How is co-parenting going? On the whole, I think pretty well. My kids are healthy, happy, well adjusted, and well behaved. I haven't seen any major problems with them, so I guess things can't be going that badly. Dealing with her can be quite difficult at times though. At her best she's passionate, exuberant, caring, and fun. At her worst she's selfish, irresponsible, overly-emotional, and falls apart under pressure. It does feel like sometimes she's undermining my efforts at parenting. I know she's not intentionally doing it, she just doesn't think her actions through. Even though I know this, it can be extremely frustrating. It's taken a LOT of time and work to get to the point we can communicate pretty effectively, and even then, sometimes it's impossible.

I like to think we're doing a pretty good job with our kids (although a lot of credit goes to them for being such good kids in the first place). I think one of the big factors in what success we have at co-parenting comes from the fact that I have primary custody. This lets my kids spend most of their time in a more stable, structured environment, and keeps my ex from becoming overwhelmed. It's a balancing act, but I think we're doing the best we can under the circumstances.

[jhkbuzz]

Was a step parent... .helped raise my SD from the time she was 11 until college.

Things are easier because she is an adult (19) and I don't need any permission to stay in contact with her.  I worried at the beginning that I would get badmouthed, but that hasn't happened (and we're more than 4 months past the breakup) so I think I'm in the clear.

Parenting with my exBPDgf was HARD.  As Rise said... ."The tough part is, she doesn't really like the less fun parts of parenting. She's irresponsible at times (she constantly wants to have fun with them, instead of doing what's best for them)."  We had a lot of disagreements about setting appropriate boundaries for my SD, which my ex never really wanted to do.  It fell to me in large part... .so I always worried about being perceived as the "bad guy."  But I knew it was necessary.

As for today... .it's hard.  I miss my SD on the holidays A LOT. But we've remained in contact.

[Wastedyears25]

S22 and D16 with mine.

D16 refuses to have a relationship with him, frankly his behavior since our split has frightened her to the point she is afraid of him. Dysregulation and disassociative episodes for weeks.

Since I left our S22 has had to leave school, move in with his dad and take over stbxh's business so it wouldn't go under, a business that the ex had run for over a decade with no problem, now ex refuses to work. For all intents and purposes our son has become the parent. Our son cooks, cleans and pays his dads bills. The caretaker (me) who finally broke away raised a caretaker (our son). Oh the guilt and irony of life! Trying to explain to our son that he's enabling is falling on deaf ears at the moment. Our son and I still have a close relationship.

Co parenting... .Non existent.

[hurting300]

We have a baby, she took the child. It's going to be impossible to Co parent i think.

[clydegriffith]

We have a baby, she took the child. It's going to be impossible to Co parent i think.

What is your situation like? The BPDx took my daughter 6 hours away when she was a year old and now i barely see her but have to pay a nice chunk of change in child support.

[picturelady]

My uexBPDh and I have four children together, two sons and two daughters. we were married for 25 years. Three of the kids are now young adults, our youngest is 16 years old.

Co-parenting, or I should say parallel parenting, has been extremely difficult all along. When we were married, I was constantly triangulating between him and the kids, but felt compelled to do so in order to keep everyone safe and alive.

4 1/2 years post-divorce, we are all in a much better place. It is still very tough, and our 16-year-old spends mandatory time with him where she feels like a prisoner in his home, but we have learned to manage.  I refuse to triangulate now, and I work very hard to disengage when his BPD behaviors flare up. My daughters have a good therapist who has experienced some of their dads BPD behaviors, so she is very validating to them.I also try hard to validate my ex on things that I am able to validate him on, to thank him when thanks is due, etc. There are times when I have to call him out on things and hold the line,but I pretty much use email to do that. That way I can write something, leave it sit for a day or two, and then review it to remove any inflammatory language. Using email also makes me more careful about what I say, since I know I am providing a written document! 

All in all it's an exhausting and crazy dance, but it works as well as it can for the situation.

Both of our daughters also display lots of BPD behaviors, and interestingly, when they have needed medical treatment due to crisis, he is sometimes able to step up and coparent a little better.

Best,

PictureLady

[hurting300]

We have a baby, she took the child. It's going to be impossible to Co parent i think.

What is your situation like? The BPDx took my daughter 6 hours away when she was a year old and now i barely see her but have to pay a nice chunk of change in child support.

once we can ever find her to serve her with court papers I'll know. But we still can't locate my ex.