Dealing with divorce, custody, BPD and possibly parental alienation :( Help

[californiamomof3]

I am posting here because my daughter likely has BPD, but the problem is more her dad... who I feel either has BPD or NPD.

In a nutshell, I was married for 18 years, I have a 22 year old son from a previous marriage, and two girls with my current (ex) husband - they are 16 and 7. The 16 year old (girl) has had problems since she was born. At 18 months she began pulling out her hair (trichotilomania) which lasted until 2nd grade, and then came years of depression, anxiety and out of control anger. When she was 8 years old, she I took her to a child psychiatrist who dx'd her with depression. From age 8 until present, her dx has changed to GAD, bi-polar, anxiety disorder, and most recently what her doctor feels is classic Borderline (though she is not 18 yet so obviously that dx cannot be officially made - but he said she is "text book".

She was hospitalized twice for auditory hallucinations, both times in August of last year.

In the midst of all this, my marriage seemed to implode. Soon after our daughter was hospitalized, my husband's dad died suddenly. His dad struggled with lifelong untreated depression, he was physically abusive to my husband growing up, and the mom was hospitalized many times for suicide attempts when my husband was growing up. He seemed to always want his dad's approval and went to extraordinary lengths to get it. The dad was a negative person though and never responded.

So my father in law died, and my husband had a very neutral reaction.  He didn't express any grief. He flew across country to attend the funeral. He spent a few days after the funeral staying with his mom - he ran errands for her, cooked for her.  The last day he was there, he seemed more upbeat, which made me happy;  Except our now-16 year old was having problems. I had kept most of her struggles between us, never wanting to talk to anyone else about it with the exception of her doctors and therapists. On this particular night, I was very stressed, much more than usual... .I could see that our daughter was not going to return to school in a short time like we had envisioned, and the BPD aspects were really showing up a lot. I "vented" to my husband about how upset she had made me that evening, and what a hard time I was having. I will never forget... .he said "you know, my dad died unhappy, and I wonder if I'm happy too". We then got into an argument because he claimed I was "accusing" him of not helping our daughter. I reminded him I was venting! He kept saying "it's not my fault, I'm not responsible, I did nothing wrong".

The next day, my husband changed his plane ticket from coming back to our home in CA, to flying to Reno where we had a vacation home nearby. The vacation home was occupied by our son (my son from a previous marriage whom my husband mostly raised). My son was attending college near Reno so we had him live at that home.   When he suddenly flew there instead of coming home, it was strange, and he didn't call me to tell me.  I tried to give him space, didn't ask questions, and let it be. Days turned into weeks, and suddenly it was 2 weeks without much contact from him.  When we did talk, he was very passive/aggressive. He drove home one day, collected some random items in a bag, and drove off again the same day... .unshaven, looking like he hadn't showered in a few days, and I assumed he was going back to our vacation place. Instead, no one heard from him for 3 days and I later found out he was sleeping in his truck. He bounced between our home, and the vacation home. He was withdrawn and acting mean to me, and ignoring our girls. He got in my face and yelled at me, and then moved into a hotel locally! He began telling everyone he wanted to divorce me... .

He lived in the hotel for a month. Over that month, I was a mess! He put $10,000 in my bank account and told me I was now responsible for the house - basically since he had always paid the bills, I had no access to money. He told me to deal with the house, pay the bills, and then I had to "decide" if I was going to "change" or not. If I didn't want to change, he would divorce me. He never could define what "change" meant!

One day, I got into a minor accident (hit from behind at a light) and called him. I was very shaken! He came to the accident scene and didn't comfort me at all - he asked the cops if there was any way the accident was my fault. It seemed he wanted to blame me, even though I was hit from behind. Very strange. But once he saw me in person, he did mellow out, and later that day asked to move back in. I was reluctant - by this time, I had told family and friends of our problems, and I had lost weight, and was a mess. I had no idea my marriage was this fragile! I ended up telling him yes, but under the condition that we go for marriage counseling.  But he Largely blamed me for our problems, and never truly opening up to our therapist.

He made daily life very uncomfortable for me and our kids. He moved out of our bedroom, and sat in his home office all day playing on his iPad. He began to act very juvenile, playing Youtube videos loud at night and if the kids and I were watching a movie, he would come in and do something disruptive. He was verbally abusive, especially to our 16 year old. Finally I told him I was going to see a lawyer and file... .I asked him to move out, and he refused, but came back at me with a promise to "take care" of us and that I shouldn't worry because we had plenty of money. Sometimes he was still blaming me, other times he would say he was "no good" at relationships, and other times he had me thinking he wanted to reconcile. VERY confusing, but I felt if I moved out, perhaps that was the only way to wake him up.

Even though he was supportive of us getting attorneys, and was initially cooperative, he suddenly waged a war. We never even made it to a mediator, because he was so explosive - he made extreme demands and if I hesitated to do things his way, he threatened long and expensive litigation. I could NOT believe this was my husband!

Fast forward to today... .15 months later and I am defending myself against what I see as either someone with an extremely horrible personality disorder, or PURE evil. For the first few months, I tried so hard to "win" him back. I didn't date, but if I even went out with friends or on vacation with friends, he accused me of screwing every guy around me. In the process of all of this - I saw a bit of a change in my relationship with my son. I felt that some of our conversations were more geared toward my son (now 22) getting information to give to his stepdad. I had nothing to hide, but I took note of my son seeming to want information and suddenly my husband finding out... .really trivial things such as trips I planned to take, holidays that my family was planning to visit me, etc. I didn't really mind it but I did take note of my son's sudden interest in certain subjects, then my husband emailing me that he "knew" the plan already.

During this time, I found out thru a friend that my husband was on match.com. And the date he registered for the dating site was on Valentine's Day, during a time we had still been talking about any possibility of getting back together. When I told him that I knew he was on match, and I was so upset because I thought our marriage deserved a change, he told me "what am I supposed to do? I never get to meet anyone, I am too busy at work". I mean, he was THAT far away from what I wanted? I couldn't believe it. I will never forget how flippant he was about it. I felt he was sure he could find a replacement for me, that I was somehow interchangable. He continues to be on the dating site, my friend often looks him up, and he shows up as being "live" on it at least every 24 hours if not more. During our marriage, he was a bit socially awkward, didn't like parties unless it was with his co-workers or people he knew already, so it seemed odd to me that he would put himself out there.

We have made almost no progress with the divorce... .he turns down every offer I have made, and his own offers are set up to cheat me out of just about all of our money. He tried to get me to sign away my right to our vacation home while our daughter was hospitalized with an infection (he never showed up at the hospital to check on her, he just bullied me over and over by email to sign things, and when I refused he would threaten me). He pushed me hard during a child exchange, I called the police, and he tried to sue me for "malicious prosecution". Literally I feel this man HAS to blame me for everything and never takes an ounce of responsibility.

In the process... .this is the worst outcome yet: he turned my son against me. I have since read up on Parental Alienation Syndrome. I had no idea such a thing existed until things got VERY bizarre with my son. My husband wanted me to agree to let him buy another home ONLY in his name. Since we have not split much of our assets yet, I would be signing away my right to a house he was using to put some of money into. When I said "I am sorry, but I need you to split assets with me first" he told me that the house was really for my son; and that even though it was in my husband's name, my son would be living there, and how could I deprive my son of this house since it was closer to his college than our family vacation home (it made NO sense). Why would I in any event sign away my rights, regardless of my son? My son had a nice home to live in. Anyway, my husband repeatedly and relentlessly obsessed over this home purchase and told me he would make sure my son hated me if I didn't agree. I laughed it off. I mean, how could he really turn anyone against me? I even showed my son the messages and he said "you know it's not true mom". I felt good about that. Yet over the next few months, it became painfully clear that my husband did get to my son. He told my son I had ruined his chance to live in this great house, and that I was a horrible mom. My son is gullible... .I once had to tear him away from a cult-like company that was essentially making him work for free. But I could not believe my son would turn against me, in fact, his emails almost exactly replicated the tone and language of my husband.

My husband has tried the same approach with our 16 year old Borderline daughter. She however has not responded the same way - at some points she does seem to "turn" against me but she comes out of it.

I cannot believe my once cohesive family is in this condition... .I was told recently that my husband has always managed to slip in negative words about me to my son, I trusted my husband so much, I never would have suspected but he apparently had talks with my son beginning years ago where he painted a very bizarre image of me. Telling my son that I was a bad mom for not cooking every night, that I never earned any of my own money and that being a stay-at-home mom was hurting our family financially (not true, because we made over $1 a year for several years in a row, we had plenty of money!). So when my husband wanted to really paint a bad picture, he was able to.

This brings me to the here and now. After my husband pushed me, all custody was taken away from him for 2 months. He just regained partial custody of our two girls... .but, this is the first week he has had our girls, and tonight on Thanksgiving, our 16 year old had a severe panic attack and talked about suicide, and he took her to the ER after I contacted her therapist (the therapist told my husband he had to take her in!). For the past two months prior to this, she had made a lot of progress - I hate to say it, but not seeing her dad was the best thing that could have happened. She went back to school, began taking better care of herself, and even began to see friends again, and I saw less of the BPD attributes. When I found out she was in the ER and would probably get a 5150, my heart sunk. I emailed my soon to be ex, and he shot back an email that - you guessed it - blamed ME for this hospitalization. He claims everything was perfectly fine until I contacted the therapist, and that action somehow triggered our daughter to have a more severe reaction. Meanwhile, our daughter had been texting me since Monday that she was fearful of her dad, that he was ignoring her, and that she was having "flashbacks" to the times when he was physically and verbally abusive. So I believe those are the triggers.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before? I know this is super long, I really could not have written it without providing all of this information though. So much of my life seems like a lie now, and so much of my family seems to have not really existed... .I look at other divorced moms and I am so jealous of them still having all of their children;s support. I cannot believe what has transpired, especially given that family was always SO important to me. I would give every last penny to have normalcy. I feel this divorce will never end because my husband will first bleed us dry on legal bills before that happens, and I don't know how if at all I will ever get my son back. I know that I need to hire yet another attorney or expert who can address custody again, because I am very fearful of my two girls being victims of PAS (if that is indeed what happened with my son).

One more thing - this may or may not relevant. When I met my husband, I was sure he was gay. I almost didn't go out with him again because it seemed... .obvious. Yet I was told by mutual friends "no way", and that he was always talking about all of the girls he was having sex with. He has always almost gone out of his way to seem heterosexual yet he comes off as feminine. He has "mistakenly" bought women's shorts, and when I met him he mostly ordered "girl drinks" like cosmos. He stopped doing that when a business associated told him it is not manly to order a cosmo at a company event. He also used to "accuse me" of accusing him of cheating if that makes sense. To the point I would wonder if he IS cheating and it got me all confused. At one point I felt there is no way he is cheating and never responded to his weird "accusations" but that made him even more hell bent on seeming to portray me as a jealous wife. Does any of what I wrote in this post made sense?

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

[pessim-optimist]

Wow, that's a lot of stuff that's going on in your life right now, and I am sure that is not helping your daughter who must be confused and overwhelmed.

I am sorry you are going through so much - taking care of a child w/BPD is in and of itself a lot, let alone doing that while going through an adversarial divorce... .

You speak of a therapist - does that mean that your daughter is currently in therapy with the person that gave her the unofficial diagnosis of BPD? Have you had a chance to talk with him about the treatment plan and options in your area?

Is your daughter willing to work in therapy? There is a high recovery rate for those patients who are willing to work hard for it. There IS hope, californiamomof3.  

I can relate to your experience w/Parental Alienation, as my husband's ex has never stopped in her campaign to poison the girls against their father (they are now adults). It is awful and something not to be taken lightly. While your children are minors and there are custody arrangements, there are legal steps that can be taken against it, and today, there are more judges that are aware of it (even though it is still a controversial issue).

You will probably get better advice on that particular topic on this board:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?board=10.0

My husband has tried the same approach with our 16 year old Borderline daughter. She however has not responded the same way - at some points she does seem to "turn" against me but she comes out of it.

We have had the same experience - my step-daughter w/BPD seems to flip-flop, being perpetually caught in a cycle of siding with either her mom or her dad (there are rare periods of time when she can have a somewhat stable relationship with both - it usually ends when she gets closer to her mom and falls victim to the poisoning. Sometimes the cause for the flip-flopping is purely her BPD - just having a blowout with one parent and thus switching to the other.)

Paradoxically, the other step-daughter who doesn't suffer from BPD is firmly alienated from her dad.

This is only my opinion: When a 'healthy' child becomes firmly persuaded (alienated) and presents with PAS, it's hard to de-program them. On the other hand, a child w/BPD due to their overall instability lives in the moment. You can be the villain one day and their hero the next, so while Parental Alienation is yet another destabilizing factor in their lives, it doesn't seem to work the same as with healthy children.

So, concerning PAS, I'd be personally worried about all of my children, but I'd probably worry the most about the little one.

Hope this helps... .

[AVR1962]

CailforniaMom, your husband is a classic case passive-aggressive. We all have times where we might act PA but for some this is truly an ingrained personality characteristic. As you described your husband had a dominating parent, more than likely your husband felt he could not challenge authority, maybe even became scared and learned to take all of his feelings inside himself. When we meet these types the seem like a gentleman but what we can't see at first is the rage that lies inside them. The PA has to have control but they normally cannot do it thru logical expression, it is done underhandedly and the rage that is inside come out in revenge. The PA has to have a person he is close to to take out what he cannot take care of on his own. He will avoid confrontation, he will not communicate and at the same time he passes all off on you, his spouse. PAs will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat to keep their upper-hand.

PAs find codependents, someone that will support them and do their dirty work (the things they cannot deal with) for them. To the outside world these men look like gentlemen and for those who become close you know something is not quite right but you can't quite a put a finger on it. PAs are stuck in a time where they do not deal with their own emotions but instead blame others, kind of like a child that never grew up. The are emotionally unavailable and in many cases these men who love sex will withhold sex with their spouse. You would question if your sex drive was higher or if he were gay when neither is the case, it is about control and withholding which is typical of the PA.

My first husband was BPD, second husband who I am still married to and have been for 23 years is PA and I have spent many hours in a counselor's office trying to understand it all and deal with it. You mentioned you wondered if your husband was gay when you met him, I wondered the same with my husband.

At this point with your husband using tactics of revenge on you, you are in a bad position. You could try to tell him that you are not accountable for his emotional well being and that it is his responsibility to voice to you what he is thinking. The PA expects you to rescue him and to do the communication and for you to take the blame, perhaps you have in the past? The only way to deal with a PA is to all him out on his actions. Normally when called on their actions they will stop, kind of like the child who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

When I met husband he had full custody of his 2 sons from his first marriage. He told me that his wife had an affair and left the 2 and 4 year olds with him. Upon questioning him more I found out that he didn't know for sure that his wife had an affair, he never asked her. He  did not want her to have custody and he didn't want to pay child support so he filed for custody of his sons, hired an attorney and she had no means and accepted her fate. He then would not allow her to have anything but her clothes. She was very angry and certainly not willing to work with me at all, husband refused to speak to her. I got along with most people so I ended up being the go between and I so wish I had not put myself in that position. I supported my husband but after years of him treating me like I was the maid and nanny I too began to see what she had probably dealt with and I could see my husband was not as honest with me as he should have been. She was faulted for things she had not even created, he created them. I called him out on all of it... .all of it!

We've been in therapy together and in some areas he has improved but he is still very detached and emotionally unavailable. I have learned to live with it but it is really no way to live.

What do you want for yourself?

Definitely correct your son's thinking on those points that your husband is trying to make you look bad. Also let your son and husband know that he should not be saying these  things to your children.

Let the man have some time to himself, do not chase him, PA can't stand to be alone. Sure, no doubt he's on some site... .he's go to find a way to make himself feel good and what better, more none threatening way than an online site! This does no reflect anything about you. What you are seeing right now is just how troubled this man is and he is no only running from himself but in total and complete denial. Let him play his games, his games are meant to draw you back in, do not play. Do not fall for jealousy and do not fault yourself thinking you did something wrong that made him do what he has done. You only have o become emotionally dead when dealing with PS as they know how to push our buttons and then when you explode guess who is the angry one with issues!

Concentrate on you and your children at this point. The kids need to know the truth but do not try to make their dad look bad to them, don't put them in the middle.

Wishing you the best!

[californiamomof3]

Wow - I cannot believe how much this hit home, to read your story.     It really is so hard not to lose control and act out, and like you said, then I am the crazy one who cannot keep from exploding.

I had never before considered that he has is a PA personality!   But it really seems like it is spot on.   We are in the middle of a divorce, I don't want him back.    Too much has happened for me to consider it and quite frankly he would worry about him "image"  if he even tried to get back to together with me, I know it has crossed his mind many times but he would never do it.   It would hurt his ego too much to even try.    This was made clear to me in the first 6 months after I moved out.   He truly cares what people think of him even if the reality is, they go home to their husbands or wives at night and he does not.   To him, the image of him being stronger is what he wants.   

At this point I am really focusing on getting my bearings and getting thru the legal stuff.    I am going to look up PA some more and really try to delve into learning more about it, just to see what I am up against.

Thanks so much, I really do appreciate your advice, it is very insightful!

[Kate4queen]

You poor thing.

Actually, he sounds like a narcissist to me. They are renowned for making divorces the most horrific experiences in the world.

So sorry about your son. My BPD son has alienated his younger brother from us and onto his 'side'. It's horrible.