Is she preparing for a battle deliberately or reflexively?

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

So I have recently decided that I can no longer sustain the emotional requirements of being in a marriage with a BPD and as such I am moving forward with lining up all the legal, financial and emotional support that I anticipate that I will need to get through this next phase with my spouse.

I believe that she is anticipating this and I am not sure if it is just the standard not med / therapy compliant paranoia or a more deliberate plan.

I have been seeing more of her trying to paint me black to others and it even resulted in her therapist filing a 51A as a mandated reporter because what she told him led him to believe that my son and/or her were being abused by me. Fortunately for me DCF did not make any findings of abuse and our marriage counselor also does not subscribe to her claims of abuse so that should be one in my favor. She has been making statements about bruises left on her body that she has taken pictures of claiming that they are the results of abuse and I am not sure to what extent that they will be admissible without context. As a precaution a few weeks ago when she was severely dis-regulated I recorded her ranting not to gather evidence against her, but to prevent her from making a claim of abuse. Though the recording itself will be inadmissible against her I made it and am keeping it (for now) as insurance against a claim of abuse. She now likes to say that I broker her trust (and I can see her point) by recording her, however when backed into a corner as a he said she said I cannot risk my livelihood and freedom to her addled brain and the false claims that she may produce.

So last night she tried at several points to accuse me of being unfaithful and of even not being where I said I was for lunch (as apparently she went out and deliberately went looking for me) and tried to spin that into something. I kept my emotions in check, responded calmly to her and did not allow an argument to start. It kills me though that she feels entitled to say whatever she wants in front of our son to try to paint me poorly, yet if I counterpoint her in the same discussion she instantly states that I am "abusive and manipulative" for saying this around him. Repeatedly I asked her to stop, and repeatedly she refused and would get upset when I offered a counter to her flawed logic. When she finally realized that I wasn't going to engage with her she went upstairs to bed and pretty much didn't engage for the rest of the night.

I am finding it easier now to enforce my boundaries that I know there will be an end to this marriage coming (hopefully) soon.

[Tired_Dad]

So I have recently decided that I can no longer sustain the emotional requirements of being in a marriage with a BPD and as such I am moving forward with lining up all the legal, financial and emotional support that I anticipate that I will need to get through this next phase with my spouse.

I believe that she is anticipating this and I am not sure if it is just the standard not med / therapy compliant paranoia or a more deliberate plan.

I have been seeing more of her trying to paint me black to others and it even resulted in her therapist filing a 51A as a mandated reporter because what she told him led him to believe that my son and/or her were being abused by me. Fortunately for me DCF did not make any findings of abuse and our marriage counselor also does not subscribe to her claims of abuse so that should be one in my favor. She has been making statements about bruises left on her body that she has taken pictures of claiming that they are the results of abuse and I am not sure to what extent that they will be admissible without context. As a precaution a few weeks ago when she was severely dis-regulated I recorded her ranting not to gather evidence against her, but to prevent her from making a claim of abuse. Though the recording itself will be inadmissible against her I made it and am keeping it (for now) as insurance against a claim of abuse. She now likes to say that I broker her trust (and I can see her point) by recording her, however when backed into a corner as a he said she said I cannot risk my livelihood and freedom to her addled brain and the false claims that she may produce.

So last night she tried at several points to accuse me of being unfaithful and of even not being where I said I was for lunch (as apparently she went out and deliberately went looking for me) and tried to spin that into something. I kept my emotions in check, responded calmly to her and did not allow an argument to start. It kills me though that she feels entitled to say whatever she wants in front of our son to try to paint me poorly, yet if I counterpoint her in the same discussion she instantly states that I am "abusive and manipulative" for saying this around him. Repeatedly I asked her to stop, and repeatedly she refused and would get upset when I offered a counter to her flawed logic. When she finally realized that I wasn't going to engage with her she went upstairs to bed and pretty much didn't engage for the rest of the night.

I am finding it easier now to enforce my boundaries that I know there will be an end to this marriage coming (hopefully) soon.

[GaGrl]

Record the nonsensical conversations where she blames but then doesn't see the logic when turned around to her.

[ForeverDad]

Does she know when you're recording?  I'm thinking that could trigger her overreactions and more ranting.  Asked another way, could she be reacting like having a red flag waved in front of a bull?

When I recorded, and it was a smart thing too because, while they weren't always needed, when I did need them I had some good incidents to select from.  Still, I never made a fuss over recording, I didn't want to enrage her or give her ideas to frame me more carefully, sometimes you could hear the swish-swish of me walking because it was in my pants pocket rather then my shirt pocket or nearby out of sight.

What if you have some recordings when she is ranting and raging and refusing to listen to reason, but when she does report an allegation then you don't have that incident recorded?  Would the police (or court) view other incidents as applying to her claimed allegation or would they say they're separate and not proving what happened or didn't during the unrecorded one?

My ex made many allegations over the early years of our ending/ended marriage but most didn't require my 'proofs'.  But having them as a form of insurance that I wasn't the one misbehaving so much as her helped me sleep just a little less on edge.

[Tired_Dad]

Unfortunately the last time I recorded her she became aware of it and really flipped out red flag style. As for admissibility none of my recordings will be allowed in court, however they could be useful to keep me clear from arrest in a he said she said.

The one good side is she is now thinking that I record all the time and is behaving much better and I have not recorded since her last significant meltdown.

[david]

If I had to do it all over again I would have had a hidden recording device with me whenever ex was near me. It may not be admissible in court but I would have used it to protect myself with the police, custody evaluators, counselors, etc. I was put in jail for two weeks because of a false allegation. I had three protection orders filed against me prior to that. When I got out of jail I purchased a video recorder and an audio recorder. I let ex see the video recorder. That was in 2010. Since then I haven't been accused of anything. Amazing how a video recorder helped my ex behave.

[Tired_Dad]

So yesterday after I finished work I came home and on entering the house everything seemed calm. My son met me at the door, gave me a hug, showed me his homework and asked if he could go ride his bike... .very calm and normal.

Then I go upstairs to see how my wife is and say hello and ask her if the repair shop was able to update her on her broken phone. She starts talking about how it cannot be repaired and it will need to be replaced my son walks upstairs and the she says "I don't want to get into this in front of him" to which I am perplexed as we weren't fighting and we were talking about her broken phone and how to move forward with it. She says something small that her phone was hacked into remotely and that caused the damage, I looked at her like she was crazy after accusing me of orchestrating the whole thing for my benefit to keep her without a phone (which she had our backup with her number transferred to it) and to keep her from calling her family or friends (which we still have a paper address book with her numbers and she has full access to FaceBook etc) and wants to start a fight with me about it after mere minutes ago saying that she didn't want to "do this in front of our son" so I walk out of the room and close the door because she won't stop trying to instigate, try to take care of an itchy bug bite on our son's leg and she is still coming at me trying to keep this going and I closed the door of the bathroom (unfortunately the lock is broken) and she then comes in and I instinctively pushed her back out. At that time she charges me with her elbow up and steps on my foot while trying to push her elbow into me as I have my hands up and open holding her off of me as she is shouting about abuse and my example in front of our son.

After taking care of our son with her watching and ranting and going on about abuse and that things aren't "Fair" I tried to leave to not be drawn into this and a Benny Hill like chase of me walking in and out of various doors in our house and to and from my car and her following along and blocking me while alternately threatening to not be there when I got home if I left to blocking me from getting into my car so that if I wanted to leave I would have had to injure her to do so. I was so pissed of at the trap she was setting for me because she wanted to know "what we were going to do about us"

Fortunately it ended up de-escalating but I was not able to start recording before she ramped up to her pitch and she left to cool off and purchase a new phone (with my money).

I am feeing especially resentful, angry, hurt and vulnerable now and now have to take up my entire lunch calling my lawyer to go over my next step before I do anything.

[ForeverDad]

I recall that many times I did not have my recorder on when my ex ranted and raged.  But one Sunday she drove off to morning services, not waiting an extra minute for me to finish putting our preschooler's shoes on.  Well, the child seat in my car was disassembled for washing, so I was pretty much stuck at home.  However, I suspected she would still be upset when she returned.  I was pretty sure that she didn't realize her "stomping off" in a fit of rage could end up with me not attending and then her having to explain why I didn't come.

And so I had my recorder in my pocket when she returned.  Sure enough, she started working herself into a frenzy.  I stepped out of sight into the kitchen for a brief moment and turned it on.  That day she did something different, she put our son into his room when he said he wanted to go outside and I heard him start crying.  That was recorded as well as her very emphatic shouts, "I will kill you!"  One was just before I dialed 911 and one was after.  She snatched the handset, hung up my call and threw it in my direction but it hit a wall and broke.  (I've heard that in some states destroying property is basis for DV but that was never addressed in our case.)  Well, it was the first time the police were involved.  Although the police were inclined to believe her — they asked me to hand our quietly sobbing preschooler over to her and "step away" — he 'saved' me by shrieking and hugging me tighter.  What child won't go to his mother?  A couple days later I had downloaded the recording and the officer who listened filed a Threat of DV charge against her.  Predictably that ended any pretense of a marriage.

Deliberate or reflex?  I would think a little of both.  In my case, I had made her look very bad and she felt driven to allege I was even worse than her.  Probably that drives much of the conflict reported her, in addition to the entitlement and need to control.  As much as we think they don't realize what they do, I can only observe that if so then how do they know just how far they can go without their behaviors being seen (or documented) as 'actionable'?

A Benny Hill chase, oh my.  So many of us have Been There, Done That.  I recall one night, maybe a year or more before my marriage imploded.  She was raging and I tried to leave.  She actually freaked that I would leave and possibly talk to others and jumped onto my back — piggy back! — as I left the kitchen and onto the back porch!