Co-parenting with a small child

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Hi everyone.  This is my first time posting.  I have been married to a man I believe is BPD (and possibly bipolar) for five years.  After some very scary domestic violence incidents, I left with our 4 year old.

Right now, he has weekly visitation with our son.  He is constantly threatening legal action and creating drama.  He called CPS for no reason.  He called the police and told them I was suicidal so they'd do a welfare check.  And on and on.  I feel like I will never get away from him.

He is very paranoid, as well.  There is always something that he is freaking out about that he insists requires immediate attention or the world will end.  Right now it is the coronavirus, of course.  He insists I am a terrible mother for any and all petty reasons.  I am so tired.

I am limiting contact with him.  We have been ordered by the court to only communicate via a parenting app and only about visitation.  Nonetheless he sends me pages and pages of paranoid rants about COVID-19, insisting I communicate with him for our son's "best interest."   His messages are almost always peppered with insults and threats. 

How on earth are we going to co-parent? 

[kn1234]

Hi everyone.  This is my first time posting.  I have been married to a man I believe is BPD (and possibly bipolar) for five years.  After some very scary domestic violence incidents, I left with our 4 year old.

Right now, he has weekly visitation with our son.  He is constantly threatening legal action and creating drama.  He called CPS for no reason.  He called the police and told them I was suicidal so they'd do a welfare check.  And on and on.  I feel like I will never get away from him.

He is very paranoid, as well.  There is always something that he is freaking out about that he insists requires immediate attention or the world will end.  Right now it is the coronavirus, of course.  He insists I am a terrible mother for any and all petty reasons.  I am so tired.

I am limiting contact with him.  We have been ordered by the court to only communicate via a parenting app and only about visitation.  Nonetheless he sends me pages and pages of paranoid rants about COVID-19, insisting I communicate with him for our son's "best interest."   His messages are almost always peppered with insults and threats. 

How on earth are we going to co-parent? 

[worriedStepmom]

Welcome to BPDFamily.  I'm glad that you found us.  There are others here who've been in similar shoes.

I'm glad that you were able to get out and be safe with your son.  That's a huge first step, and that took a lot of courage.

You're most likely not going to be able to successfully coparent with him.  Some families find a way to parallel parent (this is what my H does with his ex), but if your H is that dysregulated, then that might not be easy to do either.

It sounds like you already have temporary orders from the court.  It also sounds as if your soon to be ex is violating those orders frequently (his rants).  Keep those - your lawyer can use those as evidence of his mental state, his unwillingness to follow orders, and his attempts to intimidate and harass you.

This is not going to be a simple, quick process.  It takes time for the courts to figure out what is going on and who is to blame, so it's important to document everything that is happening.  That means that during this journey, you need to have a good regimen for self-care.  Do you have a therapist and/or a good support system?  Are you taking time for yourself to relax - to be YOU and not just a mommy or an adversary?

[Panda39]

Hi kn1234,

How much time is he spending with your son each week?  Is it supervised visitation since there is a history of domestic violence?

In terms of the ranty emails I agree with worriedStepmom, save them as documentation of his behavior in case you go back to court.  I would also add don't respond to these and use the parenting app as court ordered. 

I wanted to share a link to more on co-parenting vs parallel parenting...
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=67574.0

My partner found that his undiagnosed BPD ex-wife was unable to co-parent so he began to parallel parent.  Basically he did what he did at his house and she did what she did at her house.  That too was difficult because the kids did miss out on some things because mom was not able to put the needs of her kids first, rather she wanted to cause drama and conflict with dad.  Sadly the girls had to learn some hard truths about their mom the hard way.  The key here is to support your kids by talking with them and validating their feelings (without badmouthing dad)

We need to understand that the BPD parent is not rational consistently, if at all.  So stop trying to expect them to be, because when we do we will undoubtedly be disappointed.  We also need to leave the bait alone...that's what the emails are... argument/drama bait.  Negative attention is still attention, so don't JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain) because all that does is lead to those awful circular arguments that go no where.

More on JADE... https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=139972.0

Hang in there,
Panda39

[livednlearned]

After some very scary domestic violence incidents, I left with our 4 year old

It takes so much strength to leave, and for a lot of us the leaving was long overdue. I hope you and your son are doing ok after what you've been through, and are starting to pick up some of the pieces.

And glad you reached out. It really does help.

I feel like I will never get away from him

I read somewhere that it takes two months for every year of marriage to recover from an abusive relationship. Words like always and never tend to come up for us because these divorces tend to trigger depression, which can feel like dread. One of the worst feelings. And then it starts to get easier to create psychological and emotional distance. If you find yourself feeling "always" and "never" that's usually depression talking  

He insists I am a terrible mother for any and all petty reasons

So much of what someone with BPD says and does when dysregulated is projection. If you swap out the pronouns it can give you a pretty good idea of what he thinks of himself.

I am so tired

 

No doubt you are. Are you getting any kind of break when your son is with dad?

he sends me pages and pages of paranoid rants about COVID-19, insisting I communicate with him for our son's "best interest."   His messages are almost always peppered with insults and threats

I had all emails from my ex forwarded to a friend who would let me know if there was anything I needed to know or respond to. There never was.

How on earth are we going to co-parent?

Even in low-conflict divorces it can be best to start with parallel parenting until emotions have cooled. It's amazing how successfully you can raise a child when there is very little communication between parents.

Your ex probably expects you to do all the work and tell him everything that's going on. I guess it's time for him to learn that arrangement has ended. And if he wants cooperation he has to at least learn to control his impulses to insult and threaten you. Short of that, assuming he's going to struggle with that basic nicety, you'll probably find that parallel parenting works best.

Do you have any pressing co-parenting concerns?

Is he communicating at all through the parenting app?