Coparenting & Unhelpful "Helpers"

[Quicksylver]

Brief story synopsis: My wife's ex has undiagnosed BPD with histrionic tendencies. They have a daughter together who is now my step daughter. When they first split, they agreed to a 50/50 "fluid" parenting time schedule which was predictably pure chaos. My wife was in constant communication with BPD, receiving hundreds of texts a day. BPD soon got together with an abusive boyfriend who abused SD as well, resulting in two separate abuse investigations (there are major holes in both stories, so at this point my wife and I actually suspect that BPD was lying about most of it). My wife spent the better part of two years just trying to keep SD safe within this insane 50/50 parenting agreement. Thankfully after BPD and the boyfriend broke up, things calmed down quite a bit -mostly because BPD turned back to my wife as her primary support.

My wife countered this by setting a firm boundary early on that she would only communicate about SD. BPD quickly got around this with texts as crazy as "[SD] fell down. Should I put bandaids on?" ...how my wife had time to actually date me is still a mystery. Anyway shortly after we got together their relationship became even more hostile. BPD fixated on SD -obsessing about changing the schedule, demanding more and more time with her (only to give her back when she got overwhelmed or had to work). We started to see signs of emotional and verbal abuse with SD, eventually learning about physical abuse that was so severe that SD had to stay home from school. At this point we decided to go for full custody and modifying the parenting plan so that BPD would only get SD every other weekend. BPD signed the papers end of June. July was the first month of the new schedule. August was the first month that we enforced the communication standards (only 3 reasons for texts, the rest go through email).

**Okay I'm really here just to vent for a minute amongst people who understand.

One of the friendly neighborhood normies in my life has decided to get my SD one of those "gizmo watches" Verizon is selling right now...She's six. She has absolutely no need for a phone and frankly I was planning on making her wait until she got her driver's license as honestly I don't see the practical need for her to have one when my wife and I write her schedule, make all the plans and provide all of the transportation to and from her events. Yes, 16 is harsh in today's modern age but cue the real reason: I want her to be MUCH older before she has to defend her own communication boundaries with her BPD mom. She's too young to realize when she's being manipulated and has barely gotten comfortable being mildly independent at this point. So far all phone communication goes through my wife and I. It is heavily monitored. We are finally coming out of the worst of the extinction burst (caused by BPD signing over custody and agreeing to significantly decreased time with SD) -and now a family friend buys SD a f***ing phone watch. I am livid. My wife agreed to it without thinking to ask me about it because it was described as a "fancy watch" not the simplified phone that it actually is. I've looked into it and there is no way to deactivate the call capability, meaning that my 6 year old will be relying on nothing more than her own self control to keep her from blowing up everyone's phones.

This friend of ours not only lives with us, but has known BPD and her crazy antics for years. His response to my concerns: "well at some point you need to accept that BPD is crazy and there is always going to be something. I would have thought at this point you'd be feeling some kind of reprieve." This really hurt my feelings as I've been trying to better manage the stress and anxiety that comes with managing the daily crap that BPD is still throwing at us. My wife was furious that our friend said this stuff to me, which made me feel better as I was really starting to question how well I was handling all of this. She made the good point that he has no idea what I've been doing every day and told me that she'd take over for me if she could -but she would only be able to handle talking to BPD at most once a week ...which is just not realistic at this point (even with the cut-backs we've made). She also told me that she's needed someone to see BPD as crazy -otherwise she never would have been able to change anything. She would have just accepted this as her reality. So the bright spot in all of this is that I do feel appreciated and supported by my partner...despite her blindly agreeing to this stupid phone watch.

Getting back to the issue at hand: I'm not that worried about the fight with my friend. Honestly I think he got defensive about this expensive gift he was excited to tell me about -and my immediate reaction was No with a capital N. However the best I can do to manage the risks at this point is keep BPD from being added to the contact list and only allow SD to use it during directly supervised hours. Which as I'm sure you all will see -is hardly a solution to this problem. My 6 year old will be talking about this new phone non-stop. Suddenly we'll be bombarded with questions -why am I not added to this phone? Why are you keeping me from our daughter? Blah. Blah. Blah. Predictably we'll keep her from wearing the watch to school, we'll obviously not add BPD to the phone regardless of the fights I'll now have to wade through and side step, and BPD will likely buy SD one to wear at her place (which we'll predictably confiscate during our parenting time, all calls will still have to go through us...cue my heavy eye rolling as I fume in the corner at this ridiculous situation).

Those of you who've followed my story for a while -my mental health is slowly improving! (Key word being: slowly). I found a major pattern in BPD's behaviors which has really helped us manage her from a far: essentially she's hitting rages, making irrational threats, getting hyper needy and then getting "suicidal" (threats only, no attempts are ever made) are always at the same time each year, right down to the calendar week. Weird but helpful information that surfaced in my data tracking. We've also successfully increased our days without contact (as in the number of days that SHE can go without contacting US -aka HUGE VICTORY) each month.

All in all, things are slowly building upon themselves and I am so relieved / grateful to see / feel the progress.
Thank you all for listening. I just needed to get this out amongst folks who can see that I'm not overreacting.

[worriedStepmom]

Data is so cool.  We see patterns, too, both in time of year and in the amount of time since she last saw SD.

You really have three options -
a) confiscate the watch until SD is older
b) let her keep it but block ex
c) let her keep it and allow ex to call

If your friend hadn't bought the phone, it likely wouldn't be long before ex bought a phone for SD.  H's ex bought their kid her first phone at 6 so that she could try to contact SD whenever she wanted.  SD lost or broke phones A LOT over the years...my guess is partially on purpose.

This summer ex's verbal abuse over text got bad enough we blocked her on SD's phone.  We allow 2 supervised phone calls a week.  Ex is really really angry about this (and it contributed to her hospitalization this summer), but there's nothing in our decree that says she gets phone calls.   We should have blocked her years ago, but we didn't want to interfere in their relationship and we didn't realize SD wasn't emotionally able to set that boundary.

[kells76]

Hey Quicksylver;

You're among friends here... SD13's mom got SD13 a smartphone when SD13 was 9.  No discussion with DH ahead of time. Interestingly, SD13's use declined as counseling appointments happened. Counseling hasn't happened for a year or two, and use is kind of going back up -- but then, SD13 is in 8th grade now, so maybe it's back to being an age thing.

Walk me through why (a) just taking the watch and not having it be a thing S6 wears, or (b) replacing it with an actual low tech digital watch (not mini smart phone), aren't options?

Getting back to the issue at hand: I'm not that worried about the fight with my friend. Honestly I think he got defensive about this expensive gift he was excited to tell me about -and my immediate reaction was No with a capital N. However the best I can do to manage the risks at this point is keep BPD from being added to the contact list and only allow SD to use it during directly supervised hours.

I'm curious about the steps from "No" (great full sentence, BTW  ) to "managing the risks" and "allowing SD to use it".

Cheers;

kells76

[CoherentMoose]

Hello.  This could be considered a boundary issue.  You've established an effective means of communication with the ex with effective boundaries protecting your partner and child from the crazy.  This watch may allow a "leak" through the boundary and create unnecessary problem you then have to deal with.  While I'm sure your friend means well, "no thank you" is an acceptable answer.  Bottom line IMHO, decide what is best for the child and live with possible hurt feelings.  No one should fault you for trying to protect your step-child.  If their feelings are hurt, it's on them.  My two cents worth.  Good luck.  jdc 

[GaGrl]

I'm thick by the first boundary to be managed is the friend's overstep. "No thank you" should be respected.

[Quicksylver]

Thank you all for your feedback -I took some much needed space and did some reflecting. Overall I think I am way too burned out. Things that I should not be blowing up about are taking a definite toll. I talked to my wife about it and we decided to upgrade our current system.

She changed the password to the email account we use to communicate with BPD and isn't sharing it with me. I did make her write it down in 3 different places as I had some intense anxiety about losing all of the data we store there on Google Drive. It was hard to admit but I need to be locked out. I was getting to this really frantic and anxious place where I was either immediately enraged at whatever BPD emailed us about OR I was intensely concerned at the lack of response. I never reached out to BPD in earnest or anything like that but I had escalated to checking the email at least 10 times a day (just in case). It was getting way out of hand.

We agreed that we will log into the email together twice a week. Sundays will be my day to do any documenting / data entry that needs to happen so that part doesn't fall behind. We will also be logging in on the Thursday mornings before our daughter's dinner dates with BPD or on Friday mornings before our daughter heads over to BPD's for her parenting weekends. The Thursday / Friday log ins are just going to be a quick read-through to catch anything that needs to be caught before our daughter spends time with BPD. Sundays are the day for documenting and any non-time sensitive responses.

So far this change has already helped me feel more like my old self. We implemented this change on Friday morning and I can feel space clearing and healing in my head. My anxiety levels are lowering and I'm able to better tolerate running into BPD at our daughter's soccer games, etc. I'm starting to feel human again. The world isn't falling apart, our daughter is still safe and happy, BPD is following the boundaries (because she has to, the extinction burst is finally starting to dissipate) -my life is starting to feel like my own again.

Thank you all for gently pointing out that I was overreacting. That may not have been your intention but that was the direction I needed to be pointed in. I ended up having a really great conversation with my friend (who bought the watch in the first place) about why I overreacted and he was really understanding -even ended up taking back the damn watch after all hilariously enough. I am taking a massive step back from BPD right now (how blessed are we that we can DECIDE to not look at her correspondence for 5 days a week! A year ago that would be have been laughable) and am focusing heavily on self-care. I'm seeing my therapist later this week for a check-up.

Thank you again! So happy this place exists.

[kells76]

That can feel really good and relieving when you have those conversations with people and they get it. Glad your friend was understanding enough to take back the watch! Enjoy the sense of "weight off."