co-parenting with a BPD ex-wife

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

Just looking for some good stories about having a mother with BPD. I'm trying to find hope for my situation with an wx-wife with BPD before I go after full custody of our children. I'm hopeful there are some positive stories out there as 99% of what I've read details certain damage to our children and unrelenting chaos for the duration of our lives and theirs. 

[myersl]

Just looking for some good stories about having a mother with BPD. I'm trying to find hope for my situation with an wx-wife with BPD before I go after full custody of our children. I'm hopeful there are some positive stories out there as 99% of what I've read details certain damage to our children and unrelenting chaos for the duration of our lives and theirs. 

[livednlearned]

Hi myersl,



How old are the kids? What kind of custody situation do you currently have?

In my case, it's my son's dad who is N/BPD. It can feel daunting when you read about the effects of a BPD parent on the kid. One thing that encourages me, though, and appears to be backed by research, is that a child just needs one emotionally healthy parent in order to grow up resilient. That puts a bit of a burden on those of us who are in that role -- I was certainly nowhere near as disordered as my ex, to say the least, but I did have a dysfunctional childhood and had a lot to learn about what it means to be emotionally healthy. Even something as simple as validation was totally new to me. Have you read about validation? There are some good workshops and articles on the Lessons board to the right -----> under Raising an Emotionally Resilient Child. I can't say enough about it. If you take away nothing else except validation, you'll go a long way to supporting your kids. The book that helped me was Power of Validation, which is specifically for parenting. It was like a magic potion that worked almost instantly with S13 when I started using it years ago.

My son was in pretty bad shape when I left N/BPDx. He's doing really well right now, although there was a down dip before the holidays that made me concerned. We just went to see a psychiatrist today that S13 seems to really like, and I'm impressed how self-aware he is. I think the stuff with his dad is going to be a challenge for him, so I'm just making sure he has the tools he needs when he's ready to look at all that stuff.

A lot of the challenges in our situations have to do with the custody arrangements and different character traits of our kids. S13 is a pretty sensitive kid and he's seem some trauma that I wouldn't wish on any child.

It's not easy what they go through, but I don't think it's hopeless. A lot depends on what we do, and how well we understand what it means to be emotionally healthy.

[Turkish]

Helloo myersl,

You are correct about the damage a parent with a PD can cause to their children. However, one healthy parent or home can more than offset that damage, as frustrating as it is. What specific behaviors do you see that are harming your children?

[ForeverDad]

I'm trying to find hope for my situation with an ex-wife with BPD before I go after full custody of our children.

I thought I'd comment about seeking full custody.  When I filed for divorce we had both had both previously had temporary protection orders (TPO) against each other, I had protection from municipal court, she had protection from domestic court.  She initially had temporary custody and majority time after we answered one question, "What are your work schedules?"  Both had been dismissed, plus the temporary parenting schedule, but once the parenting schedule was history she blocked my father-son contact.  When I filed for divorce I sought custody, her response was to seek custody too and tried to block my parenting again with yet another PO in a third court.  By the time we had our initial divorce hearing it had been 3 months.  Once the magistrate confirmed with her that She had blocked for 3 months, all he said was "I'll fix that" and reinstated the prior order.  No consequences.  Not even a lecture for blocking.  I had to live with alternate weekends during the entire 2 year divorce.  However, to make a long story short, I walked out with a final decree of Shared Parenting and equal time, when that didn't work I returned to court and became Legal Custodian 3 years later, when even that failed I returned to court and got majority time during the school year.

So what I'm saying is that 'full custody' is a goal - a valid one - that could very well take some time.  So much depends on your spouse's response and level of entitlement, obstruction and sabotage.  However, I'm not discouraging you.  You do need to speak up and let the court know from the start* that you want to be a very involved parent and believe the 'standard' father alternate weekends is too little parenting in an environment prone to high conflict.  And why, based on the history and the documentation you have accumulated.

* Temporary orders have a tendency to become final ones since the judge may conclude that there's not enough basis to 'fix' what seems to have been working during the divorce process.  So try to get the best order you can form the very start.  My lawyer said, ":)on't worry, we'll fix it later" but it took 2 years to get to a final decree and the court didn't modify the temp order one bit during the divorce.  At first he had estimated a divorce with children would be 7-9 months, even he didn't anticipate it would take that long to slog through all the non-responses, continuances, obstructions, inability for her to negotiate, etc.

I had an excellent Custody Evaluator and the initial report summarized, "Mother cannot share 'her' child but father can... .Mother should immediately lose temporary custody... .If Shared Parenting is tried and fails then father should have custody."