BPD Partner is alienating me from my own family

[2020]

Hello All,

I'll try to keep to the topic but I may stray off a bit... .

My partner and I have known each other for 10 years. Five years ago she moved into my flat which was nice. Within three weeks though, she was accusing me of still being in a realtionship with the mother of my children. This was outrageous. We had separated in 2004 and had been fighting for at least 10 of the 16 miserable years we were together.

Over the past 5 years, this accusation has been her primary method of attack, for want of a better term. I have had no contact with my ex, or barely any at all. My two sons live with me, aged 17 and 26. The only contact I have from my ex is when my youngest son goes to stay with her once a year. She will send a short one sentence email that he is on the bus and I may reply, "Thanks for having him stay". That is it. Last email of this sort was 2015.

My partner does not like my kids at all. I admit that my youngest son is difficult. He is on the Autism Spectrum. He feels threatened by her and she feels threatened by him. I try to keep them very apart. If I cook a meal and my kids are fed, she gets very angry and I get accused of being abused and used by them. I tell her I like cooking but she refers to them as paralysis ticks or parasites. She calls my yougest child a mongoloid and my oldest son a junkie. She has made life so difficult for me. I feel she has got me totally under her control. I am not even allowed to talk to my kids with her around. I cannot drive to the shop to get groceries with them. Sometimes I am driving back with her and we see my son walking with shopping bags. I cannot stop because all hell will break loose, for at least a week. Over time the house has gone from us all eating the same meal, to everyone cooking for themselves and eating in their bedrooms. It is like a sharehouse, each of us with our own milk, butter, even salt! It is crazy.

She wont use the toilet here or even the front door. She climbs through the window. I have gone through all of this boring stuff here before. Maybe some of you have similar experiences? The past three weeks have been hell! I have endured daily insults, verbal attacks and the odd physical one. I have been pleading for her to stop, but it just goes on and on. Then suddenly two days ago it stopped... .

She came to the bedroom window and wanted to talk to me so I said she had better come in. She said she was hungry. I got a plate of food from the kitchen and she took it and walked up the road with it. Then she came back and I told her to come inside. I put her to bed and hugged her and she fell asleep. The next morning she was nice. Cuddling me, being funny, even happy. I just don't get this. We spent a lovely day together, watched old movies from the 50's which we had never seen. Yesterday we had lunch then later I asked her to come out to dinner. That was really pleasant too. Gee, even the sex life was back on, despite her claiming we haven't ever had one!

Today she had gone off to spend time with her son. I did some work in the morning and then took my 17 year old to the bank. As we were leaving I saw her and her son walking down the road so I pulled over and told her where I was going and would be back in an hour. Sure enough I was back on time and went up the road to see her at this warehouse where she sews. Her son and partner were there. All seemed fine.

Then I took my eledest son to town to sort out his student loan. We were gone about 30 minutes. When I returned I had an email from her that she had come to see me and I was out.  She said she was going to sleep. It was 5pm. I emailed her and explained where I went and said we must have just missed each other. Her emails started coming in: What a piece of  I am, how she hates me and my abusive family, accusing me of breastfeeding my sons, well, you get the point. I could tell by the garbled nonsense that she was drunk again. She was accusing me of not feeding her. I was actually making dinner at the time.

OK so to cut this short (because it is such a pathetic tale), I walked into the bedroom with a plate of Sushi and she was there. She was raking through my emails on my computer. She started yelling at me because she found a couple of emails from 2015 (haha, I just wrote 1015!) where my Son's mother wanted to let me know he was on the coach on his way home (she lives over 200km away). She grabbed the plate of food and smashed it! Soy sauce and rice flew everwhere! My eldest son started to yell from his room and told her to  off! It was quite a scene. I managed to get her to leave the house. I sent her an email stating that "I won’t tolerate this violence. You cannot stay here when you have been drinking; when you are violent, smash up my property or physically assault me. Do not return tonight or I will notify the police. Tomorrow when you have calmed down and sobered up, you can contact me via email. This behaviour cannot continue."

So I don't know what will become of all of this. This really does seem to be a relationship where I am lucky to get TWO days of brief happiness per month, followed by blame, abuse, violence and destruction. Of course this is all my fault:

"you are a barbarian
i was having a relationsh!t with you not you your kids and wife
you  lied to me repeatedly
i am so finished with your stupidity and abuse
no threats required from you about calling the police
i simply want nothing to do with you nor your mongs ever again
good riddens"

Just to get back to the issue... .the crux of it seems to be that she wants me all to herself. I am not allowed to have any interaction with my sons. My youngest literally waits in his room and when he hears me walking past his door, puts down the video game controller and runs out to give me a hug. Whe I return to the bedroom, she makes a sarcastic comment about him or me. She accuses me of choosing them over a life with her. Like I have said to her, these are my children; not some old share house buddies I insist on hanging out with. I will always be their Dad. It is like she is depriving me of the joy (and pain sometimes) of being a parent. I spend almost all of my hours with her. I do far more for her than everyone else combined, including myself. I can't believe this has happened. I guess I let it happen... .

Well, that's the news in my  World. How are you all going?

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[Radcliff]

I understand the pressures of not being "allowed" to do something because the pwBPD can bring such misery on us that it's easier to try to appease them.  The problem, as you know, is that it's never ending.

Many of our members get isolated from their parents or siblings, which is an issue, but one that can afford to be addressed on a long-term basis.  Your dynamic with her is interfering with your relationship with your son, who is only 17, and is special needs.  This problem cannot afford to be fixed later.

The passion to be a good parent for our children and see to their needs is a strong force.  It can give us the drive to change when looking out for ourselves hasn't provided us with enough motivation.  My concern for my daughter is what finally drove me to take bold action.

What if you were to put your 17 year-old son's needs first?  Draw boundaries around whatever he reasonably needs so that you feel good about the way you're able to parent him.  Can you tell us a few boundaries you could set to change things in this way?

RC

[2020]

Thanks Radcliff.

I am pretty much at the point where I have to put my foot down. This has been a steady campaign of hers for years. She knows I get upset when she threatens to leave me. I was lonely for years before she came into my life. Lately I have been reacting differently to her behaviour. When she self-destructs or runs away and hides from me, I don't panic like I did a few months ago. Today I received this apology: "i apologise for reacting to your lies and deception in an inappropriate manner." I replied that it didn't sound like an apology to me. She then sent numerous emails calling me a bully, an intrusive controller, backstabbing, and an abusive pot smoker (?)(something I gave up ten years ago)! Apparently the years with me were a complete waste of time and energy. Her last email stated: "i am not interested in having a relationship with you and your horrible offspring you are a sad  and you live vicariously in relationsh!t with your bushpig wife through your so called adult abusive and controlling children. you will not be hearing from me again". Somehow I doubt this will be the case.

I am enjoying my day today. I took my son to school without her sarcasm. We cleaned his room together without her rude judgement. Taking him to school or the shops was always a minefield to navigate if she was around. I need to resist her control. You know, every morning I wake up and scrub the toilet bowl, mop the bathroom floor with bleach, before she wakes up. And still that is never good enough. She claims she gets urinary tract infections when she uses the toilet here. She says she gets food poisoning if she eats what I cook. As for my son; I have already told her before that I am a Dad and I will always be one. She knows I cannot walk away from that reality, but hey, reality and her are not bedfellows.

I will be proceeding with  . I really hope she stays away for the rest of the day at least.

[Radcliff]

You've made a start.  While you recognize her nasty e-mails as garbage, it still takes a toll to read them.  How can you reduce your exposure to her venom?  For example, on e-mail, and text, you could block her, but then you wouldn't be able to receive nice messages.  Perhaps on e-mail, if you see that an e-mail is nasty, just delete it without reading the rest, and tell her that's what you're going to do.  On phone, if she's nasty, you could block her, set the timer for an hour (or whatever time you deem appropriate) then unblock her.

She has self control issues, but her ability to control herself is undoubtedly better than she is exercising.  If you are living without boundaries, she has no incentive to improve.  I'm not saying that it's on you to fix her, but living without boundaries is preventing her from fixing herself.

Back to your son, good on you for spending that time with him!  When we are trying to establish boundaries with a partner, it's helpful to have other healthy things in our life we need to invest in, to help keep our partner's behaviors from occupying all of our brains.  Increasing your time with your son and developing boundaries around that are an excellent thing to do.

What's coming up in the next few days that you plan to do with your son?  Anything you're planning with him for the weekend?

RC

[2020]

Radcliff, I thank you for your response. I have two threads going on here right now. I have quite a crisis unfolding in my life. I have been excommunicated from my partner. It's baffling as usual as to why this happened. The night before was really pleasant. Formflyer has been educating me in the other thread which is now embarrassingly in its third part. I am still in that bewildered stage as to how to handle this or what best to do. My partner is missing and I can just assume she is at her son's home.

Today I got hold of the Manning book: Loving someone with BPD. I have only read a little of it but it looks like it will be a real help. I think the key here is educating ourselves and changing our own behaviour. Maybe that is the way to calmness? As for my own son and what we are doing on the weekend... .well, it has been many months since we have done anything together. We used to go walk on a beach almost every week. Maybe we should go and do that? He would really like that. I could do this today without conflict as my partner is in hiding. But what happens if I wanted to do this when she is around? I guess this is where I need to make boundaries.

[Radcliff]

Going to the beach sounds this weekend like an excellent idea!

If your partner were around, and you said you were going to the beach, what behaviors of hers would place obstacles in your path to going to the beach?

RC