Circling Around the Wheel of Equality

[EZEarache]

So Saturday was the big day. I moved all of my furniture and belongings out of the house and into my own apartment. It was a pretty huge sense of relief. I no longer need to worry that I am going to go home to find all of my belongings out in the street.

My parents had planned to come to visit for a few weeks and booked an AirBnB a few days before the major blowout with my ExGFwBPD. So they were actually around during the move. It's been a HUGE help. They pick me up some baby stuff to help me get my new apartment set up for my son.

I have been feeling really good since Saturday, about everything. However, this morning I sort of got hit with a double whammy.

Whammy Uno
Before the move, my ExGF said she wanted to feel like an equal and a partner. I asked her what would make her feel like an equal and a partner. She said let me get back to you. I hadn't heard anything, and just assumed she wasn't going to tell me. However, this morning I woke up to a text message showing me this wheel www.prntscr.com/12t5xfn .

I wasn't really sure how to respond. Looking at it I feel like every single item on there has been really poorly handled since November. I can point my finger at her, and I'm sure she can point her finger back at me. We're both culpable in our own ways. She said she had been doing a lot of reading on the subject and felt that this wheel was the best answer to my question. O.K. great, but that doesn't really answer my question as to how I can make her feel like an equal and a partner. It's just the important components of relationship, that we seem to fail all of them.

Whammy Duo
My friends keep reaching out to me and asking me hey do I want to do this or that on the weekend. I can't because of visitation with my son. It totally sucks, and this was the exact reason I was hesitant to have a child in the first place. So this morning, my friend asked, "Do you want to go backpacking Memorial Day weekend?" My response, "Ha. No, my life is over."

So at this point this is where my confliction comes in. A big part of me feels like this breakup is really what is best for my mental well being. I no longer have to worry about where the next IED is going to come from when I say or do something wrong, to a certain extent. However, at the same time, it comes at the cost of me giving up a hard won social circle.

In our last therapy session she said she didn't want to get back together. So I have to take that at face value, I guess.

So today, I'm feeling pretty bummed out about everything. I feel like all my worst fears have come to fruition in agreeing to have a child. A lot of it is my own fault from things I've said. However, at the same time, I feel like in a normal relationship, we would be able to move past the things I've said. My worst fears about being a father, were that I would have to give up the things in life that I enjoy doing. When we were in the negotiation stage of our relationship (see stop walking on egg shells) I expressed this concern. We even had a fight when I said, "Don't make promises you can't keep," regarding this. To me it seemed that, once she realized how much work a baby was, she began to change the terms of the agreement. Now, I clearly do have to give up the things that make me happiest in life for the good of the baby.

I guess my question is should I push this conversation regarding what would make her feel like an equal and a partner any further?

If I was to push this conversation any further, should I try to bring my own needs of not dwelling on the past into it?

Should I just accept that this relationship is over, and build a new life and social circle, accordingly?

[formflier]

Before we can answer these questions, we (and really you)...need to know if she is willing to build on the concepts on the wheel...together with you. 

It appears there is some sort of joint therapy going on...these discussions are really better handled there.

Since you have a child together...working on your relationship will benefit everyone, even if you guys decided not to stay together in the "romantic sense"


Do you enjoy time alone with your child?

Best,

FF

[Notwendy]

Maybe it would help for you to decide where you want the relationship to go in terms of romantic or not. Your GF's emotions ( and possibly yours too for a while) will be all over the place.

I'm not sure what she means by sending you this idea of equality. My guess is you both made mistakes in the relationship. The benefit is for each of you to examine your own, on your own, rather than looking at each other's. Looking at someone else's issues doesn't fix them. If you discover you need to aplologize for sojavascript:void(0);mething on your part, you can do that. FF is correct in that the two of you are co parenting, and if you can make this as stable as possible it will benefit you both and the child.

I don't know what kind of visitation schedule you have worked out, or if she's even a safe parent for the child. I am not a lawyer but you may need some kind of legal arrangement to have this schedule. The emotions on both your parts might make a schedule and sticking to a schedule difficult.

"Equal" in the perspective of someone with BPD might not really be equal. It maye actually be uneven with you doing the larger part. Rather than consider this as unfair to you, look at this from the perspective of the child- what is best for the child.

I think it's important to acknowlege your feelings of resentment that having a child changed things for you. When we become parents, our lives do change in many ways. We can't spontaneously join friends to do something fun. But that doesn't mean we can't ever do something fun with friends- we can if we plan and arrange for a sitter first.

I do hope you can overcome these feelings by staying focused that your child isn't at fault for this and he needs unconditonal love from you, and to feel wanted even if his beginning was out of ambivalence. The time of infancy is challenging as he's completely dependent and doesn't "give" a lot back. He can't toss a ball with you, or interact with you, but this time is temporary. This relationship will be your greatest source of joy, if you nurture it and allow it to be. Years ago Kenny Chesney wrote "There goes my life" song about this.

Last, I would caution you about starting another relationship with someone else at this vulnerable time. It's documented that if someone leaves a dysfunctional relationship and gets into another one without processing their part in it, they risk recreating the same dysfunction with someone else. Best to work on your own recovery first.

I'm writing from the perspective of a child of a BPD mother. My father did overtime in terms of parenting. I am very grateful for this. I know that it "wasn't fair" and it wasn't equal on his part, but our welfare depended on it. We don't always see the immediate reward from parenting, but you will in time. You may be giving up some fun things now, but the rewards can be greater.

[EZEarache]

Thanks for your response, I really appreciate it.

It appears there is some sort of joint therapy going on...these discussions are really better handled there.

In our last therapy session, with exGFwBPD at my throat throughout the entire session, we more or less decided therapy was no longer relevant. The therapist suggested a moderator, that it could be him or someone we mutually trusted. Her response to this statement was that there was no one we can both mutually trust. I agree with that to a certain extent. She also HATES the current therapist. She wrote a really terrible, and factually inaccurate review of him on Google even before the last session. She screamed at him in another session because she was convinced that he was not working to treat my depression. Unfortunately, I now understand that my depression was the result of approximately three years of emotional abuse and he was trying to get to the bottom of it. In my opinion, the therapist was doing the best he could in a really impossible situation. So, yeah, I agree, it would be great to talk about this stuff in therapy, but mostly we just talk about how my actions and reactions are the problem. If I suggest that her actions are the problem, she becomes very defensive and just goes back further in our history and points out another bad thing that I said or did in the past, that she will never be able to forgive me for that caused her to do something else. My goal in the last session was to set up boundaries where we didn't discuss things that happened more than two months ago. That, of course, never happened.

Do you enjoy time alone with your child?

More and more with each passing week. When we first had our blowout that forced me to make another living arrangement she started threatening me with full custody, because I was unstable/suicidal. ExGFwBPD was also paranoid my mother wanted to take the baby away from her with my mother's own custody battle. My mother is in her late 70s and has no interest in becoming a full time caregiver. The threats of taking the baby completely away from me sent me down an even deeper level of depression. I was completely breaking down in tears at the thought of losing access to this perfect little being. I'm getting teary just thinking about it. Yes, I enjoy spending time with him. We had a great visit at my new place on Sunday. I can't wait until he starts getting a little older and I can take him out hiking, and play soccer, ride bikes, go camping, etc. I am actually starting to scheme on how we can make a 50/50 split work more quickly than I initially planned. However, there are two other interdependencies, so I'm not sure these ideas will work.

[EZEarache]

Thank you for your detailed and well thought out response Notwendy!

Maybe it would help for you to decide where you want the relationship to go in terms of romantic or not. Your GF's emotions ( and possibly yours too for a while) will be all over the place.

Yes, I agree. I am hoping we can use the next 4.5 months to determine if we want to stay together as a couple or not. I think for her part, her mind is already made up that she doesn't want to. She misconstrued a statement I made exactly a week before the moving truck arrived. I said, "I'm getting to the point where I feel like I don't want to get back together." This was after two days of her sending me nasty text messages. She was blaming me for leaving, and forcing her to raise the boy alone. She seems to have forgotten, that she called 911 on me and the police came. They took me to the hospital in handcuffs. That day she told my mother I needed to find somewhere else to live. If I thought we could get back to where we were in the fall of 2019, I would say let's work things out. I can only do so much self improvement in this situation and I need to be careful of my own mental health.

I'm not sure what she means by sending you this idea of equality. My guess is you both made mistakes in the relationship. The benefit is for each of you to examine your own, on your own, rather than looking at each other's. Looking at someone else's issues doesn't fix them. If you discover you need to aplologize for sojavascript:void(0);mething on your part, you can do that. FF is correct in that the two of you are co parenting, and if you can make this as stable as possible it will benefit you both and the child.

This was in response to a question that I asked her the morning after our last couples therapy session. She has had a habit of sending me a nasty message every morning around 7 a.m. starting about April 29th. It happened after the baby rolled off the bed and fell on his head under her care. She sent me a nasty message on Friday, May 7th, once again explaining that my earlier statements caused her to pull the baby away from me when I was watching him. I apologized to her for hurting her so deeply by my earlier statements, wishing I could take them back and lamenting our current situation and that I never intended to hurt her. That I wanted to be the first man in her life to stay with her.

She replied, "I think that's the difference between us. I don't really want and am not looking for someone to right the wrongs of my past. All I want and have ever wanted was an equal and a partner. But I appreciate the sentiment."

I found the statement pretty hurtful at first, but I chose not to follow my amygdala hijack. Instead I took the time to really process her statement and read into what she was telling me. So early in the evening, I asked, "What would make you feel like an equal and a partner." She replied that she would get back to me.

Yes, I want to make things as stable as possible. For my part, I think I managed to respond to all of early morning nastygrams with kindness and understanding. It's a lot easier to do this remotely via text than in person.

I don't know what kind of visitation schedule you have worked out, or if she's even a safe parent for the child. I am not a lawyer but you may need some kind of legal arrangement to have this schedule. The emotions on both your parts might make a schedule and sticking to a schedule difficult.

Confirmed, since he fell on his head, I have been having the same question. I realize this is a fairly common home accident. So I am doing my best not to fall into the blame game with it. I would really prefer to keep this out of the courts, if we can. Due to my initial suicidal ideation, and a suicide note I gave her in October, a custody battle will be expensive for us. I started taking medication and am seeing things much more clearly, now. My depression has largely subsided. I have a history of depression, so given everything that has transpired in the past year, it's not surprising it's managed to creep its way back in. I'm doing my best to keep my emotions out of it. Our current agreed schedule has been visitation on Saturday and as requested on weeknights. It's sort of fallen into a schedule of Wednesday nights. Last week I made the mistake of packing for my move on Wednesday. This caused a considerable amount of drama. She felt slighted that I chose to pack instead of take responsibility for the baby. I understand her point of view. However, when she tried to discuss it with me she went into a total rage and screamed at the top of her lungs. I responded via text that moving forward if she chose to scream at me, that would be the end of the conversation. She liked that even less and went into a total tirade about me being controlling and abusive. Fortunately for me, I now can see where the real problem exists.

"Equal" in the perspective of someone with BPD might not really be equal. It maybe actually be uneven with you doing the larger part. Rather than consider this as unfair to you, look at this from the perspective of the child- what is best for the child.

I agree. For a week or two prior to the blowout, she started going down this thought path that I wasn't doing enough. I was consistently grocery shopping, cooking, watching the boy any time she requested me to. When we were considering having a child she promised me that she would take care of everything. She really didn't understand what she was talking about, though. I questioned it at the time, which lead to more fighting.

I think it's important to acknowlege your feelings of resentment that having a child changed things for you. When we become parents, our lives do change in many ways. We can't spontaneously join friends to do something fun. But that doesn't mean we can't ever do something fun with friends- we can if we plan and arrange for a sitter first.

This has not been the case in the pandemic. Also her hate for my mother impacts our ability to have access to affordable childcare. The babysitter we have on week days is great, but costs $20 an hour. Also, when I tried to schedule fun things for the two of us to do, I was met with a lot of hostility about hiring a baby sitter for the above reason. Maybe after the pandemic has ended, and children under 2 or whatever are approved for a vaccine, this will be reality. Unfortunately, at this time, it is not.

I do hope you can overcome these feelings by staying focused that your child isn't at fault for this and he needs unconditonal love from you, and to feel wanted even if his beginning was out of ambivalence. The time of infancy is challenging as he's completely dependent and doesn't "give" a lot back. He can't toss a ball with you, or interact with you, but this time is temporary. This relationship will be your greatest source of joy, if you nurture it and allow it to be. Years ago Kenny Chesney wrote "There goes my life" song about this.

The baby is absolutely not at fault. I feel terrible that he does not get to have a stable family like I grew up in. I would do anything that will not impact my own well being to make this happen. At almost a one year old, his smiles, giggles and general excitement and enthusiasm about his surroundings are starting to give a whole lot back.

Last, I would caution you about starting another relationship with someone else at this vulnerable time. It's documented that if someone leaves a dysfunctional relationship and gets into another one without processing their part in it, they risk recreating the same dysfunction with someone else. Best to work on your own recovery first.

I have no intention of forging a new relationship until I own a permanent residence and have settled into a full 50/50 custody arrangement. I took a long time getting myself prepared for this current disaster. It took me seven years before I felt confident I was ready for a new relationship. I just have trouble picking stable mates. I'm realizing now, that I definitely fall into the codependent category, once the honeymoon stage of the relationship starts to falter. I was so prepared to separate early on in this relationship. I'm really annoyed at myself for letting her suck me into her guilt trips. Hopefully, I've learned a few things for the future, assuming she continues to refuse to accept that she needs help.

I'm writing from the perspective of a child of a BPD mother. My father did overtime in terms of parenting. I am very grateful for this. I know that it "wasn't fair" and it wasn't equal on his part, but our welfare depended on it. We don't always see the immediate reward from parenting, but you will in time. You may be giving up some fun things now, but the rewards can be greater.

Thank you again for your heartfelt perspective! This is absolutely the dad I want to be. I hope that I can work through my own shortcomings and bring this goal to fruition. I realize that as the boy becomes older and asserts his individuality and independence from his mother, that it will most likely bring out new and difficult symptoms for her. Hopefully you continue to post here, so I gain the perspective of the adult child, and prevent myself from falling into similar cycles that you experience.

Did your father stay with your mother as a romantic couple, or did they separate? If they separated how young were you and what impact has it had on you, good or bad.