BPD/Nxh wanted to "talk"

[Forward2free]

BPD/Nxh walked in a few minutes late at exchange cafe and his GF took kids to the car and he approached my table and asked if we could talk.

I said yes and asked him to remove his sunglasses which he did. When he left 20 minutes later, I emailed myself a list of the things he said. I didn't have a voice recorder on me and wish that I did. I haven't had contact with him for 4 years and it seems it might be necessary to carry again.

Here's the list - it's a surprising read as he changed from aggressive to passive to argumentative to kind... .

I'm just itching for a reason to take you back to court

I put on a good front for the kids so they think we have a good relationship but I despise you. I don't like you and I don't have any time for you.

If you hurt me you know I'll hurt you 10 fold

If you do 1% for me you know I'll give you back 10%

I know you do everything for the kids

You get $60 monthly child support because it's all your fault

You did this

You sold all my stuff from the house

You and your family don't support me and the kids. You would all be surprised I fought this for so long

I call [my lawyer] Aunty to soften the blow when I talk about her to the kids. She told me not to call the kids and to see if you'd ask the kids to call me. They didn't and you failed the test.

Why don't you get the kids to call me ever?

My lawyer told me not to give you extra money for the kids or D8's teeth. She said you'd find a way to fund it

Prove to me that you've changed. I keep waiting to see if you're going to change and be the person that I knew before.

What do you need? I know you do everything for the kids. What do they need?

I guess there's more to the story about your ex bf because he went back to his wife.

[My new gf] and I want you to be happy with someone.

I wouldn't ever hurt you or the kids and I'd always protect you.

My brother pays for all my legal bills and will always pay if I need him.

I have a crappy job. I'm really great at it but the people I work with are [not nice] but I get paid too well. I get to drive Maserati's and Porches and my neighbours think I'm a drug dealer. It got me over my need to buy cars though.

You've heard [my new song]. It's an apology to you.

I left the gift for D6 on your porch to test you and see if you'd react because the order said I couldn't be on your property.

I test you all the time to see if you'll do something more for me

The only reason I got the kids in court is because I had you up against the wall

Don't cry. What do you need money for?


Things I told him:

We missed your call because we were in a restaurant for a birthday party and it was a complete accident.

I am totally supportive if your relationship with the kids and want there to be a loving and respectful relationship.

We go without often in order to look after the kids. They need things for school and I can't afford them.

I sold our belongings because you hadn't helped pay the mortgage for 2 years and I did what I needed to do to keep my head above water and provide for our children.

I'm worried about having the kids call you in case you try to use the calls against me.

I always feel like I have to watch my back and from what you just said, it sounds like I need to. That's why I stick to the order.

I can't control what the kids say or how they feel about things. Their thoughts, their words.

I did cry a little when talking about money. He reached his hand out over the table to me and looked sympathetic. I sat back and stopped crying. He bought them shoes for school on the visit.


D8 called me 3 times from his phone on visit to ask which shoes to buy and sent a couple photos. The third time she called she told me S6 was crying and asked if he was he allowed to have shoes from photo 1 and I said yes.

They both arrived with new shoes and BPD/Nxh gave me the receipt in case of need of exchange.

They said BPD/Nxh asked them if they like gf and asked if they'd mind if they got married and they said ok. They said it will happen soon.


So, there you have it. I think he spoke to me at gf's insistence after he'd been sending me emails telling me he was taking me back to court on Friday with ridiculous accusations. I responded briefly with facts and cc'd his lawyer.

I'm tired of the games. I am angry that I cried but super proud that I spoke few words, always quiet and considered and I stated my boundaries and the court orders clearly. I noticed that crying had a visible affect and he softened towards me. I was tired and not made up and maybe looked more vulnerable. I know the predator in him would have loved it. For once, on reflection, I don't think I did too badly and I think he sees the truth instead of the villain that he made me out to be. At least for today.

[Matt]

Wow, a lot of stuff.  It sounds like it went OK.

If you had it to do over again, would you agree to talk to him?

Or do you think e-mail is better?

[livednlearned]

F2F, what an emotional meeting that must have been. He was so many different people in your conversation, it seemed to capture the disorder in all its facets: sad, scary, blaming, mean, vindictive, tortured, gaslighting, threatening, menacing, and then kind and caring, always so hard to believe when it's sandwiched between the cruel and vicious parts of the disorder.

I don't know that I could have been so strong, to sit there and have a face to face conversation.

Will there be other exchanges where the two of you might talk?

[Matt]

F2F, what an emotional meeting that must have been. He was so many different people in your conversation

That's one of the things I noticed too.  With e-mail, you can separate things out, and talk about one thing at a time, and avoid all the mixed-up emotions.  With a face-to-face conversation, or phone, it's hard to do that... .

[Forward2free]

You're both right, it was really difficult to handle and I stopped being hard on myself about crying when I wrote it all out and saw how strong I had actually been. For years I would try and analyse the conversations to see what I had said to push him and make him say xyz. It was crystal clear that his agenda had nothing to do with what I said this time.

I certainly don't plan on being alone at my drop off's for a while and will take a family member and an audio recorder with me.

If I had recorded it, it would certainly have been gold evidence if/when he takes me back to court. It's hard to not want to create a spider-web to catch the behaviour that is driving his irrational actions. I will certainly carry an audio recorder from now on. I guess I needed a few years without it and the intervention orders gave me the space to breathe. But it's time to tool up.

I did feel strong enough at the time to have the conversation with him and kind of relieved that he wanted to speak with me instead of intimidation and threats through email. When his lawyers get involved they fuel his fire and things get out of control. I felt more in control by way of seeing it play out in front of me.

Thankfully it's completely different now. I now know it isn't me. I know that there is nothing I can/cannot do that will change his thinking. I know now he hasn't really learnt anything after 4 years of therapy. I know that he is still the same and that his perspective is severely warped. During the conversation I realised that I needed to keep the focus on the children. In the past I was hurting so much and I thought it was about me and that I would be enough to break through his anger.

He called the kids last night as per the schedule and said he had D8's book and was going to drop it in the letterbox. I said tell dad that if he toots the horn you can come and say a quick hello. He was super surprised and said "Really?". They took their school reports out to him and gave him a Christmas photo and I told him he could pay to have it enlarged if he was interested. I have video cameras at the house so I knew it would be a recorded exchange.

I feel myself trying to have a normal interaction with him and I am doing it for the kids, but I am also selfishly doing it for me. I know it won't last and it might only be a couple days/weeks/months of pleasantness, but it's nice to not feel the noose around my neck for awhile. I still need help with some medical and school bills and I just need to get as much as I can while it is good.

He's told the kids that he's marrying 23yo girlfriend of 2.5 years so I can expect some more average behaviour before things get rotten again. We all know the cycle of reeling them in vs catching them.

It's hard to not feel like I am manipulating him. I am using my knowledge to disassociate myself from the reality and act in a business like manner and it seems to be ok for now. Am I doing this right?

[livednlearned]

It's hard to not feel like I am manipulating him. I am using my knowledge to disassociate myself from the reality and act in a business like manner and it seems to be ok for now. Am I doing this right?

Manipulation is handling or controlling something in a skillful manner. That's what you're doing. The less favorable definition implies that the person manipulating someone is unscrupulous or unfair. I don't see you doing that in this situation.

You are handling him skillfully, in the way he needs to be handled, because he has shown that he is capable of extreme abuse. He is a perpetrator of abuse, not a normal person. He responds to perceived relationship loss in a distorted way, and you are an innocent bystander.

[Matt]

It's hard to not feel like I am manipulating him. I am using my knowledge to disassociate myself from the reality and act in a business like manner and it seems to be ok for now. Am I doing this right?

Manipulation is handling or controlling something in a skillful manner. That's what you're doing. The less favorable definition implies that the person manipulating someone is unscrupulous or unfair. I don't see you doing that in this situation.

You are handling him skillfully, in the way he needs to be handled, because he has shown that he is capable of extreme abuse. He is a perpetrator of abuse, not a normal person. He responds to perceived relationship loss in a distorted way, and you are an innocent bystander.

That's how I see it too.

But there is a bad part of this:  It takes a lot of energy to deal with someone like your ex, and you don't get much of a sense of accomplishment from it.  All you get out of it is to do it again tomorrow.

I found it works way better to talk to my BPD ex only by e-mail most of the time.  One subject on each e-mail, and no emotions - if she gets into blaming or accusations I don't respond to that.

Over time she has quit engaging in very negative stuff, maybe because it leaves a paper trail and she knows I will share that with others - I won't consider her notes to me as confidential.  So now her notes are mostly respectful, sometimes not very helpful, but not a problem either.  Probably 99% of the chaos is gone.

[Forward2free]

It's hard to not feel like I am manipulating him. I am using my knowledge to disassociate myself from the reality and act in a business like manner and it seems to be ok for now. Am I doing this right?

Manipulation is handling or controlling something in a skillful manner. That's what you're doing. The less favorable definition implies that the person manipulating someone is unscrupulous or unfair. I don't see you doing that in this situation.

You are handling him skillfully, in the way he needs to be handled, because he has shown that he is capable of extreme abuse. He is a perpetrator of abuse, not a normal person. He responds to perceived relationship loss in a distorted way, and you are an innocent bystander.

This makes so much sense, and the way you have described it, I do not feel guilty anymore, thank you. It's funny how the word 'manipulation' can be so negative after an experience like ours where manipulation was used for evil.

It's hard to not feel like I am manipulating him. I am using my knowledge to disassociate myself from the reality and act in a business like manner and it seems to be ok for now. Am I doing this right?

Manipulation is handling or controlling something in a skillful manner. That's what you're doing. The less favorable definition implies that the person manipulating someone is unscrupulous or unfair. I don't see you doing that in this situation.

You are handling him skillfully, in the way he needs to be handled, because he has shown that he is capable of extreme abuse. He is a perpetrator of abuse, not a normal person. He responds to perceived relationship loss in a distorted way, and you are an innocent bystander.

That's how I see it too.

But there is a bad part of this:  It takes a lot of energy to deal with someone like your ex, and you don't get much of a sense of accomplishment from it.  All you get out of it is to do it again tomorrow.

I found it works way better to talk to my BPD ex only by e-mail most of the time.  One subject on each e-mail, and no emotions - if she gets into blaming or accusations I don't respond to that.

Over time she has quit engaging in very negative stuff, maybe because it leaves a paper trail and she knows I will share that with others - I won't consider her notes to me as confidential.  So now her notes are mostly respectful, sometimes not very helpful, but not a problem either.  Probably 99% of the chaos is gone.

You're right that it takes a lot of energy and it took over 24 hours to really feel free of the pressure I felt. And you're also right that the win goes unnoticed and will be irrelevant with tomorrow's saga.

Email is much better. I have been way too wordy with my responses of late, and I think it's because he throws so much into emails to attack and accuse me. When responding, should I only address the valid concerns and respond to the accusations that need to be disproved?

I do like the idea of a paper trail and I think by cc'ing his lawyer, I unintentionally invited the conversation. It would seem he wanted to be off record.

[Matt]

Email is much better. I have been way too wordy with my responses of late, and I think it's because he throws so much into emails to attack and accuse me. When responding, should I only address the valid concerns and respond to the accusations that need to be disproved?

I do like the idea of a paper trail and I think by cc'ing his lawyer, I unintentionally invited the conversation. It would seem he wanted to be off record.

Well I think cc:ing your own lawyer is probably a good idea, and maybe his lawyer too.  It helped me sometimes to cc: some authority figure - for a while I copied our Custody Evaluator, and later the court-appointed "parenting coach" - because that way my ex knew that whatever she wrote me would not be a secret and would be seen by someone in authority.  She started acting better when I did that.

I would strongly suggest that you keep each e-mail to about 3 sentences max, all on one topic.  Completely ignore anything he sends you that is inappropriate;  if he sends an e-mail with 10 paragraphs, and 9 of them are inappropriate in some way, just answer the one that's sensible.  Ignore any emotions - note what he writes that is emotional and ignore it.  Only communicate in terms of practical stuff related to the kids, like schedules.

Ignore accusations.  Even if there is some validity to what he's saying, there's nothing to be gained by talking about it with him.

[Forward2free]

Email is much better. I have been way too wordy with my responses of late, and I think it's because he throws so much into emails to attack and accuse me. When responding, should I only address the valid concerns and respond to the accusations that need to be disproved?

I do like the idea of a paper trail and I think by cc'ing his lawyer, I unintentionally invited the conversation. It would seem he wanted to be off record.

Well I think cc:ing your own lawyer is probably a good idea, and maybe his lawyer too.  It helped me sometimes to cc: some authority figure - for a while I copied our Custody Evaluator, and later the court-appointed "parenting coach" - because that way my ex knew that whatever she wrote me would not be a secret and would be seen by someone in authority.  She started acting better when I did that.

I disengaged my lawyer at the end of the court case in November last year. I have spent over $160,000 in 4 years and I didn't want to be their cash cow anymore. Since that time I have been representing myself and dealing directly with BPD/Nxh's lawyer. I am not sure my lawyer was being of use in the end to shuffle papers and do my typing and filing for $350 per hour. Now I deal in email only with BPD/Nxh's lawyer and am able to represent the interests of the children. Basically he threatened to take me back to court for wanting to change a visit that clashed with children's activities and told me I was in breach etc. I managed to resolve the dispute and the children went to their activities, supported by BPD/Nxh. My barrister has offered to help me in court if required in the future too and said I handled it well.

I would strongly suggest that you keep each e-mail to about 3 sentences max, all on one topic.  Completely ignore anything he sends you that is inappropriate;  if he sends an e-mail with 10 paragraphs, and 9 of them are inappropriate in some way, just answer the one that's sensible.  Ignore any emotions - note what he writes that is emotional and ignore it.  Only communicate in terms of practical stuff related to the kids, like schedules.

Ignore accusations.  Even if there is some validity to what he's saying, there's nothing to be gained by talking about it with him.

I am terrible at ignoring accusations. He told me that he holds me responsible for things the kids say, for things he said my sister did (allegedly gave him the cold shoulder and he told me "I will not tolerate it again ever. It's not OK." ) and more, and I feel the need to defend them.

I emailed "There may have been a misunderstanding with my sister. V asked T and T did abc."

Do I need to say that at all? Perhaps ignoring it is better. I guess I am still used to feeling like I need to defend myself and try to smooth things over to make him happy, and as we all know, that will never happen.

[Matt]

Yeah, I'd just ignore stuff like that.  :)oes nobody any good to argue about it.

If he makes accusation in court, or in court papers, that's different.  Then I think it's important to state that the accusation isn't true, and shift the focus onto why he is making false accusations - accusations without evidence.

[Forward2free]

Thanks Matt - you've walked a hard road for a very long time and I am lucky to have your advice :-)

[Forward2free]

Nothing to report, wrote a post and it helped me clarify it :-)

[Whichwayisup]

I would strongly suggest that you keep each e-mail to about 3 sentences max, all on one topic.  Completely ignore anything he sends you that is inappropriate;  if he sends an e-mail with 10 paragraphs, and 9 of them are inappropriate in some way, just answer the one that's sensible.  Ignore any emotions - note what he writes that is emotional and ignore it.  Only communicate in terms of practical stuff related to the kids, like schedules.

Ignore accusations.  Even if there is some validity to what he's saying, there's nothing to be gained by talking about it with him.

Would like to add my thanks Matt,

This gave me a much needed wake up call (even recognising that I shouldnt address the irrationality, I still felt compelled). , I too have been going through a similar dance.  Whilst making progress, I needed to see such sage advice, many thanks for this!

Regards,

Whichwayisup

[Matt]

I would strongly suggest that you keep each e-mail to about 3 sentences max, all on one topic.  Completely ignore anything he sends you that is inappropriate;  if he sends an e-mail with 10 paragraphs, and 9 of them are inappropriate in some way, just answer the one that's sensible.  Ignore any emotions - note what he writes that is emotional and ignore it.  Only communicate in terms of practical stuff related to the kids, like schedules.

Ignore accusations.  Even if there is some validity to what he's saying, there's nothing to be gained by talking about it with him.

Would like to add my thanks Matt,

This gave me a much needed wake up call (even recognising that I shouldnt address the irrationality, I still felt compelled). , I too have been going through a similar dance.  Whilst making progress, I needed to see such sage advice, many thanks for this!

Regards,

Whichwayisup

You're welcome!

These practices - e-mail, short and sweet - are pretty solid tribal knowledge here - lots of members have found that it works better than talking face-to-face or on the phone.

[Forward2free]

I just emailed out a 3 short-sentence email to request money for daughters dental treatment.

Who know's what will come back if anything, but it's focus is on daughter, so hopefully that will cut through... .

[livednlearned]

I just emailed out a 3 short-sentence email to request money for daughters dental treatment.

Who know's what will come back if anything, but it's focus is on daughter, so hopefully that will cut through... .

When I do that, I usually get wacky responses, but often n/BPDx will actually follow-through on what I was asking him to do. If you can ignore the content of his messages and just track his actions, it makes it much easier to manage the communication.

[Forward2free]

He wrote back and said he'll talk to me about it at the next visit, next Sunday. I didn't respond.

I want to stop the talking but see it as an opportunity to record him this time and have a good reason to stop chatting. I guess I don't want it floated that I am being obstructive or trying to block him trying to work on kids matters. Uggh.