When kids are involved

[canwedothis]

I have 4 girls (16, 13, 10 & 8).  I have been dating my bf for 15 months.  He lived with us for almost a year.  We want to work things out, but have a huge hurdle to overcome:

My oldest daughter (16) and my uBPDbf have had some very serious issues which resulted in him moving out in November.  He and I have talked extensively about his issues with her, which are:

- She is disrespectful to me (talks back, expresses her thoughts/opinions when she doesn't agree)

- She doesn't usually do chores directly when asked, often doing them on her own schedule.

- She does things subconsciously to aggravate him to drive a wedge between him and I

- She often changes her plans at the last minute with no regard to anyone else's needs/schedules

He says she "gets away with everything" and I never punish her.  Since he and I have been together, she has been grounded multiple times, including taking away her cell phone for up to a month and not being allowed to go on a trip she had been planning for almost 2 years because she shot her mouth off at him.  In the typical black & white borderline fashion, if I'm not punishing her to his standards, then I am not punishing her at all.  Please understand that while she is sassy and a know-it-all, she doesn't drink, break curfew, do drugs or have sex.  She is home every night, has decent grades in school, wants to go to college in Canada and is a very good kid. 

She and I have talked about her issues with him, which are:

- He is a bigot (uses racial and sexist slurs)

- He is mean to the world (waiters, tellers, grocery clerks, etc)

- He is mean to me (demanding, degrading, just like her father was)

- He will ask for a list of twenty chores to be done, she can do 19 perfectly, but the 20th one she                      didn't do just right is the one she gets in trouble for.

- He expects her to want to jump in to be a part of his extended family, which often interferes with her social plans

- Her sisters don't need to see me being disrespected

Please understand that I know that most of his issues are BPD related, and that he has a heart of gold and loves this child even though he thinks I'm raising her wrong.

One of their biggest issues is that he was raised in a family where you ate what was cooked for you, period.  I have raised my kids that if they don't like what has been made for dinner, they can solve the problem by finding their own food, as long as it is not just a snack or junk.  There have been two incidents where this problem has caused significant fights.  The first was over a bowl of spaghetti she reheated instead of eating the hour-old pork chops on the stove.  This was when I cancelled her trip.  The second was when she ate a bowl of cereal instead of the casserole he made for breakfast.  This was when he first said he was moving out.

It all sounds so petty when I type it, but I don't know how to proceed with the reconciliation of this relationship.  In her eyes, if I left her father because he was verbally abusive (which he was, but that was not the reason I left, and she will never know the real reason, as I am choosing to preserve his dignity with his children), then why am I staying with this guy.

So... . if he and I are going to continue to date, and he is going to move back in to the house with us, I need to know how to help her acclimate (sp?) to the situation. 

My thought is to ask her what her limits are for now, how much contact she is willing to endure (for lack of a better word) and find a happy medium.

Any thoughts/suggestions please share them.

I will answer any questions as well.

[elemental]

You are her parent. He is nothing. She owes him ZERO except basic respect that one extends to an adult.

Your boyfriend needs to go and stay gone. You have 4 children that he is FIGHTING to be able to be punitive to.

What was your question? Oh. Ditch him.

Wow, I hardly ever have such an angry gut reaction on this site.

PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN.

[elemental]

And you are asking HER to endure abuse so you can have him in the house?

What is important to you here?  You deserve to have a boyfriend that abuses your children?

[canwedothis]

Thank you for your honesty. I obviously need to protect my children. I also want a partner who wants to be an active part of my life, not someone who I only see once a week. He has all of the qualities I want in a partner EXCEPT his uBPD. He believes he has BPD and is willing to go to therapy to work on it. If I didn't see in him the things I am looking for I would have left him for good. He has been very good to my girls in many many ways and if he is willing to work on his issues why would we give up the good parts of our life? Isn't that what commitment is about?  And p.s. Before judgement sets in, I was married for 14 years to the man who fathered all four of my girls.

[elemental]

This guy cornered you into taking away an activity your daughter planned for 2 YEARS.

Because she warmed up left over food instead of eating his casserole.

Abuse.

Who cares if you were married to the father of your girls? According to you, he was abusive too.

tbh, a man in your life is the least of your worries. especially an already proven one who will freely abuse your children and engage you into doing it too.

A better question than wether you should date this man and move him into your house where your children are abused by him, is why do you even WANT to?

[canwedothis]

Everything I have read for the past few days has been supportive and positive. I don't want him to abuse them. I feel he has the potential to be an amazing stepdad once he gets a grip on his anger, which he is wanting to do. I posted on this board to get some positive feedback on how I can maybe slowly reintroduce a more healthy dialogue between them.

Why, in a sea of posts about staying has this become so negative?

[Mazda]

Everything I have read for the past few days has been supportive and positive. I don't want him to abuse them. I feel he has the potential to be an amazing stepdad once he gets a grip on his anger, which he is wanting to do. I posted on this board to get some positive feedback on how I can maybe slowly reintroduce a more healthy dialogue between them.

Why, in a sea of posts about staying has this become so negative?

Canwedothis, the answer to your name is NO.  There is very little scope for improvement,even with therapy, for people with BPD.  In time, things like anger outbursts and self harm can be improved upon (we are talking a few years of committed therapy).  The abuse will always continue.  If this was just about you, it would make sense for you to stay, if you really really were a sadist.  With 4 children though, you are setting them up for a lot of pain and possible irreversible damage.  You should read up on the effects of a BPD parent on children.  These kids get scarred for life.

We are not trying to be unsupportive. We are trying to yank you out of the FOG for the benefit of your own sanity, as well as your kids.  Those good qualities you want?  Guess what, it's not really him.  It's part of the BPD and it's just there to manipulate you (rather successfully) to stay with him.  I'm sorry this is harsh from myself and everyone else, but we are just trying to help out.  Like you, I wanted, desperately, to have a long term relationship with a BPD, even without kids.  After a very horrible break up and many, many months of tears, I can see exactly what he was.  A game player.  This is what people with BPD do.  Except in your game you are bringing yourself and your daughters to the table to play.  The rules are made up by him and the cards are marked.  He is the only one that knows.  There is no way you will win this.  Cut your losses, take some time out and learn as much as you can about BPD.  The fact that you think him saying he will get help (probably manipulation) makes me wonder how aware of the prognosis for BPD you are.  They are very sick.  There is a slim to none chance that will EVER change.  There are plenty of people without BPD who have those traits you talk about, who wouldn't dare pull this rubbish.  I know it's harsh, a bitter pill to swallow because I have swallowed it, but trust those of us who are on the other side.  We learnt our lessons the hard way and are just trying to save you lots of tears.

[PeppermintTea]

I feel for you but I agree with zencat and mazda. This man will cause harm in your family.

If he wanted to show true care and commitment to having a relationship with you he would accept the nature of his diagnosis and commit to living out of the family for several years to allow time for therapy to establish true change. A BPD IS NOT GOING TO HAVE THE INSIGHT OR ABILITY TO DO THIS!

I am sorry that you are in this place. Best wishes to you x

[AnitaL]

I just want to add to this conversation that I don't believe being a bigot is part of BPD.   

[elemental]

You let him move into your home at about 4 months of dating?

How long did you know him prior to dating?

Also "potential" is not reality. You already saw the reality so well you had him leave your home. It's a really good idea to slow down on this. We know you want to be told positive and hopeful things. There are just warning signs and red flags. How about you stick around and learn some more and look at the lessons and think for a while, and see if he follows up with his therapy plans and shows progress.

[martillo]

Canwedothis:  I think we all come to this site looking for the solution "we" want - that there is an easy way to fix our partner - that the person we initially came to know really is still there - we just need to find that fix and wa-la! We can become the wonderful, happy couple/family we were meant to be... . I met my uBPDh 22 yrs ago - there were plenty of red flags that friends and family pointed out to me - plenty of red flags that I saw but I just knew that love would conquer all.  Yikes - was I wrong! (but in my defense, I didn't know anything about BPD until about 4 yrs ago)

As others have pointed out, learn all you can about BPD and its prognosis.  Give it time and if bf is really serious about this relationship and getting help - personal counseling, family counseling and bf is willing to let you be in charge of your kids, let them be the (normal-sounding to me) kids they are and recognize that they are your first priority then move forward with the r/s.  While he is doing that, do some personal work on yourself and determine if what your DD16 says is true-is bf verbally abusive, disrespectful to you and if so, why do you think you sought this ought a second time and more importantly, is it how you want your 4 dtrs to be treated as women?  Cause you are their role model... .


H and I are still married.  I am still staying.  We have 5 kids - DSS27, DS21, DS18, DS13, DD11 ... . but I wouldn't wish the craziness (and I don't mean like Steve Martin's Wild and Crazy Guy!) that has been their upbringing on any child.  Think drama and chaos for the rest their upbringing; think trying to explain that he gets a free pass because he has "issues"; think "crazy-dance" forever ... . with you caught in the middle.

[Nonamouse]

Canwedothis, I don't know what your experience is with your bf beyond what you've written. I'm not going to judge you for asking the question. I do think that some people's expeiences are so bad that they may have an immediate visceral reaction to it.

Hindsight is 20/20. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't let my dBPDw into my life. I worry constantly about the chaos that BPD has brought into my family and the effect it is having on my children. That's just my experience, knowing what I know now. My wife isn't a bad person, she's been dealt a bad hand in life. That doesn't make it any easier on me or my children. Her love for us is really irrelevant to the situation.

I'd recommend reading through the welcome posts, where people offer their stories. That's when the lightbulb went off for me. I saw my life in many of the posts. If it truly is BPD you're dealing with, it's a long hard slog. You can't change them. You can't save them. You can only work on changing how you respond. The lessons help and there are some really wise people here that can help you apply them. There are still days I'm not sure I can do it anymore and I think about changing my name and taking my kids to another country.

No one but you can decide whether or the benefits of the relationship outweigh the risks. Good luck.

[elemental]

It is a gut reaction. I haven't been here long enough to discuss FOO issues. But here is a little bit, and everyone may think it makes me have some BPD traits. Maybe I do. Anyway:

My mother remarried when I was 6. I had an older full brother, 8. My step dad had 3 kids, 11, 13, 14.

My step dad ( now deceased) sounds just like your boyfriend. From the controlling and abusive behavior, the demanding to have parental status of life and death and what you eat... .

My brother was beaten, his jaw was broken. I sat next to him a chair one day and watched my stepdad punch him in the jaw 42 times before the jaw broke.  I was terrified. My brother was 16.  Soon after, he committed suicide. In front of me. I watched him die. I was 14.

He was resecutated after 6 minutes and brought back. Mostly neurally intact. After a 6 month stint in a mental ward, he asked to go live with our father, who was not a nice man. Loads more to that story.

My point is, yes. I am having a gut reaction. You may ask where my  mother was during all of this. Like you, she had prior been in an abusive marriage. I remember at 4 years old, hiding under a quilt while my father beat her with a pistol. She walked out the next day and ran away back to her family. When my step dad abused, mom went into a ptsd state. To this day she is shocked by what happened.

I suspect that because of the abusive marriage you had, you are not able to connect.

Your daughter is WISE. She is your canary in the mining shaft. This man needs to not be anywhere near any of you.

I think my step dad was borderline. He was abusive.  He tried to break my neck once. Why? Because the barn door had fallen off it's track and I wasn't strong enough to get it back on. I was 17, 5'2" and 95 pounds.

Your daughter warmed up a bowl of spaghetti because YOU raised her to believe it was ok to do. You let your SICK mentally screwed up boyfriend talk you into abusing a child that had no expectation of mom doing such a thing.

I read what you wrote very carefully. You know exactly what you did and you know exactly that it is abuse and that he is the seed of it and that you are being weak because you think you love him.

He's going to hurt you and worse, he is going to hurt your kids. Let him go and keep your sanity and your children safe. Believe me, if you dont, a few years from now there is going to be exponentially more damage than has already happened.

Sounds like drama and that is what BPD cause.

Just run. Run now.

[waverider]

So... . if he and I are going to continue to date, and he is going to move back in to the house with us, I need to know how to help her acclimate (sp?) to the situation. 

If you are going to maintain a healthy environment with and around your daughter, You and he need to know how to create a healthy environment. A daughter has no vested interest in dealing with the singlemindedness of a pwBPD...

I do understand where you are coming from, I did the same. But you are approaching this from the wrong end. Your daughter owes him nothing, yet the stability of her environment is at risk. She is reacting as teenage daughters do.

Any disciplining of your daughter needs to come from you, and based on your values not based on appeasement of his.

[Tayto]

when you start work you are walking into a system and they have set up rules and times and so on. you start and as you go along you are taught that some things in this employment are not to be done s we do it this way and it works for us but you are more than welcome to join or not.

thgis man has come into your family system and from what you are writing he is trying to bring it to his ways, however if this was something that you agreed on,would you not have implemented these sets of rules in the first place.

he does not have to agree with the way you raise your children but he does have to respect that these are your ways and you have been doing a great job so far. why change it if its not broken ?

[waverider]

I will go slightly against the grain of the responses you have received so far.

Can this work? yes, BUT (I dont normally like use the word but) YOU are going to have to change, YOU need to learn more about the dynamics here, and YOU are going to have to take a stronger role in this. This is not about you being the stuck in the middle as go between( thats not a put down I was there).

As the situation stands it is potentially very damaging to both your daughter and yourself. there is no guarantee this can work, but at the moment you are wanting it to work for you as you are caught up in the idealization of a pwBPD. It can get a lot worse from here. it is possible to halt that, but it is a big task. You will need to be strong, and you will need to start now.

If you do not take control of this now you will risk permanent damage to your mother daughter relationship and suffer lasting guilt over what she has been exposed to. I was in your position, and I made excuses until I came here and learned how to untangle this bowl of string. My kids and partner get on well now but I still suffer from the guilt of what I put them though out of my own ignorance of what BPD was and how to deal with it.

This is your family, your rules, your standards, your daughter is a product of them. She is not a product of his rearing or standards. You are a family, a package. I am sure as a single mum you have struggled, and maybe your daughter may have discipline/rebellion problems, that is nothing abnormal. But that is your problem to resolve not his. The "laws" need to be yours not his.

You can resolve this but it will be a challenge of your strength and there and no guarantees.

Ask yourself first. Why do you want this? Is it making your life better, or are you just trying to escape loneliness?  Without truly knowing why it may prove too hard.

Sorry the responses may seem like a slap in your face, and possibly overwhelming, it is sometimes necessary, it was for me. no one wants to see you jump over the cliff without even knowing it is there.

[Obibens]

He has all of the qualities I want in a partner EXCEPT his uBPD. He believes he has BPD and is willing to go to therapy to work on it. If I didn't see in him the things I am looking for I would have left him for good. He has been very good to my girls in many many ways and if he is willing to work on his issues why would we give up the good parts of our life? Isn't that what commitment is about? 

Hopefully you can understand this is not coming from a place of judgement - but of experience.  The question "why would we give up the good parts of our life?"  is one everyone must answer for themselves, but you must understand that the 'bad' stuff can be EXTREMELY damaging, epsecially to your younger kids.  I felt the same way for at least 15 years.  If you read any of my other posts you will find that there has been extensive damage to my kids because of this relationship.  I've been working hard over the last year or so to do my best to repair the damage that I have caused and that is why I'm currently staying (for now anyway).  But, obviously it would have been much better to not have the damage to begin with.

It's got to be extremely tough being a single parent with 4 kids.  But you have done a great thing in removing them from the abuse from the previous parent.   I think everyone is just concerned the pattern may just be repeating itself.  I will say this, I agree with everyone else in that he just needs to shut up, support you,  and let you parent your kids your way.  Does he have kids of his own?  If not, that is all the more reason to give little weight to any parenting advice he may have.

Ultimately, waverider stated it best - yes, this can work, but it will require a LOT of work and strength on your part.  Is it worth it given the risks?

[canwedothis]

I am thankful for all of the input. I have been reading up on BPD for months now, and he and I have had very healthy conversations about the fact that he exhibits very strong tendencies. The most important boundary I have set is exactly what has been suggested. If we are to work as a couple, he must let me parent the girls my way. He has a son who is 17. He is a good kid. I do not try to inflict my parenting theories on his son and I want the same respect. I have accepted that it may not work, but I am willing to make the changes in me I need to make so he can no longer have the control he thought he wanted. Honestly as I have been using the tools on the site things have gotten better. I grew up in a very unstable home, I know what I want for our lives. I am glad to hear all you have to say, I will continue to read and post. I wish you all the best of luck on this journey, god knows we all need it.