Being a parent without being a judgemental "Tiger"

[stockholmama]

Hi folks, unpd/BPDh and I are on the brink of separation (again). Pretty much every fight we have, which is started by H, is about my poor parenting skills and failure to be a "team player" i.e. not being Tiger Mom enough. There are some legitimate concerns, each kid has them, but H's methodology of dealing with this is, well, he is extremely forceful that HIS way is the ONLY way to parent. I am not allowed to challenge any of his wacky ideas but must go along with them otherwise i am not being the correct Tiger Mom and forcing our kids to excel and succeed.

example: Huge fight erupts from H after daughter mentions her friend's mom is divorced. Apparently they now live in separate houses, down the street. H snidely remarks "why are they divorced then" if they are living so close to one another. Well, maybe they are divorced because they don't want to live together? (? divorce is not allowed when you have children in his world)  also this Mom has a another young child with another man, apparently they are not together, unclear whether they were ever married. H immediately seizes this as a "teachable moment" about how immoral this is for this women to live this way. I said wait a minute, you don't know this woman or her family situation, let's not be so fast to judge. He goes on and starts ranting how that's bad if she is making babies out of wedlock. He would later claim this was a "light hearted comment."  I said again that we don't know what their situation is, and if she's hot, she's attractive, attractive people should reproduce. (also light-hearted) This whole conversation was internalized by H as me undermining his morality and the morality of our family, and by extention I am now encouraging our teen daughter to go out and make babies with men out of wedlock.

This escalated into a huge fight this morning in my home office which ended which H's demand that I take back everything I said and tell our daughter my words were "wrong even though you have already damaged her".

There is a side issue - further evidence of my bad parenting and lack of co-parenting - that I expressed reservations about making our son take up boxing as a hobby. H is firm that he wants son to start using the punching bag daily, to "make him tough so he can stand up to the kids who are bullying him." By doing that I am further undermining H's excellent parenting and pushing of the kids to succeed. I am being told weekly that I am turning "his children in to losers." He says this with a lot of anger on his face. He also says our children don't trust me and only tell all of their secrets to H (usually when they want $). I said I am fine to be a glorified nanny, if that is what you want, but don't ask me to take back the concerns that I have.

We have been to 4 MCs in the past, but the situation has not improved. All sessions were eventually stopped because H stopped coming to them, saying that "we are fine now we don't need an MC anymore."

Actually this has been going on for the last year, and it doesn't seem to be getting better with age. It's getting worse. Not really sure what to do at this point. H threatens me that I should "just leave" if I don't want to cooperate on parenting. I said put it in writing if you want me to leave. (His family came after me last time we separated.) He refused and then said "okay you want me to just leave? You're going to tell the  kids their father has abandoned them! " (he is starting to get teary eyed) I said of course not i'm not going to tell them any such thing, I don't believe in doing that to our kids. You are just taking a break, that's all.  If you need to take a break then take a break, go figure out how you're going to coexist with me, because after 4 MCs with no changes over the years you pretty much know that this is how its going to be, right?

I'm trying to understand how to "stop the bleeding" when someone is so forceful and so correct about their thinking in their own mind, and does have the capacity to force things onto me that I really don't want.

[momtara]

Gosh, you have put up with a lot, for a long time.  He must have had a lot of trauma in his past to want to be so straight and narrow in his thinking, and afraid of his kids being weak or rejected.  He does sound like a typical BPD, taking certain comments too seriously. 

I am a little worried about his comments on divorce - seems like he just couldn't handle it if you left.

You have been to four marriage counselors, his family intervenes, at this point it seems like he really won't listen to anyone.  His thinking is very black and white and maybe dbt or something would help, but sounds like he wouldn't do it.  Unless you gave him an ultimatim that he get counseling and stick with it?

Hang in there.