I made the break-- it was surreal...

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

After months of planning I did it yesterday.  I had a lawyer draft a letter with my intentions and offering settlement terms.  I had already moved out my basic stuff to my parents and have made arrangements for a permanent place to live in a few weeks.

So I asked her to sit down, told her there was something we needed to discuss, and handed her the letter.  She was shocked, of course, but was uncannily calm during the whole thing.  She asked if we could try again, and I said I really didn't think so, that we have been trying for 34 years.  So she said, "I love you, but if this is what you really want, then I'm OK."  And we proceeded to walk through the points of the settlement like we might have been discussing a car rental agreement.  We even laughed over a couple of items.  Totally surreal.

If this holds, there are only a couple of adjustments to be made and we will have something we can sign.  I realize that is a huge IF with BPD, but I am soo hopeful she means what she says, at least this time.  I tried to be as reassuring as possible while staying within the bounds of what I had proposed.

There were two main points which she focused on, one of which is perfectly logical and another which is perfectly typical of her thinking.

--I proposed transitional spousal support to end after two years, in order to help her get on her feet.  We have an adult child with disabilities (28 years old) who under the law in our state does not automatically get child support nor is subject to custody laws.  I proposed to share visitation and allow him to live with her.  She would also like an ongoing amount for him to continue after her support ends.  That makes perfect sense and I'm more than willing to accommodate.  This was deliberately left out of the proposal because I knew she would ask for it and she would need at least one or two bargaining points that she could "win."

--Here's where it gets bizarre.  We have a couple of pigs and a flock of chickens left from a ridiculous mini-farm project initiated by her.  It is detailed in other posts on here if anyone is interested.  In the proposal I simply offered that I would assume responsibility for any remaining livestock and she would have the family pets.  So she asked me what I planned to do with them, and I said I would probably have the hogs butchered for the freezer and we could share the meat, and I would probably keep the chickens, as I like raising them in spite of my issues with the farm.

Whereupon she insisted that if I kept the chickens, I was to keep her supplied with fresh eggs!  She laughed but she wasn't kidding!       

So with the straightest possible face I could muster, I told her (a) I couldn't promise anything without talking to my lawyer, but (b) if it was OK I would be happy to give her eggs for as long as the chickens lived, because I had no intention of keeping chickens for the next 30 years just because I promised to furnish eggs in a divorce agreement!  

I have no illusions that this is going to end this smoothly, but if it does turn out that all I have to do to get out of this is give her some EGGS, then I'll learn to lay them myself!  

[jedimaster]

After months of planning I did it yesterday.  I had a lawyer draft a letter with my intentions and offering settlement terms.  I had already moved out my basic stuff to my parents and have made arrangements for a permanent place to live in a few weeks.

So I asked her to sit down, told her there was something we needed to discuss, and handed her the letter.  She was shocked, of course, but was uncannily calm during the whole thing.  She asked if we could try again, and I said I really didn't think so, that we have been trying for 34 years.  So she said, "I love you, but if this is what you really want, then I'm OK."  And we proceeded to walk through the points of the settlement like we might have been discussing a car rental agreement.  We even laughed over a couple of items.  Totally surreal.

If this holds, there are only a couple of adjustments to be made and we will have something we can sign.  I realize that is a huge IF with BPD, but I am soo hopeful she means what she says, at least this time.  I tried to be as reassuring as possible while staying within the bounds of what I had proposed.

There were two main points which she focused on, one of which is perfectly logical and another which is perfectly typical of her thinking.

--I proposed transitional spousal support to end after two years, in order to help her get on her feet.  We have an adult child with disabilities (28 years old) who under the law in our state does not automatically get child support nor is subject to custody laws.  I proposed to share visitation and allow him to live with her.  She would also like an ongoing amount for him to continue after her support ends.  That makes perfect sense and I'm more than willing to accommodate.  This was deliberately left out of the proposal because I knew she would ask for it and she would need at least one or two bargaining points that she could "win."

--Here's where it gets bizarre.  We have a couple of pigs and a flock of chickens left from a ridiculous mini-farm project initiated by her.  It is detailed in other posts on here if anyone is interested.  In the proposal I simply offered that I would assume responsibility for any remaining livestock and she would have the family pets.  So she asked me what I planned to do with them, and I said I would probably have the hogs butchered for the freezer and we could share the meat, and I would probably keep the chickens, as I like raising them in spite of my issues with the farm.

Whereupon she insisted that if I kept the chickens, I was to keep her supplied with fresh eggs!  She laughed but she wasn't kidding!       

So with the straightest possible face I could muster, I told her (a) I couldn't promise anything without talking to my lawyer, but (b) if it was OK I would be happy to give her eggs for as long as the chickens lived, because I had no intention of keeping chickens for the next 30 years just because I promised to furnish eggs in a divorce agreement!  

I have no illusions that this is going to end this smoothly, but if it does turn out that all I have to do to get out of this is give her some EGGS, then I'll learn to lay them myself!  

[Gonzalo]

Surreal is the name of the game. Mine was much simpler - No joint property, no kids, I was letting her live in my place for ~ 2 months so she could find somewhere else. I got back into some gaming stuff, and decided to move a desk out of storage into a room in the house. I asked her what she wanted to do with a picture on the wall that was hers, since I was thinking I might move some shelving in front of where it was. She sent me an email telling me that she didn't want me moving any furniture anywhere in the house except for in my room because it ruined her pattern of moving stuff out. I told her that I never agreed to that kind of control and wasn't going to, and that if she was really disturbed she could spend an hour some evening between 'now' and the weekend I was going to have free time to move stuff, since there was barely anything of hers in that room. She insisted that I misunderstood what she was asking, but never did clear her stuff out of that room. Later she asked me to help clear it, and it took me literally 20 minutes to sort out her stuff, and she was shocked.

[adventurer]

Thanks for posting - I remember your story well and the whole give/take (give/give) on household projects in your marriage really hit home for my own circumstances and was really helpful for me to read.

The eggs thing is pretty amusing, sounds like something out of an earlier century.

Good luck on the next phase of your journey.

[livednlearned]

I'm hopeful for you, jedimaster! My exit was a lot more... .dramatic. I'm glad you could talk it through like two adults. Maybe she is not a high-conflict personality. Not all pwBPD are.

How are you doing now that you've taken this step?

[Panda39]

I would probably keep the chickens, as I like raising them in spite of my issues with the farm.

Whereupon she insisted that if I kept the chickens, I was to keep her supplied with fresh eggs!  She laughed but she wasn't kidding!       

So with the straightest possible face I could muster, I told her (a) I couldn't promise anything without talking to my lawyer, but (b) if it was OK I would be happy to give her eggs for as long as the chickens lived, because I had no intention of keeping chickens for the next 30 years just because I promised to furnish eggs in a divorce agreement!  

I have no illusions that this is going to end this smoothly, but if it does turn out that all I have to do to get out of this is give her some EGGS, then I'll learn to lay them myself!  

Just gotta say this just cracked me up... .pun intended 

But seriously glad to hear you got the ball rolling.

[GaGrl]

This reminds me of what my DH went through in divorcing his now-Ex.  They had been living separately for 14 years -- each had their own house, own business, etc. but stayed connected (enmeshed) because their daughter/grandaughter chose to live with DH.  Divorce wasn't important to the Ex, as she comes from a country and culture with a tradition of arranged marriages, many of which evolve into a live-and-let-live situation when the couple's children are grown.

So when DH and I reconnected (we had known each other at teens) and decided to marry, he had to go through the legalities.  One would think it would be relatively simple, right?  Wrong.  Ex is uNPD/BPD with massive entitlement issues, and she has the educational equivalent (in her country) of a grade school education.  She's smart like a fox, just uneducated.

So DH worked through it all with her... .although the house and mortgage was in his name, the children had grown up in that house, and Ex wanted to buy out DH.  OK, he was moving to my city, so that went well.  No mutual debt, so no problem there. 

So here's where things went wonky (some history here, embarassing as it is... .Ex had, from 18 months into the marriage, engaged in constant infidelities.  Several years after she moved out from DH's house to live with her latest boyfriend, one of her Asian friends invited her to work at her "spa."  By spa, I mean Asian massage parlor, also known as AMP, also known as "happy endings" and other illegal offerings.  Ex discovered she could make a LOT of money doing what she had done for free, so she opened and operated her own AMP.  We have estimated that she could have generated several millions of $$$ during the time she owned the AMP -- and we know she didn't report accurate "earnings" on taxes.  DH -- former military officer and professional -- lived in constant fear that she would be arrested).  Back to wonky... .so Ex wanted alimony. When DH pointed out that she made significantly more money than he did, she then said he needed to pay her child support for the 25-year-old daughter and 5 year-old grandaughter who (she assumed) would then be living with her rather than DH.   No... .so then Ex wanted DH to pay monthly support for the vet and food/care for the two dogs that belonged to their daughter (she was a serial rescuer).  No... .so then Ex said she didn't want to go to their son's wedding in Thailand as a divorced couple (Status and Face), so we would have to wait until after the wedding (even though she took her live-in and DH took me to the wedding).  And this went on for months.

Finally, DH just told her that his lawyer would move forward with a court date, since it appeared they could not get to an agreement.  Well, that was the hot button.  Ex was petrified about anything regarding her business, earnings, illegal activity being brought into a court room, so she signed immediately.  Not that she's been easy to deal with since then... .she's still a pill, and a very bitter and unhappy aging woman, but at least is 1500 miles away now.

I highly recommend that anyone divorcing a PD figure out what the hot button is as quickly in the process as possible, and leverage the hell out of it.

[Matt]

Make sure you know the process for getting this done without her support.

That way, if she continues to be reasonable, that's great, but if not, you'll know you can get it done anyway.

When someone is counting on the other party to cooperate, and then the cooperation doesn't happen, and they don't know how to get it done anyway, it gives the difficult party too much leverage, and things can go on and on.

[jedimaster]

A little update and I'll try to incorporate most of the comments above without requoting each one.  Thanks to everyone for the comments and support.

I am doing fine.  The inner stress of the initial conversation is dissipating and I'm feeling relieved to get things underway.  Today I went back over to pick up some stuff and she had been through our closet, gotten all my clothes out, folded them, cleared a bookshelf, and filled it with my things.  I guess she's OK with me leaving after all 

To answer one comment, she seems to cycle in and out of being high conflict.  The last little while she has been in a low-conflict mood, so this may have come at a good time.  She is in her Alexander Haig, "I'm in charge here," damage control mode, which is how she often faces crises.  She will get intensely logical and for a short while she is capable of remarkably reasonable behavior.  So for the moment she is the uber-cool soon-to-be ex-wife who is ready to make a deal and move on with her new life.

At least that is how she sees herself.  In reality she still has abandonment fears, etc, she's just burying them for the moment.  But they come out in some of her requests, such as hinting that she "may need help" finding a place and getting moved (translation, $$$ for moving and free labor for the furniture), and other such stuff.

In between reasonable requests, such as some support money for our adult disabled son separate from spousal support, she throws in things like the eggs.  Today's odd request-- for our anniversary she gave me some candy and a pair of Starbucks mugs.  Now she wants one of the mugs back, as one was supposed to be hers.    

Maybe she heard of some tribal ritual where you divorce your spouse by taking back your last anniversary gift?   

I reassured her that she could indeed have her mug and I was sorry it got mixed up with my stuff. I also gathered the eggs on the way in so I came in the door with a peace offering 

I'm trying to be as careful as I can and sound willing to help with things that won't cost me anything, i.e., sending her links to potential jobs or rental houses, but not commit to anything that I wouldn't want to have to follow up on.

She expressed what seemed to be a sincere desire to stay on good terms so that we could easily arrange visitations for our son, etc.  I told her that was my wish as well, and I complimented her profusely on how she handled things so far.  I told her that as we go along I'm sure we will have issues that are hard for us to resolve, and when we do maybe we should hand those to the lawyers to help us keep our channel of communications open.

I want to make clear that I have read many of the horror stories, and I am perfectly aware of what divorcing a pwBPD can be like.  I'm also aware of what my wife can be like, and the other shoe could drop at any moment.  This is only day 2 of a long stretch, but this day was a good one.  My basic strategy is to make the most of every good day and ride out the inevitable bad ones.

[livednlearned]

I'm really hopeful for you, jedi!

People who divorce BPD sufferers without high conflict probably don't post here  but they are certainly out there. And a lot of pwBPD may be pre-clinical or BPD lite. Others have substance abuse issues or Axis I major mood disorders that might make things more tricky.

It's my hope that your ex transitions smoothly and looks at this as a positive step. It can happen.

[GaGrl]

While I wouldn't call DH's divorce from his ex High Conflict, I would say that the little weirdnesses and surprises over the 9 months from beginning to end really wore him down.

Ex (actually, DH's nickname for her was The Dark Princess) had and continues to want to have a semi-"pedestal" relationship with DH. She sees him in an almost parental role, values his advice over all other, and apparently thinks he has the power to solve all problems. She thought he was going to continue in this role with the same level of accessibility after the divorce, and when it dawned on her that DH really was gone, she went through a very, very, very bad period -that's when I set boundaries that continue to this day, 10 years later.

All this to say that I agree, Jedi master, that you may see her react differently as this moves along, and it may even be after the divorce.

[jedimaster]

Ex (actually, DH's nickname for her was The Dark Princess) had and continues to want to have a semi-"pedestal" relationship with DH. She sees him in an almost parental role, values his advice over all other, and apparently thinks he has the power to solve all problems. She thought he was going to continue in this role with the same level of accessibility after the divorce, and when it dawned on her that DH really was gone, she went through a very, very, very bad period -that's when I set boundaries that continue to this day, 10 years later.

I could foresee exactly the same situation.  She is totally self-sufficient and an adept problem solver.  Except when she doesn't want to be, which is whenever she craves attention.

[ForeverDad]

People who divorce BPD sufferers without high conflict probably don't post here but they are certainly out there.

This has been my thought as well, many don't arrive here until there was no other alternative but to desperately seek information and help.

So our averages here, that the vast majoirty of Legal Board posts concern High Conflict People (HCP), just doesn't reflect the sum of all failed BPD relationships.  We just hear here about the frothy ones that are so intractable.

[jedimaster]

People who divorce BPD sufferers without high conflict probably don't post here but they are certainly out there.

This has been my thought as well, many don't arrive here until there was no other alternative but to desperately seek information and help.

So our averages here, that the vast majoirty of Legal Board posts concern High Conflict People (HCP), just doesn't reflect the sum of all failed BPD relationships.  We just hear here about the frothy ones that are so intractable.

True.  I tell my sons exactly that when using online reviews to evaluate something they're considering purchasing.  The vast majority of people who purchase a product and it works as advertised don't bother going on a website and saying so.  What you typically see are positive reviews from bloggers or professional reviewers, and rants from either people who had an exceptionally bad experience or are incurable complainers.

I don't mean to insinuate that people on this board are complainers, because they are not.  What I'm saying is that the people who get out of a divorce or breakup with a pwBPD, still sane and with their skins intact, probably don't come here to discuss it that often.  Which in a way is fine, as it allows this board to provide a resource for dealing with worst-case scenarios.

[Grey Kitty]

I guess that has to be a relief both that it is going relatively smoothly, and that you aren't having to keep it as a secret anymore.

Get to work learning to lay eggs!

[jedimaster]

I guess that has to be a relief both that it is going relatively smoothly, and that you aren't having to keep it as a secret anymore.

Get to work learning to lay eggs!

Yes, GK, relieved on both points.  Interestingly enough, I took my oldest son to our exercise class last night, and I decided to wait and see if anyone approached me or said anything about the news.  These are the same people with whom my wife spends time several days a week during my son's other events.  Not a word; not even any unusual looks.  I'm thinking she hasn't even told them yet.  It won't last forever, as my son will eventually say something about ":)ad's new place."  But I'm going to let her be the one to break the ice, and just see what version of events she chooses to tell. 

Now that the pressure is off, her peculiar behaviors are becoming amusing.  I have alternated between giving her the eggs and "stealing" a few for myself    I was informed that my birthday present (my BD is this month) was being returned.  Apparently the fact that I was careful to wait until after her birthday and Valentine's Day in order not to be crude didn't register.  Two days later she's posting pics of her new trail bike and my youngest son tells me she's planning to save gas by riding to work.  We live in the country and it's 7 miles to her work, on roads not conducive to biking.  I'd worry about her except I know her tendency to plan large and act small. 

The one thing that seems to have really caught her off guard was when my youngest son (age 20) informed her that when I get settled he's moving in with me.  I think she intended for him to be the "man of the house" and do all the errands, chores, etc.  Now she is faced with actually managing life on her own, the way regular people do.  He did remind her that having one less to feed and house would make it easier/cheaper for her to find a new place, so maybe that won't have an effect on the negotiations. 

Speaking of, it has been one week today and I haven't heard a word about actually moving forward on an agreement.  I think it's time to ask if she managed to get the letter to her lawyer yet.

Thanks for all your support, GK.  I have been so busy with other things I haven't had a chance to spend much time reading the boards.  Hope things are going well for you.  I'll try to take some time and see how everyone is doing on here.