Any experience from fathers who are looking to go no contact with young children

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

I am asking this for a family member. I am friends with both this family member and his BPD ex-wife. Her and I were friends before she married him.

They had a very tumultuous 10 year marriage. They have 4 kids. 12, 11, 9, and 6.

My friend showed BPD traits ever since I have known her, but back in our early 20s, BPD was nowhere on my radar at all.

I knew my friend fought UGLY, hurling horrible insults in the midst of arguments, and then the next day, acting like nothing ever happened.

I knew my friend saw insults where there were none.

I knew my friend handled breakups terribly. She couldn't handle being alone very well and would try crazy things to get back her exboyfriend. He played yoyo with her for a while too, which didn't help matters.

Anyhow... then my friend marries my brother in law. Right away, things got very bad. Their honeymoon period was cut off abruptly by a pregnancy, and before she recovered from that pregnancy, she pregnant again. The two oldest are only 15 months apart. Around this time, he had an affair was talking divorce.

But, he never went through with it. He knew though that something was seriously wrong with their relationship. She was controlling and frantic-couldn't handle it at all that he was working evenings and did things to sabotage him going into work. They started going to a very cult-like church and that church harmed their marriage even more because it beat them up both spiritually.

Their everyday relationship became toxic once the affair was admitted to. She couldn't forgive him. She couldn't stop punishing him verbally every single day. So finally, after a few years of taking the verbal abuse (and lashing out on her violently... .punching walls... .telling her she made him want to kill himself, etc) he left.

He filed for divorce.

They have been divorced for 2 years now.

They have had periods of time when the divorce has gone well, but when it goes bad, it goes BAD.

She is controlling. She sabotages new relationships he has.

Initially, she was able to do this through facebook, but he has wisened up, so she can't do that anymore.

But once, she ran into him and his female friend (they were actually not dating) at a grocery store, and she harassed them... following this girl around the store taking pictures of her, telling her "I can't believe he is with YOU. You are so ugly!"

he had to call the police.

Pure crazy.

This has caused my brother in law to take off for months at a time without having any contact with the kids at all.

This obviously causes great pain for my nieces and nephews and I am heartbroken to see them in such a state. They cry all the time. They miss their daddy when this happens. The oldest girl has decided to not have any contact with her dad. 2 of the boys now have extreme behavioral issues because of this.

My brother in law is not comfortable around his own kids anymore, though he has been back in the picture for a few months, taking them on his weekends and even extra when she works or goes to school.

And now, I fear she is in full crisis. She found out that my brother in law is in love with another girl, and she is doing whatever she can to sabotage it. She told my brother in law that this girl contacted her to ask what kind of dad he is... .when that was exposed as a lie, she came up with another lie that she was able to track down this girl and this girl is cheating on him. Just bizarre.

She sat in my living room the other day bawling saying "i just want to be his choice. I just want him to pick me and he won't if he loves someone else."

She has absolutely no concept that he won't pick her because of how crazy she acts.

She has absolutely no concept that he doesn't want her because they had a violent marriage and he doesn't want that anymore.

She trashes him all the time about what a horrible father he is, and indeed his kids are in pain because he goes MIA at times.

She doesn't at all realize that she has a part in his going MIA. She denies that she cuts him down... Insists that their encounters mostly friendly and then all of a sudden he will get mean again and take off.

She goes back and forth between wanting to be a whole family again-in sobs... .to wishing he would go away and leave them all alone because it would be better than this.

When she has the kids, she allows them to call their father Literally... (I do mean literally) 35 times in a row, when she knows he is not going to answer. This of course gets the child into an emotional frenzy of his own. She says she won't tell him he can't call, because she doesn't want to look like the bad guy... .like she is keeping the kids from him.

but... .that's crazy behavior, right? I wouldn't let my child call someone I knew wasn't picking up that many times. Just no way.

She uses the kids legitimate pain to get him to talk to her on a level he wants nothing to do with.

Its very twisty. Its very unhealthy. 

Advice for him would be appreciated. He will be reading the replies to this post.

[Ylimepie]

I am asking this for a family member. I am friends with both this family member and his BPD ex-wife. Her and I were friends before she married him.

They had a very tumultuous 10 year marriage. They have 4 kids. 12, 11, 9, and 6.

My friend showed BPD traits ever since I have known her, but back in our early 20s, BPD was nowhere on my radar at all.

I knew my friend fought UGLY, hurling horrible insults in the midst of arguments, and then the next day, acting like nothing ever happened.

I knew my friend saw insults where there were none.

I knew my friend handled breakups terribly. She couldn't handle being alone very well and would try crazy things to get back her exboyfriend. He played yoyo with her for a while too, which didn't help matters.

Anyhow... then my friend marries my brother in law. Right away, things got very bad. Their honeymoon period was cut off abruptly by a pregnancy, and before she recovered from that pregnancy, she pregnant again. The two oldest are only 15 months apart. Around this time, he had an affair was talking divorce.

But, he never went through with it. He knew though that something was seriously wrong with their relationship. She was controlling and frantic-couldn't handle it at all that he was working evenings and did things to sabotage him going into work. They started going to a very cult-like church and that church harmed their marriage even more because it beat them up both spiritually.

Their everyday relationship became toxic once the affair was admitted to. She couldn't forgive him. She couldn't stop punishing him verbally every single day. So finally, after a few years of taking the verbal abuse (and lashing out on her violently... .punching walls... .telling her she made him want to kill himself, etc) he left.

He filed for divorce.

They have been divorced for 2 years now.

They have had periods of time when the divorce has gone well, but when it goes bad, it goes BAD.

She is controlling. She sabotages new relationships he has.

Initially, she was able to do this through facebook, but he has wisened up, so she can't do that anymore.

But once, she ran into him and his female friend (they were actually not dating) at a grocery store, and she harassed them... following this girl around the store taking pictures of her, telling her "I can't believe he is with YOU. You are so ugly!"

he had to call the police.

Pure crazy.

This has caused my brother in law to take off for months at a time without having any contact with the kids at all.

This obviously causes great pain for my nieces and nephews and I am heartbroken to see them in such a state. They cry all the time. They miss their daddy when this happens. The oldest girl has decided to not have any contact with her dad. 2 of the boys now have extreme behavioral issues because of this.

My brother in law is not comfortable around his own kids anymore, though he has been back in the picture for a few months, taking them on his weekends and even extra when she works or goes to school.

And now, I fear she is in full crisis. She found out that my brother in law is in love with another girl, and she is doing whatever she can to sabotage it. She told my brother in law that this girl contacted her to ask what kind of dad he is... .when that was exposed as a lie, she came up with another lie that she was able to track down this girl and this girl is cheating on him. Just bizarre.

She sat in my living room the other day bawling saying "i just want to be his choice. I just want him to pick me and he won't if he loves someone else."

She has absolutely no concept that he won't pick her because of how crazy she acts.

She has absolutely no concept that he doesn't want her because they had a violent marriage and he doesn't want that anymore.

She trashes him all the time about what a horrible father he is, and indeed his kids are in pain because he goes MIA at times.

She doesn't at all realize that she has a part in his going MIA. She denies that she cuts him down... Insists that their encounters mostly friendly and then all of a sudden he will get mean again and take off.

She goes back and forth between wanting to be a whole family again-in sobs... .to wishing he would go away and leave them all alone because it would be better than this.

When she has the kids, she allows them to call their father Literally... (I do mean literally) 35 times in a row, when she knows he is not going to answer. This of course gets the child into an emotional frenzy of his own. She says she won't tell him he can't call, because she doesn't want to look like the bad guy... .like she is keeping the kids from him.

but... .that's crazy behavior, right? I wouldn't let my child call someone I knew wasn't picking up that many times. Just no way.

She uses the kids legitimate pain to get him to talk to her on a level he wants nothing to do with.

Its very twisty. Its very unhealthy. 

Advice for him would be appreciated. He will be reading the replies to this post.

[ForeverDad]

He should try his best to get the kids into counseling.  However, he should be aware that his Ex would likely try to control the sessions, make it all about her issues, try to make him look like the bad guy causing all the problems.  So he needs to make sure she doesn't keep changing counselors until she finds one who agrees with her.  If she refuses counseling for them, he can go to court to get them into counseling.  As my lawyer said, "courts love counseling" and so he would probably win but court may allow her as primary parent to take control of it.  He would have to express his concerns to the court if she were in control of it.  Is he able to step forward for the duration, until they're grown?  Also, school counselors are always available, but he would face the possibility that Ex has already fed them all sorts of horrible stories about him.

His Ex needs therapy, desperately, but it's quite possible she won't allow that, probably her Denial and Blame-Shifting of her issues onto others will be too strong.  If she ever does start therapy, two effective methods are Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

He will have to deal with What Is.  Clearly she doesn't respect his position as Father, at least not consistently and in a healthy manner.  With his prior absence, he needs to be aware she won't let go of blaming him for it and using it to alienate/brainwash the children.  His past choices are history now, he needs to put them in the past and do what he can now and going forward for his children.  They do need him, all of them!

Since she doesn't view him as having any authority and has blacklisted him to his children, he may have limited success rebuilding his relationship with his children.  For example, she's evidently cornered him into the scenario ":)ad left you, doesn't care about you and doesn't love you."  The truth was that (1) he was virtually driven away and (2) he didn't know how to address and handle her behaviors back then.  Would he join us here?  You can still inform him of our posts here or have him look over your shoulder no matter what he decides but it would be even better if he could join in with the peer support.  Whatever works for him.

It's good that he gets some extra time with the children now, he should take as much as he can get.  Does he think there's a need for him to go back to court to get more fixes put in place?  Not the least, keeping her from intruding overmuch on his private life?  He's getting marginalized at best and alienated at worst.  He needs some strategies, good boundaries, skills in dealing with the misinformed children, ways to deal with it all.

[Ylimepie]

He has joined the board, though he only has internet access through his phone at the moment, so I am unsure of how much posting he will do. He will be reading lots though. I think he is happy to have found a place where people understand the level of crazy he has been living the past decade.

[Thunderstruck]

My DH has been through a very similar situation. He met the uBPDx online and within two weeks she was pregnant. He never married her, but stayed with her to try to take care of my SD. 8 years of putting up with a tumultuous relationship. uBPDbm was arrested once for hitting him, he called the cops on her another time. Both of them would spew hateful names at each other. uBPDbm would constantly use SD to manipulate him.

When DH finally left (SD was 7 at the time) and started dating me, uBPDbm tried ALL SORTS of crazy things to drive me away. She claimed they were still sleeping together and she was pregnant, she would call my phone non-stop day and night, she had "emergency" gallstone surgery just so DH would feel obligated to go and take care of her. She even filed a restraining order on my birthday, hoping they would go and arrest him and ruin the day (when they didn't, she withdrew it the next day). When none of that worked, she withheld SD from DH to punish him.

The best thing DH ever did was get a court order in place. Things are SO much better now that we have temp 50/50. It's still not 100% smooth sailing, but it's not nearly as awful as it was 4 years ago. SD11 is in a much healthier place having us around.

There were really tough times when SD was alienated against us, she would just scream and yell hateful things at us. It was rough and I would go to bed crying at night. We thought about just giving up and letting SD have what she wanted "I want to be at my mom's house, I hate you!". But we knew in reality that that was not a good option for her. We just couldn't give up on her like that.