Totally detached

[Matildanina]

It has been a month since my BPD husband moved out of our home.  I asked him to leave due to the worsening of verbally abusive and aggressive episodes that were starting to take place in front of our young son.  In the first week he left we had some decent communication, however it has now been a month since my husband and son have had any contact.  I invite him and keep the door wide open for him to visit, however don't have him take our son alone.  He is hurting and understandably so, but at this point all of our communication is texting and he is blaming me for creating the distance and saying I take him for granted.  I guess my question is this... .I would love for my son to have a relationship with his father but I know I can't control his behaviors.  When I try to reach out and express how much I value their connection I put myself back in the line of fire.  Is it possible for a BPD ex to maintain a positive relationship with children and do you have any tips?  Part of me thinks that moving forward with a formal separation might create clearer guidelines, if I can get him to cooperate.

[Turkish]

It's good that you stood up and protected your son. How old is he and how is your son dealing with his father's no contact

It's natural to desire a good patenting relationship. It may be possible to get there after emtions settle. However, his r/s with your son is 100% his responsibility to maintain. As in our relationships, we're neither responsible for our partner's feelnings or actions.

What do you feel the future looks like here? Is there any hope of reconciliation?

[livednlearned]

Hi Matildanina,

It's so hard to raise a healthy child when the other parent is BPD. Hardest thing we will probably do in our lives is to help our kids grow up to be emotionally resilient. I'm sorry things have gotten worse in your marriage, and also agree with Turkish that it's good you stood up and protected your son. I admire you for being so strong, it took me a long time to get the courage to set boundaries around abuse.

You raise a good question about whether it's possible for a BPD ex to maintain a positive relationship with their kids. I guess I would rephrase it to ask, Is there a way to raise an emotionally resilient child when one parent has BPD? We have Lesson 5 to the right ----> that has a few articles on the topic and they may be helpful to you.

I think it is very difficult for a BPD parent to be a true parent in the full sense of the word. Many BPD parents seem to have very little to no capacity to repair and recover when there are inevitable differences in the relationship. My ex's emotionally capacity is very stunted and he was jealous of S14 even as a baby, so in some ways it was more like a sibling relationship, though a dangerous one at that.

My son's father is no longer in his life, which is a different kind of pain than having an abusive father, though a deep powerful pain nonetheless.

Perhaps the most valuable thing I've learned is to validate how S14 feels. I don't push the relationship, I don't prevent it. I hear him out when he says how he feels -- it is his grief to feel and I bear witness to it, not trying to appease or assuage it, simply to be there and hold him if he needs, or let him express anger if that's how he's feeling. His recovery process has taken twists and turns as he hits new developmental stages, and he has been in therapy for 5 years, almost a 1/3 of his life. The current T is a wonderful man and while I don't fully understand transference, there is something curative happening though it has been remarkably slow and not always linear. A lot of feelings got bottled up, partly because I myself did not understand that efforts to console S14 were depriving him of the grief he needed to express with a close other.

Your ex may come in and out of your life as he deals with his own capacity for intimacy and vulnerability, and that is not really something you can control. What you can try to do is guide your son to emotional resiliency and give him some skills to use when his dad makes an appearance. A child who is validated will understand how to validate others, hopefully, and that includes his dad.