He and her mother seem to gloss over the episodes

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I am stepmom to a 22 year old female who has seemed "damaged" since I came into her life over 5 years ago. I knew she was desperate for love and attention and grew to realize that she has had relationship struggles for a good part of her life, mood swings that I had never seen before, was cutting during her teen years, constant need for validation and always needs to be center of attention, good or bad. Her random outbursts and explosive behavior are taking it's toll on my marriage to her father. He and her mother seem to gloss over the episodes and NEVER hold her accountable for the unacceptable behavior even when it occurs in front of guests/non family members. She does not apologize for the behavior and starts the next day as if nothing happened. I could go on and on with specific stories but for now, I just want to find others who share my frustration and isolation.

[Irvy]

I am stepmom to a 22 year old female who has seemed "damaged" since I came into her life over 5 years ago. I knew she was desperate for love and attention and grew to realize that she has had relationship struggles for a good part of her life, mood swings that I had never seen before, was cutting during her teen years, constant need for validation and always needs to be center of attention, good or bad. Her random outbursts and explosive behavior are taking it's toll on my marriage to her father. He and her mother seem to gloss over the episodes and NEVER hold her accountable for the unacceptable behavior even when it occurs in front of guests/non family members. She does not apologize for the behavior and starts the next day as if nothing happened. I could go on and on with specific stories but for now, I just want to find others who share my frustration and isolation.

[Skip]

You may want to post on this board and on the parents or a BPD child board, sounds like you are in both "camps".

May men do glossing over these issues. I know that many women face the struggle of first getting the husband on board before they can start dealing with the child. Being the stepmother in such a scenario is tough.

Does the biomother also have issues?

[Irvy]

My niece is a successful psychologist in California and she suggested resources for me. I have been reading  "Walking On Eggshells" and in doing so, have seen some similarities that could relate to her mom. They divorced when she was 9 (she has an older sister too), and her dad seemed to be the more attentive parent. I do feel, in the way she has acted over the years, that she has serious abandonment issues. Her father remarried 2 years after the divorce to a woman who had 2 sons. Her dad became very close with the older son, hunting, fishing, etc and my stepdaughter always felt that he loved him better than her and wished he had had a son instead of daughters. She has said those words on many occasions. The 2nd marriage ended. I do believe that her behavior could have been a contributing factor but I am not, in any way, discounting her dad contribution to that. Her mom, however, has been in nearly a dozen relationships over the years and have all failed.

[DreamGirl]

Hi Irvy,



Does she live on her own?

How often do you interact with her?

~DG

[Irvy]

She lives with us. She was at school, on her own for 1 1/2 yrs but just downtown baltimore. It was wonderful. She moved back in July and it was an endless drama over her recognition that we wanted to move back. I want her to be a confident, strong person that wants to be out on her own and confident in who she is. I want her to be excited to be on her own and experience life. She wants to be in her protective environment  with the people that let her behavior go and no consequences no matter what the behavior.

[DreamGirl]

She lives with us. She was at school, on her own for 1 1/2 yrs but just downtown baltimore. It was wonderful. She moved back in July and it was an endless drama over her recognition that we wanted to move back. I want her to be a confident, strong person that wants to be out on her own and confident in who she is. I want her to be excited to be on her own and experience life. She wants to be in her protective environment  with the people that let her behavior go and no consequences no matter what the behavior.

What happened at school that made her move back?

[livednlearned]

I am stepmom to a 22 year old female who has seemed "damaged" since I came into her life over 5 years ago. I knew she was desperate for love and attention and grew to realize that she has had relationship struggles for a good part of her life, mood swings that I had never seen before, was cutting during her teen years, constant need for validation and always needs to be center of attention, good or bad. Her random outbursts and explosive behavior are taking it's toll on my marriage to her father. He and her mother seem to gloss over the episodes and NEVER hold her accountable for the unacceptable behavior even when it occurs in front of guests/non family members. She does not apologize for the behavior and starts the next day as if nothing happened. I could go on and on with specific stories but for now, I just want to find others who share my frustration and isolation.

I understand! My situation is similar. Sorry to feel so relieved that you are here posting   I have felt so discombobulated, trying to figure out what the heck is going on with my SO's D19, who appears to be BPD. (SO and I are not married, we own a home together, and are in it for the long haul).

What kind of behavior are you seeing, both in D22 and in your H? I realized that SO and D19 are in a dance together and the two of them work together to lower the skill level. I had to come up with some strategies to make sure I didn't get pulled down to that level, too. It's been tough.

[DreamGirl]

I'm also grateful for those with older kids dancing with dads... . 

[jennaberk]

We started couples counseling last year solely to be able to communicate and make progress toward my one SD'a personality disordered behaviors. I highly recommend finding a counselor who is familiar with blended families and understands the priority of the marriage for family health. Some therapists unfortunately will encourage children above all. It's been a godsend in terms of getting my husband to understand the toll that SD behaviors have, and learning what he can do to make our marriage better by having better boundaries with her. Since we are in session, I learn how to support him in this and learn to understand why it is a difficult process. Us talking about this issue without a therapist present to help us understand each other more deeply didn't get us very far. For me, the marriage counseling to handle this was a non-negotiable because I ended up feeling like I couldn't stay married, despite how much I love him, because SD was taking too much of a toll. Good luck. It is a hard process!

[Stepmom2Matt]

We started couples counseling last year solely to be able to communicate and make progress toward my one SD'a personality disordered behaviors. I highly recommend finding a counselor who is familiar with blended families and understands the priority of the marriage for family health. Some therapists unfortunately will encourage children above all. It's been a godsend in terms of getting my husband to understand the toll that SD behaviors have, and learning what he can do to make our marriage better by having better boundaries with her. Since we are in session, I learn how to support him in this and learn to understand why it is a difficult process. Us talking about this issue without a therapist present to help us understand each other more deeply didn't get us very far. For me, the marriage counseling to handle this was a non-negotiable because I ended up feeling like I couldn't stay married, despite how much I love him, because SD was taking too much of a toll. Good luck. It is a hard process!

Oh Jennaberk!  I can so relate!  My SS has been taking such a toll on us that I have honestly had moments where I've been trying to figure out how to escape the nightmare! 

Then, of course, the guilt whacks me straight between the eyes because I learn another tragic little tidbit about what my SS has been through... .

The dance between father and son is so familiar though, and it is very difficult to distance yourself from it.  I want to grab SO and shake the sense into him, he should know better!  But the dance is so familiar to them that they don't seem to know anything different!

The therapist IS helping us though.  Before, SO thought that I was confrontational and a drama queen and cruel to my SS... .all because I wanted SO to set boundaries.  (Boundaries were:  We eat dinner together and we can't be late for school.  That's it.)  We got to the point where it was a complete stalemate between SO, myself, SS and my daughter.  Now, the therapist is leading my SS and my SO into the light and showing them that there should actually be boundaries.  For the first time in 7 years, I am finally starting to feel that we might be making progress... .and SO is starting to see that I'm not a big, ugly step-mother.  just someone who wants to eat dinner with her family because there is no other normalcy available in our home!

Good luck to all of you!

[Louise23]

I am new to this board and see this thread is a bit old.  Knowing that these problems don't just go away, I will post this.

I am a stepmom to a 29 year old stepdaughter with BPD.  She was given tentative diagnosis at 16.  After more than 10 years of responding to her drama with (mostly) love and forgiveness, many bouts of counseling (more for my husband and me than for her--she wouldn't cooperate with counseling or her medication), we finally learned to set boundaries about 2 years ago.  And the result was a complete shutdown of the relationship on both sides.   We wanted her to get help, or at least to entertain the possibility that her perspective might be flawed, or at least to treat us respectfully if nothing else.  We could no longer tolerate her lies, distortions, hostility, screaming both to our faces and to family members that really didn't know what all this was about.  The relationship was hanging by a very dysfunctional thread by then anyway . . . as our therapist pointed out, it wasn't really a relationship anyway when she set all the "rules" and we just put up with anything she did in order to get the "crumbs" of a relationship she might decide to throw our way.  But by our stating that we did not want a relationship with her until she got some help or changed her perspective in order to treat us respectfully, we lost even that little thread.  I believe it's probably for the best, but it is also scary.  We no longer have hateful drama or her behavior driving a wedge between us and other family members.  But we also have no contact and very little way of knowing if she's okay or what she's doing, how she's feeling . . . It's very hard to have a daughter but not have a daughter.  I think that having a therapist is extremely important.  Best if the stepchild can be there with you as a family, but go without her if she is uncooperative.

It takes a long time for family members to accept that something is really wrong with their child/grandchild/cousin/niece etc. and it's not just a phase or adolescence or PMS.  Until they face the extreme behaviors themselves (maybe repeatedly), they are unlikely to believe your descriptions of the problems or offer any emotional support.  And, as was my case, if you are a step-parent, family members are even more likely to believe the child with BPD--and all their lies/exaggerations/distortions--rather than you.  I have had to accept that my in-law family may never like me, approve of me, or believe me because of the things my stepdaughter has told them.  Eventually though, the BPD individual will usually cross the line and the extended family finally gradually begins to understand.  Hopefully your husband and mother-in-law will acknowledge that your stepdaughter's behavior is truly not normal and begin to want to hold her accountable the way all adults are held accountable. Our biggest mistake was thinking that just loving and forgiving her would somehow heal her.  We should have held her accountable much earlier on.  We kept giving her a pass on her outbursts and destructive rages . . . apologies were never really expected because she was "damaged."  But in the end, that only gave her permission to continue behaving in these ways until finally, she thought we should be okay with her SO making death threats to us.  And that was when--through the help of our therapist--we set the boundaries that we will hold to, as hard as they are.