She's Trying to Move Back In Almost Everyday

[c_craig_k]

I don't have the money to hire a lawyer to fight this, and I'm losing the energy to continually bluff her. She knows I can't legally keep her out of the house right now.

I'm the primary caretaker of our two children. exBPD left the house after sleeping with a guy she'd been internetting. (Went on a trip and lied about where she was, but used my ___ing bank card in the town she wasn't supposed to be in.)

She's swearing she's sorry, won't do it again, wants to be around her children.

I don't want to get re-involved but being friendly and cozy in the same house is hard to avoid. We've known each other for 17 years. We get along. She's been in DBT for 6-7 months. She claims she doesn't want a relationship with me right now. I don't want one with her right now but I don't have incredibly hard feeling. I can see her getting better after a couple more years of therapy. She is trying, she's self-aware and high-functioning. But she's still very conflicted about any sort of mutual obligation.

I don't have a place to take my kids. I don't even know if that would be legal. I would love to have a woman in the house but my gut is saying "No, no, no, no." I feel the relationship has changed and is improved. I don't feel like she can get to me in a way she used to be able to. But I don't feel like we can live together ambiguously.

[heartandwhole]

Hi c_craig_k,

That is a tough spot to be in. I can understand your conflicted feelings, and I would listen to both your gut feelings and thoughts about what is practical. One step at a time.

Have you spent any time on the Improving board to get some advice and tools to help things while she is still living with you?

What about putting a time limit on working things out with her?

heartandwhole

[c_craig_k]

Hi c_craig_k,

That is a tough spot to be in. I can understand your conflicted feelings, and I would listen to both your gut feelings and thoughts about what is practical. One step at a time.

Have you spent any time on the Improving board to get some advice and tools to help things while she is still living with you?

What about putting a time limit on working things out with her?

heartandwhole

She is out right now. I am hoping to keep her out. My gut says to keep her away if possible.

If she is here I'll have to be uncomfortably guarded or we'll inhabit a very ambiguous kinda boyfriend-girlfriend, co-parenting, but not-really-together and married zone.

She is not well enough to be in a romantic relationship, but avoiding the trappings would be hard living together. I don't want to "improve" the relationship right now. I want space and I want her to have space so she can do her DBT and EMDR work. Her therapist says she has a good chance at recovery and exBPD has recently switched to twice a week sessions on her own (no outside pressure).

I feel like I've had some real breakthroughs recently and I don't feel vulnerable to her emotional knife twisting. I want the family to be together for the kids sake, and again I can imagine in 2-4 years exBPD might be a good partner for someone, I just don't know that can ever be me. Burned too many times. It would take a miracle before I didn't feel conflicted. I've known her for seventeen years. I've made progress, but I still have work to do to be healthy and whole. I want someone who isn't so damn conflicted about attachment and can give of themselves without all the borderline ambivalence. 

[heartandwhole]

Ok.    Sounds like you are leaning toward and ending of this relationship. But she has legal rights to your home, do I have that right?

What are your options? You said legally that you can't keep her out.

[heartandwhole]

c_craig_k,

Sorry, I couldn't find a link and so this was missing from my last post: Leaving a Partner with BPD.

I don't know if you are up to it, or if it would work in your situation, but some advise to start appearing "boring" and "depressed" to your partner so that her interest wanes.

What do you think?

heartandwhole

[c_craig_k]

c_craig_k,

Sorry, I couldn't find a link and so this was missing from my last post: Leaving a Partner with BPD.

I don't know if you are up to it, or if it would work in your situation, but some advise to start appearing "boring" and "depressed" to your partner so that her interest wanes.

What do you think?

I think we're in a bit too deep and she knows me too well.

She does have legal rights to the home as far as I know. I'm too broke right now to pursue legal action. The last year she went very, very far off the rails and I've been a wreck. Feel like I'm just coming out of the haze and taking back my life.

Detaching while living in the same house seems like an advanced maneuver. It is hard not to accept the creature comforts of living with a woman if she's in the house. Getting her to wear clothes around me is daily struggle.

This may sound horrible, but at this point I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to maintain and augment detachment. I'm honestly thinking about dating and not hiding it. exBPD is not supposed to be here. We had an agreement that if she lied about other men she would move out. She's not honoring that agreement--she's even admitted she isn't honoring the agreement although she says she made a slip and won't do it again. I know she means it, but I can't trust her. I'm not obligated not to date. I can't get back on the rollercoaster with exBPD.

[vortex of confusion]

I wanted to chime in. Ex and I have been together for 20 years (married 18). He has been out of the house since March (9 months or so). I will NOT let him back in. He still hasn't moved all of his stuff out. He is living with a friend and comes over to hang out with the kids periodically. I have to limit that because his negativity gets the kids in a funk and makes it difficult for us to function.

You said that she is out of the house now. How long has she been out?

It has been 9 months and I think I am just now getting to a point where I am really starting to come out of the haze. I did date somebody right away. It was great and wonderful for a while but my wounds made it almost impossible for me to function in a romantic relationship. One good thing that came out of having a relationship so soon was that it kept ex away to a degree. He was a jerk and would make snide remarks about the guy I was dating but he at least didn't seem to try too hard to get back in. I don't know if I could have had the strength to keep him out if he had seen me as "on the market". I am not sure how else to say it. When he found out that I was no longer in a relationship, he started talking about the possibility of us getting back together. He was being a bit nicer. It felt like he was trying to act as though nothing happened. Maybe it was my fears but it sure as heck felt like he was trying to suck me back in.

Like you, I do not ever want to get back on that roller coaster with ex. I will never be able to trust him again. He keeps bringing up vague hints that he doesn't really get that I am DONE. I told him that I need to be with somebody that I can trust won't ditch me and look for somebody else whenever I don't behave the way I am supposed to behave. I brought up the possibility of legal stuff and he is dead set against that for some reason. He came up with stuff like "the guy always gets screwed" and "I don't have any money right now anyway so it wouldn't be beneficial."

I don't have the money to do anything legal either so I am trying to keep him at a distance and grant him enough access to the house and kids to appease him. Neither of us have the money to do anything in the legal system. I do have the option of going to the women's center for assistance due to some of the stuff that he has done to me directly. If she has been a danger to you or your child, you might be able to seek out some assistance of that nature to protect yourself legally. That isn't an easy decision to make and it is one that I am still pondering. It is a day by day thing where I keep him away and work on detaching while trying to figure out my next move.

I found that it is impossible to detach while living in the same house. I couldn't do it. I kept the roller coaster ride going when he was still in the house. I would go from being taken in by his niceness to being angry at him (and myself). When things were calm and wonderful, I would get all cozy and forget that I was done and needed to detach. When he would check out and play his computer for hours on end, wouldn't get a job, and be the grumpy, negative one, I would get angry. It got to a point where I had built up so much resentment towards him that I couldn't be in the same house as him and still be nice. I tried and failed miserably. The only way to give myself the time and space to make sense out of things and really start detaching was to NOT live in the same house as him.