His Borderline Ex-wife during Christmas

[polkadot123]

My boyfriend is currently going through a divorce with his wife, who is a fairly high-functioning professional with borderline personality disorder. They share an elementary school age child and are attempting to co-parent.  I believe the child is loved and occupies the center of both of their worlds, but it's hard to say definitively from her for some obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. From the outside, her behavior resembles the typical borderline profile: abandonment issues, heavy drinking, manipulative, labile emotional expression, compulsive talking, texting at inappropriate hours, and verbally abusive. She continues to be verbally abusive to my boyfriend (denigrating his manhood, ability to provide, ETC.) -  and during their marriage she was physically abusive.  I think it's pretty clear that she will not change. However,  what I am trying to grapple with are the reasons he was able to stay in his marriage of 8 years (separated for 3 years) and how he continues to perceive her emotional stability. I know for a fact he loves me and the marriage is over. However, I don't believe she has come to terms with that fully, despite being in a relationship with another man for a few years. When she is verbally abusive, she then becomes remorseful and overcompensates by being highly generous and kind. I don't believe that her behavior will change and I am not seeking to make sense of her behavior. However, I believe my boyfriend sees her "remorseful" state as being her "natural state". He believes that he can control her emotions by not disturbing the peace, essentially walking on eggshells and permitting her to do as she likes, while ignoring her. I am getting increasingly frustrated because i believe he is sweeping things under the rug  and normalizing her borderline behavior by not addressing it. This past Christmas they exchanged gifts with each other. Under "normal" circumstances I would not be bothered.  However, just a day ago, she was sending abusive texts and late night emails/texts and  the next day they are able to exchange gifts as if NOTHING happened? What does bother me is that there are no clear boundaries. I don't get it. How should he establish clear boundaries?  He said to me that he envisions one day having NO boundaries, which is scary to me. I don't think he truly understands her behavior. He then gets defensive, when I point out how manipulative she seems to be. I understand he wants the best for his child and is hoping his mother is stabile, but she simply is not mentally healthy and I'm not sure she ever will be. How can I get HIM to understand her condition? How should we both try to handle her, while preserving the growth of ours?  I never thought i'd ever encounter this type of issue. I don't have friends or family with these kinds of issues. I accuse him of trying to rationalize crazy, but perhaps the problem lies with me, as I am the one who cannot accept that he was married to someone who is this emotionally unhealthy and that he still believes she can change. I don't know how to shift or reframe this in a more productive way.

[livednlearned]

Hi polkadot123,

Welcome and hello

I am trying to grapple with are the reasons he was able to stay in his marriage of 8 years (separated for 3 years) and how he continues to perceive her emotional stability.

Often, people stay in these relationships because that level of conflict and chaos feels, in some way, normal -- or at least familiar. Like family of origin kind of familiar (maybe a parent behaved in a similar way, or it was a deeply invalidating home environment, where the kid is expected to tend to the parent's emotional needs versus the opposite, a reversal of the normal parent-child relationship). Some of us stay longer when we have kids because we think we can better protect them if we're in the house (debatable... .)

I know for myself, I believed that being able to handle my BPDx husband meant I was strong, and by focusing on his (many, many) issues, I got a little (twisted) boost in self-esteem from feeling superior to him   not to mention I didn't have to look at my own stuff because his was way worse.  

He believes that he can control her emotions by not disturbing the peace, essentially walking on eggshells and permitting her to do as she likes, while ignoring her. I am getting increasingly frustrated because i believe he is sweeping things under the rug  and normalizing her borderline behavior by not addressing it.

Well, he's probably not controlling her emotions, is my guess. If he could do that, then she would never rage at him or send abusive text messages. To clarify, though -- it sounds like he's doing two things. One is that he ignores behaviors that he feels he can tolerate. This might be a form of radical acceptance. For me, if my ex sends abusive texts, I ignore them too. If he asks me things in a reasonable, adult way, I respond. With BPD sufferers, boundaries are a little different than just telling someone to stop. They are about things over which we have control. So with my ex, I asserted a boundary by never responding to abusive texts. However, when the emotional dysregulation passed and he was able to return to baseline and talk to me like a reasonable adult, I would respond.

However, it sounds like your BF may have some other issues with boundaries. What are some of the things he lets her do that concern you?

How can I get HIM to understand her condition? How should we both try to handle her, while preserving the growth of ours?  I accuse him of trying to rationalize crazy, but perhaps the problem lies with me, as I am the one who cannot accept that he was married to someone who is this emotionally unhealthy and that he still believes she can change. I don't know how to shift or reframe this in a more productive way.

It probably isn't going to help accusing him of anything... .he may be unskilled and not really know how he can manage her while avoiding conflict. It might help to focus on one thing -- one behavior that is challenging for you -- and see if we can help you pinpoint where he could use some help with skills. You can suggest ways that work and become a coach (maybe not necessarily explaining it that way) and keep yourself out of the drama triangle that people with BPD are very adept at creating.

[polkadot123]

Livednlearned,

Thank you for writing back. Your particular take was very helpful for me and I am beginning to mine the deeper layers of BPD and ways to cope with someone who has it.     

"However, it sounds like your BF may have some other issues with boundaries. What are some of the things he lets her do that concern you?"
Quote from: livednlearned on December 30, 2016, 12:50:37 PM

He allows her to continue to send late night texts.
He allows her to take the lead on the majority of decisions concerning the parenting plan and schedule. 
He defers to her decision-making concerning the well-being of their daughter and her interactions with me. 
After or while she is verbally abusive (in front of their child), he is able to sidestep her behavior and continues to interact with her behavior were normal.       

I believe that their child needs her mother and father, however, it scares me that he puts these decisions in the hands of someone who is emotionally unstable and irrational. I wonder what enables him to TRUST her to behave at her best, considering her mood swings and reactions.   
While I don't think it would be productive to point out her wrongdoing at every turn, I do think my BF will assume that he can maintain the peace by being very careful around her. This gets exhausting, because he seems to still believe she has the capacity to consistently regulate her emotions. I'm not sure if he (or I) has done the work to know what "radical acceptance" is but I do believe that is what he is doing in certain instances.   

[polkadot123]

I forgot to mention that she also continues to "lovebomb" him by giving my BF gifts and compliments.  He believes she is being "generous". I do wonder if she will pass this on to their daughter, but I don't see any signs of this to date.

[livednlearned]

He allows her to continue to send late night texts.

Ugh. My SO allows his BPD daughter do that too and it drives me nuts.

Does he respond to the texts? I think when people with BPD do this, it's a combination of impulsivity -- they feel it then do it without thinking. That's not just BPD behavior, thought poor executive control (something people with BPD tend to struggle with) seems to be part of it.

The other part is that pwBPD tend to experience terrifying loneliness and issues with object constancy. Sending texts to your BF at inappropriate hours is a test, in a way. If he responds, she is not alone. If he responds, she is assured that someone cares about her, for the moment. It's hard to wrap your head around what it must feel like to have BPD, but the best I can understand is that, at times, they can feel like they are not real, just dead emptiness. Reaching out to people can be a desperate way to feel something, anything.

It's really hard to get someone else to have a boundary that isn't important to them, so BF telling ex to stop sending them isn't going to work. And same goes for your BF, telling him to stop accepting the texts isn't going to work. It sets up a dynamic that just leads to conflict. So you have to find a way to have a boundary around the text messages that you can assert.

I handle the text messages in a variety of ways. I model what I want my SO to do, for one. I have a healthy relationship with my phone   And, about an hour before bed, I ask him if he is expecting D19 to text, and is there anything they need to discuss before he's in bed. That's probably been the most effective, because that way D19's need for reassurance is met on the early side. If SO wants sex, or if he wants to go out for dinner, the deal is the phone goes off. I don't want to hear that thing or have our evening get disrupted by distress texts that are (to me) about nothing.

It still really, really bothers me. SO is a physician and has a pavlovian response to pager/text devices, and he has insisted he has to be able to hear his phone while he's on call, which is part of how his hospital reaches him (I guess pagers are on their way out). I've offered to set up his phone so that he can receive emergency calls from the hospital without all text message notifications going off, and of course, it isn't really about that so he hasn't taken me up on my offer.

My T pointed out he is codependent (I have tendencies too) and there is a shadowy thing going on for him where helping D19 makes him feel good. There is also a parent-child dynamic going on that isn't necessarily there in your situation, though there's a good chance that your BF gets a little bump of something when his GF needs him and/or he can fix something for her. Plus, the part where he does need to be on the same page with her as co parents.

I find it takes a big shift in my actions to reset a bad behavior that I've allowed to continue. SO and I live together, so I can't say to him that I'm going to sleep at my place instead of his because the text messages wake me up. That would've been my first choice to reset the boundary. The second thing that happened is I went upstairs to sleep one night when SO was getting text bombed. It helped him see how the texts affected me, and he did make an effort with D19 that I could give him a C+ for. I don't lecture him or scold him or berate him or get mad, I just do the thing I need to do so I feel good.

The reason BPD can drive you nuts when you're in a secondary relationship like a step parent or GF is that you experience the extension of the bad boundary while having none of the control. Your BF is supposed to be a firewall protecting you from the behavior, and it's a real disappointment, to say the least, when you realize he is not alarmed by all the water pouring onto the deck.

That means you have to look for ways to take care of yourself and have boundaries that you have control over. It might mean you see less of your BF, or remove yourself from situations that involve behaviors that affect you. Basically, if he is like a lot of people with weak boundaries, you have to kinda show him yours and he has to experience the direct effect of them because words aren't going to work.

It was my SO's year to have his three kids (S17, D19, D22) for Christmas (I have S15). Combine his kids with a holiday and he has terrible boundaries, and agreed to let his ex inlaws spend Christmas with us. Based on past experience, I kinda see how things work around here so when I heard this was how Christmas was shaping up in OUR house   I booked tickets for me and S15 to spend a relaxing holiday with good friends. It's not ideal -- setting boundaries is not necessarily getting everything you want -- because I would love to spend the holidays with SO. But I also know my threshold now that we've been doing this for a while. I'm learning what it takes to put my needs first and take care of myself, letting go of guilt and obligation.

You may find that your BF doesn't like when you shift the dynamic -- right now things sound pretty comfy for him. It's good to be clear in your heart and mind what your intent is when you assert a boundary, and what you're going to do when he pushes against it, or ignores it.

It doesn't feel good to realize that the person you love doesn't just do the right thing because he loves you. The one thing dealing with BPD people has taught me is to treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. It opens a lot of options and possibilities for making your environment and relationships workable, even if they aren't ready to do things your way.

He defers to her decision-making concerning the well-being of their daughter and her interactions with me.  

What kind of interactions?

[bravhart1]

I feel you. I struggled the MOST with trying to understand how my husband could have stayed in a relationship with his ex gf when she was (by his account) a monster for all ten years.
It caused me to question his choices. If he chose this battle ax for ten years of misery. How in the world did he decide to be with me? What if he's too passive to stand up for what he wants and he spends the next ten years miserable with me?
It all became too much. I finally let it go, but not without needing to have some conversations about why.

About the behaviour you see, the pretending the BPD has done nothing wrong. Yep, I saw that too. I will say the longer he was away from her the better he became at understanding normal behaviour vs abnormal. And we did have some frank talks about modeling respect for the sake of the child.
 The bottom line for him came down to this, he didn't care enough about her to care what she said or did. He just played along like he had done for ten years to keep the peace. Some therapy helped him understand why allowing the BPDex to stomp on his boundries gave her more power over his present life than she deserved as well as helping him see she was modeling BPD behaviour for her child, and if he didn't call it abnormal then he was basically teaching his child to also become BPD.
Dads do a lot for their children, he was able to see that breaking out of the BPD chains isn't easy, and as he knows better than anyone, BPDp don't give up easily. But it is very important to raise a child with as much of a "socially acceptable" model as possible.
Your SO has been trying to keep the status quo the way he has for a reason, pwBPD can be pretty scary sometimes when things change. So be careful what you wish for. She may get some boundries and she may make your life a living hell for it. But in the long run, no one can live with a BPD in their live without them.

One thing you probably need to watch for is that when he does stand up to her, he'll get painted black and she will start trying to convince her child to hate dad like she does. That's usually how they respond to people not giving in, they call them bad.

How old is the child?

I wish you the best of luck. And hope you find the answers you are looking for here.