She is telling horrendous lies to our kids

[Dry Bones]

I'm going through the extinction burst phase I think. I forget what I last posted here and I'm sorry for not engaging with this helpful community more. We're broken up but still living together for a few more weeks. 2 daughters 11 and 7 together. Her behavior has been more and explosive. I almost called 911  tonight as she attempted to destroy furniture and stereo equipment. My 7 year old pleaded with me not to call the police on her mom and I caved, as my uBPD ex cried that she was sorry. But right before that uBPDx threatened to tell the police "what I do to the girls" implying that there is sexual abuse. I'm livid, although it's not the first time she has threatened with such false accusations. She is also repeatedly saying to our two daughters that I am a child predator. She refers back to an adult video she found on my phone 12 years ago, which was a legal video made by two consenting adults, but which her distorted memory has turned into something else. I don't know how to counter these lies/distortions without being pulled into the chaos, and am fed up and furious that she is putting these ideas into my daughters' heads.

She has also gone on a smear campaign around town, but that pales in comparison to what she's done to my own kids. Anyone have advice on how to react to this type of behavior? I've read Splitting, but don't recall anything about when the blamer says this kind of thing to the kids. Maybe I need to reread it.

I know I only need to hang in there a bit longer, and a lawyer will be hired soon. I know she is disordered, but this behavior is just plain evil. I'm sorry--I don't have any other word for it. It's taking a mental and physical toll on me that is not good.

[ForeverDad]

I almost called 911  tonight as she attempted to destroy furniture and stereo equipment. My 7 year old pleaded with me not to call the police on her mom and I caved, as my uBPD ex cried that she was sorry.

Look at it from the another perspective... Do your children make the family's decisions?  While you do take your children's wishes into consideration, this was an adult situation, it was an exceedingly stressful time, and you had an adult decision to make.  In most circumstances you do let the other adult face consequence for bad or even abusive behavior.

Even children, when walked through the logic and not the emotions of the moment, understand that poor behavior results in consequences.  What if the child had a tantrum and started damaging toys, dishes, electronics or furniture?  Well, mom had a tantrum, shouldn't there be consequences?

That said, your children are being indoctrinated with mother's twisted claims and pressuring.  Your children would benefit from counseling, with the aim to restore normalcy and insight in their perspectives.  While the school counselors might help, their focus might lean more toward school-related aspects.  (However, something is better than nothing.)

Another avenue can be counseling for the kids.  Counselors and therapists have been sued and complaints made to licensing boards, so they are twice shy and typically require both parent to agree to counseling.  The problem is that your spouse may refuse to agree, or she may insist she choose a biased or gullible counselor.

As much as we feel we've failed if the marriage goes on hold (separation) or fails (divorce), there are positives to having family court stepping up and getting involved:

• You benefit from establishing your own home with the kids for a portion of their lives without their disordered parent's influence.  Hopefully they will come to appreciate the normalcy, calm and peace in your home.
• As my lawyer said, "Courts love counseling."  If your stbEx opposes child counseling but you seek it, then family court will very likely step in and authorize it.  Of course, the key is to ensure ex doesn't get to choose a biased or gullible counselor.

[Pook075]

Look at it from the another perspective... Do your children make the family's decisions?  While you do take your children's wishes into consideration, this was an adult situation, it was an exceedingly stressful time, and you had an adult decision to make.  In most circumstances you do let the other adult face consequence for bad or even abusive behavior.

I completely agree and was going to post the same thing.  No child wants to see mommy get arrested, but that doesn't mean you don't do the adult thing and protect your family from physical and mental abuse.

I remember almost 20 years ago, I was washing dishes and my wife pushed me out of the way to put a dish in the sink.  It made me trip over the dishwasher door and i fell to the ground.   Well, I reacted badly by yelling, and she threw a fork at my head.  It missed by inches as I dodged it.  I started screaming, my wife threw a coffee cup at my head and I dodged it again, it smashed on the wall behind me.  Then she threw a bowl at my feet (I was barefoot) and it sent broken pieces everywhere.  I said, "You want to break dishes, let's break dishes," and I smashed three or four plates in one big stack into the ground.  From there, we yelled for maybe 5 minutes and it was ugly, ugly, ugly.  We were both dead wrong.

I bring this up because our daughters were 4 and 6 at the time, and they both vividly remember this argument in their 20's.  It terrified them and to this day, my wife still brings it up how I "attacked her for no reason" (I never threw anything at her, only plates into the ground in front of me).

If it happened all over again today, I would call the police if necessary.  I hopefully wouldn't react the same today, but it's so hard to remain calm when you're being physically assaulted out of the blue, over nothing.  That's not the real issue here though and I've already said that I was dead wrong for my part in that night. 

What actually matters is the kids witnessing anything like that- it should never happen regardless of the circumstances.  So even if you don't call the police next time, you need to grab the kids and take them to McDonalds for ice cream while mom destroys the house alone.

[PeteWitsend]

... I forget what I last posted here and I'm sorry for not engaging with this helpful community more. ...

No need to apologize; you're going through hell right now, and I would wager that everyone here completely understands and sympathizes with you. 

I agree with everything else posted in this thread.  I'd also add, take some time to calm down, and plan how to handle this next time. 

Getting your kids out of the house is a good call, but you need to think a couple steps ahead.  Talk to them about it maybe; let them know the plan ahead of time, in a fair way "Mom may need time to calm down, so if that happens again, let's all just get in the car and leave."

But I'd add that you need to also prepare for your wife trying to prevent that, with force even.  Understand your wife will not like this and may escalate the situation physically to prevent you from leaving with the kids. To her disordered mind, seeing you and the kids leave (or try to) will be a powerful trigger to her sense of abandonment.

How would you handle it if you and the kids are in the car, and she's standing behind it in the drive way screaming while physically blocking you from leaving?  What if SHE calls the police first?  Maybe you need to talk to your kids and level set here, that how mom is behaving is NOT okay, and it might be better if the police did come and talk to her? 

Try to record these explosions if you can; less "he said/she said." 

Don't let this fester; you need to prepare well for this, both for your own sake and your kids. 

Good luck.

[PeteWitsend]

iPhones have a voice memo feature that lets you record things through the speaker.  I assume android phones do too. 

Whatever type of phone you have, practice recording with it first, so it doesn't audibly beep and alert the person being recorded.  On the iphone, you have to make sure the ringer is muted AND the volume is all the way down before you start to record.  Not sure what android settings are.

The other option is to get a VAR (voice activated recorder) that will record automatically when human voice is detected.  You could try carrying one of these in a shirt pocket if you have one (I found it was not easily noticeable if I was wearing a plaid shirt), or hiding them in rooms.  Test them out first to see if you can get a recording.  And needless to say... MAKE SURE THE PWBPD CANT FIND THEM.

I found that preparing for a situation helped me stay calm when things blew up.

The pwBPD is escalating the situation, screaming, and throwing things because they've learned that the chaos benefits them, or gives them an advantage (of course without regard to the harm it's causing to their relationship or to their kids or partner).  Countering that chaos by preparing for it is important. 

Don't let your guard down just because the chaos passes; that is exactly the time you need to take action. 

[ForeverDad]

The other option is to get a VAR (voice activated recorder) that will record automatically when human voice is detected.  You could try carrying one of these in a shirt pocket if you have one (I found it was not easily noticeable if I was wearing a plaid shirt), or hiding them in rooms.  Test them out first to see if you can get a recording.  And needless to say... MAKE SURE THE PWBPD CANT FIND THEM.

Shirt pockets should be okay.  Pants pockets, not so much, too much swishing when I walked.

My first digital recorders were a bit primitive and limited two decades ago.  Now they're a niche market since most everyone has cell phones.

I was intrigued when I heard about pencams, pens that both wrote and could record.  By then most of my conflict was past so I never got one.

[Dry Bones]

Thank you so much for the replies and support, everyone. I don't know what is holding me back from calling the police when stuff like this happens. Maybe I still feel I need to protect her for some reason; maybe it's my own panic disorder fearing further escalation. I checked the piano that I've had since I was a kid and that she repeatedly smashed a bottle into the other day. It is damaged with the wood coming apart in one area. I'm sickened that this is the life I've chosen for the past 14 years.

I do have a recorder app on my phone and have numerous recordings of her blowups and disgusting comments. But it's something I need to manually start, and needless to say, in the moment I am often to frozen up to think about it right away. So I end up missing many of the most obscene/harmful comments. But I have some of it.

While I have been to fearful to call 911 when she blows up, I did end up calling it for myself this past week when my heart started racing as I was leaving to go to the (wait for it) cardiologist for my yearly check-in. Surprise, my blood pressure is high. The EMTs checked on me and saw that my vitals were elevated but not necessarily to the degree where it would be considered an emergency. So I sent them away and am waiting for the bill back from my health insurance to see how much that one is going to cost me.

Thanks again for listening to me ramble, everyone. I truly value all of you on this board and will check in again soon. I get the keys to my new apartment on Thursday, and although it's going to take several weeks to gradually get my belongings and everything set up there, at least I will have a place to go when she inevitably flips out and goes on the attack.

[Dry Bones]

One more quick anecdote for you all. We needed to have a contractor over this morning to fix a couple things before closing on the house. Of course, this was a stressful event--moreso than it needed to be. My uBPD ex was flipping out because we couldn't find our daughter's socks for her soccer game. Screaming commenced and I ended up just walking outside to get away from the situation after having had my fill of it. I don't know if you could call that establishing boundaries or engaging in my own self-preservation at this point. Between stuff at home and stuff at work (looming layoffs), I'm basically coming apart at the seams here, and I think I basically did when I called the EMTs for myself the other day.

Apparently, my daughter's socks were in my own sock drawer and must have mistakenly wound up there when I was doing laundry a couple nights ago. The thing is I LOOKED in the drawer as we searched for them this morning! uBPD ex says they were right on top, unfolded and obvious. I don't know if this is gaslighting or if my anxiety really has it so that I can miss something right in front of my face as I'm actively searching for it. If it's the latter, I'm trying to be kind to myself, as I am well aware of the kind of effects the situation I'm in can have on an individual. I am hoping that given some time in my new environment, and with the aid of my therapist and this community, I will be able to make A--if not a full--recovery.

[ForeverDad]

There may be a reporting time element to consider.  A threat may be more "actionable" if it is reported sooner than later.

Even more legally "actionable" is if children are threatened.  You as an adult are not seen as needing the same level of protection as a child.

My example is if you call emergency responders "My ex threatened to burn the house down last month..."  The likely response would be "Call back when it's an ongoing emergency."  Do you perceive that an old threat, even a despicable one, can age out quickly and become ho-hum?

However, on the flip side, even reporting something promptly can have limited benefit.  My separation was triggered when I reported my ex's threat (IWKY).  It was illegal to do so.  However, after repeated continuances the trial eventually started.  I could tell it was essentially a formality.  It quickly wrapped up, less than an hour, and the judge promptly declared her Not Guilty, not by law, but by case law.  That other decision - case law - involved a drunk guy saying he'd shoot his wife but he didn't even have a gun.  My ex wasn't drunk but judge stated no one reported her having a weapon in her hands.

All was not lost.  There were a few benefits to that case.  (1) It gave me time to conclude the marriage really was ended. (2) I was granted possession of the home in the TPO so she never had an opportunity to kick me out.  She couldn't have afforded it anyway but the financial aspect was simpler since I just had to pay her half the equity. (3) She was twice shy to claim DV so she focused instead on fear of child abuse, which was horrendous to deal with in itself.

[Pook075]

I don't know if you could call that establishing boundaries or engaging in my own self-preservation at this point. ith the aid of my therapist and this community, I will be able to make A--if not a full--recovery.

Please listen and receive this- a boundary is for you and you alone.  Your wife got ugly, you couldn't calm her down, so you walked away.  That's absolutely a boundary, and it's absolutely self-preservation.  That's what you mentally needed in the moment and it's what you should do every single time.

If i was going to "critique" how you did in this situation, the only mistake i see is that you didn't walk away sooner...you stayed until you couldn't take it anymore.  When you see that mood, that rage building up, it's the best time to disengage and let her vent on her own.

[PeteWitsend]

...

Apparently, my daughter's socks were in my own sock drawer and must have mistakenly wound up there when I was doing laundry a couple nights ago. The thing is I LOOKED in the drawer as we searched for them this morning! uBPD ex says they were right on top, unfolded and obvious. I don't know if this is gaslighting or if my anxiety really has it so that I can miss something right in front of my face as I'm actively searching for it. If it's the latter, I'm trying to be kind to myself, as I am well aware of the kind of effects the situation I'm in can have on an individual. I am hoping that given some time in my new environment, and with the aid of my therapist and this community, I will be able to make A--if not a full--recovery.

In my experience, BPDxw would do things like this to engineer fights all the time.  She would "find something" or "need to see my phone for a second" or buy me some "gift" that was more of an insult just to then fight over my reaction when I didn't seem as enthused as she wanted me to be over it or threw it in the trash (the time I threw it in the trash it was a cold, hours old McDonald's hamburger in a bag of used McDonald's wrappers from her meal). 

So she very well could have found the socks somewhere else, and decided to deal with her misplaced anger by moving them to your drawer so she could blame you.