We have a history a mile long with my BPD sd

[morris74]

We have a history a mile long with my BPD sd. My husband compartmentalizes his thoughts and feelings for her and only deals with her when he has to.  This girl has had issues since she was a toddler.  Very, very bright, but demanding for attention.  She would not ever, ever accept "no" to anything she wanted. If you said "no" to her you paid the price.  She would go up and down the street and tell neighbors that we had beaten her when she was 11.  She was always looking for vulnerable, soft people to play her victim role.  I had a child, we added one more.  Things continued to get worse. She took up with a bad crowd, violent and using drugs.  She lived with her mother until she got so violent and threatening at her moms  home.  She demanded that her father leave me five years into our marriage.  We stopped seeing her in her early teens because we were not sure how dangerous she was. We could hide before the internet    We also knew that she would do anything for attention including sexual abuse.  It was such a relief to have her not creating chaos in our lives.  I worked so hard to be patient with her as a child and blamed myself an her dad  everyone felt sorry for her and spoiled her.   Visitation with her  was "It's my weekend here, I run the house and we do everything my way."  She like her mother was obsessed by money.  She made financial demands on us that we couldn't afford, nor should we.  Life with her was more than a roller coaster ride, it was like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. It was miserable.  Her need to control others and gaining, sympathy, revenge, money, attention all were insatiable.  We couldn't do anything for the other children that she didn't demand 10 fold.  She came back to her grandmother in her mid 20's charming, with a couple of beautiful kids.  Grandma was convinced that she had grown up and changed.  She was there for money to escape an alleged abusive husband.  She took that money and took the husband and kids on a 5K vacation.  We finally at mil's urging gave her a chance gave her another chance.  It seemed great for awhile.  She was intelligent, charming and so happy to be part of the family. She was always desperate and asking her grandmother for cash.  We didn't have any to give. She went into a tailspin when she found out we were paying for college for our youngest.  She demanded the same amount of money to buy a lifestyle for herself and her children.  She used the "I wanted to go to college, my sister is a spoiled brat" mantra with her grandmother.  BPD didn't even want to finish high school and barely got a GED at 30.  She literally crawled into her 78 yr old grandmothers brain ate it and replaced it with all of her thoughts of her being victimized.  We had to stop having any real conversations about our lives with my mil. Mil would repeat and feel a bond with her while repeating information, which they would twist and use it some way to hurt us.  BPD's do not have conversations they have fact finding missions.  My Mil turned on us a few times and it was awful.  We stopped seeing her and she got lonely.  Mil believed the lies of abuse and my husband's alleged horrible alcoholism. No one else has ever seen this in my husband.  None was true, but the combination of dementia and so much attention being given to my mil.  She continues to dole out thousands of $$. We have no peace when she is in our lives.  She continues to have husbands that leave and children that she can't support.  Mil is enabling her in a big lifestyle which will be over when mil dies, BPD will blow through any money left so quickly. She guilts, cries or does whatever it takes to get her way.  She villainized my husband over and over to the point where my MIL doesn't trust the only one that really would take care of her and not take advantage of her, her son. We don't feel free to take any of this to court because we would be endangered and so would the other children and their children.  We can't talk to MIL, she has changed all of her will to have the BPD take over everything including her health care.  BPD keeps having kids to control men, get money and build her own little army that she can control and turn on to hate those she hates. We want to go hide.  If my husband gets 1 dollar of his inheritance, she will be chasing him down to get it.  We don't want anything to do with her or her children, which is sad.  We got close to the oldest 3 when she was trying to impress us.  She has done horrible things to our other children.  BPD operates in a way that you have bad things hit you out of left field that you never expected.  This is usually a result of her learning what is happening in our lives and learning where our vulnerabilities are.  God help us all!

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Kwamina]

Hi morris74

I see you're a longtime member, never posted before though so thanks for making this first post.

You've gone through a lot with your BPD stepdaughter. When she was younger, did she ever get any kind of treatment or therapy for her issues?

You also mention her having children, how would you describe the relationship she has with her kids?

BPD is a difficult disorder indeed and it can be very challenging when a family-member has it. Did anything happen in particular recently that led to you making your first post here?

I am glad you did decide to post though as we have many members here dealing with adult BPD children who know how very hard this can be.

Take care and welcome to our online community

The Board Parrot