We’ve just come back from the psychiatrist and now it’s official. She has BPD. Of course she won’t accept the diagnosis. We’ve been married for 15 years. We have two kids, a 4 year old girl and a two year old boy. Why did it take me so long to seek help? Why didn’t I leave before the kids came?
A few thoughts here... .I too was married for over a decade before we had our child. He was a preschooler when the marriage imploded. When it got really bad, I did seek help. But by then we were already parents and she was far enough down the PD path that, like your spouse, couldn't or wouldn't listen to me. The mass of past emotional baggage was just too much for her to allow logic and reasoning to get through her Denial and Emotional Perceptions.
I was so ashamed to tell others of her years of increasing rants and rages. Sadly, I hid so much of it, until it had gotten out of control. I had imagined them as post childhood abuse rages. I'd never heard of PDs before. I had the mistaken hope that having a child would help her to see life more positively and rejoice in watching our youngster discover a wonderful world. Instead, it (1) enabled her to relive her childhood traumas, (2) triggered her to separate herself emotionally and physically from her mate in favor of "her and her child against the world" and (3) having a child made unwinding a failed marriage vastly more complicated.
However, now is a time to deal with What Is. What we wished, hoped for or dreamed about doesn't apply anymore. Well, there is one option that avoids separation or divorce... .Is there any way she could set aside her Denial and Blame Shifting, accept meaningful therapy and truly apply the counsel in her life, thinking and perceptions? And not just for a few sessions but long enough, probably years, to make lasting improvements? If so, then the relationship can be salvaged. If not... .
Relatively few of us here ever got the mental health professionals (or other professionals that interact with family courts) to give a diagnosis. Many here have been in family court when all other options had failed and we have found that courts and the professionals evaluating and making recommendations seldom will identify precisely why the person is behaving that way. It's almost like they will say anything but what the root problem is. Partly, it's to avoid throwing diagnostic labels around. Partly too, they know it is so very hard to 'fix' a person who is unwilling to change. So what they do is they limit themselves to dealing with the
behaviors and
behavior patterns over time. Therefore, one of the best things you can do to help yourself is to document the poor behaviors. Documentation is far better than "he said, she said" that goes nowhere.
Why do the courts studiously avoid diagnostic labels, if one doesn't already exist or isn't determined how 'actionable' it is? One conclusion here is that a general diagnosis does not describe sufficiently how negatively the children are impacted. For example, imagine you were diagnosed as an alcoholic. What should limit your contact with the children? What if you are an alcoholic but had avoided alcohol for years, a dry alcoholic? What if you did drink too much but always did it when away from the kids or after they were asleep or away? Those scenarios wouldn't impact the kids very much. But what if you drank and raged at the kids, or drove intoxicated with them in the car? In that case the kids would be put at risk, certainly actionable and ought to get legal intervention or restrictions. In the same way, a person with BPD (or some other PD) may have a variety of behaviors, the big question is how much the children are impacted. The conclusion is that explains why the courts seem to focus on the actual
documented behaviors over labels. Also, courts seems to give much more weight to poor parenting behaviors (involving the minors) than to poor adult behaviors (conflict with other adults such as yourself).
