Your relationship w/ the Non BPD enabling parent

[Our abuse recovery guide]

As I understand more about BPD, it becomes easier for me to understand how to be compassionate but firm with my BPD mother. What I’m struggling with now is anger toward my father for never protecting me, for explaining away/excusing her behavior, for worshipping her so blindly. He goes along silently on her war rampages letting her have her way, he stands by silently as she gaslights. He lets her speak to him and others with disrespect. He puts her on a pedestal and worships at her altar.

My four brothers have been able to have separate relationships with dad, and my dad also routinely asks my sons to do things with him (fish, hike, etc), but not I. Since I’m the only girl I’m supposed to be besties with mom. Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha. I’d like to have my own relationship with him, but if I ever ask to do something with just him, he’s worried I’ll hurt mom’s feelings. Or he spends the time lecturing me on the importance of getting along with mother, how rough her childhood was, etc. I have to forgive him for his blindness and singleminded devotion to mother.

My dad is getting older, and I’m scared I won’t have time with him before he dies.

So, my questions:

1. How is your relationship with your non BPD parent? Are you able to have a meaningful one?
2. How did you handle your feelings of grief/anger/disgust for your non BPD parent’s failures?

Thanks so much!

[Troubleswmommy]

As I understand more about BPD, it becomes easier for me to understand how to be compassionate but firm with my BPD mother. What I’m struggling with now is anger toward my father for never protecting me, for explaining away/excusing her behavior, for worshipping her so blindly. He goes along silently on her war rampages letting her have her way, he stands by silently as she gaslights. He lets her speak to him and others with disrespect. He puts her on a pedestal and worships at her altar.

My four brothers have been able to have separate relationships with dad, and my dad also routinely asks my sons to do things with him (fish, hike, etc), but not I. Since I’m the only girl I’m supposed to be besties with mom. Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha. I’d like to have my own relationship with him, but if I ever ask to do something with just him, he’s worried I’ll hurt mom’s feelings. Or he spends the time lecturing me on the importance of getting along with mother, how rough her childhood was, etc. I have to forgive him for his blindness and singleminded devotion to mother.

My dad is getting older, and I’m scared I won’t have time with him before he dies.

So, my questions:

1. How is your relationship with your non BPD parent? Are you able to have a meaningful one?
2. How did you handle your feelings of grief/anger/disgust for your non BPD parent’s failures?

Thanks so much!

[Notwendy]

Your story is similar to mine. I had a complicated relationship with my (now deceased ) enabling father. On one hand, I adored him. He was a great father and my only "parent" as I saw it. ( my BPD mother doesn't relate to me the way a parent would ).

On the other hand, I am a female child and was in a classic Karpman triangle with my parents. If BPD mother was angry at me, Dad would step in to rescue her "from " me. He didn't protect me in that way. He did protect me in other ways. He paid for household help ( BPD mother does not do housework, or cooking or other domestic things) so someone was around to help take care of us part of the time. We were alone with BPD mom a lot and those were difficult times when she is dysregulated. Having someone else in the house decreased that time alone with her.  

He also sent us to spend school breaks with his family, which gave us a "normal" home life and extended family who loved us. All this of course was for the benefit of my mother- to make her happy and not "burden" her with house and kids, but we benefited too.

It wasn't easy to have one on one time with Dad. We did have a bond and my mother perceived this as some kind of competition with her. She controlled anything he gave me- money had to be approved by her, ( I didn't get much for college because she wouldn't let him). Any letters or e mails I sent him were shared with her ( they had the same e mail account). If I called on the house phone she listened in on the extension.

Still, I wanted a relationship with him, but they were a package deal. I realized in a way, they were one person. When I began to have boundaries with her later on, he got angry at me. She got angry at me and cut off my relationship with him.

Try to relate to your father the best you can. In my case, the bond between my parents was stronger than any relationship he had with anyone. Just know this up front. Study the Karpan triangle. Don't be a doormat to your mom but choose your battles carefully. Learning the tools on this board will help. I didn't know about them at the time, and I wish I did.

For some posters, they had to go NC for their own sanity and if you do this, expect it will be NC with both your parents. I am glad that my kids got to know my father. He was a great Grampa to them. Of course BPD mom was part of the deal but I didn't leave her alone unsupervised with my kids. But, my father was all about my mother and that's the main thing that mattered to him in my case.

Consider that although your father does not protect you with regards to your mother, he may have done what he can in other ways- materially- provide a home for you, food, clothing, and other things. I know this doesn't make up for a personal relationship but it may be all he is "allowed " to do, and I consider this a lot. I credit my father for doing a lot of good for us and parenting us in the ways he could.

I felt a lot of grief and anger after he died. I think I just had to process it. Working on my own co-dependency traits in 12 step groups helped me to understand his situation better. It was best for me to forgive him and appreciate what he did for me, while trying to understand the situation he was in. What helped me most was to not take his actions personally as much as possible. It wasn't about me, but the complicated relationship he had with my mother.

[zachira]

Troubleswmomm,
In response to your questions:
I have a mother with BPD and my father enabled her when he was alive. Mom seemed to have more melt downs as my siblings and I became teenagers and I stood up to her. After one of my arguments with my mother, my father told me he had tried to get mom to go for help for her (emotional) problems and she refused to do so. He begged me to not upset mom which I believe really contributed to many of my life long challenges in becoming a mature separate person not so enmeshed in the family system. I still love my father though I regret how he enabled her. My father was enmeshed with his own mother and came from a very dysfunctional family. He loved getting married in his early forties because he could then move out of his parents' house. My father has been dead for so many years, and there is great sorrow about my childhood though I am no longer angry at him. I think he really did try to be a good father. My aunt took him aside when I was in high school, and told him the favoritism towards my sister needed to stop and I needed to be paid attention to. After that, my father went out of his way to do things with me. He at least could learn to be a better parent and was receptive to feedback, unlike mom who will never be able to take feedback or notice how her behaviors have impaired her children.
My heart goes out to you being the only girl. In my experience, mothers with BPD are much more threatened by their daughters becoming separate people from them.
Notwendy,
I always learn from your posts: what BPD can look like in a family with a mother with BPD and a husband that enables her. My father let my mother hire all kinds of help to do nearly all the household tasks. We also had many babysitters. It seems that mom was so dysregulated that she could just barely get out of bed in the morning and really accomplished little during the day. My father used to comment on how much she complained about being tired and how he could not figure out how she could be so tired when she really didn't seem to do much.

[LonelyButTrying]

So, my questions:

1. How is your relationship with your non BPD parent? Are you able to have a meaningful one?
2. How did you handle your feelings of grief/anger/disgust for your non BPD parent’s failures?

Thanks so much!

All my father could sense is that there was something mentally wrong with my uBPD mother, but he was just as emotionally abusive toward her as she was toward him, given that he grew up in a household where his parents constantly argued with each other, his father and his brothers would end up throwing knives at each other at the dinner table, and his brothers sometimes hung him out of the second-story window.

There was plenty to worry about as it is, and I understood my mother's side to a point. Their wedding money went toward paying off my father's credit card debt, which has lasted to this day. He's always been financially irresponsible, so there's been a lot to worry about there, especially given that he, now unfortunately with stage IV colon cancer, has to formally retire from his school district (he's on medical leave with most of his pay intact, thank god).

For 32 years, I've lived in an emotional war zone, and had to grow up fast in that environment. My sister and I always had to emotionally fend for ourselves. No comfort. No reassurance that things would be ok. No other family to reach out to.

But even with all of that, my father's been the nicer one to us. When I was younger (from about 8-11), and I had inadvertently said something that set my mother off, she tried to suffocate me with a pillow, screaming,  "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!" When I was 15, I said something else, possibly just standing up for myself, and she threw me out of the house and set about systematically destroying my room, tearing apart my books. When hell had settled down enough, she let me back in, and the next morning, she was profoundly apologetic. She didn't know what she had been doing, she felt like she had been in a fog when she did it and that it was like there was a veil over her eyes. She then went about helping me put my room back together and took me to Barnes & Noble over the next few days to replace some of my books.

My father fought with my mother because that's all he knew. In our household, it was his way. His life. Phone company was transferring him from Central Florida to South Florida? We had to move. Teaching job eliminated in favor of more FCAT testing? We're moving to Southern California. Teaching job eliminated from the budget again? We're moving to Las Vegas.

The last move from there back to Southern California was necessary because it's impossible to survive in Las Vegas as a person just trying to reasonably live their life. You end up spending more money on things such as eating out and seeing a show or two just to ignore the fact that you live in Las Vegas. But it's because of this lifestyle that I've never really felt connected anywhere, never had roots. Even in my native Florida, we moved around so much that I never felt like I had any roots there. So I struggle with that as well.

But my father has looked out for us more than my mother. However, he didn't know a thing about BPD back then. Nor did I. Nor did my sister. We knew there was something wrong, but could never define it, nor was there time, because my sister and I were always hiding from their fights.

I'm angry over the financial situation my father has plunged us into, and I find that unforgivable. He was a workaholic his entire career and still there's not much, thanks to his credit cards and his consistent inability to actually save money, something I've learned hard when I nearly embodied that trait when I spent too much money on books when we lived in Las Vegas. Fortunately, I caught myself, and I know that when I'm finally hired somewhere and I begin earning money again, I'm not letting any of that disappear.

But in the in-between times, when he was occasionally attentive, he was kind to my sister and I. He didn't pay a great deal of attention, but he understood.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi Troubleswmommy, 

I've not yet had a chance to welcome you. I'm glad you have joined us and become a part of our family.

It really sounds like you are making great strides forward as you learn to understand your BPDm. Kudos!   The process of understanding your dad is also a part of this journey, and at times it can be so very difficult and hard. I remember when I needed to step back and take an honest look at my own father, asking myself the hard questions about why he never defended my siblings and I from our uBPDm. I didn't like this step because I cared for my dad very much. There is this darn thing called 'reality' though, that encouraged me to face some of what I didn't want to. My dad became sick with cancer, and a friend of mine encouraged me to ask myself what I needed to ask/hear from my dad before he died.  I didn't have an answer for a long time.

Right before he passed away I went to visit him, and as we spoke, he said something that I knew was what I needed to hear. He said, "Your mom was sick, just sick." I had always heard him speak well of her-which can be a good thing at times, but in the case of a child who needs to know that she wasn't the problem, even as an adult all grown up, it was what I needed to hear from him. In the end it was a big help, yet he was still my dad with his own insecurities and inability to take care of things that needed to be taken care of. When he remarried, he never made a will that would have allowed his blood related children to have their family heritage of almost 200 years in the land we all owned. He left it all to the step mom and her children, once again not taking care of us. He is gone now, and I cannot change his choices. I can however, acknowledge that he did not do right by us, and at the same time I can still love him, understanding the disappointment and injustice that often comes from loving someone for who they are and not for what they can or cannot do for us. It is a bittersweet place to be.

 
Wools