if their current/former partner is possessive over their children.
"Yes" would be an understatement
DH's kids' mom has many BPD type traits, though no diagnosis as far as we know.
He didn't know anything about BPD when they separated and divorced and for a couple years afterwards. I didn't know anything about BPD when DH and I met after the divorce or for a couple of years after we dated and married.
He believed that even though they couldn't be healthily married, they could "set aside differences and coparent for the kids' sake".
The original parenting plan was ONE LINE saying that "DH could be with the kids whenever he wasn't at work".
During the early months after the divorce, Mom and Stepdad (DH's former best friend) were already dating (had started during the separation) and were spending a ton of time together. I should know, I was on a recreational sports team with them at the time. So I distinctly remember how DH would go back to the house where Mom and the kids lived, and would give kids dinner/baths/put to bed while Mom and Stepdad were still out after sports. Again, I would know, because I'd already be done with the game and home, and I'd be on the phone with DH after the kids were asleep, and Mom still wouldn't be back.
So there was a time when Mom's obsession with a new relationship overshadowed her desire to be seen as "an amazing sacrificial mom".
If only we'd known to take advantage of that time, because it didn't last.
Soon, because of Stepdad's uNPD traits and history of "being the man of the house and rescuing his mom after his dad abandoned the family", he imposed his narrative on the situation -- DH was "bad and abandoned/left the family", Stepdad was an amazing rescuer who "saved Mom and the kids". DH began to be painted as the villain and Mom and Stepdad used the kids' feelings, especially olderSD, to replay out their own narratives -- Mom as helpless innocent victim of DH's cruel abandonment, Stepdad as knight riding in to save "the family" from DH's cruel abandonment, and Mom/Stepdad as the only true family and parents of the kids, the only ones who truly understood them and would protect them from DH's horrible emotional abuse.
It was incredibly easy for two disordered adults to convince two minor dependent children that "what the kids truly wanted was to be with Mom and not Dad". Mom and Stepdad were "just helping" the kids discover their true desires of... being with Mom.
Please don't think that because your kids' mom is doing the Mom stuff okay now, that she would never use it against you.
Her core need to maintain the coveted victim role (but with a twist, as the "heroic victim") will supersede any functional parenting. The kids will be drawn into her narrative, both as "victims for her to heroically protect from you" (as she plays out a reenactment compulsion), and, when she wants to be more victim-y than hero, as the "rescuers of poor Mom from the world's hurtfulness and especially orders4946's abuse".
It can happen and it can happen quickly.
You can hope and believe that even though the two of you can't be married functionally, that she'd "set it aside and focus on the kids", but if you're already here on the boards it means that it's likely her disordered way of being will overcome any sense of putting the kids first. In fact, she may reframe her disordered enmeshment and enlistment of the kids as "what is truly loving and putting them first", and any objection you have to her disordered reframing will be labeled abusive.
This attitude is more typical with moms than dads here on the boards (though in situations with two moms, it seems to be more typical with the mom who gave birth to and/or is the biological parent of the child. One member here from a few years ago has two children with her wife, and to the best of my understanding, each of them is the biological mom of one of the children. The disordered wife was significantly more abusive to her non bio child, and less overtly so to her bio child, FWIW).
All that is the nutshell version of our excruciating 10+ years.
We have been significantly helped by reading Dr. Craig Childress to understand the framework and structure motivating Mom & Stepdad's behaviors and to understand how to combat the psychologically inappropriate and intrusive parenting they provide.
We have also been helped by having a long term marriage counselor. We were lucky because we are part of a small sub-community in our larger city, and so our MC also was the MC for Stepdad and his first wife before they divorced, and for DH and the kids' mom before they divorced. For me it has been deeply meaningful that I feel like MC has seen the dysfunction first hand. Additionally the individual T I see now knows both our MC and has seen Mom and Stepdad's behaviors in public. Not everyone gets T's that have also observed the PD person, but for us it was really validating. At minimum having a T for a long period of time can be incredibly stabilizing and supportive, so you don't have to "reinvent the wheel" as you try to explain to someone new how crazy things are.
Becoming a validation black belt with your children will be absolutely critical.
They will already get an experience with Mom of having to share her exact beliefs, perceptions, and criticisms. There will be no room for them to not want what she wants and to not feel what she feels. They will "have to" in order to survive. So it will be critical for you to be a different sort of parent, not just in what you believe and feel but in
how that gets communicated to the kids.
They need to have a parent with whom they can disagree and have different feelings -- where you aren't suggesting to them how to feel about something, even if it seems obvious. Spending time to learn how to validate, and not invalidate, will be a huge help in combating the probably inevitable enmeshment/pathological parenting that will come from Mom.
Try starting with this article by Dr. Childress and we can keep the discussion going:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=320051.0Sorry if this is sort of a "downer" post. My thought is that it's better to assume the worst and just build your skills incredibly to match what may be coming, and be "overprepared", than to hope and believe that "well I think we can still have reasonable coparenting agreements based on mutual trust" and lose time with your kids. The worst case scenario if you overprepare is that you will be extra good at validation and unconventional parenting.
Let us know what you think...
kells76
