the L assured me that in cases with someone as unstable as her, more than likely it would not be long that parent time would be 50/50.
It's a good sign that your L is sort of laying out what is essentially a multi-part strategy, which is in all honesty what most of us in high-conflict divorces experience. What we ask for and what we get usually changes after separation. That goes with the territory in high-conflict divorces.
The judge is considered a "supreme" witness and that's sort of how it unfolds, where we bring our specific dysfunction to the judge and other third-party professionals to shine light on things. It's not ideal, but neither is dysfunction and pathology existing mostly in the shadows.
Another possibility is that you get 50/50 on paper but your wife cedes time because she doesn't handle stress well and parenting is stressful. Single parenting even more so, especially for a parent struggling to get through the day (altho parenting in the same home with a disordered spouse is arguably the most stressful, at least in my experience).
I think the decision to separate is deeply personal and one of the hardest that many of us make in our lifetimes, and I make no judgment on anyone's process nor do I have any illusion that our predicaments are solved easily with information. For many of us it comes down to whether or not we can tolerate what may feel like terror when we finally leave, or some other unmanageable emotion. For me, it was a combination of preparation, knowing my son's future was at risk, and abject fear. It simply became too frightening to stay.
We all have a line in the sand for what we can tolerate.
However, it's important to be honest with yourself. You might be overstating your ability to keep them safe. One of your kids has stress-related incontinence that is making it hard for him at school. This is happening with two parents in the home. For many of us, unless our spouses are working hard and receiving treatment for their trauma and symptoms, our kids aren't emotionally safe.
I left when my son was 9, about to turn 10, and like your son, he had what I now realize were serious issues that began manifesting in preschool. He's now 21 and can reflect on his childhood, and I find it baffling that the night his dad had a psychotic episode is not the memory he focuses on, but on the nightly abuse at our dinner table. Maybe that will change, and maybe it's a memory he simply doesn't want to re-live. In his thinking, he solved the problem of his dad's psychosis by pretending to be asleep, which, later in therapy, his therapist told him was clever. Whereas, I sat at the dinner table nightly prior to the divorce and not only did nothing to protect my son, I taught him to do nothing, too.
Had I put my food down during these episodes and said no more verbal abuse, it would've been WWIII, so I'm not saying the opposite of doing nothing is to toss a grenade. My point is that sometimes we think we're protecting our kids when we're actually laying down the groundwork for PTSD or other issues. We're training them to do what we did, what our parents modeled for us, and that might not be healthy for anyone, including our spouses with BPD.
For me, I went even further. To placate my ex, which enabled the dysfunction, I bought n/BPDx boxed wine (so there would be no bottles in the recycling) because he was too socially anxious to go into supermarkets, despite somehow having the capacity to buy alcohol in a liquor store. And then I spent the better part of the day and night thinking I was the safer parent for my son, trying to shield him from the instability I had helped create.
It's why I think you have to get very uncomfortably clear about what you value and then work from there. For me, it was my kid's well-being. I decided to make critical changes to ensure his safety and that made things untenable. But I had to stand up for something, and not just try to shelter him from his dad. I had to insist on therapy, and I had to say no to the verbal abuse. Maybe some pwBPD would be ok with those changes, but mine fell into the "not cooperative, dangerous" category that Bill Eddy discusses.
I guess the short version of what I'm trying to say is that status quo isn't an option. You have to choose to leave or to stay and become the emotional leader in the family. You have to be willing to infuse a lot of healthy leadership so your kids see someone not just shielding them but actively showing them what it looks like to stand up to a bully.
I worry about that 50% of the time the kids are with her.
You're smart to worry.
Something bad will probably happen. ForeverDad probably remember the night my ex had a psychotic episode because I was here in distress. I think the subject line for my post was, "HELP - crisis exploding." I will never forget FD commenting rather coolly that it could be the event that led to full custody. He was right.
That's the same night my son has little to no distress about because his therapist helped validate his ability to
protect himself.
I had been telling my son what to do if he needed help (hypothetically
), including calling me, going to neighbors, calling 911. Instead, he recognized that the smart thing was to play possum and ride it out. Which worked.
I hope that makes sense. Never in a million years did I think my son would interpret that worse-case scenario like that. He managed to do for himself what I hadn't been able to do, and it was good for him.
Obviously, it's a roll of the dice, and we can't know how our kids will manage dicey situations, but we also can't assume we are necessarily the healthiest protectors either, especially if we're training our kids to simply roll over.
