wife with possible BPD wants divorce and to move kids in with her BF.

[Falstaff909]

I've been in a relationship with my wife for eight years. We have been married for two. When we first met she was still married. She talked horribly about her husband and said she was going to leave him. Once she was separated we started to date each other.

The relationship in the beginning was amazing. She told me she loved me by the second date, which at the time was kind of a red flag, but i was so caught up with how she made me feel. We lived an hour and a half away from each other so distance was a bit of an issue. By the third date she asked if I would be willing to move closer to her if we worked out. At the time her children were aged four and six so her moving closer to me wasn't an option. I said that I would be willing to do that but i figured that was at least a year away. But by six months she was asking me to move in. I said I wasn't ready.

At ten months she broke up with me and went back to her husband. The divorce was almost final. I was in shock. Just a few days before she told me that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. We had been making plans for the future. She said I was a step-dad to the kids. I took the break-up really hard. I texted her for an explanation and she said that everything she was getting from me she needed from him. I expected her to just cut me off no contact and go on with her life. We kept in contact through text that whole month. Then one night she said she wanted to see me. I drove to her work and she got in my car and she started to kiss me and we made out briefly. Then she said that we can't talk to each other anymore. Two weeks later she texted me and wanted to talk. She asked if I was sure that I loved her and wanted to spend my life with her. I said i did. We got back together that night when she came to my apartment.

I didn't realize it at the time but when she got back with her husband she moved him in to her apartment the next day. So when we got back together she had to kick him out. I've felt a lot of guilt about that. I should have just left her alone. Over the years I've felt less guilt about that because her ex-husband was a negative influence on the children with his substance abuse and neglect. There's now a court order preventing him from contacting the children.

So within a few months I moved in and I think getting back together gave us an extended honeymoon period. I never really got an explanation that made sense to me why she wanted to marry me one day and then break up the next. She had talked about her abandonment issues before. In fact early on in the relationship she gave me a "you shouldn't be with me" talk where she mentioned the abandonment issues because of her childhood and her anxiety and depression. I think i was just naive to it all.

I'm not sure when the honeymoon period ended but there were certain things i noticed that i had never seen from her before. One time I was out on the balcony reading one morning while her and the children were watching cartoons. She came out and asked why I was isolating myself from them. I told her that I wasn't, that I was just enjoying some reading time. This started an argument and by the end of it was apologizing for not spending time with them. This would become a pattern where she would get angry at something that no one else would really be bothered by and the only way to stop her from being angry and end the argument would be to agree with her. I am in therapy now and I now know that by doing this I was legitimizing her behavior.

Other things started to happen. She started to have pretty strong mood swings with fits of crying out of nowhere. She started to call off work and spend a whole day in bed often crying. She would assure me that it was nothing that I did.

Then about two years into our relationship I noticed that this cycle of love/hate started to happen. I would be at work and I would get texts from her talking about us not working out.  One time we went out for dinner and drinks and she said that the passion is gone. I was confused because it didn't feel like it was. I told her I can't deal with these love/hate cycles shes putting me through and she better figure things out. I don't know what happened because it stopped.

Things were going pretty well by year six and we got engaged. We got married in 2020 during the pandemic but our wedding and honeymoon were cancelled. 2021 was a very difficult year. My step-daughter(11) (wife's daughter) was hospitalized eight times with mental health issues ranging from suicidal ideation to self harm. I had to quit my job to take care of her. My wife makes more money and it was the only way we could financially survive. Dealing with this put an enormous amount of strain on the family and our marriage. In-between hospitalizations my step-daughter would look for ways to self harm. We would get calls from the school every week. We were on edge all the time dealing with it. We couldn't close our bedroom door at night.  

Not being able to close our door and being on constant edge had a big impact on our intimate life and our privacy. Over time my wife would blame me for our sex life not being more active. In hindsight she did have a point. I could have done better.

Even so over the past year my wife would say things like "I can't believe how much I love you" and "it hits me out of nowhere sometimes how much i love you".  

Both my wife and I developed an unhealthy coping mechanism to deal with the constant dysfunction. Every time our daughter was hospitalized we would use it as an opportunity for "us time" Sometimes this us time involved us drinking way too much on the patio. These days started off great. We'd bbq and talk and dance together and tell each other how much we loved each other. But by the end of the night i would be passed out on the couch with my headphones on from listening to music and my wife said she would go to bed crying because she felt rejected and abandoned by me.

At the start of the summer i got treatment for depression and started talking to a therapist. I had never been on anti-depressants before. My psychiatrist started me on one that gave me some pretty bad side effects. It made me feel emotionally vacant. I couldn't even enjoy music. I felt numb. This feeling lasted for all of June and July as I tried three different meds. Meanwhile my relationship with my wife was really falling apart.  At the start of June it was going well enough that my wife remarked that we were doing really well lately.  Then starting in the middle of June it just cratered.

In July my wife got approved for a transfer with work to an office in San Diego. We were all excited about the move and all agreed we needed a fresh start.  My wife went down to the San Diego office in the middle of July to fill in for someone and to get to know her new colleagues. It was during this time she met someone and started cheating on me. I would not put it all together until the end of August. For all of July and August she was telling me she was hanging out with a friend of hers while she was actually meeting up with this man.

When I had evidence I confronted her. She admitted it and she asked for a divorce. She said that I had made her feel abandoned and lonely too often. I tried to explain that we were in survival mode for a year trying to make sure our daughter stayed alive and that it prevented us from focusing on our marriage like we should.  She wasn't having it. She said I had broken her and now she was indifferent to me. Her and the kids would be moving to San Diego but not me.

Then a few weeks ago I found out she was pregnant (not mine). She has since miscarried. I tried to support her during this time as best I could. I took her to her Dr appointments and labs etc. It was while she was in bed recovering that she was asking me to take a photo of her license plate and check the mail for her pay stubs. It then occurred to me that she probably found housing but then i realized we didn't ask to use any $ from the account. So i asked her how she was affording a down payment on a lease. She told me not to worry about it. I pressed a little further and she admitted that she is moving herself and the kids in with this guy she met just two months ago. When I told her how reckless this was and how it could damage the children her response was that she's putting herself first and that she deserves to be happy.

Here's the thing. She has not told the children yet that I am not moving with them. I have helped raise them since they were 4 and 6 and they call me Dad. She says she wants me to still have a relationship with them.

I started to try to figure out what really happened here. How in the beginning of June my wife was saying she was deeply in love with me and how we were making new plans for the future and how in a matter of weeks she says that she is no longer in love with me and she met someone else. Then I kind of figured it out. That it was probably a perfect storm. The meds caused an emotional flat-lining with me and I was no longer meeting her emotional needs. It could have triggered some abandonment issues and she went looking elsewhere to get those needs met.  To me it felt impulsive and rash. To her maybe it was about survival. It's hard for me to make sense of it.

Since the breakup she has said it was wrong to cheat on me but it was also wrong for me to make her feel lonely.

She has been living in San Diego now for a week and still hasn't told the children what is going on. Her daughter is in a residential mental health program for the next several weeks and her son is living with me still and going to school.

My therapist recommended a book called "Walking on Eggshells" and said that she obviously cannot diagnose anyone but it sounds like my wife may have BPD.

I'm just trying to deal with the aftermath of all this. I have felt for years that I've been manipulated by her. Even now she continues to text me saying stuff like "I'm sorry i hurt you. I hope you can forgive me"  

I obviously can't go NC because I want a relationship with the children. I don't know how much she has told her new BF about the challenges with her daughter. I'm guessing she front loaded him some stuff as a love test. All i know is that he's ten years younger than her (i'm ten years older).

Any advice on how to proceed with all this would be greatly appreciated

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[Turkish]

I'd agree that this is all BPD-ish.

All i know is that he's ten years younger than her (i'm ten years older).

That was me:  41-31-21 

It's certainly brutal, but she trusted you enough to leave your stepson with you. To me, that's a sliver of hope that you can remain in contact and have a relationship with the kids, even D in crisis, very sad. What do you think? We have tools here than can help improve communication with a pwBPD (person with BPD). It was humiliating and painful for me to interact with a step-dad who to me was basically a kid in a man's body, yet it was necessary.

[kells76]

Hey Falstaff909, welcome.

All I can say is that this sounds really familiar:

she admitted that she is moving herself and the kids in with this guy she met just two months ago. When I told her how reckless this was and how it could damage the children her response was that she's putting herself first and that she deserves to be happy.

She has been living in San Diego now for a week and still hasn't told the children what is going on.

My H's kids' mom has many BPD type traits. After her husband (my H's former best friend, with many NPD type traits) had some kind of emotional affair/involvement with a friend, she (the kids' mom) apparently went on a month+ road trip to... somewhere? leaving the kids with their stepdad. Mom did not tell us (H and I) about this trip and the only way we found out that the kids were at Mom and Stepdad's with no Mom there was because they let it slip. The kids had no idea when Mom was coming back. She sort of did come back but now I'm hearing hints again that she isn't around? It's all pretty unclear, yet with the same vibes of "well she's just putting her own wellness first", same as you. So please know, you're with people who get it.

You're in a different position, though, as a relatively healthy stepdad. You've also been in a Dad type position for years with no issues from her. I agree with Turkish, the fact that her son is staying with you is a huge, huge, huge deal.

Here on the Divorce/Custody/Conflicted board we can help you with legal questions about this limbo situation and also with working through how you're feeling and what you want in all of this. There's a lot of parenting/stepparenting experience here, too, as I see that one of your concerns is that she hasn't told the kids about her choices. There are also parents here, too, who have had kids in residential/inpatient treatment.

It's really good that you have a therapist in all this, too. The more support you have, the better.

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When's your D11's release date? Are you in touch directly with the doctors, as "main parent"?

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Hang in there. Keep posting, we'll be here for you.

[livednlearned]

Any advice on how to proceed with all this would be greatly appreciated

This is a relationship that has always had three people. You, him, and her.

Now you're in his role, and a new guy is in yours.

It's probably how your wife finds stability and isn't likely to change.  

New BF will undoubtedly make a choice that she interprets as abandonment. She will reach out to you.  

How would you feel about that?

It takes a lot of strength to not be emotionally injured in a relationship with someone suffering from untreated BPD.

It's a special needs relationship. It requires special skills. This is a good site to learn some of the skills that can help when you're in a relationship with someone who has BPD. Whatever you choose to do going forward, it's important to accept that this is who she is and how she copes. Being the third leg in a stool isn't for everyone, although some will put up with the rotation as long as they are in the running.

What kind of role do you want in her life? In the kids' lives?

Where is the kids' bio dad in all this?