Thank you to this forum

[engiebpd]

Im broke now but got a full time job but need to recover from my financial diasaster.   Hoping i can give back to this forum one day.   You all have spent a great deal of time helping me and i can never repay the time you spent reading my posts and providing enormously invalauble feedback.  

Briefly, i went through a shatter last year and went through a divorce with a bpd or comorbid while having to live out my last 9 months of lease with her.   I also had a 2-3 year old in the middle of all this.   Hes now 4 and doing well.

I had to strategised how to get out of that mess without losing my son.  Overall, if you read my past thread.  I made it out alive in from the 9 months of hell with her as she was going through mania due to her love affair.   She was a completely different person because she was so high in love with her affair partner which means she was split on me almost the entire time when she was home.   It got to thr point where she didnt even care for my soul and even asked if she can bring her affair partner into the apartment so she can be with him in our old master bedroom while i am on the futon with our 3 year old.  Thats how horrific that situation became.

I see so many people on these forums, youtube, and others getting their lives destroyed and i feel so bad for everyone.  I never knew thought something like this could even possibly exist.

Although i survived with signed divorced papers 50/50 at the end of the lease, + everything is playing out how i, the advisors on this forums, and my family attorney projected.  She is continously giving me my son beyond her 50%.   She has a new bf, and bouncing from new job month after month.   She is constantly making excuses why she cant be with my son on her own parental schedule.


The key for me to survive was to try to not get her to split.  And this meant accepting all her bad behaviors: verbal abuse & mental abuse without a reaction and just say well im happy for you and walked into my bedroom.   I now know that if i had gotten emotional and fired back with words at her in that apartment, i may have ended up being physically attacked or be set up for false domestic violence.  Which means i lose my son.

A friend of mine went through all of the worst with his bpd ex.  She stole his money and accused him of physical abuse which means he lost a lot of time with his daughter even though he was caring for her 90% of the time.

I had to become an extreme doormat and grey rocked the entire time and she eventually stopped splitting and became the "good person" again.   At that point, i negotiated the divorce papers with her and not her splitting demonic persona and managed to get what i needed.

I will admit, i became empty, emasculated, and lost a ton of confidence.  I can see this in myself with my interactions with people at my new job.  I am weak and probably suffered some form of brain damage because i am super forgetful and i dont even remember vocabulary that was in my everyday language prior to this event.  Its difficult for me to confidently speak at meetings as i would stutter because i couldnt find my words.

I told this story to a female friend and told her of my fears of false domestic abuse accusations.  She asked me "is she capable of that?"   This was the million dollar question at the timr.  Ive read too many horror stories on the internet about this with bpd exes to the point where i had to make sure my ex couldnt do that to me.   I greyrocked so much to the point where i started to think she would be capable of false accusations.

I am in a new ball game with coparenting with her.   Just recently, i let her come over ti my place to see my son since she "never gets to spend time with him" but its because its been her choice.  

Somehow she started hurdling mental abuse and i snapped and called her names.  Its been so long since ive had to employed grey rock that i had forgotten my strategy.   She rose and took advantage of it and here comes a barrage of verbal, mental abuse.  

I calmed myself and told her to leave my place and she did not want to go.   I pull out my phone and told her i am going to record until she leaves.  She would not go and stayed in my place with my son crying and she kept hurling brain damaging words.

I said im calling the cops if you dont go.  Shes all go ahead.  I tell her i am recording until you leave.  She grabs my phone and i pull back and she starts kicking my legs.  I walked away and told her you cant be kicking me.   Then she says "well you punched me".  I was like "wtf, i did not you demon"  i told her to leave again.  She then says ill leave if you are nice to me and say sorry.  I show her i was recording the entire again and will keep it on until she leaves.  She still wouldnt.

I sucked it up and did as she asked and said sorry then she finally left.

This incident proves to me that she can very well be capable of false domestic abuse accusation if she is even slightly driven to it.

I want to help everyone here and my advice in this is to tread extremely carefully if you are stuck and cannot leave a partner with bpd.   You must always remember to grey rock and not elicit them to split.  It seems to be the best option and the results has proven.   Every time when i would react to her verbal abuse and actions, it would almost always backfired at me.  It just never works when you try to stand up for yourself.  For me, i am binded with my child and cannot stand up for myself for fear of losing him and possibly my job just from it.

You always want to be interacting with their good side ESPECIALLY, when negotiating life altering decisions like divorce settling.

Imagine that when you get angry or show and angry face to them, its like they see a more exaggerated angry look and out comes split.

The more distant you are from them, the less bpd comes out.  I remember foreverdad sayinf something like this and it stuck with me.  And this has proven true in my case.  I am constantly trying to remind myself to just remain grey rock through this coparenting.  I sometimes forget and get caught off guard.  The game is still ongoing.

[ForeverDad]

Wow, we're so glad you're past the worst of it, we hope.  As you've just learned, being on guard will be an always situation.

First, in the future the last place you want to be is in a private (behind closed doors) scenario without adult witnesses.  If she wants to see her child, do it in a neutral location, perhaps a restaurant, park, someplace where you can walk away with your child.  In my early months of separation the only place I felt safe with my ex nearby was at the local sheriff's office where we were monitored at exchanges.

Are you documenting how much time each parent is using for parenting time?  If you're getting the majority of time, document it in a diary or journal.  For good measured take dated photos of him when it's her time but he's with you.  In a year or maybe two you should be able to return to court to update the parenting schedule.

Why document?  Right now you may have not just equal time but also equal custody.  What if she decides she wants him to attend school where she lives or she moves away and demands you follow her wherever she moves if you want to see your son?  Better to have residential rights respecting school that reflect you being the primary parent.  Besides you having majority time documenting that, it may even reduce whatever child support you might be  paying her.

A thought about demanded apologies... Can you sneak in this phrase when facing awkward, even scary demands for apologies?  "I'm sorry... that you feel this way."  Or, "... that I hurt your feelings."  Even if she later makes a claim you did something and her 'proof' is that you even apologized for it, I doubt any court could find you guilty for hurting her feelings.

[CravingPeace]

Also while I understand what you are saying, grey rocking against unfair allegations is where you shouldn't. My wife constantly accuses me of unfair things. You must deny this, one bit of advice is to say "you know that is not true", then disengage and refuse to engage.

If you do not deny accusations she can say in court what she accused you of is true as you did not deny. It is a weak play but it has been done before. So grey rock unless there is an unfair accusation that could hurt you.

[ParentingThruIt]

It must have taken massive willpower to maintain your cool through this.

My ex is not as intense as yours in the same ways, but had substance issues for at least a time. I was able to get sole custody in court on a temporary basis, but during that time we did weekly meet ups with him in public places on the advice of therapists/police. I was also ready to call the police if I needed to. I chose places we used to go as a family, like the mall or a museum.

I just wanted to say I have also experienced some kind of hit to my mental processing after years of spending a lot of energy trying to stay cool and not take it personally, and pick up the pieces for inconsistency and controlling behavior.  It's exhausting.  I hope you get a breather.

[jaded7]

Also while I understand what you are saying, grey rocking against unfair allegations is where you shouldn't. My wife constantly accuses me of unfair things. You must deny this, one bit of advice is to say "you know that is not true", then disengage and refuse to engage.

If you do not deny accusations she can say in court what she accused you of is true as you did not deny. It is a weak play but it has been done before. So grey rock unless there is an unfair accusation that could hurt you.

I agree with this. Unfair allegations are hard to grey rock, they seem to settle in with the partner making them and then become more 'true' in her eyes.

My last conversation with my ex was awful and full of lies about me and my behavior, what was said and done, and I very calmly negated each and every one of them. "That did not happen". "No that is not true." "That is not what I said".

Calmly, and without any tone at all. She accused me of yelling at her in the car. That scared me, because I didn't yell at her and I have never yelled at her. And accusing me of yelling at her is inching closer to abuse allegations.

I said, again calmly, "That is not true, I never yelled at you and I would never yell at you".

Of course she was the one who was yelling at me in the car, repeatedly. She is the one who violently pulled MY car off the mountainous two lane highway, at high speed, and yelled at me that she was going to make me walk 5 miles in the dusk and rain.

I also knew that she accused her exh of being abusive and violent, and my life flashed before my eyes. If she will say this about me, what else would she say? And how much is true of what she said of her exh?

I feel good that I at least negated these lies, and did it in a very calm and centered tone of voice.

[engiebpd]

One thing i want to add and why i really believe this illness is so real.  After i moved out from her, i was able to stay away from her for months and only communicate when we deal with our boy.  Its hard to tell if she was nice again because shes manipulating me to do something for her or maybe she is just back to her normal personality

She started becoming the person that i remember being with at the beginning of our relationship.  There were moments of her being that good friend to me and good mom to my son.

If she was stressed, she will split.   A lot of times  when she would send me a barrage of cussing and verbal abuse messages it came on a morning when she takes my son to school.   Most of the time, we didnt even have any issues and it was a normal day.  I concluded that she was splitting due to the stress of taking our 4 year old to school.  Sometimes hes tough to handle in the morning on the way to school. 

Like foreverdad mentioned, theres less bpd when there is distance.   And i saw the evil split whenever she was overly stressed.   I am the only person she can take it out on.

Also when she was in a good mood, i see her being rational.   But is ridiculously out of this world irrational when ever she splits.  It doesnt make any sense

 i can see why some people end up going back to a bpd ex after a break up and some time a part especially if they dont know about bpd.   

She does behave like a literal child.  An example is when clothes she buys for my boy are at my house because i pick him up from school more often.  She accuses me of  "Wanting to keep his clothes".  Its beyond silly.   She cant connect the fact that i end up having those clothes because i pick him up from school more.  And explaining this is futile.  Ill give her all the clothes back thinking itll prove to her that im not intentionally "stealing"   2-3 weeks later after i again pick him up from school more often than she does, we run into the same problem... she accuses me of "stealing" or intentionally trying to keep his clothes.   

This situation has repeated every month this year and for some reason her brain cant seem to connect the dots.

I wanted to share this because the new posters on this forum may be able to read this and compare it with their situation. 

Theres really something truly off with her brain due to this disorder.

[Tangled mangled]

Thanks for sharing your story.

The issues you have described are typical. If a child spends more time with one parent they will automatically have more stuff at that parents home but this will be used against you as non bpd parent. Perhaps she enjoys the drama she creates around it and your response to it.

I was dealing with this issue I would find a way to ignore it as it has the potential to cause the child unnecessary stress. Imagine your child starts worrying about leaving clothes mum bought for him at dad’s house. Better to ignore or not give her the desired response.