Surviving the marathon

[ParentingThruIt]

Hi guys, I got my uBPD husband out of the house 10 months ago after years of verbal abuse and power struggles with me, because he was drinking on antidepressants and passing out when the kids were in his care as a stay at home dad. The court has been favorable towards me in general. The kids have been doing okay. Problem is my tank is on empty. I am exhausted and grieving.

The grief and fatigue were really bad in the beginning but seemed to get better. Now they are bad again and I’m afraid I won’t make it. That I won’t be able to keep being the breadwinner, taking care of the kids most of the time, taking care of the house, etc. I am exhausted and sad.

I am hoping this is temporary and I bounce back. But to you who have made it through the marathon — how did you do it? How did you sustain yourself and your kids and a court battle? How did you prioritize?

I do have a tendency to take on too much. I’ve been trying to pare back to lowest common denominator but even that emus t enough lately.

Thanks.

[livednlearned]

It's a really tough road, ParentingThruit. It would be odd to feel good quickly -- these are not just difficult relationships, they are the most difficult. Add family court to that and it's a different stratosphere.

Somewhere I read it takes one month for each year of marriage to recover for a regular relationship, and two months for each year when it's high-conflict. It might be coincidence but for my 10 year marriage it was 22 months when I felt the full weight lift.

During that time I didn't take anti-depressants but in retrospect I probably could've used them. Therapy was helpful. I also treated my custody issues (4 years  --> my ex was a former trial attorney who represented himself) like a medical condition. Somehow that helped neutralize things and made the situation seem more matter-of-fact.

I watched a lot of comedy and let go some of my parenting standards which actually improved my relationship with my son. We played ball games in the apartment and a few times I took him out of school just because. We had cereal nights and we built a train out of cardboard that turned into a giant tunnel you had to go through to get from the kitchen to his room.

I also enlisted him to do more and he really responded to that. Seeing me be vulnerable about not knowing how to do something, or expressing out loud that I wasn't sure about something -- I think this makes him feel competent because he had thoughts on how to approach things, like trouble-shooting internet problems or fixing a squeaky door. It was a genuine change of pace for me as a parent. I guess the point being that if you're parenting like you're a two-parent home, there are plenty of ways you can be a good parent without pretending you're two.

Anything happen recently to affect how you're feeling?

[Tangled mangled]

ParentingT,
I’m at the 16-18 month mark after the physical separation.

I can relate to what you have described. I experienced burnout and was so depleted that I could barely function. The only thing that kept me going was caring for my children.
Apart from that I had to be off work/ training and performing basic household chores was my yardstick for measuring progress.
There were days when the dishes didn’t get washed, or the house wasn’t tidy and on those days, as long as the children were washed and fed I told myself I was doing well.
In the early days I struggled with dealing with people outside of essential contacts. Socialising was like pulling teeth and I avoided it. I went down the antidepressant route and it helped me feel more in control with regulating my nervous system.It helped me distance myself from bouts of intense emotions too.
I found myself sleeping a lot too , both at night and day. It felt like detox.

Getting back to work helped me get back into routine.
In the past month or so I’ve started doing some of my hobbies.
Some other things that have helped include listening to music and lifting weights- I keep an 8kg weight in my bedroom. I’ve also taken to dancing in front of a mirror first thing in the morning and cooking new dishes using recipes from an app.

Do what works for you, therapy, rest, hygiene and other self care activities. Remember to count your wins even though it’s basic things like personal hygiene or wearing a clean shirt.
Take care

[ForeverDad]

Every year (recently every 2-3 years) I drive across the Midwest to the Rockies and spend a few weeks at national parks, North Rim of the Grand Canyon and remote campsites not too far from restaurants and supermarkets.  In 2022 I spent 4 weeks loafing around, I'm retired.

But in some ways I haven't recovered even though divorce was over 15 years ago and my son is now grown.  I had been a religious volunteer for over 25 years and an elder in the congregation until things were so impacting that I was *asked* to step down.  I did keep up with work and my parenting efforts but I never did reach out again in the congregation.  Of course, my health is limited, armchair life, and firmly in senior age.

[ParentingThruIt]

Thanks guys. It’s validating to hear that my experience is common and even “normal” for the circumstances. It feels like I’m living on a different planet from everyone else.

I have some good confidants and they help.

I think I need to work on boundaries some. I’m trying to make everything okay for everyone and that’s not possible.

A challenge is, in my ex’s limited parenting time he’s a focused and doting dad in a great mood and does what the kids want to. He has limited responsibility compared to what I am shouldering. They think of his passing out as one episode and his behavior as “their parents fighting.” So it also feels like I’m living on a different planet from them, holding what I know about him separate from their awareness.

I probably need to take a good look at my expectations of myself (implicit) and let go of some of them.

The years benchmarks help to hear. I don’t expect to be super over it all but being hit with slightly debilitating grief in the middle of work etc is hard. Maybe I’ll look into antidepressants knowing this will be a tough period.

Thank you <3 and congratulations (I don’t know what the right word is!!) for making it out. We see you.

[ParentingThruIt]

Re: what’s happened lately…

- I think it’s really sinking in that he’s ill and he’s not getting better. The deeply feeling/caring person is in there but his irrational thinking keeps rearing its head. I won’t have him as a partner or even a collaborative coparent ever, or at least for some time. I sort of knew this but it’s hitting hard lately. We finally told the kids about the divorce couple weeks ago (he put it off forever until I pushed him to do it this summer and gave him the option to tell them however he wanted). Seeing my kids’ heartbreak and fielding questions about whether I love him and miss him etc is hard even tho it’s a relief that it’s finally been done and they are handling well overall.

- my son has a bad bug this past week and I’m sick too which makes everything harder. I am behind at work and feel a bit helpless to catch up or prove myself. I am the breadwinner and he’s trying to get alimony.


Those are the biggies.

Looking back at the summer I found a lot of pics of the kids having fun. That made me happy. They tried new things my ex would never have allowed to happen. I also had a moment of grief for some things they expressed interest in that I wasn’t able to make happen, partly bc of my ex and partly because of logistics/money. I cried for that but am trying to remember that those things can still happen sometime.

[livednlearned]

I wonder if the kind of grief you're describing is what some refer to as disenfranchised grief.

This is grief that isn't acknowledged by others and isn't socially "sanctioned," so we don't necessarily get support for what is a very complex grief experience.

If your kids are not seeing the reason for your grief, I can only imagine how hard that must be for you. My son was a target so moving out for him was a relief. The Disney dad experiences were compelling but his father could not sustain them. That might've been different if his father was interested in video games because then there would be a shared interest but that never came to pass.

It also seems that your ex had tender cycles which can keep you hoping that he'll be more like that person then the other, when the painful truth is that he is both. That may make the grief even more complex.

[ParentingThruIt]

Just another note... I feel much better today than I felt over the weekend and late last week. It's a relief to feel okay. I'm sure the challenging feelings will come back but it's a relief that I'm not "stuck like that."

In retrospect I think it was a big emotional flashback. https://pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm  I have gotten better at recognizing these in recent years, but this was a biggie and got me good. I am especially prone when I am run down. While I didn't do the greatest flashback management of my life this time, it did help to reach out to trusted people and to try to give myself as much downtime as I could (though I still felt scared and guilty about it, it still helped).  I think for me this will be part of the slog.

Thanks.

[ParentingThruIt]

I think I’m grieving him as if he had died. I’ve known on some level that he’s ill but I think I was holding out hope that he’d get help and change, or that maybe if we weren’t living together, we could at least coparent the kids collaboratively and be essentially friends. As it is it feels like I’ve lost all my hopes for the best I imagined it could be, hoped it would be, and there’s the knowledge that the times that were good or memories I value - those times and experiences aren’t coming back.

There a lot of logistics to cover for the kids but I tho k this grief and sort of shock - even though I knew some of this on some level - is the toughest, it makes me sad and drains my energy. I keep searching for a possibility that it’s a misunderstanding or there’s something I can do. It’s slow going accepting completely that that’s not the case

[ForeverDad]

There are various stages of grieving  a loss. A person can bounce around back and forth but eventually one hopes to settle on Acceptance.

[ParentingThruIt]

Thanks, ForeverDad.

To your point I found this book and have found it really helpful: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17170549-stop-caretaking-the-borderline-or-narcissist  it's currently free with an Audible membership.

It's extremely validating of the experience of coping / caretaking, and the steps towards setting boundaries and separating / ceasing caretaking.  It includes stages like denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and boundary-setting that are universal for loss but also tailored for this experience.

One thing that was reassuring to hear is that the "depression" stage tends to be a prequel to the boundary setting / action stage because it's just sad to accept that what we have hoped and worked for is not going to happen because we don't have power over this illness.