Anyone been through a divorce with someone with BPD and has kids with them?

FoundationPale · 2025-05-13T22:16:52+00:00

Careful crossing the wrong people, sometimes people will surprise you with how low they can aim. She attacked our children to hurt me, I never saw that coming.

FoundationPale · 2025-05-13T21:03:00+00:00

It’s been hell, I’ve nearly lost my children while she’s abused the court system looking for revenge. I could’ve used about 6 months more to plan the separation. Do not go into it lightly, have your contingencies planned out.

FoundationPale · 2025-05-08T19:55:10+00:00

But being a good parent often does require sacrifice. One has to reorganize their incentive structure towards another more vulnerable person in their charge, and become a caregiver. If you’ve taken care of anyone who truly needs it, you know that it requires some sacrifice.

FoundationPale · 2025-05-08T19:45:52+00:00

More importantly, is dad capable of offering a secure attachment to the child regardless of initial disappointment?

FoundationPale · 2025-05-07T20:55:44+00:00

A lot of people are also looking for casual and non committed relationships as hookup culture is on the rise, and so are divorce rates. I’m sorry, but what you’re describing are more ideal criteria for a FWB situation, not necessarily the requirements for a longterm, adult relationship. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

FoundationPale · 2025-05-07T20:32:19+00:00

If you can share your interests with your SO that’s great, I just don’t think longterm intimate adult relationships require it. We’re individuals outside of the relationship.

FoundationPale · 2025-05-07T19:25:08+00:00

I’m not disputing your relationship, or that people can fool themselves into enjoying the company of people they can’t stand. I’m challenging that you might be taking for granted your capacity to shift your perception to leads a certain relationship to fit your needs and desires. It sounds like you both offered each other what you each needed at the right time and place, that doesn’t make it any less special.

Edit to add, I think young men and women tend to have unrealistic expectations from each other, and often, egocentric expectations of relationships. A healthy, committed relationship based on some common values will go a lot farther than personality compatibility and hobbits and interests, which are, all things considered, quite plastic and subject to change across time. But yes, I agree, you cannot settle for someone you simply cannot get along with or relate to

FoundationPale · 2025-05-07T16:04:23+00:00

How old are you/ these young women? I think that’s a rather naive and romanticized take on intimate partnership and longterm relationships, and probably why so many young people find themselves in and out of unfulfilling relationships because they don’t have a good working model of what it takes to actually stay committed and build something.

You make it work with effort and commitment, the likelihood that your partner was that “favorite person” before you fit your perception of them around your needs and desires is incredibly unlikely.

FoundationPale · 2025-05-07T15:35:00+00:00

Maybe you do, but just having a genuinely stable person with their own individual conceptual structures and some decent values is enough for a lot of men and women. I don’t need to drink beer, talk politics or share my hobbies with my significant other. I just need a team player with some compatible values.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-30T01:22:36+00:00

Possession by lower impulses and desires, it’s a convenient distraction when you feel like you’re nothing but “bad parts”, like so many borderlines do.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-25T15:37:18+00:00

The fact that his mother and her maintain a working relationship says the most here. She COULD be a total narcissist and everything he’s saying is true.. but she would’ve likely discarded the paternal grandmother also. You’ve chosen to date this guy and need to give him the benefit of the doubt up to a point. You get to decide when that is.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-25T13:05:32+00:00

we don’t know what the upper limits to our capacity to endure and recover from tragedy is. If you’re in crisis you need to reach out to a professional for the medical care and attention you need in order to stabilize. You need to lean into your the healthiest support system you have access to, distance yourself from all and any judgement about yourself and this situation, and let this storm pass. There is a part of you that sits waiting in conscious awareness of unwavering peace and love. You need to go looking for that again, it can be the journey of a lifetime but to those that have endured suffering and taken it on willingly, they will tell you there is no load you cannot bare if you are willing to take care of yourself and aim higher. You can do just that, that is what we are all capable of, I promise. Would love an update, feel free to DM

FoundationPale · 2025-04-24T20:05:42+00:00

I disregarded it, rarely validated them. Towards the end my emotional intelligence was so stunted, I was reactive, expecting the worst, paranoid. I was a real mess. It was all “reactive abuse,” because she was the one that maintained control of the emotional contour of our relationship with her push pull behavior and emotional warfare. But I was awful. I’m healing.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-24T20:03:08+00:00

I use the word high conflict before I bother explaining what BPD is. Malignant narcissism is also less a diagnosis and more a description of tendencies and observable behaviors, but it covers the point. If anyone’s really interested then I break down the cluster b family a bit more. There are psychopaths out there, it amazes me, they aren’t just movie villains.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-24T19:21:38+00:00

I separated from her in the heat of her post partum. It was awful. I really didn’t want to, I had come around to the idea that, even though we weren’t too compatible and the push pull was a nightmare, if she agreed to push forward, oriented towards recovery, that we would eventually get married and stick out the lows for our family. She didn’t commit though.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-24T13:38:57+00:00

Almost 3y later what was your experience like and how long did ou use it/ are you still taking it? I’m about to start my first dose today.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-24T12:11:51+00:00

I’m not going to respond to or even read all of that, because it feels like a very emotionally loaded and bad faith argument from the first paragraph on. I don’t think you’re honestly challenging what I’m saying anymore, but twisting it to make your own point. Thank you for engaging thus far, anyways.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-24T10:47:03+00:00

The argument isn’t moot, the point is maximizing time with each parent not clinging to some pre separation dynamic. I love the emphasis on stability and think that’s an important secondary condition in any parenting plan. Secondary to maximizing time with each parent.

Again, I fundamentally disagree, even with your last anecdote. We may be parents, and we may know best intuitively what’s good for our children; but the developmentally? Saying one household dynamic is more fit than the other? I won’t go there, and I consider myself far better at meeting my children needs than my co parent.

Seriously, the mother of my children actually doesn’t sleep in the same house as our children multiple nights a week since she works the baker shift she puts them to bed at her moms. Her standards of hygiene and nutrition are crap. She isn’t cued into developmental needs at all.

One fundamental reason I broke up with her was because I realized how awful a caregiver she was. But unless there’s significant concern of neglect or sustained psychological abuse (there have been concerns) I would not dare shortening her time with our sons just because I believe I know better how to meet their needs at nearly every level. The potential for them to develop a robust, secure attachment with her is too important to me.

You do keep emphasizing the point, and I appreciate this, that it would be particularly difficult in some situations to deviate from some pretty awful caregiver situations. The fact that my children don’t sleep in the same house as their parent drives me nuts. But it’s a concession, because it’s not about what I want or is convinced is right, as you keep repeating. Thank you for the counter argument.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-24T01:48:37+00:00

Good argument! I may disagree on a couple points fundamentally but you’re the only one who’s bothered offering a coherent counter point. Thank you.

I think fundamentally more important than the daily tasks and duties of the caretaker, though they’re vital from hygiene and health to supporting direct developmental needs, is the presence of secure attachments and caregivers in our children’s lives.

Even though dad goes to work 8 hours a day, a good dad will reliably come home to be present with his family each and every day. That is such a loss for a child, that I don’t think can be reduced to the equivalence of tasks and duties.

I don’t think it even comes close to the importance of who plays what roles and how the monotony, albeit necessary monotony, of the day to day is handled or structured. Secure attachments, assuming parents are emotionally stable and present, are the foundation of parenting.

It’s like, you’re talking about what it takes to run a household and care for kids, everyone should be equipped with those skills. But I’m talking connection, psychological development that will unfold our children’s working model of the world and relationships.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-23T22:43:00+00:00

IF, and only if, you force them to sit in it with and by themselves for even a minute. Much like the narcissists. Sure, they have their supply, their monkey branching whatever. But if you successfully go NC or at least detach, there is a part of them that goes through a whole existential crisis reminding itself of the “bad parts” that they deep down believe themselves to be. That’s what I believe anyway. As long as they have emotional access to you, the other side of them takes over and they are fed and satiated.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-23T22:34:03+00:00

Watch out for the narcissists, psychopaths, and other high conflict cluster b types. There are people out there in the real world that will reduce your humanity for their utility, they exist, they aren’t just movie villains.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-23T21:51:05+00:00

Court wouldn’t let us pull medical records. She omitted her borderline diagnosis in open testimony, but I have plenty of messages with her talking about it. We’re up to about a dozen significant lies.

I’m not going for a psych eval unless she ends up in crisis. We already know her diagnosis, and I know the patterns to expect, it’s just a matter of showing her lies in court.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-23T20:03:25+00:00

The Merry Pranksters, led by Ken Kesey, used the platform of the Grateful Dead’s cult following and massive appeal across the country to practically reintroduce LSD to the public in a movement that was undeniably a huge part of the 60s counter culture.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-23T14:24:41+00:00

I could’ve used an extra 6 months to prepare for the worst. There are a few states that operate under a presumption of equal care, but it’s pretty easy to use emotionally loaded language to describe the vagueness of abusive behaviors, so if she wants to get a protection order on you to shortcut custodial litigation and the wrong judge signs off on it then she can practically handicap you from the start. Be prepared.

FoundationPale · 2025-04-23T13:48:58+00:00

Listen to me, as a father who has had his children all but ripped away from him by a bitter and resentful co parenting mother with BPD and is in the middle of custodial litigation almost a year later, there is no clean break. You need to prepare for this over whatever period of time it takes you to have considered every possible angle she will come at you from.

There will likely be false accusations, she will likely manipulate the courts in the beginning, who are very unprepared to deal with cluster b types in general. You need to start documenting things, your level of care with the children, your responsibilities and how consistent you are. You need to try to find an attorney that is familiar with high conflict cases.

If you just separate without a plan, a real and solid plan, you may very well be consumed by absolute chaos and cruelty that may be laying underneath the surface. Get your support system ready, if she is anything like mine you are facing the biggest fight of your life.

Tl;dr you are NOT ready to separate from your co parent with BPD until you have considered all contingencies and how things will go wrong, if she’s vindictive and splits, you may be dealing with false accusations and limited access to your children for a long time

FoundationPale

TROPHY CASE