Worn out

[pushit]

Hi there - I'm new to this site, but have been aware of personality disorders for about 18 months now.  My story is long, and I've shared a bunch of it on another site, but recently decided I was going to stop posting there after one of the moderators got aggressive with me after I disagreed with him.  The members there were fantastic, but eventually it felt like I had a target on my back after disagreeing with the notion that giving in all the time is the best solution for long term peace.  In my experience it just makes the next demand bigger and worse.  Any recent posts I made there seemed to raise his ire and he would jump in to tell me how I'm bringing all my problems on myself.  Needless to say I didn't feel very supported over there...but enough about that.

I've been lurking a few weeks here and it seems like this is a good place to start up again for some support.

I should clarify at this time that I believe my wife is uBPD.  I initially thought she had postpartum issues after our 3rd child due to the timing, but after awhile it didn't go away and match up completely symptom wise.  I stumbled across BPD after Googling her behavior patterns, read Stop Walking on Eggshells and my eyes were opened to what was happening!  Like others say, reading that book was an epiphany.

I've been married to my W for 10 years, of which the first 5 were fantastic.  Then things changed.  We had some disagreements over schools and moving (LONG story here, don't want to write a novel just yet) and it seems I was painted black once I didn't give in to her demands, which I felt were impulsive and unrealistic.  The same demands keep coming up and I continue to tell her I won't accept the decisions she's already made for me and the kids (8,6,3)  unless she listens to my side of it and is willing to compromise on some things.  Of course that gets nowhere.

Over the last 5 years I've seen most everything that people write about on these sites:  smear campaigns, lies told to/about me, controlling behavior, isolation tactics, silent treatment, parental alienation, being extremely difficult to talk about anything with, inability to see other people's viewpoints, impulsive decision making, victimhood, constant negativity, etc.  This situation is really hard to deal with, it feels so lonely at times!

We've been through $10k in therapy with 3 different therapists, only to get nowhere.  W didn't like the first one, the second bought into her victim-hood and tried to get me to keep rescuing her, while telling me I had anxiety issues, and the third went nowhere after a couple sessions.  I've seen a T myself off and on, but haven't in awhile because I can mostly cope with the situation without having to visit a T on a weekly basis.  I've read SWOE, and Stop Caretaking the Borderline and Narcissist.  I've also read the tools on this site and they're very helpful.  I really like "Gray Rock" as I've sort of been doing that on my own but now I have a name for it!  (keep everything on the surface and bland)

I'm going to share some more in the coming week or two, but here's a preview:  I'm at a crossroads right now.  I'm absolutely worn out from all her manipulation and lies.  If there were no kids this would be an easy decision to move on, but there's a lot more at stake with them involved.  I love my kids and want what's best for them, and I can't decide if staying together in a high conflict house or moving on to provide one peaceful house would be best.  My W is really pushing me into making a decision on moving (and still giving me no say in where/when) so I feel like I also need to think about my overall decision of stay/divorce.  So, I'd love to hear some opinions from others on this situation and I will start a new thread to add information when I have time.

Thank you very much for the site, having a place like this to share stories and get advice from others who live this impossible life, that no one outside the house understands, is a huge blessing.

pushit

[xredshoesx]

welcome to the group pushit,

i'm a refugee from another support group site myself so i totally get what you are describing.  it sucks when you are already struggling IRL with the relationship and even worse,  people you are trusting to support you give you an even harder time...

we try hard to provide a safe place for people in relationships to decide what the next best step is for them in their particular situation.  we have an area of the forum that supports folks working on the relationship and an area where folks are more focused on leaving- you can post in either or both at the same time, we only ask you don't submit duplicate posts.

Comitted to Working On It

Separating and Divorcing

since kids are in the mix the co-parenting forum may be worth looking into as well, just to see what other people experience and recommend in situations if you all do decide to end the marriage.
Co-parenting and Secondary Relationships


in my own experiences with the uPD/PD folks in my life, i have found the toolbox helpful. esp in situations when i have no other choice but to interact at a professional level.  please do check out the articles on boundaries and medium chill-
Toolbox     

you're not alone.  we're listening when you're ready to share more-

[coyote]

Just wanted to add my welcome pushit. Don't have any advice except to say it would have been better for my kids if I had divorced earlier in my marriage. Current W and I have no kids together so again I really have no advice to give. Just suffice it to say the Toolbox and the support from the forum here is are both awesome.

[RavenLady]

Hi pushit. I grew up in a (verbally, not physically) high-conflict home with two uPDs who made each other and me miserable. I wish they had divorced so I didn't have to witness so much of that. It was like growing up inside of a marching band's drum. FWIW.

[pushit]

Thank you for the replies, I appreciate it.

xredshoesx - I have been looking at threads on those forums, just haven't added anything yet.  I will continue to read more in the toolbox, I have done some reading on multiple pages and it is always helpful to re-reference those and learn more.

For coyote and RavenLady - Can you go into more detail on why your situations would have been better if the divorce had happened earlier?  My kids are really my only concern at this point and I'd like to hear more about how this could impact them from all angles.  What's it like for them to see dad leave?  I'm less worried about me.  I don't believe any of W's lies anymore, and know she can't destroy my reputation even though she would try, and I can always come back from the financial side of things.  (Divorce costs are starting to look more appealing than living with this!  LOL)

Truthfully, I am very fearful of worsening parental alienation since it is already happening on a regular basis.  So far it has been mainly a victim-hood type role "dad is bad because he won't let mom do XYZ", and generally speaking negatively about me to them.  It's really hard to hear my kids ask me why I'm "doing this or that to mom", when all I want is to work as a partnership.  Given that she is doing this while supposedly wanting me to stay, I can only imagine the lies that will be told if I filed.  She has already claimed to my family and hers that I'm abusive and an alcoholic.  If I file I'm quite sure she would tell the kids I abandoned them, and I would be accused in court of the above items and anything else she can think of.

I don't know if that's FOG or not, but I don't think so.  I think it's rational fear based on her past behavior.  My biggest fear with this is somehow she finds a sympathetic judge and all of a sudden she gets full custody while I have limited visitation.  Not only would I miss my kids greatly, but I fear the damage that will be done to them if I'm not around to intervene or be mom's target sometimes.  But then again, does my being there escalate things?  I don't know, probably sometimes.  I also believe uPDw would latch onto another relationship quickly  and then what have I really accomplished?  It would eventually just be another high-conflict relationship the kids are subject to, and I'm not there to control my reaction to mom's outbursts.

Thanks for listening, so many questions and doubts in my head right now...

pushit

[RavenLady]

Oh my, where to begin. I'll try to just point to discrete things I experienced to give you a general idea. I should probably preface this with: since they never did divorce I never saw what ugly mess that would undoubtedly have become, and who knows, maybe I would be taking the opposite position if they had. It seems to me toxic environments exist on a spectrum and the harm to children is a matter of degree. For example, I wasn't so badly harmed that I couldn't eventually find my own sense of agency and set my own course for my life. It's just been very, very hard and painful. I was/am highly sensitive so maybe a sibling wouldn't have minded their fighting so much. Also, there's a lot of evidence now that having even one consistent, loving, protective adult can mitigate a ton of crazy elsewhere in a child's life. You could be that person for your kids. I did not have that, so my story is different. But since you asked here are some of the things that impacted me growing up with my high-conflict uPD parents:

1. There was no such thing as a vacation. It was literally impossible to get away from the stress of being my parents' child until I was old enough to obtain long-term physical distance from then. By then, the tension of walking on eggshells all the time had became my default/only setting, ultimately causing me serious physical health problems. I couldn't relax. I'm still working on it. Healing from C-PTSD helps.

Maybe that would have been my experience if they were separated too, but what I do know is they set each other off in the worst kind of ways. And since my uNPDf would probably always need to get off on antagonizing someone, I would have appreciated it if he could at least have directed his abuse at someone other than my uBPDm. She was my mother, after all, and unfortunately she was also very vulnerable and thus needed extra gentleness, not his angry arrogance. It was damaging to witness and worsened her stability, I now believe.

2. While their mistreatment of me had common elements -- most importantly, their refusal/inability/terror of being emotionally present with me (or themselves) and thus their emotional abandonment and neglect of me from day 0, punctuated by scornful abuse -- their particular negative preoccupations pointed in different directions, with the result that it was literally impossible to meet both of their criteria to be a Good Girl at the same time. While each parent's demands were unreasonable/unfair, they were unreasonable/unfair in very different ways, so I was left in a perpetual double-bind with a guaranteed 100% failure rate. Someone would always have reason to be disappointed in and reproachful of me, and I internalized their shame. Thus the C-PTSD.

3. They presented as upstanding citizens to the broader community. Happily married, responsible leaders, respectable professions. Nobody knew. I literally had no words for what I experienced and was deeply isolated and alone. If they had divorced, maybe someone might have asked questions about my home life along the way?

4. My parents were constantly cutting each other down in my presence both openly and behind each others' backs. I'm not sure public smear campaigns could have affected me more. The one benefit was that I knew neither of them had much integrity, so I didn't consider their judgments of each other as necessarily true.

Don't know if this helps. Divorce is really hard on kids, but C-PTSD is about being trapped. It's good not to be trapped. That goes for both you and the kids.

[Latchkey]

Hi pushit and welcome,

I too came from another forum and started here after having a less than supportive end of my time there.

I would recommend you read this thread to get some idea at what other parents and children of divorce have experienced:

https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=60598.0

Take some time to regroup. We are here for you.

Latchkey

[pushit]

Don't know if this helps. Divorce is really hard on kids, but C-PTSD is about being trapped. It's good not to be trapped. That goes for both you and the kids.

This last line almost made me tear up a bit!  So true.  I do feel trapped, and I insert myself into mom's squabbles with the kids to make sure they have a voice because I don't want them to feel it.  Not trying to be a martyr, I just hate seeing my 6 year old cry while she's being berated over nothing....

Thanks for your post.  That must have been really tough to have PD on both sides.  I can see in your situation that a divorce may have just resulted in two houses that don't feel safe.  In our situation I have definitely reacted to her behavior and not been myself, but I've gotten a lot better at being calm.  Although I've been made to feel like the PD at times, I'm realizing I'm not that at all.  I think I'm more of an empath, I've always been overly sensitive to other peoples' feelings and that's probably why I'm here now.  Trying to work on that.

Hi pushit and welcome,

I too came from another forum and started here after having a less than supportive end of my time there.

I would recommend you read this thread to get some idea at what other parents and children of divorce have experienced:

https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=60598.0

Take some time to regroup. We are here for you.

Latchkey

Thanks, Latchkey.  I actually read that thread before I registered and it was one of the things that attracted me to this site!  The idea that splitting up may actually be a good option in some cases and isn't the end of the world.  The site I was on really pushed people to stay together at all costs, which I understand to a point, but it's impossible when your partner is seemingly, intentionally, taking actions to make a relationship impossible.     I firmly believe it's okay to stand up for yourself and say "no" sometimes.