She must be seeing a lawyer...what now?

[Awoken]

Thanks PrairieGirl for such a great post; I read it several times, and it means a lot to me what you shared.

I hope you'll bear with me? Please forgive if this is out of place or too personal.

At this point I've posted my most personal stuff here, and your personal experience is really meaningful.

From my research borderline personality disorder is similar to bipolar but a lot less extreme.

I think borderline and bi-polars are two facets of a similar disorder, and they are often hard to diagnose. The extremeness of it varies with the individual, more so than with the disorder.

One of the things I haven't discussed on my post, is that my mother, although not bipolar, has 'borderline tendencies'. I think it has a similar effect on the family though - they essentially spend their lives walking on eggshells, right? I grew up constantly frightened for the next blowup when I'd have to hold mom's hand through terrible crying spells, or cope with the anger and blame for her problems, listening to her unending problems, begging her to see a psych, feeling responsible for fixing her personal and marriage problems.

wow. it's like you are speaking for me and my kids. somehow, this helps me a lot.

Heaven forbid I'd talk to mom about anything, and Dad was emotionally and physically absent too.

Oh, that sounds tough PG. It's often been hard on me, and I worry that I've been absent at times as well. That's certainly part of my fault in my M. I've gotten so tired. Tired of the rejection, of the emotional distance, of taking care of W. I know I've checked out many times. I didn't know, I didn't know how it was affecting my wife. It's hard because she couldn't or wouldn't communicate about any of it. I suppose that her extreme range of emotions and thoughts made it difficult for her to trust herself, or me.

I hope you realize and feel proud of what a good dad and role model you are - they're very, very lucky to have you.

Well the affirmations here are very good for me the hear, because I'm not feeling like such a great father lately. I wish I had paid more attention to my W, I wish my kids weren't going through this divorce.

I do mostly feel like a good dad. I have my bad days, but I'm here for them and both D17 and S14 know they can rely on me.

I'm so glad you posted. It took a long time for me to start posting on others threads, because I simply didn't feel qualified to say anything. But every post from someone here means so much to me. Thank you.