Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hi, this is Rachel recovered.
We've got a special guest, Esther.
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She's gonna tell us a little bit
about herself and then she's gonna, I
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answer some questions about being married to
a borderline in the long term effects tent
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on her life. Esther, tell
us a little bit about yourself. Uh.
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Well, I'm uh, I'm a
mom of now six kids, five
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of them with my ex husband.
Um, I was a stay at home
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homeschool mom most of my married life
with my ex husband. We're married for
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almost twenty years, Um, and
then since being divorced, I'm a registered
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nurse. I'm remarried now to a
wonderful person and have a child with him
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and have pretty complex adult life.
Well, anybody with six kids has a
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relatively complex adult life. Yeah,
that's true. So here's some of the
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questions that we have. Um,
when did you notice? What was the
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first thing you noticed something wasn't right? M Hm. Well, I think,
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UM, early in our relationship.
Uh, there were a lot of
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things I noticed, but I didn't
necessary I saw them as I more accepted
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them as just part of his personality, you know, seeing that is just
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who he was. and Um,
I'm a pretty accepting person of people.
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That are differences in people. But
Um, one of the things that I
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always that kind of struck me as
odd was he was extremely emotional. Um.
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He could go from laughing to crying, Um. And then, uh,
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after we were married, uh,
those mood swings turned into rage episodes
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and Um that I think it was
a pretty gradual process, Um, in
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our relationship that I started. I
think I just got to where I was.
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We were busy having kids and I
think a lot of things I just
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didn't even notice or I chose not
to pay attention to, Um, just
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as a survival skills on my part. Um. I think that after we
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were married, I did have conversations
with some other married women along the way
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and they would make a little comments
here and there, UM, kind of
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like wives do, talk about how
their relationships are going in their marriage and
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stuff. and Um, one particular
time I was married, when I was
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married to him, he there was
a girlfriend of mine and he had gotten
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really angry and um about something.
I don't even I have no recollection what
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it was, but she said,
uh, he was. He was saying
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that my standards were just too high
and something about I had gotten into this
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conversation with this other Christian woman and
she was like, oh no, your
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standards are not too high. She
says, this is just what you should
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expect, like this is what you
should expect from a Christian husband. And
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I don't even remember what the conversation
was about, but she was probably the
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first woman that called me out to
tell me, Um, that my,
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AH, my willingness to give in
and assume that he was right and that
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when when he would say my expectations
were too high, that that I wasn't
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the problem, that his behavior was
the problem, and I just kept always
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accepting the blame for his behavior.
And she was probably the first person that
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that brought that to my attention.
And then things just kind of grew from
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there. I continued to have I
had an awareness that things were not right.
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I had awareness that we needed help. I spent a lot of time
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reading books, Um, thinking that
I could just fix things, um that
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maybe if there was just a piece
of information out there that we could get
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that would make things better. and
Um, we got in contact with at
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one point, somehow we got involved
with a Christian organization that had conferences,
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and so, um, he went
to a conference. One of the men's
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conferences and came home with a friend, Um and introduced me to this friend.
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And this friend was actually probably very
instrumental and really challenged me, challenging
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me not to accept, Um,
what had become our norm and really calling
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out what was already so dysfunctional.
And I just kept accepting it and I
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kept accepting the blame for it and
I kept accepting the responsibility for it.
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And he was the one that said
that I should not settle for that.
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Um, that was actually the words
he used, that I was settling for
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things that, Um, I shouldn't. I shouldn't settle for, and I
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didn't really see it as as that
up to that point. I really kind
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of saw it. I think people
don't understand that, but a lot of
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women are just try and do everything
they can to keep their family together and
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their behavior is not necessary. It's
an it is enabling behavior. They do
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enable their UH spouse when they do
that, but it is it's an attempt
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at survival. Um, they're just
trying to survive their life, they're trying
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to keep their family together and they're
trying not to bail when things get tough,
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and I think that that's an admirable
quality. But in some circumstances I
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think that people don't realize, Um, how dire their circumstances really are and
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how, no matter how many attempts
they make at saving their situation, that
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saving it is not really possible.
And it took me a long time to
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get to that point. Um.
What do you think causes? What do
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you think cause the bpd in your
ex I'm not for sure all of the
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causes. I there were suspicions of
what causes bpd. Um. I do
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believe that abandonment is a big triggering
factor for bpd. Umm. The sad
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thing was as by the time that
bpd was a conversation in our relationship and
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it really was never a conversation in
our relationship. It was a conversation that
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came up through a last stitch effort
of marriage counseling, Um, and it
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was the conversation came up in private
between me and the counselor. Um.
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But the the by the time that
conversation came up and what causes bpd,
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my cup was so full of receiving
the the abuse from from him that I
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couldn't accept one more reason or excuse
or story as to why he was who
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he was. I needed him to
accept some accept responsibility somewhere, just a
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piece, just one shred of responsibility, and that I know. If I
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could have seen that at once,
at any point, he would accept responsibility
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for any of it, I probably
could have listened, but my my cup
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was just overflowing with receiving all of
the blame and and I just couldn't tolerate
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that anymore. I do I do
know that there was a lot of events
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that happened in his childhood that were
you know, that happened to him,
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uh, having a sick sister with
a with what they believed was a terminal
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illness and took all the attention from
him and he was uh, as he
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says, a dened by his parents
Um. And you know, the sad
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thing was it was actually a bonding
moment for us because I had a sister
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who had cancer as a as a
child, and Um died from cancer.
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And so I think they used the
word trauma bonding and I think there was
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some trauma bonding for us early in
our relationship because we we identified with each
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other's pain in that Um and the
sad thing is is trauma bonding doesn't build
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a good marriage. So, Um, we we could identify with each other's
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pain and the sad thing was is
my sister died, has lived and my
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family has dysfunction. My my family
had dysfunction growing up that we have healed
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through so much of that, whereas
his family seemed to never heal from that
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trauma and has continued to carry it
with them. So I think that was
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probably the cause of the bpd.
But there could have been other issues as
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well. Um, there is suspicions
that, uh, there could have been
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a sexual abuse in the family,
but again, I don't I never was
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directly witnessed any of that. Um, I just have heard stories of it
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and I'm not close enough with any
of those people to even see any sides
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or symptoms of it. It's just
more of the stories that I've heard.
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So yeah, Um, how was
the bpd affecting your marriage? Um,
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it was. I became a caretaker, uh, and I was a caretaker
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from early on and I didn't realize
I was the responsible party in the relationship.
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I was the one that was always
having to hold it together. I
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had to be the Rock, Um
for the instability. Um, there there
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was never a time when I was
able to fall back on somebody else's strength
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and stability. I was always having
to be the strong one. Um,
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I was having to make the responsible
decisions I was having. I felt like
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I was always having to fix irresponsible
decisions. Um. I was always having
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to counsel on how to be a
responsible adult, um, how to be
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a parent, and it became even
more apparent when I had children and my
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children began to Um have more responsible
behavior as children than the parent, and
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so that that became very apparent at
that point. Um, when we did
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finally end up in counseling, that
was actually one of the discussions that the
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counselor had with me, was that
I would have to accept the fact that
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I would be that caretaking would be
my forever role in this relationship and that
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it I would have to see him
as as someone who has a h permanent
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disability and a terminal illness, if
I was, and that I would have
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to accept that as part of my
uh future if I was going to remain
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in the relationship. Um. But
I would also he also encouraged me to
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UH figure out a way to begin
working on financial stability, because I couldn't
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depend on my ex for financial stability
or my husband at that point. So
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those are really hard conversations to have
because I had already I feel like being
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a caretaker for someone really affects your
ability to have romantic interest in someone.
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Um, it's like a child.
You don't have romantic interest for a child
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because that's not the type of relationship
you have. And so it began to
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feel like I was taking care of
a child. Um, that child that
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emotionally and practically couldn't manage their world, and the the older he got seemed
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to be more and more instability it
was. And nothing ever got better,
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it only ever got worse. So
that was a hard Um hard place to
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be is to have that conversation with
the counselor where he was challenging me to
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make a decision whether I was willing
to take that on for a life,
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lifetime, um, which is hard. As a Christian, you have uh
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when you do your vows you believe
that you're going to be married for life,
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through thick and thin and sickness and
in health and all that. And
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but I don't know, it was
I think when they talk about sickness and
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health, I I know they're also
talking about mental health, but at the
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same time it was like the mental
health that I was living through was causing
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me some significant mental health crisis as
well, and I was I just didn't
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know how long that was going to
be and I wasn't ready to jump ship
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Um. So I made a couple
of decisions at that point about how to
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basically, I kept thinking what the
counselor had said wasn't true, that I
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really wanted to believe that everything that
he had told me about our situation wasn't
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true. It was just his misinterpretation
of the information, and so I decided
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to at some point, I decided
to go back to school and get a
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degree that I could make money do, uh, and I thought that the
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time it would take me to get
a degree, hopefully things would settle down
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in our relationship and that Um,
it would calm calm everything down. Instead
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of working so hard to try and
fix things, stop working so hard at
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trying to fix things and work at
trying to be a better person and better
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our lives and focus on those things, and then the relationship would either follow
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suit or it would fall apart.
And it fall apart is what it did.
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Well, when you start getting healthier, it gets harder and harder to
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be in unhealthy relationships. Yeah,
well, somebody you have to both get
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healthy at the same time or it's
not going to work. I don't think
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Um. How did the bpd affect
your family financially? UH, well,
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I really feel like in hindsight,
at the time I couldn't see it,
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but I really believe that people who
have significant emotional instability have a very difficult
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time making any kind of financial uh
find bringing any kind of financial security or
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financial peace in their in their life. They if you're emotionally unstable and then
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you cannot be stable in any other
aspect of your life. Um. If
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you're if you make decisions based on
your emotions, how you feel at the
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moment, then you can't hold jobs
and you can't keep them for very long.
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And and the dysfunction in the way
you keep your relationships. I saw
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that, um. At first I
only saw the side that he told me,
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Um, about how he was,
the thing, the events that would
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happen with his employer, and I
believed, of course, everything. I
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believed everything he told me and I
didn't see the other side of it.
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Um, when I was going through
a through the divorce, one of his
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previous employers actually asked to meet with
me and wanted to tell me some of
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the events that had happened that led
to him being fired and they were sure
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that I had not gotten the whole
story. And I know there I always
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know there's two sides to every story. But of course I had only gotten
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his side of the story. And
interestingly enough, Um, even when he
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got fired at that from that job, he told me at the time he
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got fired that they didn't like me, that it was my fault. He
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managed to even turn him getting fired
into a problem, me being the problem
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Um, which of course was extremely
crushing for me and made me distrust people.
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And Uh, it was a Christian
and organization, so I of course
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it was tied in. I that's
the spiritual abuse thing. So I distrusted
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Christians in the mix of distrusted good
people, distrusted Christians because of the things
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that he told me. So during
the divorce, when I talked to Um
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this person about the things that had
happened that led to him being fired,
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what the thing? The interesting things
that they told me were it was the
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exact same events in same situations,
the same types of conversations that he and
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I had had in our marriage that
we're leading to the destruction of our marriage
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and our marriage the fact that we
were in a divorce situation. It was
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exactly the same type of conversations and
I found it very interesting, Um,
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that their biggest complaints with him apparently
had been complaints they had had all along
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while he was working. They had
been working on trying to mentor him into
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better places and he refused all of
their mentoring. and Um, one of
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the things that he would do is
after they would spend hours talking with him,
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trying to mentor him into a better
place, by the end of the
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conversation it was as if he had
never heard anything they said and he would
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go on as if nothing had happened. And that was a chronic situation,
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um, and our relationship as well
was this this constant conversation, thinking we
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had made headway and we talked about
things and then nothing ever changed. So
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I found that very interesting at that
time. Um. So basically, he
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couldn't keep a job even uh,
and that was that particular job was probably
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the most stable job he had,
and I believe it might have been three
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years he worked at that job and
that was the longest we'd ever the most
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stable Um we had been and the
longest he had worked anywhere. So it
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was a big Um. It was
a difficult loss on our family's part because
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it was the only time in our
my children and our lives as a family
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that that was considered stable Um financially. We were not wealthy at at all.
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We weren't even considered middle class,
but we were we had a home
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um that we owned and my kids
had, you know, regular kid activities
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and friends and birthday parties and and
that lasted all of three years. So
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that was a difficult loss Um.
And of course when he would lose a
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job he wanted to move towns.
He didn't want to just find a job
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somewhere else, he wanted to completely
moved to a different location, and that
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was a repetitive theme. And moving
unless somebody pays you to move, is
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extremely expensive and of course we never
were at any of those type of jobs
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where anybody paid us to move.
So we always had to come up with
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the money to move. Um Savings
was never a thing. Um didn't we
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never were able to save any money. Retirement was not ever a possibility.
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Um did a lot of work working
for himself because he couldn't work with anyone
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else um and we were because he
never made very much money. We were
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always on government assistance as much as
we could be to be able to afford
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to feed the kids and Um insurance
purposes and that kind of stuff. So
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about the time, I think young
people can tolerate that for a period of
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time when you're really young, you
think, well, this is just part
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of this, is just a kind
of rite of passage to adulthood, and
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you just go through these phases of
being poor and of course all these older
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people who are parents and things will
tell us. You know, that's just
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part of being young. You just
have to go through this and you'll get
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through it on the other side.
But the time when you're supposed to be
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coming through on the other side,
we still were not getting any traction whatsoever
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in any kind of financial stability or
security and in fact we were continuing to
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become more and more financially unstable.
And at one point I found out that
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the House that we had just we
had bought a house, Um, a
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small house, and then we were
going to add on to it and he
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was really good with having lots of
grand plans, very poor following through with
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any of them. Um. But
when we, uh, we're able to
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get that house finally almost completed,
with the addition making it big enough for
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all of our five children, I
found out that he had not been paying
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the mortgage, uh, and it
had been going on for about six months.
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Of course, he blamed that on
me as well and at one point
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when I had gone to get groceries, he made me take them back because
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we couldn't afford them, and I
did and I shouldn't have. But Um,
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we even had some friends that found
out that we were behind on the
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mortgage and they gave us a large
sum of money to pay off, to
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catch up on our mortgage, and
he took it and, uh, I
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don't remember. I feel like we
went on vacation with it. And it
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was just very poor money management,
poor decisions, and his decision was we're
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so far behind, might as well
not pay any thing, which really just
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put put us in a situation where
we were just at the mercy of when
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are they going to come take our
house? It put us and put us,
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put me, as a wife,
in a position where I was concerned
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that at any day, I didn't
know what the time frame was, but
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I started being concerned that if I
left the house and came home that somebody
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would have come and changed the locks
and taken our house. Um. It
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was just a very unstable it was
a very unstable relationship because of the financial
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choices that were made during that relationship. Yeah, how did that impact your
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kids? Like, how how is
your ex impacted your kids? Well,
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I think all that is still playing
out. Um, some of my kids
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because of that, specifically the financial
insecurity. Some of my kids have a
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perspective of money that is very difficult
for them to overcome because they see the
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world through the Lens of how they
grew up. Um. Um, I
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don't know. Um, my oldest
two children, who watched everything the most,
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uh, and we're, you know, more active part in all of
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the demise of our marriage. Um, have a lot of personal insecurities.
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It doesn't take much to send them
off there, UM, off of their
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place of confidence, destroy it doesn't
take very much at all to push them
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away from confidence. One of my
kids is struggled with accepting the fact that
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deserve actually, both the older two
children struggle with the fact that they deserve
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to have a good, healthy relationship. and Um, it's funny because they
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don't talk about it often, you
just hear about it every now and then.
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Um, one of my kids has
a very fractured relationship with their dad.
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And then one of my kids has
taken on an attitude that Um,
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and it comes out of a place
of anger, uh, and tries to
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balance, always be the buffer for
all things, tries to make sure that
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everybody's everybody's playing fair and he tries
to level the playing field. And the
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way he does it is by Um
trying to create in his own mind a
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reality that everyone is evil, everyone's
bad, everyone does bad thing, Um,
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and that way, if everybody does
bad things, then nobody gets to
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win. And it's kind of a
sad perspective for me to for him to
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see that, and I think it's
why he's struggled and even achieving any kind
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of long term dating relationship, because
he's not willing to allow another person to
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win either. And and I think
that that's part of being in a in
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a romantic relationships, you have to
have an attitude that both people need to
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win at that or or no one
wins. And his way of, I
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00:27:36.200 --> 00:27:40.759
think, coping is he just says, well, if I make up my
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mind at the beginning that nobody's going
to win, then I won't be disappointed.
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Um, my boys especially excuse their
dad for his behavior. I think
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it's part of it is the male
uh boys in particular want their dad to
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be the hero. They want him
to be there, UM, the person
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they look up to in their life. They're they're role model, so to
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speak, and if for them to
accept the fact that he's not a good
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role model, they would have to
acknowledge the fact that he has flaws that
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make him not a good role model. And then, in part of their
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desire for him to be that role
model is they have to Um, elevate
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the positives and make the negatives all
disappear, pretend like they're not there.
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And I think that as they get
older and they start making responsible decisions for
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themselves in life, I think they're
going to see more and more Um,
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how uh they're excusing his behavior.
Is really did them no favors and it
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didn't do their dad any favors,
um. And I think as they get
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older and they start having their own
children and seeing things from a different perspective,
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a different male adult, a responsible
male adult perspective. I think that
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they're going to have a different opinion
of him. Um, but it takes
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time to see some of that play
out. Um. Some of my kids
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really struggle with healthy boundaries. Um, in fact I would say all of
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them struggle with boundaries because they don't
know where to draw the line as children.
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UH, somebody with somebody WHO's emotionally
unstable with bpd. They don't know
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how to uh, they don't have
the bbd. person does not have good
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boundaries and they're always taking advantage of
other people and overstepping other people's boundaries.
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And they will at times respect boundaries, but you cannot ever budge on those
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boundaries. You have to keep them
intact. Heaven, and the second you
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let them let down your guard in
one area it they break through the fence.
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and Um, I've tried to encourage
my kids on how to have good
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boundaries, but they're afraid. They're
afraid to have those kind of boundaries with
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their dad. They're trying, afraid
to set those boundaries because of the other
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flip side of the rage and the
repercussions that comes. Um, the belittling
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and the how? I mean he
just runs people down. I don't know.
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I guess kids call it roasting these
days, but it's merciless. Um.
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He mercilessly talks about how stupid they
are and how dumb they are and
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he runs them down to the point
where they don't want to hold up boundaries,
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even for their own protection, because
they are going to get torn down
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for any kind of resistance. Um. Uh, so, I guess.
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Uh. And especially with children,
one of the things that's really difficult and
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when you're trying to establish boundaries is
how to have boundaries within yourself, how
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00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:15.680
not to be had a conversation with
my youngest about how not to be a
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00:31:15.759 --> 00:31:22.519
sponge and absorb the the emotions of
the people that you're around. That that's
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that's part of boundaries. It's not
just a fense that's this imaginary place between
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you and another person, but it's
really um not allowing somebody's junk, an
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00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:40.960
emotional garbage, to soak into your
heart, in your life and and you
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have to learn how to not be
the sponge in that relationship. And it's
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00:31:45.359 --> 00:31:51.720
hard for children to be that way
because they are sponges and by nature they're
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00:31:51.759 --> 00:31:56.960
born to be sponges and they're so
they should be able to receive love and
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affection from a parent figure like like
a sponge, and so it's hard to
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00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:07.640
have that conversation. It's one thing
to have that conversation with your children when
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you're talking to them about people outside
of the home, but when you're trying
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00:32:13.079 --> 00:32:16.559
to teach them how to have boundaries
within the home, two people they should
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be have a receptive relationship, receptive, loving, caring, trusting relationship with
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and you're trying to teach them how
those that's a really difficult place and it's
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a difficult thing for them to understand. Um. And so what ends up
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happening is some of my children either
have refused to they just try to pretend
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like they don't need boundaries and then
they deal with the aftermath of when things
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go bad. Um. And then
other other children, uh, some of
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my other children will just they draw
such hard boundaries that it's just a wall,
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and then it makes it difficult for
them to participate. And sometimes I
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have one that seems she's really good
at drawing putting up walls and she'll put
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them up with everybody because she then
doesn't trust anybody Um. So I think
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that, uh, that the integrity
of the of of yourself, I don't
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know how to put it, but, uh, integrity of who you are
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becomes really difficult when you've grown up
in a home with VPD and who you
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are and who you are not and
who other people are and who who they
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are not, and the difference between
those things and how to be comfortable with
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that. And it's hard enough in
a in a healthy home for those things
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to naturally develop in a child,
but to put them in a borderline personality
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disorder home makes it astronomically more difficult. Um. I do think that through
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time and therapy and healthy relationships that
those things can be possible and in one
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of the things that was the most
encouraging to me when I went to counseling,
361
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probably the single most encouraging thing,
was Um, as we were discussing
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all the heart wrenching realities of our
situation, as the counselor was talking with
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me privately, I was distraught over
how this was going to affect my children
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in the in the long run,
and he assured me, the counselor assured
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me that having studies show that having
one stable parent in a situation like that
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can totally keep a child from going
down a bad path or following in those
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bad behaviors. Because I was very
concerned with the example that was being set
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of irresponsibility Um by my ex husband
to my children. And he said,
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you know, you just continued doing
the things that you do, be responsible,
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you know can maintain your influence with
your children and that will that has
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more of an outcome and their ability
to grow up and be responsible adults and
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be emotionally available than anything else.
And so that was encouraging and that became
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my mission at that point, through
thick and thin, all the Ah Huh,
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hey guys, thanks for listening.
Uh. It's going to be back
375
00:35:37.159 --> 00:35:39.960
next week, actually the next two
weeks. This is a three part episode.
376
00:35:40.440 --> 00:35:45.440
If you are fans, feel free
to creach us on your favorite social
377
00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:51.480
media or favorite podcast platform. If
you want to look into more more on
378
00:35:51.599 --> 00:35:57.360
Rachel and recovery, always go to
Rachel and recovery DOT com. And we'll
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00:35:57.400 --> 00:36:01.280
be back next week at ten am
