# love my child, painful past, present and future



## jamesname (Jul 13, 2012)

We often start the same way. She was an exchange teacher in California, visiting from Mexico, we dated.

Looking back there were plenty of red flags. Her maticuly reading all my email going through my photo archives deleating every photo of me with my ex long term relationship partner as well as person I previous dated.

having exited a long term relationship I was eager to please and thought I had nothing to hide. Things ran their course, it built towards codependence I feed on her being
ridiculous needy and felt happy to change all sorts of my behaviors to build happiness together... and there was love and good sex. 

the prospect of her leaving after her school year was up seemed unberable, I flew her to pairs proposed to her. intially she accepted...then downward spiral acellerated in weird
ways ... at the time of course my codependency feed onthis.

she became even more needy, requireing I change my world views beyond the abandonment of my previous activist activities and social circles. I was to convert to catholicism + some some odd brand of psuedo witchcraft. 

she moved back to Mexico. I visited, and the demands were even more dramatic. I skiped my 10 year highschool reunion to drive down to Tijuana to bring her some left over items she could not fit when she moved back to Mexico. I was blind by an eagerness to please her. once there she and her family attempted to stage some kind of psudo whichcraft / catholic intervention to take away the "curse" my "witch" ex girlfriend had put on me, preventing from adopting their ideology and causing health issues in her.

I broke with her repeated pleas to not talk to anyone about anything and regained some small part of my identity. I attempted to cut it off once back in CA, she annonced she was pregnant. I flew back to Mexico, got her pregnant for real. ( did not find out the dates did not match up untill after the night before the marriage ) but it was just water under the bridge at that point given the Rocky road to marriage.

she had given up on converting me to the hard line weird religious stuff so i felt for the good of my child we could try and transition to normality and happyness. 

I wanted to be part of my childs life. so I did what I could, right after the marriage she decided to abort the child this was a weird shock to me. I supported her as best I could even though it was very painful and confusing, and flew her out to US to have a late term abortion with her mother from who she had keep a secret that she was pregnant. once she told the mother of her intentions, they decided it would be better to go shopping outside the abortion clinic... they flew back to Mexico.

I still was gainfully employed in the states. so i went back and forth she deeply resented my business travel and work responsibilitys, with wild acusacións of infedelity. she of course had no shortage if resource requests, which at the time i was happy to fullfill. while in Mexico I was able to convive her to have the child in the US, flew her and her mother out. 

her mother greatly exasperates the ideological differences between her and me. she had the beautiful baby. she was very contentious about my family visiting she argued to not include me as the father on the birth certificate. she eventually sided on including me, something she to this day understands as me cheating her out of full control over our child.

she flew back to Mexico. I agreed the child could leave the contry. I only wanted what was best and was trying to ease into a more stable relationship, and makes her happy. she said it would only be till she finished her school term ( a few months ) in Mexico. two years later I confined to travel back and fourth.

her insistence in living with her family cause deprives me of basic atonomy while I am here in Mexico.

she continues to be very unresonable steeling my passport to control what day I come or go, causing me to cancel my speaking engagements. she sends emails in my name canceling things.. this is very unprofessional and i try to explain my work is not in Mexico etc. she makes increaseing resource demands from me but does not spend the money, she just saves it in a bank account and complains that she is poor and has me buy everything while i am here., she is very moody becomes physically violent with me, she will get mad and throw my work computer to the ground etc. I feel trapped here. this is all in her parents house where I have no key.

she expesses absolutely no interest in supporting my basic needs forbids me from Skypeing with my child with my mother that is terminally ill. She won't let the child visit US, for the past two years. ( ever since the child left the contry ) 
shed has refused to get her green card vía our marriage, despite my repeated attempts.
she maintains a maticulis log of every wrong doing she feels was done to her when no one else sees the wrongdoing. 
concequently one by one every family member, friend and work colleges make their way to her black list, signaling they are forbidden from seeing pictures or much less interacting with "her and only hers" child. and for work colleges I should not socialise with them, even though I am entirely alone when in us for my work responsibilies. I make something like 10 to 12 times what she dies, but her stuff always takes precidence, in life planning and day to day schedules and child responsibilites. I am good at what i do so i am allowed. lot of flexibility, but it is hurting invitations towards upward mobility.

they ( the mother and her ) force the child to do these weird "healing" rituals with the neighboring ant / witch doctor. I feel extremely uncomfortable with this. the whole household in Mexico is very different from what i understand a healthy environment to be. they are yell and curse and eachother constently. its always extremely messy. they watch television all the time, ( i did not have a television growing up..

they are constantly gossiping with values wildly different from mine. 

they hate black people, and native Mexico Indians, while being poor / middle class Mexicans themselves... some strange identy I don't understand.

anyway i have talked to lawyers through the process and there is very little chance of me having meaningful access to my child given the structure of the Mexico legal system. she promises to spend every last penny on preventing me from seeing my child if we seperate. she suggests in the same sentence that I work harder on being more romantic with her. I love my child too much and only hope to get him out of this weird environment somehow, but I have no way to do that, since she is unequivocally against any time I could have with him post seperation, and heavily manipulates the interactions I have with him in the present environment. I accepted this trade off in that i valued being part of the life of my child. but i feel like its becoming less sustainable with her recent physical outbursts... things have gone on this way for way too long  ....recently she has potentially been diagnosed with a disease that can greatly affect mental health, but looks like another false hope that things will get better... apologies for the verbosity and for the typos, I wrote this on mobile.
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## jamesname (Jul 13, 2012)

p.s, yes she refuse councling ( of course ) and of course used the child as leverage to get me to stop seeing my previous council because my previous council was female so she was going crazy with fear and dreams of me being with the counciler... I said I would see a male councillor but she does not want me to see a male councillor either because they make me not love her aka have "boundaries"
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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

James, welcome to the TAM forum. The behaviors you describe -- the verbal and physical abuse, temper tantrums, very controlling behavior, neediness, black-white thinking, fear of abandonment, inability to trust (e.g., "wild accusations of infidelity), blameshifting, and always being "The Victim" -- are some of the classic traits of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), which my exW has.

Only a professional can determine whether your W's BPD traits are so severe as to meet 100% of the diagnostic criteria for having full blown BPD. Yet, even when the traits fall well short of that level, they can make your life miserable and undermine a marriage. Moreover, spotting the red flags (i.e., strong occurrences of the traits) is not difficult. There is nothing subtle about traits such as physical abuse, verbal abuse, and temper tantrums. 

I don't know whether your W has most BPD traits at a strong level. I nonetheless believe you are fully capable of spotting any red flags that exist if you take a little time to read about them. An easy place to start is my brief description of BPD traits in Maybe's thread. My three posts there begin at http://talkaboutmarriage.com/general-relationship-discussion/33734-my-list-hell.html#post473522. If that description rings a bell, I would be glad to discuss it with you and point you to excellent online resources. 

I caution that, if she has a pattern of strong BPD traits, they would have started showing themselves in the mid-teens and -- except for your courtship period -- would have been persistent. That is, they would not suddenly appear in only the last year. I therefore am interested in your comment that she has a "disease" affecting her mental condition. If you don't mind sharing the information, please tell us what that disease is. Take care, James.


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## jamesname (Jul 13, 2012)

I would characterterize her disorder more along the lines of Paranoid personality disorder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_personality_disorder

she seems to fit thouse charachteristics to a tee while certainly there are BPD traits, its by no means point by point aliened like PPD. the disease is a thyroid condition, which i think is exasperating PPD, which is consistent with some literature on the topic.

Knowing this is not very helpful, one can hope with hormonal balace things would be calmer, but at her core PPT, prevents her from trusting people and enables her to see her self as victimized. she is constantly hurt that i can't see or "don't believe" her about what to her is obvious evil and malicious wrong doing carried out against her.


Understanding does not help too much every coversation inevitably brings up old wrong doings that have been done to her and she is physical hostil towards me having any part in my childs life. she wants me to undo my "wrong" of having my last name on the child, she sees me as 0% despite 2 years of being here as much as possible chaning hundreds of diapers and fully supporting her financially and fully dedicating myself to the well being of our child as best i could, given her wild mood swings push and pull relationship. 

Right now for example she has stolen my passport and refuses to return it unless I sign away the rights to my child. I would just leave but that would mean not seeing my child for a long time an expensive passport replace process and what not. also there is no time since I have a speaking engagement next week, so i just have to hope vía combined pressure of her family she stops these silly control games of taking my passport.
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## jamesname (Jul 13, 2012)

p.s I read your ( Uptown ) thread on the list from hell. very illustrative and does fit so much if what i have been dealing with. thanks for sharing.
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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

James, even if you are going to divorce her, it will be useful to know what you are dealing with -- given that she is raising your child. I therefore suggest you see a clinical psychologist -- for a visit or two by yourself -- to obtain a candid professional opinion (based on your description of her behaviors). 

Keep in mind that most people suffering from one PD also have one or two others also. It therefore would not be surprising that, if she is found to have PPD, she also has strong traits of another PD. The PDs are not separate diseases. Indeed, nobody has yet shown that a disease causes any of them. Instead, the PDs are simply "syndromes," i.e., groups of dysfunctional behavioral symptoms.

Perhaps you will be able to persuade her to come back and live with you in the U.S. If that happens, you would have an opportunity to use a VAR to record her worst outbursts and perhaps be able to use it to obtain full custody of your child. If there is a chance of that happening, I suggest you check to see if such recordings can be used in a child custody hearing held in CA. Also, you already have evidence that she essentially stole the child away from you and ran off to another country.


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