Personality Disordered wife preventing me from seeing my newborn, Divorce Filed

[artistmodel]

Two weeks before my spouse was to give birth to our first child, she blindsided me with filing for a Legal Separation, because she was pregnant and could not file for divorce. I later found out that the filing was published as she had asked for a divorce.
As I sweated over this for 5 sleepless days and consulting the Bible, Catechism, Legal options, Divorcer Psychology (Dumper/Dumpee - I am the Dumpee) and finally accepting the fact that she had emotionally left the marriage (and state) 5 months before, I filed for divorce so that she and her attorney would not take away my right to be a father to my child and to care for her and preserve her inheritance for her future.
My spouse and her family have viewed me as a terminal loser for a while now, despite over 2 years of progress in marriage counseling, and, while I learned to control my temper and bad behaviors during this time, the emotional abuse began coming the other way.
Doing research in psychology of Personality Disorders, she seems to rank highly for outward-acting Borderline/Narcissism/Paranoid type.
I have realized that I have been walking on eggshells around her for over two years now, and that I have been a victim of BDP/NDP abuse - and am now becoming the receiver of an onslaught of a smear/reality distortion/character assassination campaign, whihch has been conducted increasingly over the past two years.
The final straw in this unfortunate circumstance is that she began accusing me of mental illness, despite the fact that she is severely depressed/ on medication/ stopped medication/ prePartum depression. She manipulated the pregnancy in such a way that immediately after the childbirth, she sat smiling and watching as her aunt assaulted not just me but my senior citizen mother, so that I could be force out of the room to have her attorney serve me with some legal documents, when she had sworn that the childbirth would not be manipulated in any way. Before this, she even invited her divorce lawyer into the hospital room and allowed him to begin picking up and shaking my child as if the baby was some sort of toy or accessory, and object to be possessed and “won” in a divorce custody battle. Truly disgusting and flabbergasting.
Before filing deciding to file for divorce, I found this in the Catechism:
"The Church teaches that the separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases. The Catechism states: “If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense."

Thus, I re-iterate that I filed for divorce to protect my child’s right to have a father, to be able to see her, and to protect her inheritance from the destructive whims of her and her attorney.

We had done retrouvaille and marriage therapy counseling for years, and even went to 3 types of marriage prep, and Papal Blessings, etc. Marriage Encounters, etc.

Firstly, please pray for my newborn daughter, and my spouse, who I believe to be severely depressed and ill, and for me.
I am praying that I have the strength to bear this cross to maintain my sacramental marriage vow for the good of my daughter and to live in a para-monastic vocation (which I considered seriously before marriage) so that all I do for the rest of my life is for my daughter, for her health, for her future, and that I may be here for her when she needs me, and my legal rights are protected so that I may begin my relationship with her.

My spouse does not at all believe that I have a right to see and to provide for my daughter, which to me is downright diabolical, such that I have begun researching what is called the “Possession of the Jezebel Spirit”. I am a devout Catholic, and wonder what others think of this sad tale.

To me, the final betrayal, aside from preventing me from bonding while the child was in the womb and allowing me the privilege of supporting both her and the baby, was the decision that she made that her whole existence was to be devoted from keeping my child away from me, and expecting that I would:

1. Do nothing to protect my natural and legal right to be a father for my child
2. Allow myself to be stripped of any custody of my child
3. Voluntarily allow myself to labeled an “unfit father” and to undergo psychological testing for non-existent addictions, complexes, etc.
4. Allow myself to be deprived of the privilege to support my child financially and bond with her, spiritually.

I ask again for your intercessory prayers.

And yes, it’s true. I am no saint, and have made many errors, am not perfect, have atoned an continually apologized to no avail for years. There was no actual infidelity on my part. There was no striking or hitting on my part. In fact, much of what she claimed to be “abuse” was clearly exaggerated and invented, and meant to be performed in front of a judge.
I am at the end of my rope, and pray constantly that I may conform myself to God’s Plan, in which I firmly trust, and that he will deliver me and my child, and maybe even my spouse from this crisis.
I pray that he help me to be a man with a heart that can feel again for the sake of my relationship with my daughter, and that my sacramental vow remain intact for her sake, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who will be my daughter’s spiritual patroness, I pray, for every day of her life…
Please pray that I may soon hold my child.

 

[nana3]

First of all you have my prayers and support during this difficult time you are going through. I think that more men like you need to exist when it comes to the way you think about supporting your daughter. I have two sisters who have husbands that are not paying their child support. One is so backed up that he owes her over $50,000. I don’t call this being responsible for your child. You want to do that and support your daughter financially, emotionally and spiritually and that is admirable. I don’t know why your wife would refuse you that. I think it is terrible that you did miss out a lot in the pregnancy stage and early life of your dd. You have my prayers for those intentions.

I also can understand your wife a little, for I don’t not agree that she won’t accept your financial help for what is your responsibility, when you mentioned you have a temper and are getting better. My dh has a temper and the wounds are there when you yell or verbally abuse your wife. It will take time for her heart to heal. She may never forget, but she should forgive.

I hope that now you have visitation rights. I know of a friend whose wife has bipolar disorder and before going on medications, she refused him visitation. He had to hire this man that rights for father’s right. This many did a psychological evaluation on the children and he testified in court and this man got his visitation. The ex-wife was not happy, but he does have a right to see his kids. He did not want the divorce and fought over it many times with his now ex-wife. She is now filing for an annulment and this bothers him. He said he would fill out the paperwork and leave it in God’s hand whether he had a valid marriage or not. He has yet to hear from the tribunal.

If you can’t see your dd, take action to see her in the legal system. I have three sister who are divorce and the children are the ones that suffer. One of my ex-brother-in-laws left his two children from here in Florida to live in Puerto Rico. The son is upset with his father for abandoning him at six months old. They still do not have a good relationship and he is 22 years old now. So you are doing everything possible to be part of your daughter’s life, don’t give up. Do what you need to do legally to see your dd. You don’t want to miss anymore of her infancy.

You are going to be in my prayers and I ask Blessed Pope John Paul II to pray for you during this difficult and painful time. Remember, everything happens for a reason. One day, you will see what God has planned for you. He doesn’t agree with divorce, but it is out of your hands, your wife wants one. I do not think if matters who files first, you still should be given visitation rights during the separation. This is what our friend had to do with his wife and later after the visitations were set, she filed for divorce.

Hang in there, Jesus loves you and will help you if you ask!!

 

[McCall1981]

You have my prayers as well, Im so sorry that youve had to suffer in these ways. May God be with you and your family.

 

[bcuster]

This is a sad situation indeed. I will pray for you.

 

[AveMaria5]

As someone who has just come out the other side of a custody battle with a BPD, my advice to you is fight hard and do not give an inch. I know that may sound very unchristian but when you are dealing with people with personality disorders, give them an inch and they will take a million miles!
It took me many years and many mistakes to realise what I had to do. I was on a forum for BPD and everyone said the same. Do not give in or give up.
This is very hard for someone like me… I am extremely forgiving, do not hold grudges and give people the benefit of the doubt. I always felt sorry for my ex… but believe me, any kindness or goodwill on my part was met by venom, spite and nastiness on his.
He used every dirty trick against me, even tried to use my other children (not his children) against me in court.
I realised that I had to tell the truth about everything and expose him for the mentally ill person he is to protect my son.
I was not being nasty, I was fighting for my son’s health and wellbeing and for his spiritual wellbeing.
It took about 4 years but through prayer, trusting in God that I was doing the right thing and my persistence in doing what I knew was best for my son, we won in the end.

You are fighting a spiritual battle for the soul of your child when you are fighting a person with a PD as they will poison the child against you eventually. Mine tried with our little boy but did not succeed.
It’s a hard battle, but ultimately it’s the battle for the souls of our children.

You need to get yourself a good lawyer, that understands PDs and fight for your rights as a father. And never give up!
I will pray for you.
God bless.

 

[artistmodel]

I want to thank everyone for their prayers. I have been reading many Psalms and trying to make it through the day, and trying to build up my financial war-chest. It’s such a shame because I wanted all of this to be baby money and to be able to support her and give her bed rest. I am trying to get past the F.ear, O.bligation, and G.uilt that is involved when you have been in an emotionally abusive relationship.
God is making known to me his many blessings, and I know that soon, with the help of 2 attorneys and two different states, I will be able to hold my newborn child for a few hours.
I never would have believed that 9 years ago when I met this woman, that she would be capable of this. I have made many mistakes in the marriage, but have earnestly tried to do all I can to atone, “make up”, be patient, and give time, with caring concern. I am deeply convinced that the level of Histrionics, BDP, and NDP, with all the depression thrown in was a powder keg just waiting to explode from the very beginning.
I think that both the Church and State should begin to require at the very minimum to familiarize and recommend testing for these. When love is blind, we are so capable of worshiping the ground that a “perfect spouse” walks on, without seeing that it may indeed be a form of idolatry.
I am trying to learn more and more about Psychological conditions, wats of coping, and trying to be brave for the present and future. I find it so hard to forgive myself for things I have said or done in the past, which is part of the guilt, and guilt-ing that someone can and will hold over you for the rest of your life.
My biggest concern is to fight as hard as I can to never let my daughter be taken from me and to fight as hard as possible to see her and to provide for her.
I am in such need of intercessory prayer at this moment.
Again, I wonder what the Catholic Church teaches regarding waging spiritual battle against the Jezebel Spirit (that both men and women can be influenced by) that seems to be destroying families across the globe and world.
Searching on line, most web-sites that have writings regarding this seem to be non-Catholic, charismatic type sites.
Given the mention of this spiritual battles against this type of possession in the Old Testament and Revelation, and the writings of the Epistles, I am surprised that more is not written. This age seems so blind, as I have been.
I know that whatever the cost, my child will be worth it. Please pray for me, and for protection for my child by the Power of the Name of God.
I miss my child so much…God do not abandon me in this misery…

 

[Sereta]

I’m sorry for your situation and I commend you for wanting to be a good fathers in your new Childs life as fathers are so important!
It sounds like you and your wife have a dysfunctional relationship and that there are wounds on both sides.
Some of this might not be what you want to hear but here is my perception of what you have wrote.
You and your wife need to see a therapist together but someone who is not biased and is objective and you need to work on this together and ask gently all involved family members to let you two work on it alone for a while without any (name removed by moderator)ut from them.
You need to stop trying to “diagnose” your wife into psychological conditions,REGARDLESS of whether her actions fit this or not.
This will possibly cause resentment or anger in her and it’s not beneficial to your marriage.
You also need to stop thinking she’s got a Jezebel spirit etc as not only can this sound accusatory but could work against you in court as they could “deem” you mentally ill or a religious nut etc-courts can often be nasty and hurtful.
Ask your priest with help forgiving your wife and ask for her forgiveness for any hurt too.
Try to recall the good times you once had and try to recreate them by going out together on a date etc…
Let go of the notion that either of you are in an emotional abusive relationship.Neither of you are victims but you are both in a highly dysfunctional relationship which still has a lot of potential to succeed providing you both put your hurts and egos aside and get the right help and support to make this work for your childs happiness.

 

[SinnersAnonymus]

Doing research in psychology of Personality Disorders, she seems to rank highly for outward-acting Borderline/Narcissism/Paranoid type.
I have realized that I have been walking on eggshells around her for over two years now, and that I have been a victim of BDP/NDP abuse

You most definitely have my prayers.

I have had very close personal experience with people fitting the BPD line and they were traumatic to say the least. I lived with one person for several years and it opened my eyes to how real thoughts can be afflicted by the evil-one.

These people are what I have come to believe are partially possessed (not fully) possessed. Their thought patterns seem to switch on a dime (they are generally unable to notice this switch it all feels the same to them) and what psychology calls the “Outer Child” (which resembles a demonic personality) takes over and it is cruel, childish, impatient, and selfish to say the least. A couple more common reasons for this disorder that I have seen is massive amounts of (very well) repressed trauma or dabbling in the occult. (One person I met had no identifiable reason)

However, I have seen the successful healing of one and stabilizing of another person through faith based measures (a slew of doctors and other professionals proved useless unfortunately). The only problem is, they have to admit there is a problem. All too often they are too busy attacking/seducing people to usually see that. What helped the people I knew is outlined in chastitysf.com/

I would pray a lot, find a very good spiritual director, go to daily mass (or as often as work lets you I go during lunch breaks), regular (like monthly or better) confession and read Deborah Lipsky’s book A Message of Hope, Confessions of an Ex-Satanist-How to Protect Yourself from Evil if you are new to dealing with a close family member (like I was) who is demonically afflicted.

I realize many people may have a hard time understanding how a mental disorder can be caused by the evil-one but demons affect thoughts and BPD is very much based on thoughts. In your case you are reaching the conclusion that something is not quite right just as I did when this happened in my life. I read as much as I could out there on this stuff and it is very hard and scary.

They often attack you and have vivid hallucinations of things that did not happen. The close person I knew actually experienced being beaten while being reprimanded by their father, however it was all in their head we all saw them just siting there quietly on the sofa. We could talk to them in a quiet tone of voice and they responded that we were yelling and profaning at them.

God Bless you and keep you during this difficult trial.
Do not give up hope. I almost lost everything helping this person but our Lord was there in the end.

 

[mommamaree]

You most definitely have my prayers.

I have had very close personal experience with people fitting the BPD line and they were traumatic to say the least. I lived with one person for several years and it opened my eyes to how real thoughts can be afflicted by the evil-one.

These people are what I have come to believe are partially possessed (not fully) possessed. Their thought patterns seem to switch on a dime (they are generally unable to notice this switch it all feels the same to them) and what psychology calls the “Outer Child” (which resembles a demonic personality) takes over and it is cruel, childish, impatient, and selfish to say the least. A couple more common reasons for this disorder that I have seen is massive amounts of (very well) repressed trauma or dabbling in the occult. (One person I met had no identifiable reason)

However, I have seen the successful healing of one and stabilizing of another person through faith based measures (a slew of doctors and other professionals proved useless unfortunately). The only problem is, they have to admit there is a problem. All too often they are too busy attacking/seducing people to usually see that. What helped the people I knew is outlined in chastitysf.com/

I would pray a lot, find a very good spiritual director, go to daily mass (or as often as work lets you I go during lunch breaks), regular (like monthly or better) confession and read Deborah Lipsky’s book A Message of Hope, Confessions of an Ex-Satanist-How to Protect Yourself from Evil if you are new to dealing with a close family member (like I was) who is demonically afflicted.

I realize many people may have a hard time understanding how a mental disorder can be caused by the evil-one but demons affect thoughts and BPD is very much based on thoughts. In your case you are reaching the conclusion that something is not quite right just as I did when this happened in my life. I read as much as I could out there on this stuff and it is very hard and scary.

They often attack you and have vivid hallucinations of things that did not happen. The close person I knew actually experienced being beaten while being reprimanded by their father, however it was all in their head we all saw them just siting there quietly on the sofa. We could talk to them in a quiet tone of voice and they responded that we were yelling and profaning at them.

God Bless you and keep you during this difficult trial.
Do not give up hope. I almost lost everything helping this person but our Lord was there in the end.

Not to derail the thread, but this makes so much sense to me. I have a person in my life with a serious personality disorder and her perception of reality is very distorted. She “remembers” things and tells the same stories of abuse over and over, but such stories cannot be substantiated. Also, any interaction with her necessitates nearly constant rebukes of her behavior and her lying and manipulation. If she is experiencing anything of the nature of demonic influence you describe here, that would provide a decent explanation for why everything tends to spiral out of control if I do not entirely dominate the interaction (which only works for a short period of time).

 

[SinnersAnonymus]

Not to derail the thread, but this makes so much sense to me. I have a person in my life with a serious personality disorder and her perception of reality is very distorted. She “remembers” things and tells the same stories of abuse over and over, but such stories cannot be substantiated. Also, any interaction with her necessitates nearly constant rebukes of her behavior and her lying and manipulation. If she is experiencing anything of the nature of demonic influence you describe here, that would provide a decent explanation for why everything tends to spiral out of control if I do not entirely dominate the interaction (which only works for a short period of time).

It can be very tricky to determine this by the very nature of demons who wish to remain hidden. In the end after doing a lot of research and recruiting the family’s help, we were left with three possible options:

1. This was a manifestation of their repressed real and imagined problems (very possible)
2. Its demonic, they dabbled in a ouiji board and new age
3. Its Both

So we started with the scientific method going to Doctors/psychologists/counselors first and reading up on stories of people who were cured or stabilized (these are a bit rare). The medical profession offered Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), drugs, and insights into pasts pains and buried trauma. They also had documented the three personality types that emerged (Adult, inner child (like a hurt toddler), and outer child (evil little bugger with the emotional maturity of a 10 year old or so (I am not trying to be insulting to BPD but this was a description one gave me and it fits)). However, none of these had any meaningful impact on the hallucinations, thoughts, and attacks/seductions and so on.

After reading a blog by a (sort of) stabilized BPD and her troubles and thoughts and comparing them to the ones I knew, a pattern emerged. Medical professionals often dislike dealing with BPDs since they are so hard to work with and many said the same thing. They generally felt this “awful vibe” (everyone describes it a bit differently, like one said they wanted to take a bath and such) after dealing successfully with a persons repressed trauma and all their hatred. Lifestyle choices are often disordered by church standards and the outer child is almost an alien entity for the person (once they become aware of it).

So out of an act of desperation we tried the religious route (mind you at this point this person wanted to get better but could not find answers). We tried a combination of a Catholic psychologist (to help deal with past pains and such), ascetic living, avoiding their old friends, prayer, confession, healthy living, spiritual direction for thoughts, modest dress, and so on (a good Catholic life basically). And what do you know it worked! It was hard, and there were slips and regressions and so on. But after about two years a majority of the mood shifts were gone and they are leading a stable happy life.

It was a weird process in which one day they would wake up and stated they had double memories (As in their hallucination and the real one). They had body pains that would move on their own (like from your arm-to your head-to your stomach in a couple seconds). They threw up during rosaries several times, and would get headaches and severe stomach aches before going to get baptized, and occasionally before going to Church, and confession. After going to adoration they would complain “it’s freezing” in the church and it was at least 15-20 degrees colder outside then inside the Church (which was heated)! There were a few more but you hopefully get the idea. At one point we tried the exorcist route but the priests I talked to either said, they were not severe enough or exorcisms are used anymore. One priest did believe she needed an exorcism and even approached his bishop to perform the exorcism but he was just laughed at (evidently the Bishop did not believe in possession). The problem is these symptoms were not persistent, they occurred usually when the outer child is dominant.

Mind you, this person was essentially raised New Age and knew next to nothing of the Church (aside from what was taught in public school). I had lived with them for several years and while they had some issues we never saw the events described in the above paragraph until we made an active effort to be there and try to help this person (this was after a self harm episode).

As a side note we found (after a couple years of trying) the best way to deal with the outer child was the humble rosary. The person’s mom kept getting this idea (from God I imagine) to pray a rosary during these outer child moments (she was a fallen Catholic at the time turned New Age and was in the process of converting back to Catholic). We would try talking for hours but it would not solve much of anything, however after a fifteen minute rosary and they would usually calm down. Prayed with or without the person joining in seemed to be fairly effective so it became a daily ritual at home.

I cannot speak much of the others I have meet since most of them did not reach a point they could admit there was a problem. They are currently on the cycle of attack/seduce with one exception. This person lead a very Catholic life (due to their up brining) and even though they still have issues (mainly due to denial of the problem itself) they are fairly clam and maintain a fairly stable with an episode here and there.

God Bless, keep praying, and never lose Hope!