A little background

I started reading books like “Stop Walking on Eggshells” and “Understanding the Borderline Mother” (UBM) back when S and I first started dating. S is currently my fiance, and is a divorced father of a beautiful 8yo daughter (adopted from China). Her mother, S’s ex-wife, fell apart mentally and got diagnosed as bi-polar with BPD. When the little girl was between 4 and 5 years old, S's ex ran off with another man in her support group. S handed me a copy of Stop Walking on Eggshells, so I’d understand what he had been dealing with. I wanted to read more, so I picked up a copy of UBM to try to understand what his little girl might have to deal with in the future. While reading the section in UBM that talks about how children of borderlines feel about their mother, I had a revelation. “That’s exactly how I feel about my mother”, I thought.

My momster (I like that term) has always been a major control freak. I was a clumsy, forgetful kid growing up, and got screamed at a lot by her. Of course when you’re a kid, you don’t realize that not all parents scream at their kids over minor mistakes. You just assume you’re a complete screw-up. So I was very timid and mostly a loner, but tried to comply with her as much as possible.

But during my late teenage and young adult years, I started having boyfriends. She’d get right in the middle of my relationships and tell me what I should do or say as if she was trying to help me. But she’d get so obsessed about my relationships, it was like she was trying to live vicariously through me. And if she found fault with whoever I was dating (which was often), she would harp on it day and night until I broke up with the person out of pressure. And sometimes, guys would break up with me unexpectedly, probably because they saw the unhealthy dynamic between my mother and me.

I believe my mom’s a borderline Queen and my dad’s a narcissist, which according to the UBM book, those two personality disorders tend to pair up. I don’t really have a problem with my dad, but we were never very close because of his tendency to be self-absorbed into his own hobbies and such (not really interested in me).

Neither of my parents were any good at managing money, and ended up in a lot of debt. I went to college on student loans, and by the time I graduated and got a job, my mother said I needed to continue to live with them for “a few years” to help them get out of debt. So I, being the dutiful daughter, handed over more than half my paycheck to my mom month after month, year after year, not knowing when I would ever be able to have a place of my own and keep my money for myself. If I ever suggested helping her set up a budget, or taking a look at the order she was paying her credit cards to see if there’s a faster way to pay them off, she would rage at me for not “minding my own business”. She would say she’s “not going to let her ‘little daughter’ tell her how she should be managing her money!”. I was in my 30s at the time and was (still am) a CPA, LOL!

I felt so trapped! I finally had to engage my mom in an all-day-long fight in order to stand my ground and say that plan A (me living with them and giving them money) was not helping them get out of debt. They had to move to plan B. I gave them 3 whole years to figure out what plan B is and implement it. By the time the 3 years were up, they went bankrupt with over $90K in credit card debt. I moved out and got my first apartment at the age of 39.

Since moving out and having my own place away from my mom for the last 5 years, I joined a great church, made some wonderful friends, developed a strong faith in God and began to realize that I have a right to a life of my own, opinions of my own, my own decisions, and nobody but God should be controlling me. Of course I know even God doesn't control us, but has given us free will.