Well, to attempt to kick her out that is. I need to figure out whether to agree to delay a Wednesday court hearing to ask for sole possession of our house. My wife has finally, at last started DBT therapy this past week... has actually gone twice to the psychologist, who has recommended she start the group therapy component next week, and she seems to seriously be starting it. Not sure if it was the first court order or this new motion to kick her out of the house, but she seems to understand things are serious. She's changed her behavior significantly short-term, though still regresses. She was emotionally dysregulated on Friday when she read my lawyer's proposal to postpone if she agreed to move out temporarily & have rent paid from community funds & get estimated spousal support for a month. But she kept it away from the children.
We're talking about an agreement in which she commits to DBT, agrees to keep the environment at home calm and sane for the children, etc. In return I postpone the court action for 30 days and we see what happens.
Pros: She's started therapy. Don't want to disrupt that. She's stopped dysregulating at our older son, and she's tamped down dysregulation overall, and seems to really be trying to keep the children away from it. She's stopped demanding that I text my every move to her (that is, I told her I was stopping and she's stopped dysregulating about it). The freedom is wonderful. She's offered to help with various things, and she says she wants to reconcile with me. It's only a 30 day postponement so if things start to go badly there is a backup ready. There is no guarantee that the court would kick her out -- they didn't do it in the original court orders after all, and some of the original arguments (refusing all therapy) are no longer true.
Cons: She's at the start of a long road of therapy. We haven't gotten her psychological report back and I don't know what it says. She has no real constancy except that she still wants to get plastic surgery for our older son's head; but now she's accepted that that's not going to happen in the immediate future. But she says she's still depressed and gets worse when she looks at him (just FYI, nobody but medical specialists can really see he has anything out of the ordinary about him in normal life).
I need calmness and constancy right now so either way I'm detaching emotionally from her; but of course since we have children and visitation, either way I cannot go NC with her.
Background: My wife has been unofficially diagnosed as having Axis II PD, closest to BPD. Definitely has many high functioning BPD behaviors. Has been hiding much of what her therapists tell her from me. Threatened suicide many times. Went through a 9 day psych hold, followed by a partial hospitalization program. Program gave her an Axis II "deferred" diagnosis but apparently recommended DBT. Her psychiatrist also recommended DBT. We are in the middle of a divorce, I have full custody of our children and she has only supervised visitation due to concerns Family Court Services has about her. She was ordered to undergo a full psych evaluation and send it to the court; she did her part of the evaluation immediately, but evaluation is still not completed after 6 weeks. She has not moved out of our house, though at one point said she would. She tried to do couples counseling with me but ended up walking out (after the counselor told her she had a PD).
So two weeks back she was still not going to any individual therapy (in violation of the court orders), she claimed she was thinking of using her remaining medications that she was not taking (in violation of the court orders) to commit suicide in the nearby mountains. She was not saying anything problematic to the children but they definitely overheard her talk about inappropriate things (our divorce, her anger at me, etc.) when she was talking to me. I had to continually remind her not do to that (also a violation of the court order of course).
So I filed a motion for sole possession of our house. She can easily move out to a studio nearby, I can't because I have custody of the children. We have the court date set for Wednesday.
So: After she was served papers, she started looking for DBT therapists. She found them. After a lot of argument she finally agreed to commit to DBT for 6-12 months (it is a long term commitment). She went to the individual therapy twice last week. She started raging much less and said she wanted to reconcile with me.
She also seems to think that we can reconcile over the next few weeks. I think it's going to take months of therapy before we'd be ready to start doing that seriously, and I've told her that. I don't think she believes it. She's rejecting couples therapy; I don't think it'd be useful either unless and until she gets through a substantial amount of individual therapy and makes a lot of progress. But I also don't see how we'd be able to reconcile without couples therapy of some kind. Maybe DBT offers some kind of family therapy, down the road. But that's all a long ways away and really a roll of the dice.
The question at hand isn't reconciliation or long term issues, just whether I should agree to postpone the hearing 30 days. There are going to be legal issues, but here I want to try to figure out the non-legal issues. How should I figure this out?




