Dear Men

When you've got kids with someone, you need to be able to cooperate. But what do you do if your ex is emotionally unstable/volatile, physically or emotionally abusive, or otherwise difficult?Most partners don't start out that way, of course. As one man put it, it felt more like "the ground could be kind of unstable" in the relationship. Another said, "I was hyper-aware of her emotions all the time, and trying to minimize her upheaval."Maybe the two of you have even tried seeing a couple's counselor. But it didn't work -- or in some cases, even seemed to make things worse. Says one man, "Even in therapy, a lot of it was, ‘You’re the cause of this.’"Here, three men share their personal experiences of co-parenting with challenging partners -- women who often have traits of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).They go into what it was like being in the relationship, the progression from being a childless couple to having children