i think my wife has BPD and i am making it worse

[bodell]

My wife and I have been married 7.5 years and together for almost 10. She is 27 years old and I love her with all my heart, to a fault. We have a 5 year old son who means the world to me. I found this site after taking a BPD test online and answering questions as if I were my wife, who I now know to display all symptoms of BPD except self injury. We have had many great years together with the exception of an 8 month separation four years ago. About four months ago she told me that she loves me but does have any attraction to me anymore. She said she was talking to another man, but lucky for me, he was not willing to have an affair with her. She said that it was because of a laundry list of things about me that made her unhappy. I agreed to change these things, and I did, at great personal sacrifice. Among these things was that she was never on her own and that there was a void in her life caused by my providing for her. I make good money and my wife has not worked since we met when she was 18. She had started a job as a personal trainer a few hours a week earlier, and that is when and where she met the guy for mentioned. Now that I read about how taking on responsibility such as this new job can aggravate BPD I can understand that by building her a studio of her own and giving her much more responsibility only made things worse. By giving her what was supposed to be the means of self fulfillment I was actually harming her. Now things are bad. Really bad. The studio has disrupted her sleep, which is also an aggravating factor, and her eating disorder is far worse as she obsesses about her body, which is that of an olympic athlete. She hides foods, binges, starves, and beats herself up over things such as peanut butter or ice cream. Anyway, things boiled over a few days ago when she told me she was sleeping with someone. This hit me out of the blue because we were doing so well at the time. She tells me that she never loved me and that the past 8 years have been miserable despite me showing her 10 years of a WONDERFUL LOVING LIFE in photos and media. She is trapped in this hellish alternate reality she has constructed with me as her captor, holding her many belongings and son as hostages to make her love me.  I have run the suitor off and we are still sleeping in the same bed, but now there is no physical expression of love or even kindness from her. She I ice cold to me. My mental health has suffered significantly, first when I went off the deep end when being very hostilely assaulted with an angry confession of an affair, and a defiant attitude to continue it. It drove me to the point of suicidal thoughts. Lucky for me i have good friends who got me help. So now I have her back in my bed, but she is a million miles away, and I am probably driving her further by being hurt and suspicious of her, but its killing me and I can't stop. Help me, please.

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[JohnLove]

Hello bodell, welcome to bpdfamily.com.

I have read your post and left it open on my iPad. I was hoping a someone might chime in and offer support. It looks like that person is me. 

I was with my BPDex for 20 years. Your post was somewhat troubling to read as my BPDex has made many of those same statements to me.

The "I love you but I'm not in love with you" type statements. I can also relate to you wanting to provide a secure, stable, and happy home for your 5year old child.

I also heard the great sacrifices (strong word) or huge compromises you have made to show your dedication and commitment to the relationship in order to sustain it. Let's be realistic, ideally she has to meet you halfway to be fair or even reasonable.

pwBPD can form unhealthy attachments or bonds with males that they communicate with or see routinely due to a lack of boundaries. I can completely see how what happened would occur. I am not so sure it was just lucky for you. It sounds like he may have seen the red flags by what she said or how she behaved. It may also be lucky for him. pwBPD can be very destructive in relationships.

I am a little intrigued by the fact that building her a studio has become her undoing, and has negatively impacted the relationship. It sounds like you are a great partner and you were just helping her to live her dream... .?. But I see your point. The added responsibility has overwhelmed her and now she is acting out. One aspect of BPD that I have noticed is that they are very rarely happy or even satisfied. When they get what they want, they then want something else.

The rewriting of history is also a terrible consequence of BPD. I have a strong logical mind and I try to combat that aspect with logic. Let me tell you I fail regularly but do make slow progress. I should probably add at this point that before I found out about BPD just over a year ago, I met my current girlfriend... .or should I say BPDgf.

Self injury can present in many forms. It is not just cutting or wreckless behaviour. The binging of food, the starving, the beating oneself up, and the seeking out of sexual partners (especially while in an intimate relationship) with no commitment or genuine love is a form of repeating, reliving, or reenacting abuse. it is self injurious. It is is self harming. Ultimately it is undermining herself, her relationship, and therefore her life. None of what you have described are healthy behaviours.

I understand your references to the fantasy world that a pwBPD will create. It is sad. I would expand on you being her captor to you being her "abuser"... .often pwBPD will paint their intimate partner as black. That's when intimacy stops and you are portrayed to potential suitors as evil and she tries to be rescued. All terribly dysfunctional.

I am deeply saddened by what you have experienced and gone through. I have too felt those intense feelings of betrayal and despair.

You are correct in your belief that your feelings of hurt and suspicion might be preventing the relationship from moving forward. I know this all too well. Again, I wish I could help but I too really struggle with this.

I wish I could give you specific advice. It is not all doom and gloom. I know you have experienced the intense love from a pwBPD. I am hoping by replying you might find some comfort or validation in my words... .

... .and at least your post will be raised to the top of the board even for a bit which might encourage others to respond which may be able to provide you with some direction.

Hang in there mate.

[Notwendy]

Hi bodell,

Sorry you are going through this and I understand how you can feel betrayed after providing what you thought was something fulfilling for your wife.

There are some aspects of your post that I wanted to comment on. Your wife was 18 when you met, and as I take it, she never had to work because you were able to provide for her. Then, after she started working as a trainer, you provided a studio for her and she became stressed. She also indicated that she feels as if she has not been able to do things that are personally fulfilling.

I think it is great that you can provide for your family and I recognize that this is an important contribution. I see where your wife could be wondering that since she settled down at a young age, she could be missing out on something. Maybe she isn't but it is understandable that she could be thinking that.


For most careers or jobs, people start at the bottom and work up to it. Someone doesn't start out managing a restaurant or running a store- they are usually wait staff, cook, sales person. Then, over time, they learn the business and possibly take classes, learn finances, taxes, and all that is needed to run the store before they own the store. I don't know if your wife has BPD or if she is stressed from trying to run a business that she may not have the foundational experience to run. Although the eating disorder and affairs are not healthy- they may be a response to stress. Note that this is not your fault- you wanted to be good to her, however, if this created stress for her, you can adjust.

You are both fortunate that your wife does not have to work outside the home for you to survive financially. However, your wife may wish to know that she has skills outside the home so she feels less dependent.

What you want from her is the passion that comes from her chosing to be with you. For this to happen- if it does or does not- she has to have a choice. The studio was a generous gift, but maybe too much too soon. Could the two of you work out another plan? She is interested in fitness- perhaps she can go to school to get a degree in exercise physiology, nutrition. She may not even be sure, however, if there is a college or community college near you, she may be open to selling the studio and taking on an education program.

I do think the key to marital issues is working on ourselves, not trying to change our spouses- through personal therapy, co-dependency groups and other ways. Taking a look at ourselves helps us see where we are making it worse.

[bodell]

John Love

Thank you so much for the reply. It helps a lot. I have continued to research BPD and am understanding the condition more. I also let my wife read both of our posts and I think it may have helped some, as it was eerie how correct you were. She and I also went back and took some of the BPD online tests, and I actually scored higher than her. I think that much of that has to do with my codependency as she has been the center of my world for nearly a decade, and how upside down my life has been without her love.

I have tried to reduce her stress by reconnecting with her estranged family, which went unbelievably well, and putting as much order into our home as possible. I set some boundaries, the main one having to do with infidelity, as she no longer has the desire to be intimate with me in any form. On a positive note, she reminded me that I am her best friend, which means very much to me, but does not nearly fill the hole left from our lack of intimacy. She is seeing her regular doctor tomorrow, and will hopefully get a referral to someone who can help us further.

I am still hopeful, and grow more hopeful by the day, however, I am suffering from short, but intense, waves of anxiety throughout. This mainly happens when I think about the distance between us, or reach out and get nothing back.

The hardest part of all this is not being able to hold her tight in my arms or lay against her in bed. All I want to do is comfort her, and myself at the same time, but that is the exact thing that she currently hates the most.

I prey to God for her return and wait nervously while trying not to fall into an abyss of desperation and angst. Sorry for the spill of guts, but this may serve as a journal for me one day when this is behind us.

[vortex of confusion]

I saw so much of myself in your post. I have been married to my husband for almost 17 years. Him and our kids have been the center of my world. I would do whatever I could to reduce his stress and make his life easier. He wanted to be in a band so I found him a band. He wanted a different job so I would search the job boards for him. He wanted to live with his parents so he could take his "dream" job so I loaded up our 3 kids, left our home, moved several states away, and endured 4 months of pure hell living with his mother. When the job didn't work out, I rescued him by emailing the board of directors. When he was upset with the way his mother treated him, I took her on and put her in her place. No matter what has come up over the years, I have fixed it, planned it, taken care of it, and done whatever it took to make his life as easy as possible.

None of it works. Now, neither of us are happy. He has spent years completely disconnected. I got caught up in magical thinking where I would convince myself that things would get better if <fill in the blank>. They didn't get better. They only got worse.

Things didn't start to get better until I started facing the reality of the situation and started taking care of myself better. I recently joined a 12 step program to help me focus on me instead of trying to care for and fix everybody around me. Keep reading the information on this site. The communication tools are great, although they do take a lot of practice. And, it helps to read the section on understanding your partner's behaviors.

[waverider]

At the core of BPD is lack of emotional development. She has never developed an independent adult life which has enhanced this. She sees this, and blames you as an enabler to prevent her "living life". Of course it is not your fault. You have had a child, does she blame the child too, it happens. She would have avoided life regardless, but she needs to blame someone.

This leaves her feeling controlled, she feels in a cage. Anything you do for her is seen simply as gilding the cage.

Pursuing physical fitness can often be a compromise for feeling worthless inside, my partner did this in her younger years and became a fitness instructor and super toned to compensate. Now she barely moves a muscle and lives on food fads.

You can't live her life for her, you can't control her, you may have to step back and allow her to make her mistakes and any lessons to be learned there from, but then she may not take any lessons on board, you can't control that either.

The more you bend to her wishes the less respect you will get as you will become as weak as she feels. She will despise you for mirroring how she feels and will seek out someone who appears stronger who is more like she would like to be.

If you want her to respect you then you need to be someone stable and strong as she would like to be, rather than someone who meets her needs, as her needs are unstable.

Stop trying to meet her needs and concentrate on your own values and boundaries. Let her fluctuate around you, as you provide direction rather than following her all over the place, forever one step behind

[bodell]

Does anyone ever just snap out of this? Is there ever a happy ending? What are the odds that speaking to a psychiatrist will allow her to be intimate with me again?  The consensus seems hopeless to me.

[waverider]

Does anyone ever just snap out of this?

Nope

Is there ever a happy ending?

yes, but it takes time and it may not look like what you think it would

What are the odds that speaking to a psychiatrist will allow her to be intimate with me again? 

It can be the start of a change, it may take many such starts to get anywhere.

Nothing changes without a first step.

[takingandsending]

Hi bodell.

Thank you for sharing your story. Your post really struck a tender place for me. I have had a similar experience with my uBPDw, although we met when she was older. Similar to you, I have tried over 15 years to provide her with the tools to become more self fulfilled. We have two young children. My wife's journey has led her to a string of abandoned plans, businesses, classes, hobbies, and so forth - none of which has led to the holy grail of independence. The only things that are constant in her efforts have been that she must be her own boss but struggles to know how to remain motivated. In essence, I willingly gave away much of my independence, strength and allowed my core values to be compromised over the course of our relationship. But, as posted by john, vortex and waverider, the more you can take care of yourself by being honest about your own needs and feelings, the better this will be for the health of your marriage. It really is the best thing that you can do for your partner as well as yourself.

From the sounds of things, you both still have positive regard for one another, which is huge. That she is willing to take a BPD assessment test is also very positive. I will note that generally, it is not recommended to share this site or the posts with pwBPD. This is really your safe haven, where you have the freedom to say how you feel. It's not all roses and sunshine, as you have likely read here, and that's part of taking care of yourself - being willing to be honest with where you are right now with a community of people who understand and can offer help. Problem with many of us living with someone who has BPD is that many of us are co-dependent and have poor boundaries. I recommend maintaining this boundary. You need some things that are just for yourself.

Keep posting and let us know how you and your wife are doing. And keep reading the Lessons on this site. They are great tools for not only learning healthier methods of communication with your wife but also better understanding yourself and how to take care of yourself and your own needs.

[bodell]

I didn't want to just fall off the thread. I will give an update after therapy tomorrow. Thanks for everything so far.

[takingandsending]

Good luck. Hope it goes well for your wife and you.

[bodell]

Therapy has worked wonders. We have been collectively 8 times. We are communicating so much better. I think we will be ok.

[takingandsending]

Bodell,

That is such wonderful news. I am so happy for you both. Keep reading and applying the communication tools here. It will only help. And thanks for sharing the good news!

[bodell]

All is lost. Save yourselves.

[waverider]

All is lost. Save yourselves.

Have you had a severe opposite reaction?

If so this is quite normal.

[BrokenClock]

I'm new here, been reading for several days and only just created an account a few hours ago. I fee like I've almost lived this story. It's eerie.

The rewriting history. The feeling of entrapment. Rewarding extreme love and support with flippant infidelity. Lack of intimacy at home, while simultaneously cheating. Painting you as the bad guy. The I-dont-really-love-you out of nowhere. Even down to the feeling that everything is going to be ok one day, and then complete loss of hope the next day. It's exhausting.

One thing that has really helped me is just knowing that this is not unique, it's a pattern for people with BPD.

I also can't really offer much in the way of help, I'm myself am just starting my own healing and I'm very confused. But if I can offer one iota of hope: if she sees, acknowledges that she has BPD, that would be huge for me. In my case, my partner basically has an episode if you even say Borderline, if you even hint at it. She's in complete denial, and will ironically even get violent if you suggest it. The therapist told me one of the largest barriers for BPD is that they don't commit to treatment, so it fails. They don't see that they have a problem. So if she recognizes it, that may be something, however small. I don't really know.