reticulatedsplin
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Gay, lesb
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Romantic partner
Posts: 5
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« on: June 25, 2015, 02:35:48 PM » |
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After 3 years of marriage and 5 years of knowing each other I think my husband and I are going to separate. I'm writing this mostly because I haven't really felt comfortable sharing the details of our relationship with my friends and family and I feel this huge sadness inside me and I need to let it out somewhere. Apologies if this isn't the right place for that.
When we met, we connected instantly. We actually first met through a gay hookup app called Grindr but we didn't actually have sex or even kiss until date two or three. The first few dates were just us talking for hours on end, completely losing track of time. We just clicked in such an easy and natural way that I felt pretty early on that we had a very special connection. I'm normally someone who has difficulty being social with new people, and with him it was just effortless. The first few years of our relationship were amazing and I was happier than I've ever been with someone.
Things started to fall apart when we moved in together. We began fighting more often, though I assumed this was just a natural side effect of moving in together which would pass. We got married not long afterwards, and I hoped things would settle down, but they got steadily worse. Bigger fights, occurring much more often, involving him making wild accusations, screaming at me, ambushing me while I was sleeping, and other really stressful things. I knew something was wrong then, since the frequency and the intensity of the fights was too extreme to be just marital squabbles. I kept insisting that this wasn't normal, and each time he insisted he was in the right.
We'd fight about 2-3 times a week in a big explosive fashion- yelling at each other and all that. He once broke his arm punching a door when we were fighting about my dog chewing up one of his sweaters. I once got so angry at being woken up with a shirked accusation of infidelity that I kicked a hole in the wall. These usually appeared out of nowhere with little warning. He'd come home and seem irritated, then a few minutes later be screaming at me about how the fact that I didn't check the mail meant that I thought of him as my subordinate. In between the fights he'd alternate between being very sweet on some days and very bitter on others. By bitter I mean just sour and nasty. He'd come home and it would be apparent he was in a bad mood. Everything I said would get a nasty remark from him. Every suggestion I made was shot down. He'd walk around the house finding things which weren't clean and get very angry about them. I felt like between the explosive and unexpected fights, and the general background nastiness, I began to feel very uncomfortable just being around him. I felt like at any time the sweetness would melt and I'd be attacked (verbally/emotionally, he never hit me). That was the worst bit, never knowing when I was going to be yelled at, and feeling like nothing I could do would prevent it.
We eventually started couples therapy about a year and a half ago, and there were some victories- learning how to deescalate some fights, learning times when we seemed more prone to fighting that we could avoid eachother during. But honestly we were still fighting about as frequently as ever.
Last year he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and started individual therapy for it. It certainly made a lot of things make sense. The rapid switching back and forth from happiness to anger to sadness. The overwhelming emotions he seemed to feel. The way he could completely block out all evidence to the contrary whenever he got upset about something he suspected. Unfortunately him being diagnosed didn't really lead to a major improvement. It just added another step to our fighting cycles, where after he blew off all of his steam, he'd cool down and realize he'd had a BPD moment and feel deep shame and self-loathing. He got better at recognizing and admitting when he'd had a BPD moment after the fact, and there was a slight decrease in how often we'd fight, but explosive screaming matches were still a bi-weekly occurrences, often book ended by a several days of sullen nasty bitterness.
And the deep shame/self-loathing moments he felt were almost worse than the explosive anger. He'd cry, talking about how broken he felt and how he didn't deserve me and how I should just leave him. Seeing someone you love and are married to sobbing and talking ___ about themselves hurts, you know? I'd do my best to try to keep him hopeful, tell him I knew how hard he was working Even if it's after they've been screaming at you an hour before. More recently the divorce/separation overtones to these crying spells has increased. Two days ago he said "I'd be sad, but I understand if you left me". This morning he said "You need to leave so that one of us can be happy."
In all honesty, I do want out. I feel like even if he miraculously got better today, what I once felt for him has been far overshadowed by the anger, the bitterness, the nastiness. I've grown so used to being nervous around him that I no longer trust him. I also know that he'll never get "better" in the sense of no longer having BPD. The best I can hope for is a decrease in the frequency and intensity. I'll never not have to be on my guard around him. I want more for my life. I don't want a land mine for a husband.
On the flip side, I do love him. We make eachother laugh, he understands how I feel about things, and when he's in one of his good moods we have a terrific time together. When he's sad, I do genuinely feel bad seeing him in pain. In a way that makes it worse for me. And I can't help but worry that if I divorce him that I'm giving up on something that could still be good.
I haven't really spoken about any of this to my family, and have only really shared anything with one of my friends. It's embarassing, you know? How do you tell your friends, who will see and interact with your husband periodically, that he's a lunatic who loses his ___ at you over taking out the garbage? Only a few of him have ever witnessed one of his major freak-outs, so I don't even know if they'd believe me. I feel ashamed at the idea that I'm the one giving up on this and calling it quits (even if he is literally begging me to leave him). I also know that none of this is really his fault. I can see how ___ty he feels after each time he loses it. I know he doesn't want to be this way. I know he can't help it.
I also feel scared at how he'll react. Despite all of the assurances that he understands if I leave him and how he doesn't think he deserves me, I know how vindictive he can be when he feels wronged, and what hell he put his past boyfriend through during their breakup. And he's legally got his hooks on me, unlike his last boyfriend, so if he flips his stance and decides he feels victimized by me, he can make a huge amount of trouble for me. My biggest fear is him taking out his anger on one of my dogs, or perhaps trying to argue that he gets custody of one of them in order to hurt me.
I feel like this is all going to come to a head this evening when we have couples therapy. The last two or three days have been an emotional black hole for both of us, with divorce/separation being a constant refrain in our conversations, mostly from him telling me how he thinks it's hopeless, how he doesn't understand why I'm with him anymore, and even flat out telling me I should divorce him because "at least one of us can be happy." I've stopped trying to sugarcoat when he's depressed, stopped trying to tell him that things will be all right and that we'll make it, because I don't think we will and I don't want to lie to him. I feel like he's going to pin me down and make me admit that I want a divorce. I do, but I know that the second I say so my life will change permanently.
I'm terrified.
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