At the end of my rope

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hello,

I guess I should start by saying that my wife, as far as I know, has not been officially diagnosed with BPD, and as far as I can tell she only shows traits of BPD within our relationship-- while a few mutual friends have told me they sometimes get the sense that her personality is false or that she's faking happiness around them, no one else aside from her parents has seen the range of her anger. I ended up doing a lot of research on BPD because I started to research emotional abuse and started coming across information on the disorder that seemed familiar. A marriage counselor we saw together and who I saw individually after my wife became angry at the counselor also confirmed that she felt my wife had BPD traits, although she couldn't formally diagnose her.

I've known my wife for around three years, and we've been married around seven months. Looking back, I recognize a lot of what seem to be standard behaviors for someone with BPD. My best friend introduced me to her, and after just a few weeks of dating, we had a very intense night during which she told me that she had "done terrible things" and had been abused, but didn't go into any detail about any of this. I told her that I didn't want to push her to talk about anything she didn't want to, and that I only needed to know what she was ready to tell me-- to this day I know virtually no details. On that night, she also told me she loved me-- this was maybe our fourth or fifth date. I'm ashamed to say now that I said it back, not because I really felt love yet, but because I was afraid of hurting someone who had just opened up to me-- I said "I love you" out of fear and guilt. From that point the relationship started moving very quickly. At the time I don't think I felt that I didn't have enough control over the relationship, but in retrospect I had none at all. We moved in together after only a few months of dating, at a time when I felt completely swept away by her-- she seemed like everything I'd ever wanted. There were a few small conflicts after we started living together, some arguments that maybe didn't make complete sense to me and perhaps should have been red flags. At the time I chalked them up to getting used to living with someone new.

Over time, fights like that became more and more common. Usually they would start over something small, the kinds of things people that live together fight about. But increasingly, she would start bringing up old conflicts during these fights that I considered resolved, and refused to stick to the topic at hand, attacking me for things I'd done or failed to do in the past. I thought this was my fault, that maybe I hadn't improved on the things we'd fought about in the past or something. I thought that if I gave her more of what she seemed to want, things would get better. I tried to spend more time with her, eventually somewhat at the expense of friendships. I tried to open up to her more, to communicate and share myself with her, but this often resulted in fights so that over time I think I started to close off to her. Eventually, I decided that if I gave her what she really seemed to want, she would treat me differently. So I proposed marriage and she accepted.

From that point things got much worse. At the time I thought it was just the result of wedding planning stress. She began to get angry with me on a regular basis, usually beginning with something she felt I'd failed to do toward planning our wedding. I was hesitant to involve myself in the planning too much because of her anger, and my hesitation only made her angrier. A few times in the period before the wedding she had rage episodes (which were a new development) during which she would scream at me, belittle me, and eventually leave. I'm ashamed to say that on a few occasions I accidentally made her feel that I was "chasing and holding" because I felt that I wasn't being heard at all and wanted to resolve a fight without her running away from it. Two or three times I also became so frustrated that I broke objects I happened to be holding at the time-- a glass, a cell phone. But every time she had a rage episode it got a little worse-- she started slamming (sometimes breaking) doors, breaking objects. She threw her keys at me during one fight. In the week or two before the wedding, things seemed to get better. But our honeymoon was a nightmare, full of fighting. One day on the honeymoon she refused to talk to me for the entire day.

Shortly after we returned from the honeymoon, my family learned that my 92-year-old grandmother, with whom I had always been very close, was dying of congestive heart failure and would be put on hospice care in my parents' home. I currently work for my father, and during my grandmother's last month, instead of working I was at my parents' house every day helping to care for my grandmother. During this time my wife was not as supportive as she could have been. She rarely came over to help or to see my grandmother, and during several fights accused me of using my grandmother's impending death to win arguments with her. On one occasion, after coming home from my parents' and having my wife yell at me for something I can't recall, I became so overwhelmed that I broke down and cried harder than I've ever cried in my life. My wife sat and watched me, not saying a word or offering any support.

Shortly after this we entered marriage counseling. We'd had three or four sessions, and one night (the night before another session) my wife had another rage episode, during which she brutally belittled me for working for my father and being "tied to my family" (not a real man, etc.) and, when I challenged her, broke several objects and threw a candle at me. The night before this she had stormed out and broken the front doorknob to our apartment. The next day in the counseling session, I brought up what had happened the night before and, I think seeing how shaken I was, the counselor asked if we would like to talk to her separately and then come back together at the end to talk together. I said that I did want to do this, because I was afraid that if I finally spoke my mind my wife would make me pay for it later. When I said I wanted to talk separately my wife became very angry, yelled at the marriage counselor, and stormed out of the office. I told the counselor everything that had been going on, all the things I had been afraid to say in front of my wife in previous sessions. She told me she suspected my wife had BPD, and suggested that I might be in danger and should consider moving out and going no contact. After about an hour of talking this over with the counselor, my wife returned and sat outside on the front step. The marriage counselor apparently didn't want to talk to her after her reaction earlier, and this further enraged my wife, who, on the way home in her car, threw a cup of coffee all over the interior of her car in a rage, while I was driving.

When we got home, my wife continued to rage. I tried to stay detached from it and not react. She said she wanted to kill herself, and left. At this point I was ready to take the marriage counselor's advice and get ready to move out as soon as possible. But a few hours later my wife called me, crying, to tell me that she had gone to seek individual therapy, told the therapist that she was suicidal, and was going to be admitted against her will to the behavioral health unit of a hospital in a nearby city. I broke down and decided not to move out yet.

She was in the behavioral health unit for about two days, and when she was released she went to stay at her parents' house for the weekend. We worked out an unofficial separation agreement-- we would still have contact but wouldn't cohabitate: she would stay at her parents' for the time being and we would switch off staying at our apartment. Over the next couple weeks I started to think a little more clearly, outside of her constant influence. I started to feel like myself again for the first time in years. I continued seeing the therapist who had been our marriage counselor, and she worked with me on some self-esteem issues and helped me to understand some of my wife's mentality.

This went on for several weeks, and I felt like I was working through some old issues that had led me into relationships like this one more than once. Eventually I made the decision to tell my wife that I wanted to end the relationship. I told her and, surprisingly, she didn't respond with rage. That night I stayed at my parents' house, and before the end of the night my guilt and fear had gotten the best for me. I ended up leaving her a voice mail and writing a long letter trying to explain myself. We moved back in together and decided to try again.

That was a few weeks ago now, and I'm finding that for the most part things haven't really improved. She hasn't had another rage episode, but I wouldn't be surprised if she does soon enough. I still don't feel like my needs are really being heard or acknowledged. She still tends to steamroll me during fights, and I don't think she has a clear understanding of how her behavior has affected me. Since we've moved back in together she has blamed me a lot for what's happened, even while claiming she's not blaming me. She has tried to get me to acknowledge to her that it was me who was abusing her, and constantly says that I have to earn her trust back. She says she can't trust me because I haven't been open with her. She is in regular therapy now, but it seems that so far the therapy is only addressing the way she handles her anger, and none of the other issues.

I've still been wrestling with a lot of fear and guilt and doubt. Sometimes I really believe that this is all my fault, that I haven't been open enough with her. A few times I've found myself feeling completely convinced that I have a personality disorder myself. I feel very alone in all this-- my family and friends have been supportive but they don't really understand because she only shows this side of herself to me. It feels as if I would have to blow up my whole life and lose all my friends in order to escape from her.

I'm sorry for the long rant-- I'm feeling lonely and scared and I needed to get it out.

Thank you for reading.

[Sotapanna]

Hello,

I guess I should start by saying that my wife, as far as I know, has not been officially diagnosed with BPD, and as far as I can tell she only shows traits of BPD within our relationship-- while a few mutual friends have told me they sometimes get the sense that her personality is false or that she's faking happiness around them, no one else aside from her parents has seen the range of her anger. I ended up doing a lot of research on BPD because I started to research emotional abuse and started coming across information on the disorder that seemed familiar. A marriage counselor we saw together and who I saw individually after my wife became angry at the counselor also confirmed that she felt my wife had BPD traits, although she couldn't formally diagnose her.

I've known my wife for around three years, and we've been married around seven months. Looking back, I recognize a lot of what seem to be standard behaviors for someone with BPD. My best friend introduced me to her, and after just a few weeks of dating, we had a very intense night during which she told me that she had "done terrible things" and had been abused, but didn't go into any detail about any of this. I told her that I didn't want to push her to talk about anything she didn't want to, and that I only needed to know what she was ready to tell me-- to this day I know virtually no details. On that night, she also told me she loved me-- this was maybe our fourth or fifth date. I'm ashamed to say now that I said it back, not because I really felt love yet, but because I was afraid of hurting someone who had just opened up to me-- I said "I love you" out of fear and guilt. From that point the relationship started moving very quickly. At the time I don't think I felt that I didn't have enough control over the relationship, but in retrospect I had none at all. We moved in together after only a few months of dating, at a time when I felt completely swept away by her-- she seemed like everything I'd ever wanted. There were a few small conflicts after we started living together, some arguments that maybe didn't make complete sense to me and perhaps should have been red flags. At the time I chalked them up to getting used to living with someone new.

Over time, fights like that became more and more common. Usually they would start over something small, the kinds of things people that live together fight about. But increasingly, she would start bringing up old conflicts during these fights that I considered resolved, and refused to stick to the topic at hand, attacking me for things I'd done or failed to do in the past. I thought this was my fault, that maybe I hadn't improved on the things we'd fought about in the past or something. I thought that if I gave her more of what she seemed to want, things would get better. I tried to spend more time with her, eventually somewhat at the expense of friendships. I tried to open up to her more, to communicate and share myself with her, but this often resulted in fights so that over time I think I started to close off to her. Eventually, I decided that if I gave her what she really seemed to want, she would treat me differently. So I proposed marriage and she accepted.

From that point things got much worse. At the time I thought it was just the result of wedding planning stress. She began to get angry with me on a regular basis, usually beginning with something she felt I'd failed to do toward planning our wedding. I was hesitant to involve myself in the planning too much because of her anger, and my hesitation only made her angrier. A few times in the period before the wedding she had rage episodes (which were a new development) during which she would scream at me, belittle me, and eventually leave. I'm ashamed to say that on a few occasions I accidentally made her feel that I was "chasing and holding" because I felt that I wasn't being heard at all and wanted to resolve a fight without her running away from it. Two or three times I also became so frustrated that I broke objects I happened to be holding at the time-- a glass, a cell phone. But every time she had a rage episode it got a little worse-- she started slamming (sometimes breaking) doors, breaking objects. She threw her keys at me during one fight. In the week or two before the wedding, things seemed to get better. But our honeymoon was a nightmare, full of fighting. One day on the honeymoon she refused to talk to me for the entire day.

Shortly after we returned from the honeymoon, my family learned that my 92-year-old grandmother, with whom I had always been very close, was dying of congestive heart failure and would be put on hospice care in my parents' home. I currently work for my father, and during my grandmother's last month, instead of working I was at my parents' house every day helping to care for my grandmother. During this time my wife was not as supportive as she could have been. She rarely came over to help or to see my grandmother, and during several fights accused me of using my grandmother's impending death to win arguments with her. On one occasion, after coming home from my parents' and having my wife yell at me for something I can't recall, I became so overwhelmed that I broke down and cried harder than I've ever cried in my life. My wife sat and watched me, not saying a word or offering any support.

Shortly after this we entered marriage counseling. We'd had three or four sessions, and one night (the night before another session) my wife had another rage episode, during which she brutally belittled me for working for my father and being "tied to my family" (not a real man, etc.) and, when I challenged her, broke several objects and threw a candle at me. The night before this she had stormed out and broken the front doorknob to our apartment. The next day in the counseling session, I brought up what had happened the night before and, I think seeing how shaken I was, the counselor asked if we would like to talk to her separately and then come back together at the end to talk together. I said that I did want to do this, because I was afraid that if I finally spoke my mind my wife would make me pay for it later. When I said I wanted to talk separately my wife became very angry, yelled at the marriage counselor, and stormed out of the office. I told the counselor everything that had been going on, all the things I had been afraid to say in front of my wife in previous sessions. She told me she suspected my wife had BPD, and suggested that I might be in danger and should consider moving out and going no contact. After about an hour of talking this over with the counselor, my wife returned and sat outside on the front step. The marriage counselor apparently didn't want to talk to her after her reaction earlier, and this further enraged my wife, who, on the way home in her car, threw a cup of coffee all over the interior of her car in a rage, while I was driving.

When we got home, my wife continued to rage. I tried to stay detached from it and not react. She said she wanted to kill herself, and left. At this point I was ready to take the marriage counselor's advice and get ready to move out as soon as possible. But a few hours later my wife called me, crying, to tell me that she had gone to seek individual therapy, told the therapist that she was suicidal, and was going to be admitted against her will to the behavioral health unit of a hospital in a nearby city. I broke down and decided not to move out yet.

She was in the behavioral health unit for about two days, and when she was released she went to stay at her parents' house for the weekend. We worked out an unofficial separation agreement-- we would still have contact but wouldn't cohabitate: she would stay at her parents' for the time being and we would switch off staying at our apartment. Over the next couple weeks I started to think a little more clearly, outside of her constant influence. I started to feel like myself again for the first time in years. I continued seeing the therapist who had been our marriage counselor, and she worked with me on some self-esteem issues and helped me to understand some of my wife's mentality.

This went on for several weeks, and I felt like I was working through some old issues that had led me into relationships like this one more than once. Eventually I made the decision to tell my wife that I wanted to end the relationship. I told her and, surprisingly, she didn't respond with rage. That night I stayed at my parents' house, and before the end of the night my guilt and fear had gotten the best for me. I ended up leaving her a voice mail and writing a long letter trying to explain myself. We moved back in together and decided to try again.

That was a few weeks ago now, and I'm finding that for the most part things haven't really improved. She hasn't had another rage episode, but I wouldn't be surprised if she does soon enough. I still don't feel like my needs are really being heard or acknowledged. She still tends to steamroll me during fights, and I don't think she has a clear understanding of how her behavior has affected me. Since we've moved back in together she has blamed me a lot for what's happened, even while claiming she's not blaming me. She has tried to get me to acknowledge to her that it was me who was abusing her, and constantly says that I have to earn her trust back. She says she can't trust me because I haven't been open with her. She is in regular therapy now, but it seems that so far the therapy is only addressing the way she handles her anger, and none of the other issues.

I've still been wrestling with a lot of fear and guilt and doubt. Sometimes I really believe that this is all my fault, that I haven't been open enough with her. A few times I've found myself feeling completely convinced that I have a personality disorder myself. I feel very alone in all this-- my family and friends have been supportive but they don't really understand because she only shows this side of herself to me. It feels as if I would have to blow up my whole life and lose all my friends in order to escape from her.

I'm sorry for the long rant-- I'm feeling lonely and scared and I needed to get it out.

Thank you for reading.

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[waverider]

 

Thank you for sharing.

Did typing that out put it all in perspective for you?

You story is certainly a classic recount of how a BPD relationship develops.

This is not your fault, and there is no quick fix.

Rediscovering your own identity and right to make choices based on your own values is important. This is the only way to move out of survival mode. Your relationship may or may not survive, but either way you can be empowered to do what is right for you without leaving you with the "if only' doubts.

Keep in mind it is never the issue at hand, and just getting over the next hump, it is the reoccurring and endlessness of it that grinds you down, and what you need to address.

Lots of people here certainly know your story and will be able to provide the support you need to erase some of the self doubting you experience

Waverider

[Sotapanna]

Thank you for your response.

Yes, I guess it did help put it in perspective a little. And it is helpful to know that I'm not alone in feeling so confused. The hardest part is always second-guessing myself, and thinking that maybe I'm overreacting to her behavior. It makes me feel so isolated knowing that she doesn't show that side of herself to anyone else.

[waverider]

Thank you for your response.

Yes, I guess it did help put it in perspective a little. And it is helpful to know that I'm not alone in feeling so confused. The hardest part is always second-guessing myself, and thinking that maybe I'm overreacting to her behavior. It makes me feel so isolated knowing that she doesn't show that side of herself to anyone else.

If it helps you put it in perspective it is said something like 10% of the population has BPD traits, yet you would never be aware of it as it is kept "in the family" and the vast majority have no understanding of what they are dealing with. The result is they feed into it.

Isolation is a big issue, we can help with that. It is hard to consolidate your thoughts  when you can't share them with those who have a good idea what you are dealing with

Waverider

[Sotapanna]

I don't even know where to start. I feel like I'm in emergency mode all the time. I desperately want to reach out to my friends, not just for support but for a kind of "reality check", to see if I seem crazy to them, because I feel so scattered. But the problem is this: she didn't have any friends when we met, so all of her friends are my friends. She never made much of an effort to spend a lot of time with them until things blew up between us, and now I feel like I can't reach out to them because I'm afraid that I'll come off as the crazy one, or make them think I'm trying to turn them against her. And even though I know it's a selfish way to feel, I feel a little betrayed by them for supporting her. I don't know how I can ever get them to understand because they haven't experienced what I have. I'm afraid to even tell them how scared I am and to ask for their help.

[waverider]

And even though I know it's a selfish way to feel, I feel a little betrayed by them for supporting her. I don't know how I can ever get them to understand because they haven't experienced what I have. I'm afraid to even tell them how scared I am and to ask for their help.

Its not selfish and they haven't betrayed you. Unless you live it then it is impossible to comprehend. Friends are for a dose of normality, dedicated BPD support therapists and this forum are for empathetic support .

Dragging fiends into it, especially shared friends will cause further discomfort conflict and triangulation.