I'm so tired

[gardner14741]

 Hi,

I'm on my second marriage. I recently married my high school sweetheart who said he never stopped loving me. Came to my first wedding and couldn't bring himself to come in. Was devestated the first time he lost me. I'm the only woman he's ever loved. So romantic.

The chaos in his life when we met was extreme. Lots of mental and physical illness in his family and children. He needed support and because he was so loving it was a joy to help him through. But the chaos never stopped. One major crisis after another. Car accidents, suicide attempts (his ex), meltdowns in his children...it just kept coming. He just kept pouring on the love. One day he he yelled at me, not sure what about. I was so taken by his abaility to talk it through, to appear to sincerly grow together and learn to be better together. I had never seen that before.

Through a series of crisis moments, we needed to care for his kids, relocate them to the city I live in and get them started in school. We had been dating for about a year, him traveling to see me every other week from another state, so our relationship plans started taking a life of their own. We moved in together, he proposed, I said yes. Our lives were already so intertwined as I was helping to settle his kids. During this time there were several fights that seemed to come out of left field. He kept assuming I was cheating on him, spending too much time volunteering on community events, he even called me a bad mother. There was one day, after too much wine where I was frightened he would hit me. He didn't. He apologized, talked it out, talked about how he's never loved anyone but me...

Fast forward 5 years. We have been married for 2. About 10 months ago, I told him something wasn't right. That his outbursts were not OK, unpredictable and extreme. I was tired then, exhausted now. He was diagnosed with BPD. He is very successful at what he does, he is brilliant and his IQ pegs the top. He is extremely loving, needs constant physical touch, assurance that I love him, has exteme anxiety about losing me.

Before last month, he had not been able to go more than 12 days with out an incident. It is taking its toll on me. I've gained weight, am not performing as well as I could be at work, have no interest in intimacy, and can't really connect to joy. I feel like I'm constantly managing his experiences so he won't blow. Last month he made it 26 days, 15 of those involved vacation days. I really wanted him to gain confidence in his efforts. He is trying and studying how to manage his BPD. I held my tounge, didn't react to the nasty comments, immature responses and other signs of stress and anxiety he usually shows. While they still happened, he was able to control them for the most part. He found a calm and felt really great. Texted me about how great we were doing as a couple, how he was so excited about our future.

My experience was so different.

I felt numb. I slept for 2 days after vacation, avoided talking to him. I also have fibromyalgia which developed after we started dating which was likely triggered by the activities and heat of the vacation and didn't help my relationship challenges. Depression started setting in. I couldn't think straight, couldn't make decisions. I was completely shut down. I didn't know how I felt about him, me, anything. My counselor suggested that this was a form of hypoarousal that comes after trauma experiences. Flight/Flight and Shutdown are all brain responses to trauma. It made a lot of sense. I decided to take a little risk since he was doing so well. I shared with him that I was feeling this way. I thought he was open to suporting my side of the journey. The response to this sharing was a 2 day attack/retreat/talk about it/calm/repeat cycle. He's gone from sobbing applogizing for having an episode again, to telling me I don't care, that I'm ripping the family apart...

I'm so tired. The impact on my body, mind and spirit are significant. I'm not ok and it is very disorienting.

I'm really struggling with a decision to leave. The logical/loyal side of me says I made a vow. This is medical condition that he cannot help. He's early in his diagnosis and I should stand by him. The emotional side says that I am deeply unhappy, constantly afraid, losing friendships, depressed, exhausted and tired of being on edge. I took a 3 week break from him in February, worked remotely and visited my kids, restored myself. He crumbled, deep depression and suicidal thoughts.

He complains about lack of intimacy, that I'm "distant". He's not wrong. I do not trust him with any of my thoughts or emotions. He seems to always need to discredit them, or make them about him. He wants what feels like false intimacy. Every day I get these words at least 3-4 times "Do you love me?" "Can I hold you?" "Don't you want to hold my hand?"  "Can we cuddle?" "Kiss your husband."

I started talking about leaving today. I talked again about reactions to the trauma I've experienced through his behavior, that it wasn't his fault, but the experiences I have had from his outbursts and rage are real. It was like he never thought that I may be on a timeline different than his. He said that he thought if he was getting better I should too. He said he just can't understand  how his calm made room for me to breath and feel sad and even go numb because the adrenaline wasn't pumping through me constantly. My mind and body are simply exhausted. He said he didn't ever think about what I was going through. That he always made it about him. He's sorry. I've taught him soething new. He is promising to make space for my healing, to be supportive. Begging me not to leave.

I was sobbing, telling him he's told me this before but I've never seen it in action. His actions are so different than the words he says when he is calm. I really don't know if he really knows how to support, how to bear witness to intense emotions without over reacting.  This made me profoundly sad and I started to cry.  As I cried the first thing he said was "Great I'm in the dog house again." The second was "Will you get it together and talk to me?"

So much for not making it about him and being supportive of my journey as a spouse of BPD. I so wanted to believe him, but in the very moment he was trying to be supportive, he made it about him and diminished me.

This of course is lost on him. He's angry that I'm making decisions about caring for myself based on "this one incident" even though it is a series of incidents that have built over the last 5 years. This one just was so crystal clear to me. It made me cry harder.

He's giving me ultiatiums about if I leave it is over, and his kids can't have another mother leave them. (he's not wrong about the kids and I would never cut them out of my life, I'm the only stable adult they have. Again so profoundly sad.)

If you are still reading, thank you. It is helpful to get it written. I feel like he is hyper aware of where my journal is, who I'm talking to, where I'm going and what I'm talking to friends about.

I'm so torn. I took a vow. I made a decsion to love him, and I do love him. I just don't feel in love. He's not a bad person, he desperately wants the kind of stable healthy life he saw I had with my family before. He want's to be the perfect couple, supportive, sharing, close, in love. But I'm a shell of who I was before we met. I'm so tired. I'm going through the motions. The days and weeks melt together. Each time the alarm clock  goes off, I dread the day. Can't wait till the day is over so I can go back to sleep.

I feel like a schmuck even thinking about moving out, but I don't know what else to do. Some of you went through this for decades. I couldn't imagine. I feel so sad for not being able to stand by him.

[Scarredheart]

Thank you for sharing. I know it takes a lot of courage and strength to type all of that out. It's like part of you relives each moment as you type it. I had to stop and start several times before I could finish mine because it was so painful. I see so much of my own marital history in your post.

I struggled with my vows as well. They were so very important to me and I needed to stand by them and her, no matter what. It's crazy how much you end up rationalizing things when you take a stand like that. Every red flag that started popping up as my marriage slowly circled the drain was something I fought with internally. I didn't want to believe that my marriage wasn't salvageable. That I couldn't "fix" this. Yes, we were constantly broke, but it had to be me somehow. I must be doing something wrong. It can't be her. When I saw the dating sites pop up, I accepted her reason of needing validation, and worked harder. When I actually had proof that she was proposition men online, I told myself that maybe she was just flirting online and it never went any further. That if I could just love her enough, she would stop before she passed the point of no return. She already had passed it. I just didn't want to see it. I had to save my marriage. I had to. I had made a vow to be with her through thick and thin, through good times and bad, until death do we part. I could fix this. I just needed to get her to see how much I loved her. I just had to sacrifice more, love more, be there more, then she'd see that we were worth fighting for and she would change. She never did. I get it. You spend years of your life fighting for your marriage. It can't have been for nothing. I had to remind myself that although I had lost her, probably long before I thought I did (she would keep saying that she desperately wanted us, while secretly sleeping with other men, and then would say it was my fault because I wasn't there when she needed me although she never told me she was having a problem, and "how was she to know that she could have asked me or told me"?) I had still impacted the lives of her children. Her children have changed so much in the ten years I've known them. I know that a lot of that has to do with the love I poured into their lives. Was I a perfect husband? No. Could I have done some things better or differently? Yes. Did I deserve what she did? Absolutely not.

Talking about all this with my brother one day he said "If you can take one thing from all that's happened, remember this. Your crap is your crap. Her crap is her crap. Own your crap. Not hers." That's a lot harder than he made it sound. I wanted to own her crap too. I wanted to save her, to fix her. To be the white knight that swoops in and restores her faith in love. You can't fix others. They have to fix themselves. I had to learn to separate what my wife said and what she did. She would always say that she wanted us, that she needed me, but then she would lie, steal, cheat and destroy the heart of our marriage. In the end, when she saw me broken and crying, even then she wouldn't own her actions. She simply told me to stop crying.

Only you can decide if you're truly done. If your husband sticks with treatment, and is doing it for himself and not because he thinks you want him to do it, it's going to be a LONG road. Will he succeed? Maybe. Maybe not. The question isn't if he will or won't. It's can you stay or not? It's going to take years. There will be relapses and very messy situations and that's if he sticks with it. Only you can make that call for yourself. Just remember, it does you no good to be there for him and to try and support him through this if you are destroyed in the process. If you're anything like me (and like I said, I see a lot of me in your decisions) you probably tend to be more sacrificial than you should allow yourself to be, and you run yourself into the ground doing so. Don't fall on your sword to save him. If you're going to stay, my opinion would be stay with clearly defined conditions that need be adhered to. Not to control anyone, but to keep you both sane and allow you both to heal.

Just my two cents. I hope it helps.

[gardner14741]

Thank you Scarredheart,

I've read a lot here about the "forgetting" that happens after a blow up. I'm feeling that now. The drama of the last few days has now lost its bite, been internalized, compartmentalized. Today is another day and I find myself wanting to give his solution another chance, just to keep some peace. He's so desperate and volitile. I don't know that I can keep it up. I am not seeing the signs I need to see that I can be happy and be myself in this marriage. But the energy to leave while maintaining my career and family feels enormous.

He is not one to step out on the marriage. Infidelity or disloyalty is one of his triggers. It's so hard when he has so few friends and confides in no one but me. Won't confide in anyone, switches counselors when he thinks he knows more than they do. When I asked him if he would go see our therapist, he said that he thought the therapist was dangerous because of what he told me about my shut down trauma response. That one I fought back on. I just don't know if it is worth pushing this boulder up hill. 

I don't know what boundaries to set. He says I have too many rules. The one I have set is that when I need to stop the conversation because it is going in circles or I'm getting too caught up in the emotion of it I will tell him I need it to stop and he is to back off and pick it up at another time. I also try to use this when his emotions are out of control, telling him that it is me that needs it to stop so he doesn't feel attacked. I think I need to put a lock on one of the doors in the house so he doesn't follow me to badger the issue into all hours of the night.

The other one is that if he asks me a question where the answer isn't what he wants to hear...frequent ones are "Why are you so on edge today?, or What did I do to make you shut down?" When I'm telling him what made me cautious or checked out he cannot marginalize, provide counter arguments or negate what I experienced. I've asked him to listen without interruption or comment. Otherwise there is no reason I want to respond to the question he's asked. It's just not worth the fight. This is the bounday that doesn't work. 

I'm still confused and tired, but I have an enormous workload ahead in my job. I need to be sharp and lead with confidence. I'm going to take the day to do some self care and find a little peace in this phase of his BPD which is all about making ammends, doing better, keeping me.

[Sappho11]

gardner, I am in no position to give any marital advice, but one thing jumped out at me.

And that's the fact that despite years of this ordeal, you've preserved your ability and power to not only recognise your boundaries, but to enforce them.

That's an incredibly rare skill, and I'm sure I'm not the only one here who finds it admirable. BPD relationships can grind you down to the very core. You've somehow managed to keep yours intact.

Whatever you do, you've got the inner strength to deal with it.

[Scarredheart]

I've read a lot here about the "forgetting" that happens after a blow up. I'm feeling that now. The drama of the last few days has now lost its bite, been internalized, compartmentalized. Today is another day and I find myself wanting to give his solution another chance, just to keep some peace. He's so desperate and volitile. I don't know that I can keep it up. I am not seeing the signs I need to see that I can be happy and be myself in this marriage. But the energy to leave while maintaining my career and family feels enormous.

I understand. It feels like an unsurmountable obstacle sometimes. It's like you're being asked to climb a mountain at night with some dental floss and a candle. There's just no way that this doesn't feel like a no win situation. One thing I learned is that I had to remember that no matter how powerless I felt, no matter how much I felt like I was being drowned by what she was doing, or by the surge of my own emotions, I still had the control. No one was holding a gun to my head. I could choose. I could stay and try, or say enough and leave. I tried the first for a long time, and almost lost myself in the process. I decided (after my sister reminded me that the choice was indeed mine.) to walk away. To say enough. I can't let my wife hurt me any more and then tell me that her words and actions were my fault. That's not to say that you have to make the same choice, but remember that you have a choice. You're not alone, and you're not powerless.

He is not one to step out on the marriage. Infidelity or disloyalty is one of his triggers. It's so hard when he has so few friends and confides in no one but me. Won't confide in anyone, switches counselors when he thinks he knows more than they do. When I asked him if he would go see our therapist, he said that he thought the therapist was dangerous because of what he told me about my shut down trauma response. That one I fought back on. I just don't know if it is worth pushing this boulder up hill. 

Only you can really make that determination. I understand (boy do I) that fighting the same battle again and again (and again) is so disheartening and draining. Try to understand your limits. I know that's sometimes easier said than done, but the point I'm trying to make is that no marriage is worth destroying yourself for. You can't help your spouse or yourself if you're ground to dust.

I don't know what boundaries to set. He says I have too many rules. The one I have set is that when I need to stop the conversation because it is going in circles or I'm getting too caught up in the emotion of it I will tell him I need it to stop and he is to back off and pick it up at another time. I also try to use this when his emotions are out of control, telling him that it is me that needs it to stop so he doesn't feel attacked. I think I need to put a lock on one of the doors in the house so he doesn't follow me to badger the issue into all hours of the night.

I'm glad you've already set some boundaries that you stick to. No one can tell you what rules you need or don't. That's something you need to decide on your own. I think the ultimate question when looking at what boundaries to set is "What do I need to be able to heal and grow?" That's bare minimum in my opinion. If you can't heal and come back from where you are right now, you're no good to your spouse or yourself, and if you keep going downhill, you will burn out eventually.

The other one is that if he asks me a question where the answer isn't what he wants to hear...frequent ones are "Why are you so on edge today?, or What did I do to make you shut down?" When I'm telling him what made me cautious or checked out he cannot marginalize, provide counter arguments or negate what I experienced. I've asked him to listen without interruption or comment. Otherwise there is no reason I want to respond to the question he's asked. It's just not worth the fight. This is the bounday that doesn't work. 

That's a hard one. I can't speak for all BPDs obviously, but my wife was an expert at seeming like she cared, but not doing anything that didn't help her. She would ask about me, seem to be listening, sometimes even change for a day or at most a week, and then go right back to her old behavior like nothing was ever discussed. I remember after MANY different attempts at communication such as face to face, email, text, phone, voicemail, standing, sitting next to her, facing away from her (She would say "I can't talk to you if you're standing." "I can't deal with it if you're looking at me." So I kept trying other things.) I finally said to her "I'm going to tell you how I feel, but at this point I really don't have any hope that you're going to do anything about it." No reaction. No change. All that to say that you can't control your spouse's reactions, or actions. You can just choose what you're willing to endure, and what you're not.

I'm still confused and tired, but I have an enormous workload ahead in my job. I need to be sharp and lead with confidence. I'm going to take the day to do some self care and find a little peace in this phase of his BPD which is all about making ammends, doing better, keeping me.

I get that. My job is very intensive and detail oriented. There were some days I just had to step away and take a me day. Sleep in, go for a walk, talk to a friend. You can't give 100% to your job if your "gas tank" is at 25% at home. You know your limits. Don't run yourself into the ground. Be good to you, and listen to your body and your heart.

S