BPDFamily.com

 How do you get your needs met in your relationship? I have tried numerous times to talk to my husband about this. Basic needs like listening, encouragement, understanding... Usually he ends up saying things like "why don't you just leave me if you feel like that?" or it will somehow get all twisted up, confusing, and he starts to accuse me of saying or doing things I didn't do. I gave up trying to get these needs met and completely gave up trying to talk about it.

Does marriage counseling work well? We tried it for a few months previously. I am not sure if it was just the therapist we had but it honestly made everything worse. My husband did most of the talking (I should say complaining about me). It basically caused him to nitpick EVERYTHING I said, how I said it, when I said it, and everything I did (or did not do) and I didn't get anything out of it.

Last question. Any tips on how to have more self confidence in situations when your partner is... .not being logical. An example would be; tonight my husband asked me to not just put the recycling in the garage, but to put it in the garbage can. I said "of course, I can definitely get better at doing that. Do you think you could make it a point to take out the trash when it is full like we agreed upon?" he said I didn't talk enough about his issue he brought up before bringing up my own issue, then would not allow me to say anything to him until I more throughly addressed his issue.

Hi Kelseyy,
Welcome to the family, there are lots of people here going through similar situations, so you should get some good advice.
The tools section is a must read, there are a lot of things WE can do to produce a better outcome in out interactions with our partners. (I didn't know any of it before I found bpdfamily, I was making everything worse.)

I'm going through similar thoughts about getting my needs met and starting to work out strategies for approaching the subject in the right manner.
Do you have friends/family you can turn to for support?
You might find counselling really useful as well, it gives you a space to be completely honest about everything and have someone who isn't emotionally invested help you make sense of it.

My experience of marriage counselling was also similar to yours, my BPDw spent the first months detailing everything that was wrong with me and the first week we talked about an issue I had, she said counselling wasn't working any more and she wasn't going back. A counsellor with a good knowledge of BPD would make the world of difference.

With your last question, I think working on yourself and making sure you're healthy and happy is important. loving and living someone with BPD can be hard work and sometimes we forget to take care of ourselves.

Welcome *welcome*,

I'm glad you found us. You've found a great place for support and help. I'd like to second LeChuck in checking out our lessons and workshops to help you begin understanding your relationship and how to stop making it worse.

Getting my needs met is something that I struggle with too, but it's getting better. The one thing that really seems to be helping me quite a bit is that I tell my H clearly what I need. I've learned that he will not pick up on my hints. So if I'm feeling down, I will just say something like "I'm feeling a little depressed. I love it when you want to help me when I'm like this, but right now I just need to talk about it." or if he is starting to get angry about something I'm saying, then I know that I need to  validate  (https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating) him more first. pwBPD are so sensitive to rejection that before us nons can share something difficult with them we have to be sensitive to them first, letting them know that they are important to us, loved, accepted, etc.

Many people on this board have shared that marriage counseling did not work for them. My experience with MC was exactly like yours. It got really bad and I found that I was unable to share anything in the session as my H would take up all of the time, it became more about his abandonment issues, and he did not want to look at fixing things, only fixing me. We do have a post about  Why Marriage Counseling So Often Fails  (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=117485.0)


I always say that less is more. The less taking blame, accepting responsibility for things that aren't really issues, the less you need to fix him, the better. For example, tonight when he asked you to put the garbage in the trash can you followed up with 1) accepting/apologizing for something that really wasn't wrong by saying "you'll do better" 2) criticizing him for something he wasn't doing too.

What would have happened if you had just said, "Yeah, I'll do that" and left it at that? No need to say anything more. No need to apologize or accept blame. Just do it and move on. Wait to bring up the issue about him not taking out the trash for a later time.

My H will start to get nit picky at me over little stuff like this, and it never goes well when I try to point out something that he isn't doing correctly too. When he gets like this I realize that he is feeling out of control about something else, and this is usually how he tries to regain control. I just do as he asks and later try to talk to him about what is REALLY bothering him.