doughadeer
Fewer than 3 Posts
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Romantic partner
Posts: 1
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« on: May 24, 2017, 10:12:58 PM » |
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No one has diagnosed my wife w/ BPD, but as I started reading about BPD in the past month, she has many of the signs.
Feel free to skip my story/background and jump to the "===> Fast forward to 8 days ago ===>" section.
My story/background:
We had a quick engagement, but I didn't want to waffle about marrying her though I was confused and in pain. I apparently thought going through with the marriage was to overcome my tendencies to waffle, not let her down and to come through for her. There was trouble even during the honeymoon, and the counsel and support I had around me leading up to the wedding (church, family) were all supportive of the marriage. Yet, the church situation was moderately to very enmeshed and no one asked me any of the hard questions. She told me during or before the engagement that she was abused physically and sexually as young girl, but I didn't think that would pose a serious concern and i was completely dedicated to loving her and walking through with her, in the thick and thin. Her parents also divorced when she was 15. She was also hospitalized around the age of 15.
It's been a very rough battle since we got married, with her cutting off relationships she had independent of me for 20+ years, moving out of state literally in the night, as well as basically forcing me to cut off pretty much all my friends. As well as cutting off her own family and mine for some real and some hyperinflated offenses.
In the many conflicts she has had with all those family and friends in the time we have been married, I would immediately take the other person's side because the negative assumptions she made about all their intensions seemed so outlandish. I just couldn't wrap my brain around what she was saying, especially having less of an emotional and more logical ways of dealing/thinking with things. I can see now how my approach completely made her feel undermined, invalidated and unloved.
About a year ago, we left another church all of a sudden based on reasonings that she strung together that the pastor was not protecting her or the people. This was her home church for 20 years, but sadly, many people there have marginalized her and dismissed her, despite her having a lot of talent and intelligence. My theory now is that they first tried to befriend her, but eventually were hurt by her uncalled for overreactions or harsh responses to conflicts. There was a case of child molestation was not publicly disclosed, and she felt she and many others were therefore left open. Those two issues are, for the most part, real to some degree, but she has strung a lot of assumptions together.
Though I felt like she didn't give me a choice and just decided that we as a family are leaving that church, I didn't give her much pushback about that decision, and she certainly has never told me I invalidated her about her opinion. Even though I felt steamrolled and without any choice in the matter, I let her have her way.
After leaving that church, she felt so relieved and like a completely new person for a few days. Unfortunately, a few days after, I had a conversation with her where I told her my perspective of my emotions, etc leading up to the wedding, and I think I was trying to say that I wasn't in love with her, head over heals when we got married, but I really liked her and was committed. Somehow, either I said, or she filtered what I was saying as I didn't love her. That completely devastated her. Within a week or so of that conversation, I put myself in her shoes and felt what it would be like to be married to someone who said they loved me but didn't, destroying all hopes and dreams.
After countless rounds of those arguments, with some help from some friends, I eventually started to really empathize with her and not come across as invalidating, and eventually turned my logical side off during my conversations with her. I also realized that I had demonstrated of lot of anger and rage due to the extreme amount of frustration I had. Not to mention my own hopes and dreams of a great marriage had collapsed years ago. I blame much of that decision to marry on myself, though it's pretty likely (and I *may* even recall indirect discussions with her about this) that she clung to me as a dream that would heal all her past male-authority wounds and issues. Looking back, I think on some level, her clinging was conscious to me, and I wanted to be her hero. Though I had father wounds and self esteem issues, I didn't have the extremely difficult background she did (divorced parents, abuse, etc), so I thought I could and wanted to help her and love her.
We have been doing better (less arguments etc) in the past 6 months. We had a great mother's day. She been overwhelmed with all the mom duties for a while. She's cut her entire local family off and we don't really have any body to help with our kids. She also has been writing 400+ page books (fictionalized romantic stories of abuse and healing). I know writing is a great way to help cope with BPD, and I really want to be supportive of the book, but I've struggled a lot with supporting it for, I guess, more dogmatic reasons, but I'm not showing enough support. Even when I do, it's with a lot of cognitive dissonance, which comes across as less than sincere. It's also has interfered with her being a mom, and I've gently told her in the past that it's taking her away from ability to focus on the kids. That's all while almost every day for the past year I'm waking up first, cooking breakfast for everyone, cleaning up, dropping of our child at kindergarten, coming home to clean more and get ready for work, coming home by 6:30 to relieve my wife for most of the remainder of the evening and night. Then I'm wanting to have some down time and me time, and have tended to not see my wife until maybe 11 or midnight. Also, she's been talking about narcissism over and over again, and has told me I'm a narc countless times. I have a very hard time supporting that because I know I'm generally rather sensitive to others (to a fault), I had a professional psychologist tell me I was not a "narc" after spending about 30 min with me, and I see that much of what she accuses others of doing, she does the same thing. **I want to support her and not invalidate her, but the only way I am able to stay sane and not argue with her about the "narc" thing is to not talk about it.** But then, that comes off as invalidating.
===> Fast forward to 8 days ago ===>
Things took a huge change for the negative about 8 days ago. Our Kindergartener just got out of school about 2 weeks ago, which means more responsibilities for my wife. I think we were planning to go out for dinner as a family after I got home from work, when she told me she was overwhelmed. She felt she couldn't take her mom duties anymore. We were close to leaving for the restaurant when she told me she felt like she wanted to go to the hospital. I monitored her during the night, and she seemed to be doing better, so I didn't talk about the hospital until a few days after, explaining that I didn't pursue that option then because she seemed better that night. She has told me in the past few months that her counselor hasn't mentioned PTSD, and that it was her that brought it up to her counselor. She has said that her counselor doesn't know much about it.
I felt an opening to give her an honest but very gentle perspective and suggested some changes. I thanked her for allowing me to speak freely. It seemed like a few days after that, she started becoming irrationally sensitive and mean and nasty toward me. Looking back, I'm wondering if I was "too honest" or put too much attention on things she can do. She told me a few months ago that after we get a new car, she would be willing to see a couples/marriage counselor. In the past few days, she told me that my unsupportiveness regarding her books has really hurt her. She also has reneged on her promise to start seeing a marriage counselor together, saying that I haven't shown any remorse for ruining her life by marrying her under false pretense and that I need to be demonstrably gut-retchingly (groveling) sorry for doing that to her. I told her I did that a year ago, but she wants to see it again. She wants to hear it again. I feel forced and Im having a hard time brining myself to forcefully grovel, even though I can empathize with "what I did to her." She said 2 days ago that unless she sees me demonstrate my sorrow, she has no hope for this marriage and she will not go to marriage counseling. She also told me that she's afraid that I will make her out to be the bad guy and me the innocent victim. With our last marriage counselor that ended abruptly about 2 years ago, I didn't try to make her out to be anything, but I also didn't realize some of my own culpability. So, she did *feel* like our last counselor thought her to be the bad guy, and me the innocent victim.
Her threats of divorce (see below) I've heard are a common BPD tendency. She's also insinuated that I won't be of much use to her (and the kids) if her books make money, which she says is to help people, but with this comment, it hurt me. Yes, she is a thoughtful person at times, and yes she wants to help people, the books could be about her catharsis and feeling better more than it is to help others. Though, with all the other things I'm trying to juggle, most especially because I don't want my kids to have to deal with the pain of a divorce, it's shaking me up. I feel like I have no control and and depressed. Thoughts of suicide come, but I quickly push them aside. I have had several people tell me that I'm being abused. All I really care at this moment is for our kids, but I certainly have not given up on our marriage. I never thought anything close to this would happen. I'm maxed out emotionally but somehow, I'm still going on. Thanks to God. I'm also scared, but trying not to take her threats very seriously, but seriously enough to post here. I just need some encouragement given that I have nothing left emotionally.
She's going back and forth in the past few days with me, being nasty and threatening to leave me to non communicative (more so, zoned out), even ignoring the kids at times. I'm doing the very best to juggle all 3 kids, her, my job and normal house duties. I worked from home today to let her go out this morning on a breakfast date with a friend (she didn't get home till 11:30 or so after leaving around 7:30). She made lunch for everyone. While the kids are napping in the afternoon, she runs out to go grocery shopping and secondarily to print her book. I barely had a chance to focus on work today while working from home. She ended up not having time to go grocery shopping because printing the book took so long (which I helped her with remotely).
She comes home with takeout so she doesn't have to cook. I stopped working around 4:30 because my daughter woke up and soon after, the other 2 kids. Then, for dinner, I'm present and actively helping because it's usually pretty stressful with the kids. After, she takes a break for 15 min, while I clean up. I told her that I need to go back to work in the other room shortly, then she says she can barely stand up as she's so tired. A few minutes later, I told her again I had to go to work because my work was suffering. I guess I didn't show any compassion for her, but I was frustrated given all I had done for her and the family today (pretty regularly too). So, she puts the kids to bed by herself (usually I do most of it every night). I'm guessing as a way to vent that she didn't feel any compassion from me (or because she just couldn't emotionally/physically handle putting the kids to bed, or both), she apparently started texting me the following while putting one of our kids to bed:
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I want a divorce. I don't know how I'm going to afford it, how I'm going to.handle all 3 of them but I can't do this anymore. We're both miserable and this can't go on anymore. I can't pretend that I love you. I'm certainly not in love with you. You destroyed that a long time ago
I want to be free from this misery and sham marriage YOU created w your lies
I want OUT
I'm tired of hoping you'll come to your senses
That you'll treat me like a f*ing wife instead of this hired help bulls**t arranged marriage you tricked me into. If you wouldn’t want something like for our girls how the HELL could you do it to their mother you f**ing hypocrite
The only true feelings you show for me are annoyance, contempt, anger and resentment. The "love" is all a pathetic show and attempt to fake what we both know you don't feel I don't leave
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I think she's hurting so bad and she wants to fight and abuse me so she can feel better. I don't know really what to do. I don't want to ignore her, I want to love her, I want to take responsibility for my part, but I also don't want to fight or make things worse. It's very tough to show love when most of the *emotions* I have are frustration and pain. I don't know how can I show her the true passionate love she wants to be shown.
Yes, I'm not happy at all, but I thought early on, that we could work things out.
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