Seeking guidance

[Husband2014]

Hello / been married for 6.5 years now and my wife has BPD.  Our issues started after we had our first child where she started believing my sister particularly hates her and wants to ruin our marriage.  This has caused an unbelievable amount of fighting as I tried to argue logically that no one hates her.  Through therapy I started realizing something is not right with her and all the BPD symptoms from temper to splitting is there and the therapist confirmed it for me as well. She obviously refuses to get help and thinks me and my family are the problem.

She cut off my sister got almost 2 years and “wants her to apologize” for trying to ruin her marriage, etc… it had gotten a bit better but anytime someone from my family does something that ticks her off she takes it all on me and in front of the kids and she has no regard for language use.  I am able to calm down things a lot by validation which has worked well however I can’t figure out how to solve this issue with my family.
For example I got sick the other day and she raised all kinds of hell on why my father called me to check in vs call her? Any action by my family she immediately twists it into a fight. It has gotten really exhausting dealing with this daily and was wondering if anyone has seen that before?

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[Cat Familiar]

Yes. It’s a common theme that people with BPD try to alienate their partners from their families. Please don’t let this happen to you. I’m glad you are working with a therapist.

[Husband2014]

Thank you for the tip. When you say don’t let yourself fall in that trap what do you mean by that? Any tips here would be greatly appreciated. I have been able to work through the 10000 things she threw at me and that’s pretty much the last big hurdle.  She accused me of cheating on her, stealing money, sleeping with an ex, work trips and everything else in between.  I was able to work through them and our relationship has improved a lot. If I can crack this family nut I can almost live a normal life.

[Husband2014]

Forgot to add that anytime we get on this family train she used the same line “you’re always defending them and never have my back” and I immediately feel cornered. Of course what I want to say is “I couldn’t care less what you do with them anymore” but I know she will retaliate with “your family can never see the kids” type of stuff and I honestly am terrified of that.

[JadedEmpath]

You say that you are terrified that she will prevent your kids from spending time with your family...maybe she can sense that fear, and knows your family is a particularly good area for her to trigger you for that reason? It's been my experience that people with BPD are really good at pinpointing exactly how to best get under your skin. If you decide for yourself that you will not ever give her that power (to keep your children from your family entirely), it might be freeing and might relieve some of your anxiety in that area, and she will have less emotional response to go off of.

My SO goes through phases of this as well. He has gone through dom. Abuse trainings for school and those were a hidden blessing because it really stuck with him that trying to keep someone from their family is abusive, so he does try not to ever explicitly prevent me from spending time with my family. He does talk trash about them, though, around my daughter even sometimes, and that really bothers me. It makes it harder when you have kids in the mix I think. I have learned never to argue. He really believes the things he believes, and if I don't argue them he will eventually move on from these false beliefs. I will usually just say (calmly) I am sorry you feel that way.. or something like that.

[15years]

... she used the same line “you’re always defending them and never have my back”...

Same here.

Involving my family in our relationship drama makes it really hard to have a normal view of my family members. It would be nice to be able to have my own opinion of them. I mean they're not all good.

The expectations about what position I take is exhausting. And starting to be more like ultimatums.

It really makes it not enjoyable to hang out with family because I can never get it out of my mind. That's why I've always enjoyed hanging out with her family. Not my responsibility.

[Husband2014]

Yes, my reaction to her claims is 75% of the battle on our case. What drives me absolutely crazy though is her family treats her so poorly and she never says anything about them.  As an example it was her dad’s birthday and she bought him a $2300 recliner and they shamed her and said it’s your husbands money and made her return it. When it’s my family she would say “did you see how they rolled their eyes at me?”, etc…

She also leverages the kids a lot to bad mouth my family.  I still don’t do a good job of handling that. Almost every morning I get the same question “did you talk to your family today?” “Did you send them pictures of the kids” “did you FaceTime them?”

Part of me just wants to lie to her and say no but I think that is the wrong behavior.  If I can learn a script here that doesn’t come across as challenging but also establishes a boundary it will be a step forward. Just haven’t had a ton of success there yet.

The other piece I want to understand is what’s causing her to trigger so bad with my family? Is it fear that I’d leave her if they “hate” her, something else?

That is my biggest dilemma. The rest is day to day stuff that I really learned to neutralize her rather quickly except this family thing.

[GaGrl]

The best way to have a couple of scripts ready is to have your boundary established, and to have an effective boundary requires that you are clear in your values around that topic. So let's start with values.

What are your values regarding your family, expressed in "I" statements?

Such as...

I love and respect my family.

I enjoy our close relationship and time spent together.

It is important to me that my children have good relationship with my parents, my siblings, and their cousins.

These are just suggestions. How would you phrase your values about your family? Then working on defining boundaries can follow. THEN when you decide on a response to boundary busting, it will come from your core values, and you will be true to yourself.

Does this make sense?





...

[Husband2014]

Thank you all for this discussion- just knowing I’m not alone in itself is nice.Makes perfect sense and it’s something I actually wrote down a while ago. Where I’m struggling in practically is the enforcement. As an example when I get the daily “ did you call your family that doesn’t care about you” question I just want to say yes and but of course that may  cause an explosion so I dance around it vs find a calm non in your face way to say yes and it’s a boundary.

[JadedEmpath]

I can relate to that frustration. The making it impossible to give a simple yes or no.

What if you go out of your way to tell her that the way she has been talking about your family has been bothering you (sometime when she hasn't started an argument about them, when you have started the discussion), state you pre-planned value statement about your family, and ask her to respect a new boundary around this topic (not talking about them around the kids, or only talking about them once a week at a pre-planned time). Tell her what you will do if she does not respect this boundary (I will leave the house for a few hours, I will not respond, etc.).

Then when she starts some provocation like that in the future, calmly and consistently remind her of your value statement, and stick to the plan.

[Husband2014]

Yes it makes a lot of sense and I will try to find a way to mix this in to my day without major fireworks.

I had a major breakthrough today as I was slowly talking to my wife and she mentioned one of her sisters pretty much abusing her emotionally and a child.  Things like making her borrow clothes and paying for it then mocking her in front of her friends.  She also mentioned that her mom never had her back in these episodes and “always defended” (a term she uses with me all the time) her sister.

Fast forward to the issues with my sister she kinda let it slip today that my sister reminded her of her sister and that’s what triggers all these emotions.  To make matters worse I used to try and logically defend my sister to my wife from all the wild accusations and that ended up just about the worst thing I could have done. Problem is I have no idea how to handle that but at least I will take the small win and understand now what’s causing these huge reaction and that’s due to past trauma.  Now I gotta figure out how to unscrew all that.