Blew Up at dBPDw and Feeling Guilt/Shame

[HurtAndTired]

Hi all,

Over the weekend I did something that I am not proud of. I have been enforcing hard boundaries on my dBPDw for the past 10 months after 12 years of increasingly severe damaging abuse (physical, verbal, emotional, mental, spiritual, and sexual.) I have done massive amounts of reading on BPD. I have learned about validation, SET, and other tools that I have been practicing and using. I have been working on myself in individual therapy with a therapist who specializes in BPD and cluster B personality disorders. My wife and I went to couple's therapy...and were let go because the therapist said he could not work with us until my wife started working on herself. All of that work and I should know better than to do what I did. I feel so ashamed that I took a giant step backward and blew up at my wife over the weekend.

She invited some of her work friends over for a movie this past Friday and was on pretty good behavior because she hides her symptoms when other people are around. That being said, I could tell from subtle remarks that she was making in my direction that she was hiding a growing dysregulation towards me and that once the guests left I was in for it. I wasn't wrong.

She had been drinking fairly heavily and I had had a few beers myself during the social event. After everyone had left we put our S2 to bed and settled in to watch another movie. During the movie, she became increasingly verbally aggressive toward me. It started out with some of the typical barbs that I easily shrugged off, but then progressed into some pretty fresh wounds and some older and deeper ones that I was unable to shrug off.

Several months ago, during one of her ongoing extinction bursts due to my new boundaries, my wife weaponized my SS25 against me and made him her flying monkey. This is a young man that I have raised since he was 12 and love like a son. He is also a competitive weightlifter and is taking large doses of testosterone. She lied to him about me being abusive toward her, which led to him coming over to our house and threatening to beat me up. This has more or less destroyed our relationship and I am still in mourning and deeply angry about this unnecessary loss.

She started probing this very fresh wound, told me that I was not a good father to our S2, and was laying blame for her being trapped with a child she did not want, and that I should have known better than to ask her to try for another child after she miscarried 6 years ago. I just lost it. I verbally barraged her and let out all of that pain that I had been carrying inside me for all of these years.

I told her that I was also incredibly hurt by the loss of our child but that she had never allowed me to mourn. Every time that I tried to share or express my grief, she shut me down and told me that the pain belonged to her. I told her how much losing my SS25 has hurt me. That our relationship (SS25 and me) was broken because of what she told him and that it was up to her to fix it. I said that if she thinks she can just ignore it and it will go away, she's mistaken. I told her that Thanksgiving and Christmas would not include SS25 until he apologized and removed the standing physical threat that was hanging over my head. Until he does, he is not welcome in my house.

She started to argue back and tell me how I was trapping her in a marriage she didn't want and with a house, child, and job she didn't want. She just wants to run away somewhere else and start over with a new life. I then laid into her and told her if she really wanted to run away to go ahead and file papers, but that I would fight for full custody of our S2. I told her that I had documented evidence of her physical abuse of me and her suicide threats. I said that I would use everything I had to make sure that she underwent a psych evaluation during any divorce proceedings (I have done massive amounts of research on how the process works in our state and know I am within my rights as a parent to do so in a custody hearing.) This would tilt the scales heavily in my favor and would virtually guarantee that I get primary if not sole custody.

I told her that I have been incredibly supportive of her changing jobs, up to and including taking my SS25 onto my insurance for a year at a significant financial cost to the family so that she would be free to go back to school. I took her to the local community college and got the financial aid process started for her. I bought her textbooks and made a financial plan for how we could afford her job training classes so she could switch careers...all for nothing. She chickened out. I told her that I didn't want to hear her complain about being trapped in a job anymore because when she had a chance to leave, she was a coward.

During all of this, the tears were streaming down my face. She was at first dysregulated and trying to respond angrily but then wilted under the force of my emotional outburst. We went to bed without really dealing with what had happened and the next day she was quiet and distant for most of the day. In the afternoon, she brought it up and said that she felt like she had been verbally abused. I told her that I was ashamed and wanted to apologize, but she interrupted me and started to say "You don't get to apologize." I then interrupted her and said "I want to apologize for how I said what I said, but I don't want to apologize for the content of what I said. I needed to let those things out, but should have done so in a way that wasn't mean." She again said that it was verbal abuse. I agreed but pointed out that she had done the same thing to me countless times and has never apologized, but just acts like it never happened. Sometimes she gives me the caveat, "I was just saying what was true." "What I was saying was true too, but it didn't make it ok for me to be so angry about it when I was saying it. It didn't excuse me for being mean. It doesn't feel very good to be on the receiving end of that, does it?" I said.

For the rest of the weekend, she was low-level snarky, and distant but didn't make her usual divorce threats. She didn't lock herself in the bedroom. She didn't banish me to the guestroom. In fact, when I offered to sleep in the guestroom, she said: "if you go sleep in there, don't try to come back in here (the master bedroom)." She is still distant, but the retribution I would normally expect has not come. It seems like her fear of abandonment has been activated in full force. This makes me feel like a bully. It was cathartic to release all of that negative emotion, but my shame and regret are palpable. I am familiar with the concept of "reactive abuse" where the abused person snaps and abuses their abuser. I know that that was what this was, but that doesn't make me feel any better. However, I don't feel like I should do any more apologizing. That would only feed the beast. I have said that I was sorry for blowing up. I was sincere, and I was sincere in limiting my apology to how I said what I said, but not the contents of what was said.

I am struggling with how to forgive myself and how to move forward. In therapy, I have only recently been starting to cope with the deep resentment and anger that have built up in me over the years of suffering some pretty horrendous abuse at my wife's hands. For most of the time that the abuse was occurring, I was just in survival mode. I had no boundaries and would even usually end up apologizing to my wife after she had abused me just to end the split. Now that I have started to take control of my life back, all of those negative emotions that come from being abused are finally starting to surface. I need to figure out how to release these emotions in a safe and productive way. I know I should forgive and forget as a Christian, but as a human being, I am not finding it that easy. I am still damn mad. I am mad at her and I am mad at myself for allowing myself to be abused for so long. I guess I still have a lot of work to do in therapy.

Thank you all for letting me get this all out. Have any of you had similar experiences? How did you handle it? How did you move forward and what was the fallout?

HurtAndTired

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[kells76]

I have also done things in my marriage that have really hurt my H, and I've known that those things would be hurtful, and I still did them. At the beginning of our marriage, I was sure that we would be different. We had skills! We had knowledge! We were in therapy! We weren't just "cultural Christians", we were really trying. And we've still wounded each other deeply.

This is who we are and what we need salvation from. We're broken, hurtful people, who out of our woundedness, wound the ones on earth we love the most. We're no different from anyone else in terms of our actions. It's not like the difference in life is "well, some people are hurtful and some aren't". I think the distinction is more: we're all hurtful, broken people; the only difference is between those who acknowledge it and want mercy, and those who don't. It's the pharisee and the tax collector.

It can be difficult integrating that when a partner has BPD -- maybe that's part of the issue facing you? You've apologized as genuinely as you can, you regret the way you interacted with her, you recognize that there's a distinction between what you say and how you say it, and you know that unmanaged emotional "dumping" on your W isn't effective or loving... but you also recognize that because BPD is in the mix, she may in the future make demands for more apologies, bring up this interaction years down the road, etc.

I'm not sure that forgiveness has to involve forgetting, per se. One way I think about it is -- if I could forget it, then was the forgiveness really meaningful? It's because I remember what or someone said or did, that I can offer forgiveness (not holding it against them, because I'm the same kind of broken person). Maybe forgiveness can be more like -- I remember what you said/did -- it was sinful, it was evil, it was hurtful -- but I no longer have to count it as relevant. IDK -- maybe something in there will resonate.

There is just a lot of grief and loss happening for you, and a lot has resurfaced around the same time: the miscarriage, the damage to your relationship with SS25, and the ongoing grief of not having a wife who can really care for you, not in the way you'd hoped for. I wonder if those losses are somehow connected with working on forgiving yourself -- can you forgive yourself (not excuse yourself, not forget the facts) for being a broken human being who is floored by grief and out of that grief sometimes hurts others... just like everyone else? Maybe you can forgive yourself not because you forget about wounding others, but because you remember, and it reminds you of the truth of who you are, and you know that you need the mercy of God, and you aren't "forgiving" yourself to try to look like a better person, but to try to be healthier and more loving in the circumstances God has given you.

This is difficult stuff. I don't really have answers for you, because I struggle with the same thing. In the non-PD relationship with my H, I tend to apologize repeatedly for the same stuff, and I don't know that that would be effective in your relationship with your W. Honestly, it isn't really effective with my H, either. I think I hope that if I apologize again, I won't feel so horrible for having hurt him... but it isn't true. Maybe my challenge is that I have to accept that there's no amount of apologizing I can do to change how I feel inside, and that I have to learn to live with the reality of being a broken human being, and I can't escape that through apologizing more.

It may be that you're in a marriage where your W's limitation is that she is not the person you can turn to, to release your emotions productively, even though in other marriages spouses could turn to each other for that support. I think you're right that therapy may need to be the relationship where you express that anger, grief, and frustration (at least, at the intense levels). Therapy may also help you figure out the level at which your relationship can handle emotional expression. A generally healthy relationship may be able to handle 10/10 intensity; your relationship may max out at a 3/10 capacity for handling emotional intensity, and you may need to turn to other (healthy, faithful, professional) relationships like T for the rest of that support.

Anyway -- just sharing that it's already difficult when we're faced head-on with our hurtfulness, when we get our faces rubbed in the fact that we're just as low and wounding as everyone else, and it's another layer of difficulty when BPD is involved. I don't have solutions, but I'm walking a similar path, and it isn't a fast process. It is taking me more like years (versus weeks or months) to really, really face my pattern/cycle, take responsibility for my parts, and take the risks of moving forward differently. So maybe that is the closest I can get to an answer -- be patient with yourself, be committed to facing the pain, and know that it may take a lifetime, and that God is merciful.

[ThanksForPlaying]

Sorry you're going through this.  I could really feel the whole argument and I've had those arguments myself.  You're not alone.

Honestly, it sounds like the outcome here was about as good as you could possibly hope for, in this specific incident.  I would even go so far as to say your skills and tools seem to be mitigating the rages.

What are some of the things you would have liked to happen in this argument?  In a perfect world, what result would you have wanted?  You've described here some of the things that "could have been worse" (didn't get banished to the guestroom). Can you think of some things that "could have been better" ?  How frequent are these major arguments?  Constant?  Or does it ever get back to 'normal' for any length of time?

[ThanksForPlaying]

Therapy may also help you figure out the level at which your relationship can handle emotional expression. A generally healthy relationship may be able to handle 10/10 intensity; your relationship may max out at a 3/10 capacity for handling emotional intensity, and you may need to turn to other (healthy, faithful, professional) relationships like T for the rest of that support.

This is really helpful for me.  I've been struggling with "walking on eggshells" in the sense that I can't complain about my day at work or really complain about anything without setting off a dysregulation.  1/10 is mostly ok.  If I take anything to a 2/10 then I'm "stressing her out" and she "can't handle my negativity" and shuts me out for a while.  Meanwhile, she is daily in the 7-8-9 range of foisting her problems on me.  I understand everyone has their own sliding scale - and I've run it by my T to make sure my 2/10 is 'accurate'.  T agrees it's roughly a 2/10 and would be a 'normal' discussion in a functional relationship.  I like the idea that if I'm going to accept this relationship, I may have to get that support elsewhere.

[HurtAndTired]

Kells,

Thank you so much for your words of comfort. I am very much in the position of the Publican (beating my breast and begging God for mercy for my sins) but am also in the strange position of not being able to make amends with my wife in a standard way. I need to go to Confession this weekend and take Communion (next week is Holy Week for Orthodox Christians followed by Easter on May 5th) but that is for making my spiritual amends with God. I still need to make earthly amends with my wife, but cannot feed into her victim mentality/position (her preferred place in the Karpman Drama Triangle.)

I feel like I am going to have to make amends in a non-verbal way. Perhaps through acts of service/kindness or some other way to demonstrate that I am sorry without verbally asking her for forgiveness. The BPD dynamic makes the whole apologizing/forgiving thing super weird for us. She never apologizes, or the few times she has it has been forced and insincere. My apologies are only ever received as proof of guilt and are used as weapons against me. She also never truly forgives anything. The best I can hope for is for her to act like something never happened. This is her BPD way of both forgiving and saying she is sorry.

I also need to work out how to forgive her for her years of abusing me. I now see that this will be a major impediment going forward until I am able to let this go somehow. The amount of repressed pain, grief, and anger that I have needs to be addressed. I have tried to suppress it for years and it has taken a heavy toll on me, mentally, physically, and spiritually. The things I brought up in my rant do need to be said. To be released as a part of this process of moving on and forgiving, and she needs to hear them as a part of that process. I am afraid that she is not ready to though. I do think that there may be a positive that came of all of this though. I think I might have a genuine insight into how she must feel much of the time.

Like her, I am now carrying a lot of hurt and unresolved pain from continuous and serious abuse around inside of me. Like her, it grew to an intolerable level. Like her, I could not contain the explosion of hurt and anger and unleashed it on someone I love. Like her, I meant every word I said, even the mean ones...especially the mean ones... at the moment I was saying them. Like her, the catharsis passed and left me feeling at first empty, and then full of shame. I regret what I said, but feel like I have no way of apologizing that wouldn't make things worse. I have no way of knowing if this is exactly what a pwBPD experiences, but from what I have read from some of them it's not far off. I will try to keep this humbling and shameful experience in mind as I go forward to try to empathize with her. To feel this amount of shame and self-loathing but not being able to resolve it is awful.

ThanksForPlaying,

Thank you for your responses and your sympathy. To answer your questions, the response I would have loved to receive (in a perfect world) would have been something along the lines of "I am so sorry that I have caused you so much pain. I didn't realize that you were hurting this badly. I wish I could take it all back, but I can't. Going forward I will try my best to be better to you. I don't know if I can fix what I did with turning SS25 against you, but I will do my best to undo what I have done. I am hurting too from all those things that happened to me when I was a kid. I can now see that I need to get help so that I can stop hurting the people I love. I will get that help before it's too late." Never going to happen, but one can dream, can't they?

As to how frequent these arguments are, they used to only happen a few times a year. Then they increased to every few months. Since I placed my boundaries, they have been much more frequent. The caveat here is that they are not arguments. It takes two people to argue. I have not argued with her for at least ten months. Arguing is a part of JADEing, which (until this weekend) I completely stopped doing. It has been more like her attacking me and me dealing with the attack through validation, SET, physically removing myself from the situation if things are getting intolerable, or grey rocking (completely ignoring her) as a last resort. This means that I have absorbed a fair amount of "tit" and have given no "tat."

I have on a few occasions had an emotional blowout in response to her verbal abuse, but they have been few enough to count on one hand over the 12 years we've been together. It's like I am an emotional volcano that absorbs pressure for years before I erupt.

I don't know what to expect after this. I am in uncharted territory. I have been letting her push me around for 12 years. This is the first time in our relationship that I have taken control back. In the past, she would have given me the silent treatment, banished me to the guestroom, or done something else to torture me for days, weeks, or months until she felt that I had had enough punishment, and then she would just one day start acting like things were normal. Never an apology. Never an admission of guilt. Just punishment and then act normal.

Now she isn't in a position to punish me. I feel comfortable and safe in the guestroom. It is my safe place to go and lock myself in when I am feeling physically threatened by her. She gave me the silent treatment and banished me to the guestroom for 2 months back in late 2023 and I thrived there. She sees that those are no longer punishments that have any effect on me. I called her bluff on divorce threats and she blinked first. I have one by one taken away all of the tools that she has used to exert power over me and have defanged them all over the past ten months with my boundaries. She has no arrows left in her quiver to fire at me. That's why she turned my SS25 against me when she got angry at me about two months ago. She couldn't think of anything else to do.

I know things could have gone worse, but the way that I hope they go better is that she realizes that she needs to fix things with SS25 and me. All of the other things can be dealt with in their own due time, but having a 25-year-old gym rat and world-class record-holding weight lifter who has roid-rages pointed at you like a gun is not something that I want hanging over my head. It can't be ignored and won't go away. I won't let it go away. We are in the same family. We have major holidays that are going to be very, very messy and uncomfortable if she doesn't fix this. Her usual method of pretending everything is normal once she is past her BPD splitting won't work this time. I won't have him at S2's 3rd birthday party in a little over a month if this isn't fixed. There is a timer ticking on this one. I still love him like a son, but I can't have him threaten to beat me up in my house and just pretend like it never happened. He is taking super high amounts of testosterone (he is over three times the maximum normal limit of 1200) and is a very dangerous person to be around if he is angry.

HurtAndTired

[kells76]

Thank you so much for your words of comfort. I am very much in the position of the Publican (beating my breast and begging God for mercy for my sins) but am also in the strange position of not being able to make amends with my wife in a standard way. I need to go to Confession this weekend and take Communion (next week is Holy Week for Orthodox Christians followed by Easter on May 5th) but that is for making my spiritual amends with God. I still need to make earthly amends with my wife, but cannot feed into her victim mentality/position (her preferred place in the Karpman Drama Triangle.)

I feel like I am going to have to make amends in a non-verbal way. Perhaps through acts of service/kindness or some other way to demonstrate that I am sorry without verbally asking her for forgiveness. The BPD dynamic makes the whole apologizing/forgiving thing super weird for us. She never apologizes, or the few times she has it has been forced and insincere. My apologies are only ever received as proof of guilt and are used as weapons against me. She also never truly forgives anything. The best I can hope for is for her to act like something never happened. This is her BPD way of both forgiving and saying she is sorry.

That makes sense. Your relationship with God is between you and God and does not require your W's participation.

I wonder if a mindset shift could help here:

I still need to make earthly amends with my wife, but cannot feed into her victim mentality/position (her preferred place in the Karpman Drama Triangle.)

We don't have control over how others see our actions. You could really consciously choose to make amends with her in the most perfect, non-victim-feeding way, but you don't control how she filters/interprets/chooses to accept those amends. The amends could be just above and beyond in terms of the most healthy and boundaried amends ever given, but her experience of it is not something you can manage. In fact, it could be that trying to make amends without feeding her victim mentality is still giving her control over the process: "I thought I showed her I was sorry in the right way, but she twisted it, so I must have done it wrong".

What if you chose to make amends in a way that was consistent with your integrity... no matter how she saw it? Again, if BPD is involved, then she has a serious mental challenge impacting the way she perceives and experiences life and emotions. Trying to shoehorn your moral choices into a form that she can't/won't twist is playing by her rules. Maybe it can be OK to do the best you can in line with your integrity, letting go of having a goal of "stopping her from entrenching in victimhood". It isn't under your control.

And that isn't to say that you get a free pass to do whatever you like "because she'll twist it anyway". More about finding that balance of trying to love her the best you know how, for who she is right now, letting go of trying to "get her out of that mindset".

...

This also seems important:

I feel like I am going to have to make amends in a non-verbal way. Perhaps through acts of service/kindness or some other way to demonstrate that I am sorry without verbally asking her for forgiveness.

That's my gut feeling, too.

In general, does she appreciate acts of kindness and service, more than gifts, touch, etc?

She also never truly forgives anything. The best I can hope for is for her to act like something never happened. This is her BPD way of both forgiving and saying she is sorry.

When you say she never truly forgives, do you mean she never verbally apologizes? You may be on to something that when she moves on without discussing a past incident, she is operating at the upper limit of her emotional capability -- that is the closest she can get to forgiving, with her serious limitations.

[kells76]

This is really helpful for me.  I've been struggling with "walking on eggshells" in the sense that I can't complain about my day at work or really complain about anything without setting off a dysregulation.  1/10 is mostly ok.  If I take anything to a 2/10 then I'm "stressing her out" and she "can't handle my negativity" and shuts me out for a while.  Meanwhile, she is daily in the 7-8-9 range of foisting her problems on me.  I understand everyone has their own sliding scale - and I've run it by my T to make sure my 2/10 is 'accurate'.  T agrees it's roughly a 2/10 and would be a 'normal' discussion in a functional relationship.  I like the idea that if I'm going to accept this relationship, I may have to get that support elsewhere.

That might be part of radical acceptance. We aren't saying "it's totally fine, normal, and healthy for my partner to be emotionally impaired, I agree it's good" -- we are saying "whether I like it or agree with it or not, this is who my partner is in reality".

It definitely sounds like one of the challenges of staying in a BPD relationship -- accepting that your partner has significant emotional impairment, grieving that loss, but also not then tipping over into "so I can get my emotional needs met wherever I want". Finding healthy, boundaried places to get emotional needs met is important. A partner's limitations aren't a green light for me to make up for my pain in hurtful ways (affairs, etc).

[findthewayhome]

HurtAndTired, don't be too hard on yourself. You are not perfect. Nobody is. You have tolerated years of abuse and finally snapped.

Around 4 years ago I was washing up at the sink, I hadn't done some other job that uBPD had wanted doing I guess. She came in and said "why haven't you done that, you are useless". I was carrying a heavy load, was under pressure providing, doing my share around the home, and I totally snapped, I turned around and shouted "Don't you dare speak to me like that, you fing bitch".

One of my lowest ebbs. But I remember it all the time. She didn't talk to me for a week, constant silent treatment. When she did finally agree to talk she started as per usual with "Have you anything you want to say", I apologised, and said what about you said. She tried to pretend she hadn't said that, and she said if I ever spoke to her like that again she would be gone.

I acknowledged that, and basically took the blame for the entire situation. I now know it was reactive abuse. Didn't make it easier. It was uncharacteristic of it and I am still ashamed years on. But the truth is she has spoken to me like that countless times, and worse. Yet I am supposed to just let it go....

So like I say we have all done things we aren't proud of. But it sounds like you are owning it, taking responsibility for it and apologized for it. Don't beat yourself up. Just keep doing your work in therapy. My therapist says 1% of progress in a month doesn't feel like much. But it compounds. 1% every month for a year is 12%, thats a big gain...

This is really helpful for me.  I've been struggling with "walking on eggshells" in the sense that I can't complain about my day at work or really complain about anything without setting off a dysregulation.  1/10 is mostly ok.  If I take anything to a 2/10 then I'm "stressing her out" and she "can't handle my negativity" and shuts me out for a while.  Meanwhile, she is daily in the 7-8-9 range of foisting her problems on me.  I understand everyone has their own sliding scale - and I've run it by my T to make sure my 2/10 is 'accurate'.  T agrees it's roughly a 2/10 and would be a 'normal' discussion in a functional relationship.  I like the idea that if I'm going to accept this relationship, I may have to get that support elsewhere.

Thanksforplaying : I can relate to this, I never discuss hard days now. Even if hard if I don't come in all sunshine and rainbows she gets very stroppy and begins to dysregulate. I have also been told I am not allowed to tell her how I am feeling unless she asks. So the result is, since I started putting boundaries in place, refusing to argue (which is a bit avoidant I accept), not discussing my feelings, and not touching her (another of her requests) the relationship is all but dead.

[HurtAndTired]

findtheway home,

Thank you for your support. It means a lot to hear from all of you that I should give myself some grace on this. I have been trying to. I can totally relate to your situation of finally snapping at that one insult that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

To everyone who has been kind enough to read and comment,

I spoke with my therapist this morning and we mutually came to the agreement that I have moved beyond needing to talk about my relationship with my wife and working on strategies to make things better. We need to move on to dealing with the pain, hurt, anger, betrayal, and frustration that I have bottled up inside of me.

The reality is that for 12 years I have been taking abuse of all kinds and that has left its mark on me. In particular, losing a child to miscarriage and not being allowed to mourn that loss has wounded me very deeply. For most of these past 12 years, I have been ruled by fear. I was walking on eggshells and endlessly worried about when the next explosion was going to happen. It wasn't safe for me to feel those emotions. My brain was in constant survival mode. It is only now, 10 months after I placed and enforced hard barriers to stop that abuse, that the fear has started to subside and leave room for the other emotions to come to the surface. Now that I am taking power back over my life and starting to feel safe, I am being overwhelmed by those emotions that I held back for so long.

What she suggested is that I do some empty chair exercises since I express my emotions verbally rather than through journaling, writing poetry, writing music, etc. I also don't want to unburden myself overly on my friends and family. While my support system is great, some of these emotions are just too raw and angry to want to put that on people that I love. Hence the empty chair (or with a stuffed animal or other sit-in for a person in it) will allow me to safely vent some of these things. I can imagine a person sitting there and then cry, scream, vent, or do whatever I need to do to get the emotions out when I have time alone. I am also going to work on giving those emotions that I need to feel the space that they deserve to be felt by working through them in therapy with my therapist, but right now I just need a safe vent for them.

My therapist also suggested that I start talking to myself, and even talking to my emotions as though they were sentient entities inside of me, and show myself the same kind of care and comfort that I would give to anyone else who is in pain. Those of us who are empaths and highly sensitive are so easily inclined to care for other people but find it difficult to turn that caring back on ourselves, even when we desperately need it and no one else is giving it to us.

I will continue to try to keep things positive/neutral with my wife and hope that she starts working on herself. The daily drinking continues, but she has at least started taking Lexipro daily as well. I am hopeful that in the next 4 to 6 weeks she will start laying off the booze as the antidepressant kicks in. However, I can clearly see that my focus now really needs to be on myself. I need to deal with this poison inside of me so that I can be there for my S2 and, to a lesser extent, my wife.

Thank you all again,

HurtAndTired

[Elvis42]

HurtAndTired,
 I have been where you are more times than I can count. And while at first I may feel so much better after the incident, later I become sad, frustrated, angry, failure, you name the emotion I feel it. I have always said sarcastically, not knowing at the time how hurtful nor what was really the underlying issue, that deal with my wife is like dealing with a 4 year old child. I have actually said that to her face many times in anger, frustration, exhaustion....
 I am just beginning my understanding of BPD and loving someone with, I'm not sure how to express, I assume the correct expression would be mental illness. I always refer to it as an issue, so I'm not sure if that is disrespectful or less stigmatized as saying someone has a mental illness. I know personally I suffer from chronic depression, anxiety and am a recovering alcoholic, so I know how it feels to be stigmatized.
 I can only say from my point of view its hard, really hard not to, for lack of a better term, "explode", which is what it feels like to me an explosion. I'm slowly learning that its about how or where we "explode" that makes the difference. My therapist has suggested I find a hobby, a distraction to keep myself centered. I also started to write letters to myself, expressing how I feel, so I can get it all out in my own private time. It's just for me. Sometimes I go back and read them just to see what was going on and truthfully sometimes I end of throwing them away, for whatever reason I'm never sure. It's something I learned in the group I attended for AA.
 As others have stated and I know it can be difficult, you have to learn to forgive yourself or it will eat you up. We are only human, or at least that's the rumor going around 
 I try to understand, without trying to overthink it, what happened in that moment and why. Hopefully to use the experience to "try" and do better the next time. That's all we can ask of each other is to "try" and do better, because none of us are perfect.
 I hope that things get better or as best as they can be and that you continue to work for your mental health, because the truth is we can't be good for anyone else if we aren't good for ourselves. As the saying goes "you can't love someone else if you don't love yourself first"

[Pook075]

I am very much in the position of the Publican (beating my breast and begging God for mercy for my sins) but am also in the strange position of not being able to make amends with my wife in a standard way.

Hey Hurt.

There's two types of forgiveness- worldly and heavenly.

If you're saved, then forgiveness from God is automatic.  You ask and you're forgiven.  The only catch is, you then must forgive yourself and let it go.

The Bible also says that you must forgive others as God forgives you.  The two go hand and hand- forgive and be forgiven.  Don't forgive and you'll feel physically  separated from God (Not spiritually, because God's still there. He's just waiting on you). 

So you must forgive, and you must ask for forgiveness.  I'm Baptist, so I don't believe in a formal confession.  It's the same concept though and ultimately the same process.

Note that so far, we're talking about you.  Because that's what matters here, your personal relationship with God.

Your wife is under the same commandments, yet she refuses to forgive.  Mine did as well and it makes things complicated.  You're supposed to stay and love like 1st Corinthians 13 commands- be patient and kind. Don't be proud or self-seeking. Keep no record of wrongs. Do no easily anger, do not delight in evil. Always protect, trust, hope and preserve.

It's almost impossible to do those things when you're carrying the guilt of the world on your shoulders.  So stop doing that, go to confession and let that go.  Your wife's judgement is not your burden to carry.  That's her burden and it ultimately hurts her.  You've apologized, you've forgiven, and now you're going to confess.  All good stuff, but then you have to let those burdens go for it to actually matter within your life.

[HurtAndTired]

Elvis and Pook,

Thank you for the replies and support. I have forgiven myself for my momentary loss of control and am doing my best to move forward and past this event.

Elvis,

I agree with you about the rumor going around that we are only human. I have heard it too, and I am finally coming around to believing it. I think that what has made it hard for me to forgive myself over various things in recent years is the amount of blame-shifting that has taken place in the marriage. When nothing is your spouse's fault and everything is your fault (in the view of the pwBPD) it eventually starts worming its way into your brain that it is true. I am, with help from my therapist, getting better at disentangling myself from her toxic delusions, but it has been taking a lot of time and work.

Pook,

Thank you for keeping my eyes turned to God on this. Not forgiving yourself is, in a way, a grave offense to God. If we have asked God for forgiveness and it has been granted, who are we not to forgive ourselves? It is either pride speaking, thinking that we are so important that we know better than what scripture says on the matter, or worse, it is despair and self-hatred telling us that what we have done is so bad that it is unforgivable, even in the eyes of God. Either option is sinful and self-directed.

It is normal to feel regret over your actions, even after you have repented, and it is good that we do so as it discourages us from repeating the same mistake in the future. However, letting that inner voice that tells you not to forgive yourself hold sway in your mind means that you are under spiritual attack and that you are losing the battle. It brings me back to the commandment to love your neighbor as you love yourself also meaning that you must love yourself before you can love your neighbor. Dealing with all of the negativity and darkness that comes from BPD can make it hard to remember how to do that, but I am working on it.

I AM a good man. I AM a good son. I AM a good father, and despite all that I have heard to the contrary I AM a good husband. Like everyone, I have made my share of mistakes, but each time I fall down I get back up again. I will keep reminding myself that the horrible things I have heard screamed at me are mostly projections, and I will try to let that fuel my compassion. If that's how horrible I feel after having those feelings projected on me, how much worse must my wife feel from having that feeling within her all the time? It does not excuse her behavior, but it gives me a window into the awful condition that is driving it.

I will keep praying that my wife finds her way to getting better, but I am going to keep on focusing on making sure that my son and I are healthy and safe so that if and when she decides that it is time to get help, we will be in a position to support her in that. She has been taking Lexapro for a little over two weeks now and the alcohol use is, at least for the moment, decreasing in quantity if not frequency.

Thank you all for your comments and support. This site and this community have truly been a light in the darkness for me. For those of you who are so inclined, your continued prayers are much appreciated.

Thanks again,

HurtAndTired

[Ourworld]

I just want to pop in and say that forgiveness is a way of letting things go for your own well-being. It is not about forgetting an atrocity that was done, and the first person to forgive is yourself, then you forgive the other person involved. I am talking about forgiveness between you and God. You have to do this many times, and eventually you will forget what occurred.

Hope that brings you peace.

[Pook075]

I will keep praying that my wife finds her way to getting better, but I am going to keep on focusing on making sure that my son and I are healthy and safe so that if and when she decides that it is time to get help, we will be in a position to support her in that. She has been taking Lexapro for a little over two weeks now and the alcohol use is, at least for the moment, decreasing in quantity if not frequency.

Side note, Lexipro takes a good 4-6 weeks to fully balance out in someone's system.  So have patience, young grasshopper!

You're doing everything right and you have the right focus here.  Now it's time to "Let go and let God..."  Keep praying, keep being encouraging, and get into your small groups at church (do Catholics have that?  I think they do).  Let others hold you accountable as you hold them accountable- it works wonders.

The good news is that you are seeing positive signals- the alcohol is decreasing.  She is on meds.  Positive is positive, no matter how large or small.  God is working.