BPDFamily.com

Hello All,

I have been contemplating what to do with my 7 yr BPD relationship. I feel very stuck and want to leave but love and hope for a better future.

I am tired of going through devaluation and ideation. I need my emotional needs met. I am exhausted and want out, but I also love my H and  have been trying for years to make him feel better and have sacrificed nearly everything for him. I am resentful, at times hate him, and walk on eggshells all the time.

I was going to pack up and leave, but I have a four year old who loves daddy; I have no where else to go (I am the sole earner in the house, but have no savings (due to H marijuana use and drinking), I have written off my family and friends because they were triggers for him, I am not allowed to have a life beyond him, and it is still not enough. I feel trapped and isolated. I live near his family, mine is all over the country and not very supportive (they didn't want me with him from the beginning). He goes back and forth between begging me to stay and pushing me away.

For the last two months I have not worked because I am having my own health issues right now. Ended up in the cardiac unit and am still undergoing testing to figure out why I can't breath doing normal activities and have chest pain whenever physically stressed or experiencing extreme emotion. Right now being treated with nitroglycerin for angina pain, awaiting cardiologist appt tomorrow which will hopefully give me some answers. My H even gets bent out of shape having to "share" me with the Drs. I had to change cardiologists after leaving the hospital because I had a male and H freaked and demanded that I switch my care to a female, something that has delayed any answers or treatment, but I have done it to make him comfortable still to only have him attack me later. I just have a hard time when I am down and in need of support still having to care for him and dodge landmines only to have him throw them against me anyway.

What right do BPDs have to treat others this way and why should I cow to him and make his needs more important. I matter too! I can't just let his attacks slide and allow him to get away with it. What he does hurts and I cant validate someone attacking me. Can someone please explain how validating them when they wrong you doesnt go against self preservation? I am really struggling to accept that I have to accept him for threating me like crap. I do have unconditional love for him and have tried showing him that, but I just want some back damn it. Why can't I be loved and treated with respect in my time of need? Why do I have to be the whipping post and accept it? This really sucks and I hate it. I just want a "normal" relationship, one with gives and takes, mutual respect, kindness, and love (love being something that apparently my BPD doesnt understand).

My BPDH thinks he can break me down and attack me for 8 hours even though I have tried to avoid, not engage and walk away from it, but he keeps forcing me to face him, talk and accept his rages. Then he thinks that just because we are married that means he gets to snuggle up and get loving gestures just because he has gotten his rage out and is now ready for bed. I cant do this. Is there anyone out there who can?

I am sick of this cycle, I am sick of my life being a constant fight, I am sick of never knowing what emotions are going to explode out of him, I am sick of being sick and tired.

How can I get to a point where I am not reacting out of hurt? Can we save this? Is it worth even trying? How do I let go of the resentment? How can I bury the hatred? How can I learn to love and trust him again? What about the inevitable return of the person I hate? I am really frustrated and confused. I want this to work but as you can see I am really conflicted at this time and dont know how to work through it.

Sorry for the length of the post, it was building for a bit.

Hi overwhelmedandconfused, first of all I'm so sorry to hear about your heart problems. Do you have someone else in your life to lean on? Know that we're also here for you.

You ask a lot of very good questions. To tackle the one about validation first: the goal is to validate feelings, not facts. Meaning don't agree that you are (whatever it is he's accusing you of), but recognise that he's feeling x/y/z. And don't forget that once it turns into just venting about your "faults" or attacking you, there's no point in validating. That's when you go into time-out and go somewhere else. I see that's difficult for you as he keeps engaging you. Can you temporarily leave and go somewhere else, stay the night at a hotel? If you're consistent with doing that for a few times, he might then get that when you leave the room he must let you be.

And you definitely should not be a whipping post.  The Staying board is all about how to get out of and control situations and our own responses (we can't really control anyone else) so that we don't become/stay whipping posts.

I see from some of your other posts too that you're a bit lost at the moment in your relationship. Not a great place to be. Have you seen the "Choosing a path" over at Undecided?

You need to start taking care of yourself more.  Being isolated from friends and family, treated like crap, etc. is no way to live.  There are a few ways to reclaim your life.  As you mentioned, leaving is one of those ways.  

We offer an alternative on this board.  The basic path is laid out in our board Lessons, which you can link to on the right side of this screen.  

I was pretty deep in a hole when I showed up here too.  I started with some basics.  Things that helped me right away.  I reached out to "lost" friends and family - and was pleased to see they were happy to hear from me.  I started to eat right and exercise.  I did things that I enjoyed, took walks, gardened, watched movies that I picked, etc.  All of these little things helped lift me up and allowed me to build strength.  I also saw a therapist to help me work through everything I was facing and it was tremendously helpful.  

There is hope.  Many members here have used our path to regain control over our lives.  

briefcase said what I was going to.  Take care of yourself.  Reclaim your life.  You are no good to anyone else if you're no good to yourself.  This is true in general, not just in BPD relationships.

Seek therapy for yourself and explore your role in this relationship.  Are you enabling your pwBPD?  Are you co-dependent?  These are the questions you need to be humble enough, vulnerable enough to address with professional help.  And this will help with "being good to yourself".

Maybe after some deep self-reflection and self-caring, you can then make a more informed decision where you want to go in your pwBPD relationship.

Hi overwhelmedandconfused

I know exactly what you are saying. I went through the same thing with my wife.  Isolation from friends & family, the in your face never ending arguements. Once I was using the bathroom & she came in & I had to sit there & listen as she went through the checkbook line by line explaining why I was at the grocery store so often. I must be having sex with someone there.

There is a window in which you can try to validate but sometimes it isn't very big. I found the best way was for me to walk outside or go for a ride. Since you have a small child that might not be as easy for you.

I read your post about when you gave birth. I'm sorry he did that to you. It must have been horrible.

Taking care of yourself is very important but you need to keep your side of the street clean. It took me a long time to start getting back with friends because the fallout from it never seemed worth it. It seems the more I did it the more she stayed in her room.

We were married for almost 42 years. She died in April of 2012. She didn't get to the point that your husband seems to be at until the last 8 years or so.

This place saved me me. Learn all you can & get some therapy for yourself if possible.

Hi, I've been married to my uBPDw 2 years and boy was I so not prepared for what was to come. I went through the feelings that you wrote, and sure others here did as well. It's the stage where you tell yourself "enough is enough". I was there many times, today I am trying to understand more about it and try out the lessons and techniques in the resources. Not all work, but there was some success. I'm still trying to cope. Some thoughts that I want to share from my limited experience in staying and not leaving, everybody and every situation is different, and it may not apply for you:

1. Disassociate the behavior from the person (don't take it personally) -

This was and still is tough for me. The person raging, abusing, saying and doing hurtful things is "something" else (I want to think that is for my case). It hurts us so, because we love them and what they say,think,and feel matters. And because of that we have to separate their condition and the person. I try to keep those rare happy and cheerful moments stored somewhere (like in a drawer), and practice recollecting it to remind myself who they really are, like taking a photo out of your wallet. This is not to cover up for their bad behavior, but helps me to remind my objective of committing to the r/s, that not making it worse before making it better.

2. Setting correct expectations -

Why can't she listen to what I just said and pacify me? Why is she saying and doing this in the middle of the night? What can't she make up her mind for once? The answer I found out, she can't, at least not at that moment. If I'm expecting things I can't get, then it's better looking elsewhere, cause it's setting up for failure.

3. Take care of yourself before trying to fix the other person -

Can't say much about this. Before we can help others, especially when we can't really fix it in the first place, priority is to take care of ourselves. I'm trying to work on this... .

4. Being mindful of ourselves -

This one is quite advance I feel, there are resources out there about the techniques. The way I look at it, if I feel like s*** because someone is projecting their own negative feeling at me, then how can I change the way I feel the next time it happens and choose to react differently? It's not suppressing your feelings and thoughts, but changing the way it is processed in the mind, for better I would hope. In progress... .

5. Understanding about underlying issues -

I empathize facing flak for hours without a break, it's still tough for me. I still forget and point 2 and 4 above.   I also try to remember what could have caused their behavior today. This needs a lot of listening time and effort to want to understand, something that I think is like being a therapist  :'( To give an analogy, you know someone that refuses to walk a stretch of road and insists on taking a vehicle or going the longer way, it makes you angry because it's senseless, until you found out they were previously mugged or assaulted at that place. Then it makes sense, and you probably won't try persuading them again. Yes it could be trivial, but for someone with BPD, it means a whole lot (that I have learned).

Hang in there, you can overcome the doubts and may the dark clouds past.

Hi overwhelmedandconfused,

    I feel that you and I are in very similar relationships, though mine is in a different state currently. I was in the same state you're currently in with my wife about 3 years ago. After 5 years of cyclical arguments, black/white thinking and actions, pushing away all immediate family (both of ours) and friends, among other toxic behaviors I had finally had enough. I told her I couldn't be with her anymore for my own well being. She begged, she pleaded, and she raged. I still remained strong and said no. Then she confessed to me that she had been sexually abused by her father as a child and had been wanting to tell me for sometime. Of course, that took all my defenses down and I felt like I couldn't leave her after this admission. She had finally come to terms with a terribly traumatic aspect of her life and I felt trapped. My only saving grace was that I told her I would only stay if we went to couple's therapy and she went to therapy for her childhood issues. She agreed. I wasn't exactly ecstatic but it was better start than going back to the Hell I was in.

Couple's therapy helped tremendously since I could openly speak my mind during sessions without fear of immediate rages. Additionally, my wife got on very strong anti-anxiety medication and her mood swings began to decrease very soon. We were both committed to making couple's therapy work. I can admit here that I was definitely skeptical going into therapy, but I knew that I couldn't leave the relationship without making a valid effort of trying to make it work with professional help when it was an option.

Things are much better between us these days but I'm still not sure at what cost. My wife is a very intelligent, high functioning uBPD. Her and I both know she has the most brains in the relationship and she's also older than me, so I often deferred to her guidance, "wisdom," and more responsible nature the first few years in our relationship. I can only now see how I let her illness take the reins in the relationship even when I knew it was against my better judgement because I thought myself too naive or unworldly compared to her. And there was almost always a bit of truth in her illogic which could convince me into estranging my immediate family and close friends. I'm still trying to put all the pieces together and make sense of our relationship. Honestly, if I could do it all over again I would have left her after the first or second year of our relationship when all the red flags started popping up. But, I didn't and we are indeed married. I love her and I could never pretend or doubt that I don't. Divorce isn't an option to me. But if it is to you then consider it strongly. Especially since you have a child to consider as well. Your family would probably be more accepting and willing to help since you have a child and they probably don't reach out anymore because of fear. Best of luck to you.

I agree with others that you need to take care of yourself first.  We aren't strong enough to handle the enormous flood of stuff thrown at us mentally unless we do.

I have gone to therapy, read books, read stuff online, talked with close friends (who know who you can trust to talk about this)

Make sure you don't stop outside activities no matter what he says or does.  You need to keep a life going, you need to build yourself up, include physical activities in that, any sport you like, gym class, I do Nia because it is a very zen dance class, but yoga, etc is good for gaining peace.

My H is very good at trying to follow me also during rages, I have learned over time to slowly leave room and go to bathroom and lock door and refuse to answer no matter what he says.  Normally I just leave room but if he follows I do that.  I have also left house and just gone to a coffee place for a few hours.

When they don't have you to mentally punch at, the rage usually stops pretty fast.  My H is high functioning also. 

I am lucky I get sometimes up to a few weeks before he really flips, but that makes it hard also because its easy to lower your guard and not be ready.

Hi

I agree also, get well, look after yourself if he does not like it leave.

As I have gotten better and less codependant over the past year of being on the board she has decided to look at herself and her behavoir and we are now looking for help for her.

We did couple counselling from April to July after a one month separation.

I told her I wanted a divorce last weekend after a few drama filled days and she is willing to look at herself and determine why she cannot control her emotions.

She now realizes that trying to lie her way out of situations will lead to divorce as I do not tolerate that any longer.

Joe :)