BPDFamily.com

How do I find areas of reward in this relationship?

I've have accepted that this is not "normal", that I have a spouse with a serious mental condition,  and that this will likely never be "normal".

How do I strike a "deal" with her that is not the 100% / 0% that she currently expects it to be. How close to 50/50 can it ever be?

I know what I want.

To be nurtured.

To be respected

To enjoy my time with the family.

Intimacy and affection.

Autonomy

Reciprocation of positive behaviours

Co-operation

I think these are healthy things.

Not always about quantity dont forget quality. Quality 30% is better than so so 70%.

There is no deal, you have to take it ,and enforce it, negotiations dont work. She either adapts or what?

When I started to take "my time' there would be calls about cutting arms, blood everywhere, police reports about me gone missing because I was late. Constant overdosing, trashing stuff. But I stuck to it and always came back. She adapted now I can take almost what time I like as she knows i am coming back. in return I pamper some of her neediness without attempting to draw 50%/50% lines with accompanying guilt trips.

There are nil fights about taking my time, or some of her neediness issues. As I get my "pay off" my resentment lessens and we can work on reducing the neediness a little a time without me being overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all.

Look outside the square dont look for the tradition across the board equality and balance. What gives you the greatest reward and concentrate on that, compromise on the other issues.

Hi Moselle,

I think those are absolutely healthy things. I admire your choice to try to work with your wife to maintain your relationship with her.

As far as "striking a deal" with her, or things being 50/50 -- I can only say that I think it will be very important for you to be realistic, and maintain your objective perspective. I'm not familiar with the specifics of your story, but I read your goal statement on your profile page -- and found it to be very clear. Things are rarely 50/50 with a partner suffering from a personality disorder, and BPD and NPD are pretty daunting disorders. Is your wife in treatment? If it were me, that would be a big part of any agreement, and I would also want to be included in her counseling -- not all the time, but regularly, and certainly any time her therapist thought it would make sense. I think it would be important to have a solid working r-ship with her therapist.

I really do admire you and everyone here who chooses to stay. l continue to work on accepting that I am not one of those people. I don't feel that I'm equipped, nor do I have the desire to work that hard. Maybe I'm hung up on equality in relationships, I don't know. But I know trying to make things work with my ex, whether she truly suffered from BPD or not, who knows really, was utterly exhausting -- emotionally, physically and in this last round it began to get mentally challenging as well. The only way I can envision this type of relationship working is if the partner without BPD is truly able to practice radical acceptance. Sadly, I wasn't able to do it, so I had to leave.

Good luck to you, Moselle. Your wife is lucky to have you. Take care of yourself.

Evindr thanks for your note.

She's had 4 years of treatment and she's worse now!. I think it was a convenient thing where she expected the psychiatrist to fix her. She's not grasped the concept that she needs to fix herself.  She also expects me to do it. 

I'm tired of sponsoring her therapy. I'm actually not interested in requiring it of her. If she wants to change she will choose it.

The BPD is one thing but the NPD is a very sly and cunning beast. It calculates how to gaslight you, I can see why very few NPD's actually seek treatment. It's too much fun I think and it's always everybody else's fault :-) She is absolutely convinced I have NPD.  She said it at least 10 times in a counselling session today. And when I pointed out Narcisstic rages and which of the two of us were having them, she went absolutely crazy.  There's no logic or decency at all.

           


Wow, Moselle, I'm sorry to see that you are going through something like that.

It must be tough on your self-esteem, man!

I can see your point, here, to work on clarifying what it is you want for the relationship.

It looks like what you have in front of you is not very validating. I beleive we can make many small choices to adapt ourselves and 'see', but ultimately, it's up to us to know at any time how far, how long, and for which reasons we do this.

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waverider has a good point about  'taking his own time'.

   

Moselle,

You're welcome. Sure we aren't talking about the same person?... .


Logic they do not do. My ex labelled me a narcissist after our first break-up. After we got back together, I called her on it -- and she apologized and said she didn't mean it, it was all anger, she thought she kind of went crazy without me, etc. Interesting how it came back during the second breakup -- but this time the main label was that I was suffering from untreated bipolar disorder. Mine managed to sabotage all therapy -- then claimed to be doing her own, then explained that her therapist had agreed to do biweekly phone sessions, because it was too inconvenient/expensive for her to keep attending in-office sessions. Definitely made a point of telling me that there was no difference at all between phone sessions and face-to-face visits. I'm fairly certain she made up the whole thing about the phone sessions. In the last year of our r-ship, she was dx'd as bipolar, and spent a few days under observation. Honestly, I was surprised that she even agreed to do it -- at the time, I really got my hopes up that we were ready to turn a corner. But after a day, her focus was only on doing and saying anything she could to get released, and she immediately went off the prescription she received while there. What was exasperating about that was that even she said it was "like a miracle." But the first thing she did when they told her they were going to try the med was look up the side effects, and then of course after not even a week's worth of dosages, she immediately claimed to be experiencing akathisia, one of the drug's possible, albeit uncommon, side effects. So, she went off it before it even had a chance to really work. Or not -- how could I really know? (And she never hesitated to point that out to me -- I said something like, "maybe your body is still adapting to the med" -- and I got, "I can't believe you would say that to me! You aren't a doctor! I could be dying!" So, she got herself a different Rx -- which she took according to her own schedule -- in other words, not as prescribed. She literally would pull the capsules apart and dump out some amount of the med, then take the rest, and other times skipped dosages altogether. Never complied with ongoing talk therapy -- and if I tried to raise it, immediately it turned into a thing -- with me being the big bad nasty critical a-hole partner. I asked her about the capsule thing, for instance -- and was immediately told, "My doc said it's ok. You don't have to worry. I would never do anything that I shouldn't do. You know how I am about my deications. Don't worry, honey!" Exasperating!

In retrospect, I think she agreed to do the in-patient thing partly out of fear for her own well-being -- she had a lot of psychosomatic stuff going on, and some real health issues -- and partly to placate me. Maybe secretly to get some Dx other than BPD locked in? Who knows. Nothing changed for long. And I'm not a doc. But I know when my gut is telling me that something's off -- and there was a lot off with that behavior.

But, no. They don't do logic.

Very well put.  What I tell others also when then ask why I stay.