BPDFamily.com

Hey folks, having a tough go of it the last couple days.  spouse wBPD traits moving out after 10 year marriage and in process of divorce. 

When I first got to this site I was feeling a great sense of relief to have an explanation of what had been going on.  It fit so well, felt like vindication from all my internal self-doubt.  But as the days countdown to her moving out (July 25), I keep getting lower and lower. 

I have been scrolling the Q&A board looking to find out how to diagnose myself as BP.  Found my resource, I identify with 6 out of the 20 most common BPD beliefs.  Feeling like I am the sick one and she is too but perhaps I didn't listen to her enough and pushed too hard.

Intellectually I know my thoughts do not match the experience but internally I feel deeply to blame.  I suspect that this is some of the reason that I was involved like this for so long. 

My self blame perpetuates itself along the line of feeling deeply alone, needing to abandon myself to be loved and I had a chance to get what I wanted but blew it.

Can anyone offer truthful words to help understand this?  Does anyone relate to this?

I really thought our marriage was a vindication and release from these internal feelings.  But even after a 13 year long r/s these feelings now seem to be just as present as they were then, despite all the additional years of therapy and "healing" i thought I had earned.

My therapist said something really sucky tonight, I told her that I was feeling all of the above and her comment was "maybe you are right".  grrrr... .  Does that make her a BPD too?

The question is not are you BPD or ABC - its really what physiological problems you face and getting on a path to heal them.

We tend to want to label this stuff early and its just not easy.

Its a big deal when your wife moves out - a stressor - divorce is a stressor - so you are going to experience tense emotions from that, regardless.

What symptoms do you struggle with (and have struggled with periodically through out your life?)

Internal emptiness and alone are the primary feelings.  Not knowing what I am going to do next and what is the meaning of all I am doing anyway.  I just feel so damned empty.  Kind of like, I am watching the world while being stuck in a fish bowl. 

I suppose some of my self blame is actually guilt.  Guilt that I accuse her of being BP but then she is the one taking initiative to end the marriage and leaving while I am an emotional mess, feel abandoned and betrayed and fearful of slipping into a state of mental confusion/sickness and being a lonely old man.  She told me once that; I would end up a lonely old man, after I was unable to adopt with her.  I told her how painful it was for her to say that but this did not remove the message she seeded.  Actually, it it cut right into the heart of my fears.

Part of her comment was in reference to the fact that my family (of 7) all live within 20 miles of me and none of us speak or interact with each other at all (I suspect this is some of my emptiness).  And my Mother is definitely very mentally ill closer to psychotic than BPD. 

Overall, I am a very high functioning individual with a good job, good support network and close friends and others that love me.  My friends have the utmost confidence in me and they are actually really glad that she is leaving.  In their words, "you can do much better, you just can't see it at the moment".  Sometimes I soothe myself fantasizing on that and that my wife is messed up and I will meet the girl of my dreams.  But there were many years that I lived in the fish bowl before we met and now the fears of returning to it have surfaced in earnest.

Maybe I hid behind the marriage or buoyed my faltering sense of self with it and that is why I stayed so long despite seeing all the problems?  Now, regardless of her condition, my condition is becoming prevalent for me. 

Not sure how this relates but I feel fine when I am with others that I know care and I can trust.  All these bad feelings go away when I am physically with them.  Weird, almost like if I had my parents with me I would be fine or more accurately, feel safe.

I know this board is for non's recovering but somehow in thinking about all this I wonder how much of this is really about me and not her.