BPDFamily.com

And BPD husband probably can't hear, reflect (except robotically), or understand.

Back in December, a couple of nights before leaving for a family dream vacay in Hawaii that DH almost totally sabotaged with drama (could write a novel about THAT!), I participated in a fundraising monologue event. I'm a writer, and my friend facilitates these events to raise money for various causes. I spent the week in group, and worked on a piece about parenting. After some resistance of my own (I was coming off my first semester in grad school, where I'm also a TA, and was DEPLETED!) I wrote a fresh new piece in about an hour that was actually almost polished enough to present. It was about how my oldest daughter, who is now 18, almost died as an infant.

It felt AMAZING to write an entire piece like that, as I struggled with some of my projects over the course of the semester.

My DH came to the performance. I sat up on stage with the other speakers, one of whom was a man. It was organized such that the presenter at any given time walked up and stood at upstage with the other participants still seated behind. Anyway, when I gave my monologue I did GREAT, and felt wonderful, until I got to one part of it when... .my throat closed up. Almost losing my daughter hit me HARD, and suddenly. I struggled through the rest of the piece, fighting back tears and trying to steady my voice. I glanced once at my DH during this time and saw him watching me with his half smile that I know so well. It's a "half accepting" smile. Mind you, my daughter is his step daughter, but he loves her and has been in her life since she was 5.

After the performance, I went over to my husband feeling like I was walking on a cloud. The whole thing felt so cathartic!

Until he opened his mouth.

The first thing he said, after he dutifully hugged me, was that I had mispronounced a word (I have no recollection of that, but whatever). Then DH said it looked like I was staring at the male participant's butt the entire time he was reading.

I was stunned and hurt. I said something in the car on the way home about how deflating his comments were, and he gave me some pat response about trying to be funny, but that was it. I got little to no feedback/reflection/commiseration whatsoever on the emotional impact of the piece.

This many months later, I'm still really hurt by this and am reluctant to bring it up with him. I try REALLY hard to model the "don't bring up the past" rule of thumb, because otherwise our arguments are ridiculous.

So I guess I just needed to vent in a forum where others would maybe nod their heads and relate. Feels good even just typing it all out, actually.