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BPDw packed up and moved out over the past two weeks. She wanted a temporary or "therapeutic" separation.

This weekend she came to visit the kids and me. We talked a lot, and she told me three key things:

1. She has low self esteem and thought marrying me would fix it.

2. She realizes that she has been angry at me for not making her feel better about herself and has pushed me away because she felt abandoned.

3. She apologized over and over for expecting me to be able to fix a problem she has had since childhood.  

Yesterday morning she called and said she realizes she has made a huge mistake, that she cannot run away from herself. She asked if she could come home if she agreed to stepping up therapy, going to partial hospitalization or an alternative provided by Dr. Psych or Dr. GP, and MC for the two of us. I said yes (those were the conditions I laid out to her previously), expecting her to move back in the next few weeks.

I then get a second call in the afternoon. She is home cooking dinner, has appointments set with T, needs my schedule for MC, and has calls in to Dr. Psych and Dr. GP's offices.    

I am optimistic at this point based on her self awareness of her problems.

Congratulations!  I keep praying this day will come for me put I lose more and more optimism as time passes.  I hope things continue upward for you and your wife.

This is good news for you and prompted me to post about the events lately with my partner.

I think it is this willingness on their part to accept that change can only come from themselves instead of blaming everyone else, that is the key to ongoing relationship success. As your wife said she has realised you can't be expected to fix her.

I'm 6 weeks with the new 'self aware' partner and things are going well.

Thank you. Stay optimistic, our BPD SO's need optimism in their lives!


6 weeks in... .glad to see that!

The change here is not that she sees how she has been acting and knows she has to change. She has been there before.

The change is the self awareness of why she acts the way she does and the willingness to get the professional help to fix it. That is where my optimism for her to better control the BPD is coming from.  

Insight and willingness is good, but it can  become too much of a burden for them to carry too long.

Be aware of any self loathing this may bring about, as they attempt to overcompensate.

They are still no more capable of coping than they were before

Absolutely. Though she has had some real awakenings and feels better than she has in a long time, she is still going to pursue extensive therapy on her own and MC with me. As she put it this morning, she needs professional help to keep going in the right direction and to address core shame issues. The fact that she used the term "core shame" tells me she has been reading up on her problems or her T brought it up. Either way, there is awareness of what and why and a willingness to get help.

Hi Cole

My partner has made impressive strides in therapy.    It has taken quite a while.  9 years to be exact.   Along the way she has learned better skills at handling things that used to be huge challenges.     For example she has become more accepting of difference of opinions between us or different schedules.    Right now my work situation changed literally on a  dime and with a days notice I changed positions.    No dsyregulation.   We are living apart and making it work.   I'm not sure how she is processing this and that is okay.    It's up to her to figure things out and let me know.     

I will say also that I have changed a lot too.  I had to completely accept her for all of what she is,  the good and the not so good.  It was surprising how much better things got when I  relaxed.

Babyducks

I think this is a prerequisite before they stand any chance of improving. I think this is the most critical turning point

|iiii Indeed.

If YOU get caught up in reacting to her *stuff* then you provide a perfect distraction that guarantees she won't actually address it.

Your changes are no guarantee that she will change too... .but it is a prerequisite.

In my marriage, it took ME two years from starting to realize there was a problem with how my wife was treating me until I figured out that it was abusive, and found the tools (boundary enforcement) here to put an end to the abuse. My wife thought she started changing around the time I started, but I didn't see her behavior change until ~six months after I stopped accepting abuse, she had a breakthrough where she stopped trying to be directly verbally, or physically abusive toward me.

And those six months were incredibly hard and painful work for her. It was hard to watch at times. I later found out that she had planned how she was going to commit suicide, although she never attempted it. I'm sure it was far harder than what I saw, and that was bad enough.

If I hadn't gotten to where I wouldn't stick around for any abuse, she wouldn't have figured out that she could stop it and found other coping mechanisms.

(Other crap happened, and we are now separated and our marriage is ending, but it wasn't because of direct abuse.)

Cole, I know you've hung in there and worked really hard on your own issues.  |iiii  I hope your wife realizes how much you love her and works equally hard at being a good partner to you.   

Thank you, Cat Familiar. Part of this is her realization that I do love her, even if she has trouble loving herself (there's a BPD trait!). She told me yesterday that her best friend, who has stood by her through all this, laid into her after she moved out and basically asked W what the hell was wrong with her. BFF then told W that if she wanted a separation then I was fair game because BFF would love to have a nice guy like me in her life.

W knew she was not serious, but apparently it hit home with her.

Good for her friend! It must be nice to feel appreciated and to have her friend acknowledge that you're a good guy!

pwBPD sure have a hard time loving themselves, or even being kind to themselves. I think, by extension, we get into territory similar to what Woody Allen described as "not wanting to belong to a club that would admit him as a member." Another good reason to keep our self-respect intact and our boundaries healthy.

Absolutely. We cannot allow tem to pull us down their rabbit holes.

Right now she is dealing with serious core shame issues based on the way she has been acting the last few years and particularly the last few months. I am optimistic she can work through this with the help of her T, our MC and our Priest.