BPDFamily.com

Hello,

First time post but have been reading on this forum for a while. I am in a spot that countless others have been in. I need a sound board besides my family and friends (everyone wants me to take care of myself and end my marriage). I apologize for the long post, it felt good once I started to talk things out.

I have been married to my wife for about 3 years and dated off and on for 12 years.  I knew she had BPD when I agreed to marry her. Before I did so I went to a support  group in person and just heard horror stories about everyone's lives with a BPD significant other/child/parent. When I told them I was so fearful of marriage (an ultimatum she gave me that I resisted as long as I could) everyone told me not to do it. One man told me how he had been married for 25 years with his BPD wife and raised a family with her but even so if he could go back in time he would not have married her.

I never went back to the group. I told her I didn't want to do marriage and that we were over. She fell apart before me and it crushed me beyond what I thought was possible. "How could I just give up?" "I love you so much why can't you just love me?" "You ARE just like everyone else, you did leave me" "How could you be so cruel" etc etc

I had a break down and wanted to hurt myself rather then deal with the guilt having caused her so much pain. I felt worthless and terrible. I called my mom and heard her break down over the phone when I told her how bad I felt and how hopeless I was. I felt trapped. If i left she would hurt herself again, maybe this time for real. How can I hold her warped mind against her when she was trying her best. If we both try we can overcome this.

Fast forward 1 year. I had been accepted into a doctoral program for something I never thought I could achieve, most of it because of her encouragement. I never could find a path for myself career wise and this was working out. I got accepted into my top school with a great program close to our house that we had just purchased. I was so happy and proud. As the semester went on I came to realize the department was in shambles. The best professor had passed away and there was a leadership war among the faculty. My class was in for a tough ride. My wife had to take a job away from home to make enough money to pay for our large house that I was reluctant to get initially but gave in. I was so happy she was away. I could do anything I wanted. I had a hard time staying focused on school because I never had such freedom. Then her depression got much worse and she would have suicide threats with me on the phone the night before a midterm. I had to get other people to talk to her so I could try and stay on track. I got more and more behind in my classes. When she was home I had to upkeep the house or face her wrath or lack of love. I needed to study all the time but I couldn't. I failed out of the program. I had ruined everything. "Why didn't you study harder?" was an actual question she asked me.

A few months later during Christmas holidays she had to be taken to the hospital for a suicide attempt. I broke down and told my whole family about it because I was just numb. She had asked me to come home from my parents house a day early and I didn't want to because I missed my family. My mom had to drive me to the hospital to see her. I still fear she could leave me like that.

Now 2 years later, for about 9 months she has been fighting me about having a baby. I tell her there is no way she is ready to carry a child and that I can't handle her through the process. We go to a couples therapist who tries to help us. We focus on finances and other things because those are tangible.  After every session she breaks away from me and we have to reconnect with dinner that night. Sometimes we don't reconnect. She is 30 and she is terrified of getting too old to have children. She had ovarian cancer as a teenager and her intestines just shut down another time so she has had medical issues she is terrified will cause issues with pregnancy. She says if I'm not ready to have a child then she can't wait for me to get there. We will have to end it. I don't want this, I beg her to give me more time to try and make myself ready. All my life I just wanted to be a stay at home dad and raise my kids. She makes all the money and I just have a job to help out. Everything in her eyes is ready to go. She tells me "Why am I dragging my feet? Why do I always drag my feet? This is your habit that you get stuck in! Just like marriage! You are afraid of change!" I get frustrated because she just talks at me in a loop with the same points and if I interject I make her angry and she feels invalidated. She tries to end our marriage 3 months ago but I ask for yet more time, telling her to just trust me.

The months creep by and nothing changes. She is sad and numb because she thinks or knows I won't change my mind. Our relationship suffers. It festers into anything. She doesn't feel loved by me so we are hardly intimate and I feel I am trapped in this marriage that is just painful. I try to convince her we can make it work. I change my schedule to be healthier and more available. I go to work, take the dog to the park, come home and eat dinner with her, spend time with her by watching a show together, then go to bed because I get up very early.

This routine makes me so sad. I want time to myself. I feel like on any given day her world will fall apart and my day is now dedicated to helping her back up. Or maybe I tell her in a week advance I need Friday to myself. Friday will come and I will excuse myself and she will flare up with anger that I want to do something without her. She recognizes it and tells me to just go because she will be mad and have to come around. I sit in my office just terrified the door will open and she will start screaming at me about something because that used to happen years ago. I still have anxiety from it.

One thing I demanded of her before I got married to her was that she go to and stay in therapy. This is the part that hurts me so much. She has been going to therapy. For our marriage she is doing that. She went away for 3 weeks to rehab to get help with her eating disorder. I was proud she took that step. That was 2 years ago and nothing as intense since. I don't talk to her about her therapy, I don't know what she is doing. I go to a therapist and just talk about her. Just rant and get mad at the universe that we can't fix a person's mis-wired mind. Hate myself that I love her so much and she loves me.

Fast forward to last week, the date of my ultimatum. I tell her that no, I am not ready and don't know when I will be. I can't trust her. She still will cut herself (down to once maybe every few months or longer when before it was daily). She still self destructs. She has a terrible body image of herself. She doesn't love herself. She still purges occasionally and justifies it by drinking too much to make herself sick. All of this is in my head and then also the fear that what do I do if she hurts herself while pregnant or once we have kids? I tell her no, I'm not ready. She cries and begs me to take a leap of faith. We have made it this far, we will get through it. It's just us vs the world. All the things I have said to her over and over to try and build her up.

I didn't mention how a month ago she got scared and just packed up her stuff to leave. That way I couldn't hurt her, she would just do it for me. We have housemates living with us to help pay rent and credit card debt. The housemates have been my extended support. They are her friends and so we take shifts with her. I could go hang out with a friend because I knew someone was there with her. When she was trying to pack up and leave, my housemate stopped her and talked to her for an hour. I was on my way home and I just pulled over in a parking lot and sat there for an hour hoping she would just be gone because I was such a coward. Her leaving would just be easier then me being the one to end it. I got home and she was still there so I did the motions of convincing her to stay. After an hour I told her to make her mind up and I'll be inside making dinner. My 2nd housemate goes and talks to her after me for another hour. She comes back inside and hugs me and says she will never do that again. She has decided to not give up.

Yet we are here at the appointed time for my decision and I tell her no. I can actually justify it to myself that this is crazy and in no way the right time. She begs me and cries for 3 hours and I just watch this beautiful creature suffer and have her world upended and I've let her down. How could I lie to her? I had told her I wanted a family but now I don't. I stuck to my guns. The first time in forever because this was something I couldn't compromise on. I left to go to the pharmacy to pick up medication and I called my mom sobbing that my marriage was over because  this was it. I felt so guilty and wretched. She was doing everything I asked by going to therapy.

There were improvements. She was getting "better" in a way. I was just giving up on her, on us. I have been off and on with this woman for 12 years. I have seen her at her worse when I first met her. She is a different person now and she is so smart. She is working on trying to change her thought patterns. She catches herself and will apologize to me. I am stunned when this happens because it normally doesn't. I see the improvement. But I also see the times when I can't make her feel loved and it devastates me. What is life going to be like when our housemates leave? I can't even fathom it. She was forced to keep her friendships in tact since they lived with us but once they were gone it would be easy for her to just cut them out.

I decide to stay with a friend because I can't handle seeing her hurt so much because of me. She texts me and begs me to come home. I know it will be the wrong decision. She begs. I come home and she tells me she just wants me in the house because it doesn't feel like complete rejection to her. I go to bed and I hear her come in the room to get a handful of pills to take while she is drinking. I tell myself she is her own adult and I can't control her or make her stop. My housemates are up with her as well.

She crawls into bed with me late that night and I just hold her and melt. I miss her so much. I am everything to her and I hurt her so much. The next morning I try to tell her again why I don't want this. She wants me to tell her what a compromise would be and I can't. I tell her to do outpatient therapy, just do more, are you doing everything you can? She talks to me about what she has been working on. Her shame and fear about sexual abuse she has been working through. Body image issues tied to that as well. Her current therapist thinks its not BPD but PTSD and I don't believe that could be possible after everything I know about BPD and her but I know very little about PTSD. I tell her I will talk to my therapist that night about possible compromises. She is hopeful. I speak with my therapist and just simply realize there is NO compromise. I will not have a child with her now... .but would I ever want that? Would that ever change? I break down and just scream at my therapist about how screwed up this world is that I am going to leave her even after she has done everything I asked her to. She tried so hard and is still trying. Why can't I just be strong? Its not her fault, she deserves to be loved by someone, I know how wonderful she can be. WHY CAN'T IT JUST BE ME? I'm an extremely sensitive and compassionate person and if I can't do this who can? Why should she be denied a family because her parents were so terrible to her to make her this warped being.

I decide to just go away and I leave her a text saying I can't talk to her. I abandon her because I can't face her. The shame and pain hurts me too much. She doesn't understand what I'm doing. Everything was fine, we were working to be better, how could I just leave her? She just wanted to have a normal night without the baby issue and I'm just gone.

A week passes and I have ignored her calls and texts. Each time I read one I'm crying on the floor because I feel so guilty and terrible at hurting her. She is hurt, wants me to not give up. Then she is angry and mad I lied to her. Then back to "Please don't leave me, I don't want a divorce, I love you so much", but I continue to ignore her.

My family knows everything. Their relationship with her is forever tainted. My parents have come out and told me they can't be there if I go back to her because they can't handle the roller coaster. I understand but it hurts to hear, my family has always been everything to me and I always wanted my wife to be apart of that. I come to the decision that we need to be done. She can find someone else that needs what she has to offer. I want to be free. I want to start over. I am sad the almost suburban life is not going to happen because of me.

The time apart drives her crazy. She is broken all week. Not functioning with anything and my housemates resent me for just disappearing. I don't really care about their opinions. Near the end of the week I feel better. I feel hopeful. I know I will be ok because I have friends and family, places to stay, support. She has just me and our housemates, her family is up north across the country. I tell myself how quick she finds someone when we broke up all the time in college. She would have someone else and I would want nothing to do with anyone until we ended up together somehow. How could I, a shy guy with not much self worth be with this attractive and passionate woman?

I got the courage to speak to her after a week and I did it mainly for her. I know I didn't handle the situation well at all by just leaving. She said she could respect my time apart but just wanted it in person rather then me just leaving abruptly. She tells me on the phone how she has taken this time to self reflect and that she doesn't want the kid if I'm not ready. She is sorry she pushed it so. She doesn't know why she acts that way but this whole event has forced her to realize that all she wants is me. She just wants me. She's begging me for another chance. She didn't know I was this upset about things. She can do better. Can't I see how she was working on things for me? She was trying to be more intimate lately, she was thinking of things to do as a couple rather then just tell me she didn't feel loved. She is trying her best, why can't I just give her another chance?

So here I am now, with my resolve corroding, so sure that the divorce was what we both needed. Could I have tried harder? Was it really that bad? I do love her so much but why was I so guilty and devastated the past week for facing my own fears and reservations? Do we really have a chance? Can she really keep getting better? Can I have faith in my beautiful wife that she will continue to work for us? Or do I just walk away, my last chance to be free? I feel so wretched.

Thank you for reading about my situation.

I think you are done nag the right thing to nag for you. You need to take care of yourself. Hang around your friends and family. Clear your head. Keep going to therapy. It gets better.

You posted on the staying board, so I think you want a reason to stay.  Ok, let me give you 2 reasons.

1.  She sounds like she is truly trying to overcome her issue and appears to have made some progress.  I couldn't count the number of people on this board that wish their spouse was actively trying to address their BPD.

2.  It sounds like a lot of the problems right now are in how you are feeling.  That is your side of the equation.  That puts a fair bit of the solution in your hands.  That is a good thing.  This board has a lot of links on the right about how to control yourself when married to a person with BPD.

P.S.  I do agree that she is not in a state where she can have children and probably never will be.  However, if you have not already, consider getting a pet.  It gives a woman something to "mother" and pwBPD often do well with pets.

Hi Anonymous777,

you are in a tough place. You post on the Improving board and ask whether it is ok to leave. Being conflicted is human but at times it is also painful  .

The way I see it is for things to work long term the

- pwBPD needs to have some self reflection and want to get better. Doing T consistently is a good way to move that direction.

- the partner of the pwBPD needs skills as pure willpower is going to be exhausted sooner or later. The strongest women or men have been brought down to their knees by BPD. One needs skills related to self care, validation and boundaries.

- some love, desire to stay together, attachment, and respect

It is good that you took steps to go away to clear your head  |iiii The way you describe the relationship is quite close, mutually supportive and at time this can cloud matters. In any case the way your relationship was going was exhausting and not sustainable. It sounds the relationship needs either to change end or to change. No matter which direction you go the change will start with you.

*welcome*,

a0