BPDFamily.com

I didn't know what hit me;  It was the most intense relationship of my life.  She asked me to marry her a few months after we started dating.  I waited to propose for some time thereafter, but I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her as well.  

I struggle with understanding what I'm dealing with:  my wife had a documented mental illness prior to me ever meeting her, but she had become medication compliant, had ceased using drugs or alcohol, and she truly seemed to want to live as normal of a life as possible.  Yes her relationships were stormy and had often ended in spectacular fashion, but I attributed those breakups and/or incidents to having not previously been medication compliant and engaging in substance abuse.  No more substance abuse, taking her meds with me every evening:  recipe for success with the love of my life, right?

Several months before our wedding she lost her job, but I attributed it to the stress of the wedding and the stress of her job triggering aspects of her mental illness.  Only, without the stress of her job she didn't get better, and after the wedding she actually got worse.  Several more incredibly serious mental health diagnoses were identified, and though she was in daily treatment, we were losing ground.

For weeks on end it seemed that our only discussion involved whether or not I was going to leave her.  She would come home in the evening and barely speak, devastated by the diagnoses she had received and anguishing over her joblessness and listlessness when it came to what she wanted to do with her life.  Her anxiety was sky high.  She barely spoke to me and often floated off into the internet or her own mind. Suicide ideation became a  recurrent theme.

We had a major argument one evening about whether or not she was committed to our marriage.  I said things I regret, but it was by no means the worst crisis of our relationship.  However, it did involve questions that almost certainly triggered her fear of abandonment.  Several weeks later, after spending one of the happiest nights of my life together, I took a trip out of town only to come home to a text message that she loved me forever but she was leaving me.

To reiterate:  so many of the DSM criteria for BPD apply to my wife in spades (in fact, every single one except for explosive anger), and a number of her official diagnoses overlap with those criteria.  But the push/pull I read about so much here, the splitting, the rage; none fit with her.  Even now, her behavior doesn't fit into the total shut down I read so much about from other posters.  She didn't speak to me for weeks, but she has called, and she does text, and she still tells me she loves me, just that our marriage is over.

I'm no clinician, but every single mental health professional I've talked to about my situation - in my own personal therapy following her departure - has said some variation of "I'd have to interview her and put her through the paces, but this sounds like an obvious case of BPD."  Is it that obvious?  All the symptoms  but none of the behaviors I read so much about?  And her willingness to maintain a dialogue, albeit on her terms at her pace?

I've done a ton of therapy since she left, and I've asked my therapists "was it me?"  Codependency issues?  Some un-diagnosed PD or mental health issue of my own?  Apparently not, though there are certainly areas I can improve on.  Further, I didn't need to take care of her and frankly I wouldn't have even considered the relationship were she not taking strides to get better/maintain her mental well-being.

So far, our conversations are limited to how I'm doing in therapy I entered subsequent to her leaving (better), how she's doing (not well), and her recital of grievances from our marriage.  I had huge issues with her and had asked her to go to marriage counseling before she left, but our conversations do not broach what I want; they are about what she wants.  I do my best to remain open and not defensive, but our last conversation drifted into the realm of the inane (I asked her to spend time with me one morning when she had the morning off from treatment instead of with her fellow patients in her treatment program; this was controlling behavior)  and the fanciful (things that never happened or, in one case, happened once but got blown out to our entire relationship), at which point I told her I would respect her feelings but would not tolerate invented realities, resulting in her hanging up on me. Strangely, she still texted me throughout the day, so the damage I thought I had done is a question mark.

I love my wife.  My heart beats for her.  My family, my friends, and my therapists tell me to let her go.  I made a vow to her, I promised to love her forever and I still want to.  But, I don't know if I'm on a fool's errand trying to reconcile with her, especially given that our communications are erratic and sporadic and that, though she's heartbroken to leave me, she's made up her mind.   My texts are generally limited to I love you and I hope today is a better day, or my highest hope for you is to get well, or to tell her something that would have made her laugh when we were together, or to respond to a question she might pose to me.

The consistent message I receive from her is "I'm overwhelmed" or "today was harder than the last."  I know I'm not in control and have said as much to her repeatedly.  I've told her that I'm not looking to reconcile at the moment because there were things I wanted from our marriage that I wasn't getting and that I am focusing on me right now.  But, I want her back.  I just don't know how to do it.  I love her enough to her go, but I feel like there might be hope.  I just don't want to delude myself.

Hi Icanteven,

Welcome and hello  :)

Many members here struggle to make sense of BPD, trying to understand if there are co-morbid diagnoses and whatnot involved with their loved one's condition/s. A leading expert in BPD (Gundersen) once said that he believed BPD should have a scale for severity because that may be more significant from a treatment perspective than a checklist of 9 diagnostic criteria. I've also heard some people refer to "quiet borderline" to explain behaviors that are less externalized. 

What do you say to her when she tells you she is overwhelmed? Or that her day was harder than the last?

Sometimes we inadvertently and unknowingly undermine intimacy in the way we respond. We can share with you some of the skills and tools that have worked for members here. There are no magic formulas to win someone back, though there are definitely ways to mitigate conflict so we can stop making things worse.

We'll walk with you through this  :)

You're not alone.

LnL

LNL: "What do you say to her when she tells you she is overwhelmed? Or that her day was harder than the last?"

I tell her that I love her.  That I can't imagine how hard it must be to be going through what she's going through.  That I don't know what to do but I am here if she needs to reach out.

I don't know what else to do. 

Feeling overwhelmed, feeling that each day is harder than the last suggests she feels unworthy. She cannot replenish her emptiness with your words, she has to fill that cup herself. It's a feeling she has, and what works best is to validate that feeling.

We can do that by repeating back what was said. "You feel overwhelmed."

"Today was harder than yesterday for you."

This is validating her feelings.

A lot of the work on validation comes from suicide intervention. Researchers wanted to understand why telling suicidal patients they were loved, were wonderful, were doing fine made the patients worse. They discovered that patients responded better when therapists and loved ones validated the feelings they had, even if the reality might seem different. Validation is acknowledging and accepting the person's feelings without agreeing that they are correct feelings.

You may be able to shorten the emotional distance with her if you try to validate how she feels.

Telling someone who is suicidal that you love them may get distorted in the cognitive filter. They may feel worse because they cannot love you back appropriately. Or they feel bad that you love them and they are so badly damaged, therefore they are hurting you. All of this can build shame and make them feel even less worthy to maintain the relationship.

We have some good resources on the site about validation. My favorite one are the validating questions (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=273415.msg12586025#msg12586025) because they both validate and put responsibility for solving problems back on their shoulders, which shows you have confidence in them to work through whatever problems they are dealing with.

Is this something you think might work with your wife?

It seems like the answer is yes; not long after seeing your post she had texted me and I tried these techniques, and it felt like something broke loose in our conversation.  But, I sense that she doesn't have much faith that she will ever recover; can I validate that she feels hopeless without reinforcing her hopelessness?

So long as we are not discussing her feelings around my shortcomings as a husband and caregiver, she is very sweet, making jokes with me, occasionally telling me she loves me, solving problems with me, etc.  It is very confusing.  As I mentioned from the outset, the last night of our lives together was one of the happiest I've experienced; my wife who I'd lost in a fog of despair reverted to the woman I fell in love with years ago, if only for a night.  I realize in retrospect it was her making peace with her decision to leave, but it's confusing to me as she can be so kind in our exchanges yet have deemed a text message as an appropriate way of leaving one's spouse. 

 

Wow what a rollercoaster the last 24 hours have been.  Last night I used the validating techniques and really, really felt like I was getting somewhere .  We got all the way to her saying the deal breaker was that she didn't know if she could emotionally handle being a wife. Then, this morning, she asked for the paperwork one would need to initiate divorce proceedings and reverted back to this entire situation being my fault.

I never really understood the title of "I hate you don't leave me" till now.  Really thought I could see a light at the end of the tunnel.  Looks like the light was just a freight train... .

I don't know what to do, but it seems like I've got to accept that our marriage truly is over and that it's time to lawyer up and move on as best I can.

There are other communication skills that can work for different situations, like SET (support, empathy, truth). There are lessons here that might be useful: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56206.msg913190#msg913190

You are not validating that she is hopeless, you are listening and acknowledging and having empathy for the state of feeling hopeless she currently experiences in that moment. The truth that we know (and can tell ourselves) is that things do not remain hopeless. She probably has a much harder time with that truth.

For me, I found I rushed too quickly through S and E. It's easier to understand, much more difficult to do it effectively in a variety of situations -- it can be hard to tap into empathy when you are so befuddled by the intensity and variability someone with BPD experiences, and the distorted cognitive filter, and yet that is precisely what has to happen. To slow down and connect with the feelings, her feelings, and your own. Validating the invalid is a trap to avoid altogether and it takes some practice to learn how to communicate in a way that you do not fall into that trap.

SET worked too, but I feel like the ground beneath me is something out of Inception; my wife went from the classical I Hate You Don't Leave Me to I want to come home but I can't be what you want in the same day.

Our phone calls grow longer and longer.  They become more lucid.  The woman I fell in love with dances in and out of our conversations.  Reason creeps in.   Acceptance of reality as it is as opposed to some construct to justify her abandonment becomes more commonplace.  Stay with me my love.  

Yet she cannot.  If you told me I was in hell right now I wouldn't disbelieve you.

I  can totally empathize. I'm close to that with my husband and I am so sad... .I hope things are better since your last post.

I wish.  NC from both ends at the moment.  just wish we didn't have children involved; makes things a lot more difficult.  As I've said in other threads, there are a lot of instances I could let her go easily in; married with children makes it impossible at the moment.

Hey Icanteven,

Sorry you're going through this. We all understand how difficult these situations can be. Question for you... .What exactly do you mean when you say she has all of the symptoms but none of the behaviors of BPD?

Also, being "overwhelmed" or "depressed" or anything really for a BPD is their way of expressing how empty they feel. Eventually something triggers them and they realize that nothing externally (jobs, money, relationships) is going to feel the void in their life and they run away in depression or in hopes of finding another way to fill that void.

I hope you're making it through this okay. We are all here for you.

Thanks for the support.  What I mean is, she meets all the diagnostic criteria for BPD except inappropriate anger, and many of the BPD traits overlap with the symptoms of her official diagnoses.  And, it's not that she doesn't have ANY behaviors:  there's a long history of interpersonal relationship drama, childlike emotional states, a constant need for reassurance that she's not going to be abandoned, etc.  But, though she's sought to remain in control of our communication pathways, she's still been communicative; she tells me she loves me and misses our family; she thanks me for everything I've done for her and all the good times we shared; basically, I've not been painted black in a way that I read about so often on these boards.  That said, it's still an all or nothing situation insofar as returning to our marriage, with her choosing nothing. 

The more distance I get from the situation, the more my memory is flooded with how she's left every other man in her life who loved her as an adult:  in spectacular fashion.  Apocryphal stories that are the stuff of internet legend are real-life events in her past.  Her longest relationship (before our marriage) ended when she orchestrated a scenario by which her live-in boyfriend caught her in bed with a mutual friend, and she made sure said boyfriend would catch them in the act.  And that's not the worst thing she's ever done to a lover.  I wrote all this stuff off as her having been un-diagnosed/misdiagnosed/non-compliant in the past, but as the grieving process moves forward I'm reminded that she's had a lot of great guys in her history, and every one of them who loved her either had his guts ripped out, or would have had his guts ripped out had he actually known about the depth and breadth of her deception.

I guess when I read about BPD on the boards the major themes appear to be splitting and rage; my wife isn't a rager, and though she has cut friends and family out of her life before only to allow them back in after some "penalty phase" has elapsed, I think she sees shades of gray.  But, maybe I'm not understanding splitting, because as I mention, she is using her feelings to define her reality, and she's dead set against working on our marriage even though we have very low-grade problems that could be easily managed in a "normal" relationship.

Ahh now I understand. She doesn't have some of the major symptoms. Splitting and rage. The funny thing is mine didn't either. She never "really" rage at me at all. She cold be mean, downright cruel. Cuss me out in texts, calls, but she never went off. She was more passive aggressive and manipulative than that. She liked silent treatment and ignoring. She once said if I made her mad she just wouldn't talk to me for a while, because she knew it would bother me!

I never experienced the splitting either, although this break up I might be. The first time we broke it was so nice, and communicative and cordial. I was the right person, wrong time, she loved me etc. 6 weeks later she's back basically worshipping me. Next go around of off and on she's a little more adamant about breaking up saying it's right for us, I am chasing more than I did the first time too. I offer and exchange of our things, she's being cordial and nice this whole time, she agrees then when she sees me says she can't do the break up her feelings are too strong for me.

Now cut to my most recent break up, she basically ditched me on my birthday to probably party, called me a drama queen, and I broke up with her. No apologetic call or text, silence for a month. I finally decide I'm breaking it to get my stuff back from her place she simply replied "I'd rather not. I'm not happy with the way things ended. Please don't text me again." Feels like a split to me. I was never split this bad before. If you haven't seen some of these symptoms give it time and you probably will. Hope this helps!

Is that a common feature?  Ditching you around important events?  My wife did that a few times on majorly important days; not sure if it was her way of exerting control, but if I had done the same to her... .

As our separation has gone on the splitting has become pretty apparent in point of fact.  I'm getting the silent treatment, or, she'll do things like turn her text message read receipts on and wait three days to read a text from me.  If I can protect our kids and break this cleanly it would be a huge weight off of me.  Not sure how to do the former, but it's amazing in going back through our Internet lives together just how much nonsense I've put up with that I frankly shouldn't have, and all in the name of staying together for the kids.  Uggghhh.

Seems like it. My ex-fiancée started the breakup process roughly 5 weeks before our wedding, which is right around the time to start the marriage license. The last time I saw her was last Fri. Our original date was the 25th of this month.

Last year, the breakup drama happened around this time of the year too.

People with BPD tend to experience a lot of anxiety, often about things that may seem relatively insignificant. Even if you yourself experience anxiety, what they tend to be processing is more extreme.

PwBPD tend to be hypersensitive. There is so much more stimuli to handle, meaning much more anxiety to manage.

So when there are expectations to perform, or feel a certain way, or anything that involves pressure, their coping skills are overwhelmed and it becomes easier to check out, either by having a crisis, not showing up, starting a fight, go MIA.

Important events can be big triggers even for people who aren't BPD, though most people can maintain a degree of decorum while managing the uncomfortable feelings.

That's why BPD carers talk about validation so much. Sometimes you can alleviate the intensity of that anxiety with empathy and validation.

Yes important and significant dates I would say are big triggers for pwBPD. I was with my ex for two years. We never spent a New Years together, one she went with girlfriends the other was during one of our break ups. I spent one thanksgiving with her where she did nothing but get drunk and cry. She barely talked to me nor got me anything for one Christmas even though I gave her a present, also during one of our break ups. We have also never celebrated my birthday. I've had two when we were together, the first break up we had lasted for 6 weeks and was 10 days before my birthday, our most recent break up was the day before my birthday. Both these break ups also coincide with the anniversary of her and her ex husband which happens to be, you guessed it right around my birthday. So of course I now see all these triggers, my birthday, ex anniversary, holidays (she had to move away here far from her family to maintain joint custody), also pretty much coincided with a fight, break, or break up, all consistently every 3-6 months. Very strange pattern.

So... .last night was... .fun.  I've gone NC and disconnected from my wife on social media to the extent possible, only I hadn't unfollowed every last person she is friends with on Instagram.  And, as luck would have it, there she was last night on IG with her girlfriends, as beautiful as ever, looking happy and loved.

On one hand, I'm thrilled she's getting help and thrilled she's among friends.  On the other, I really didn't need to see her face after not seeing her for months now.  I almost feel like I'm back at square one in terms of my emotional recovery:  seeing her happy and beautiful melted me and reignited all the dormant feelings and missing her and and and.

Anyone else found themselves in the same situation?  I'm so glad she's in a good place with friends getting help;  I'm devastated that she's not reached out to her family in so long and appears not to give a s%&t about the people she left behind. 

She's moving on, so you do the same. You can't do that by holding onto her with one hand and letting go with the other. You can't control her, yet you're allowing her to control you. Time for some thought discipline. Turn your thoughts away from her and onto your own life. But yeah, seeing her all happy and beautiful has got to hit you right where counts. Now get the frick up and keep moving.

Moving forward is all I can do.  Just very hard to see her having moved on so quickly from her husband and family.  We didn't have years and years of bickering; we were a remarkably normal family until her mental health issues started massing.  It really feels like a death, except she's moving on with her life like none of this happened and the people who love her the most mean nothing.  It's brutal.

Looking happy and loved is different than feeling happy and loved.  

Social media shows a staged moment in time, it makes ephemera seem permanent and tangible and real. For the BPD sufferer in my life, what social media suggests could not be further from the truth. It is a way to get the maximum amount of attention with the least amount of intimacy or authenticity.



Loved ones can represent a lot of baggage. There can be past hurts and difficult intimate relationships that may seem impossible to fix because they require vulnerability and accountability.

I know it hurts. I sometimes look at my son's father's FB page and see the very best of who he can be. Meanwhile, he has lost custody of our son and had to take a big demotion at work to prevent full termination of employment, has a crippling substance abuse problem and you can probably guess many other details because the stories so often seem the same.

What social media often does is makes us yearn for the version of our loved ones that no longer exist. They can be staged for short periods of time with close others. For us, that self is as good as gone and we have to radically accept this other person who remains.

It is brutal. I'm so sorry.

Well, it looks like there's already an ending to this story.  After DMing mods (and getting incredibly insightful, helpful advice), talkign to my T and other mental health professionals, and visiting a couple of support groups for families of mentally ill spouses/children, I was able to engage my wife and get as close to what I'd consider closure as possible.

My wife had never been in psychotherapy before her mental health crisis.  And, after going into therapy, a lot of uncomfortable truths came out.  Turns out, she didn't leave because of a bad argument or because there was someone else or because she didn't love me any more.  Nope.  The truth is somehow much worse.

Being a wife was a mask.  I was marriage material and marrying me gave her cache and agency and helped her conform to her family and friends and my own expectations of "normal."

Being a mother was a mask.  She was supposed to have children because all her parents wanted was grandchildren, and after being married to me long enough it seemed like the right thing to do.

Being the woman I fell in love with was a mask.  The too-good-to-be-true siren who stole my heart was a facade to win men over; the real version of my wife is in many ways the opposite:  afraid of intimacy, not especially social, not especially interested in sex, not especially interested in much of anything.  Just anxious, scared, and struggling to take care of herself on a day-to-day basis.

There's a part of my brain that wants to believe this is her way of letting me down easy, but given how disinterested she seems in me or our kids or our friends, her explanation sounds imminently reasonable.

What is really, really, really, unbelievably hard about hearing this is that such a vast swath of my family's life and a majority of my adult life boils down to mental illnesses masquerading as reality.  My wife says she never wants to get married again and wants to go back to her dating pattern before she met me, because it gives her control and means she doesn't have to meet anyone's expectations except her own.

How we deal with the kids, how we deal with getting divorced, and how we get on with our lives is still TBD, but she definitely wants a divorce.  She'll love me forever and always cherish our years together and blah blah blah but this is who she is.

Not sure what else there is to say.  Thanks everyone for your kind words and support.

I'm so sorry to learn this news.  :'(

That's just so wrong. The pretense. The deceit. The worst of it is that she did it to fulfill some sort of expectation, much like my ex (except she really liked sex, but hate the intimacy requirement).

It must be so hard to hear  :'(

How long is she expected to stay in the institution?

My wife used to really show enthusiasm for sex too.  But, in retrospect, sex was more about control than about intimacy.


Good question.  Probably a few more months, though I'm not really sure what the end game is.  One of the really hard parts of this is that I can't really tell if she's making progress.  Little things can ruin entire days, and I'm not exactly sure how the stress of holding down a job and supporting herself going forward will affect her.

I honestly can't wrap my head around any of this.  Today I got a very sweet call:  I miss you and I love you but I still want to go through with getting divorced. 

Me:  Aren't we married?  Help me understand:  we are family, you are my wife, you love me, you miss me; why aren't we trying to save our marriage?

Her: I don't know I just can't.

I'm either being played for the biggest sucker ever or something is terribly wrong with the above conversation. 

Confusing. 

Are you getting any support from programs like Family Connections (http://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com/family-connections/)?

I wonder if you can connect with people who have been pushed aside during the recovery and treatment stages, to help make sense of this.

Someone in such an acute state of mental illness is usually not capable of making long lasting high impact decisions. This is not to say that she does not want to get divorced, or that she won't go through with it. Only that mental illness can be so baffling -- she has the emotions of a terribly hurt child and the reasoning powers of an adult. That in and of itself would be very confusing, not just to you, but to her. How can you know if what she says she wants is truly what she wants?

I wonder, too, if someone who had experience with this might counsel you to offer her unconditional love without making any demands. Meaning, to drop any talk of staying married and instead put the effort back on her. "If divorce will make you feel better, I want you to know that I will do that, even if every ounce of my being resists. I cannot, though, be the one to make this happen. It has to be you pulling the levers. I will be here for you, with the kids, supporting you as you go through your healing. If part of your healing is to get divorced, then that has to be something that you do for yourself. I will be taking care of myself and the kids, and working to understand what we are going through as a family."

Or something like that? I would have a hard time trusting her state of mind, while also believing that she intends to go through with it. It must come down to who she is as an individual, while also having some of the harbingers of recovery from BPD.

The only way I can imagine surviving what you are going through is to grieve the loss of the woman you loved and married, and to become very courageous and vulnerable for extended periods, for your sake and the kids.

I'll certainly check out the website.  And I think you're right, as I've gotten that same advice from a number of friends and family and mental health professionals in the last 48 hours:  we get that you love your wife to pieces, but she's gone and she's never coming back, and whatever relationship you have with her going forward will be a new relationship with new dynamics and new boundaries and new expectations.

The worst part is I really thought we were making progress, given that we've been talking more and more - to the point that we spent two hours on the phone yesterday. She just doesn't want to be my wife any more. 

Progress, whew. I can see how difficult it must be to hang in the balance like this. It seems a testament to you that you are keeping your heart open while her actions and words are so seemingly in conflict with each other. She wants you in her life; she does not want the old role?

Many pwBPD have no boundaries, emotional or otherwise. So she may "progress" as much as you are willing to let her progress, while she clings to what seems like an external boundary (my T calls them fortification, usually a sign of weak boundaries).

This may come down to your own boundaries, your own values, even though it feels like she has the power to decide what happens. You mentioned in earlier posts how important your vows are, so what might that mean in terms of your boundaries as she goes through recovery? Maybe we can help walk alongside you here and think through this together. 

Any and all help is welcome.  Part of what make this hard for me is the therapists I work with and my friends and my family and the psychologists and psychiatrists only touch parts of the elephant.  For years I asked her to do more than maintain her medication regimen, because the meds alone seemed to work for a while but they would get changed as their efficacy seemed to diminish; I can't remember her being on the same regimen for longer than a year before things had to be tweaked or wholesale mixed up.  I just thought it was the doctors trying to get their arms around what was going on, as she had only been diagnosed around the time we started dating.  Years and years later, the medication tweaks began to occur every few months and the number of meds she was on when we first started dating versus the the meds she was on when she left had literally quadrupled.

It seems crystal clear, in retrospect, that the reason the meds didn't seem to do their job was because it wasn't just a mood disorder, hence being on these boards.  And, the irony is, once she got into psychotherapy, she decompensated in a matter of months to the point that picked up numerous new official diagnoses, though as we've covered (and I don't know; she may be diagnosed and not have told me), her therapists and psychiatrist danced all around saying "borderline" without actually writing it in the chart (as an aside, there's another diagnosis they told me straight up they didn't want to write in the chart, so it wouldn't be the first time).  At least here I've got a huge community of folks who've dealt with this from both the clinical and the relationship side.

All I know is that I'm burnt out.  I want to fight the good fight and save my marriage because I love my wife, as her husband it's important to me that she knows she can count on me always, and for our children to know that mom being sick doesn't mean dad left them and ergo if they get sick... .  But I'm exhausted.  Truly, deeply exhausted.

For my health and well-being I really need to take a break, but I'm afraid that will push her all the way out the door.  So I feel stuck.  But I'm really at a place where I have to save my health for my kids and myself and if that means losing her it means losing her.  As my handle suggests, I cant' even do this any more.  I want to, but I'm wasted.

In retrospect, the title of my first post was pretty darn on point.

I can't help her.  I can't fix her.  I can't do anything but put pressure on her via trying to engage her as a wife and mother. All I can do is let go.  I told her as much today, and her last words to me were "I love you my husband." I'm about as low as I've felt in this process, at least beyond the initial 72 hours after she left, but it's a different kind of low.  Almost like a death I'm coming to grips with?

It's hard to believe, but both of us today feel like therapy blew up our marriage, in that the therapy she's been going through unlocked all the demons she had held at bay for so many years.  And, if she successfully beats those demons, she won't be the woman I fell in love with.  But, what kinda just makes me dance on the edge of sanity, is that she lumps our entire family into her thinking that we're all part of a past she'd rather not be associated with any more.

The good news is I've got tons of family to help me raise our children and that her family is finally realizing just how damaged their daughter is and getting more and more involved in the kids's lives.  Now, maybe dad can get emotionally healthy.

I never wanted to rescue my wife.  She didn't need to be rescued throughout almost all of our relationship.  But, when she decompensated, that was the end of us.  Just hope she gets better.

This is Ripley... .signing off [of this thread].

Just because... .

Father's Day came and went without so much as a text message.  Granted, Father's Day the last few years had become more and more marginalized. but to get two dozen texts from friends and family, have Facebook blow out, get all the phone calls, etc, for my own wife not to even contact me was really kind of heartbreaking, especially as I had made it a huge point to reach out on Mother's Day.

My family. my friends, even some of her friends and family all chalk it up the illnesses, but as I sat on my T's couch last night, T was the first and only person IRL to validate what is a very real emotion for me:  Great, there is a name for why my wife is so emotionally dysregulated; why the meds had to be changed and never really worked for very long; why she did what she did.  But, that is incredibly cold comfort, because in the end, it hurts just as much no matter what the reasons.  So she's incredibly ill.  So what?  :)oes it take away the profound sense of loss I feel or the almost dissociative experience of giving the children baths and putting them to bed and realizing she's not there and will never be there again?

It didn't help that my T consistently tells me that if I truly, truly love my wife I will let her go.  I have let her go!  What choice do I have?  But am I selfish for not wanting to do so?  If I had a choice and chose not to would that mean I didn't love her?

Sorry to vent, but I feel very stuck in this acceptance phase.  It hurts like a motherf*cker and to go from hoping the phone will ring to wondering why it's not ringing to accepting that it will be a surprise if it ever does has been a descent into hell.  

It hurts just as much no matter what the reasons. Amen to that.

I'm so sorry she could not acknowledge you on Father's Day, I know that had to hurt. My son's father (not in our lives anymore) sent a Happy Father's Day message to my son  :'( These are complex and painful relationships, and the pain (no matter the reasons) can often be shrouded in confusion.

I held in my feelings and did my son a disservice. My intentions were to keep us stable and I can see now that I masked my emotions and made S14 feel somewhat alone in his own despair. He dealt with having too much empathy by turning off the faucet and now he struggles to feel anything for his dad at all.

It's good that your T validates your pain and anger. It is a disorder based on fear of abandonment, and yet we ourselves are left abandoned. 

If it helps, I have not found that the acceptance phase is a phase at all. It is not linear and sometimes it is during the normalcy of daily life, the small everyday parenting moments, that can hurt the hardest, often out of nowhere with a force I can only assume is equal to the strength of the attachment I felt for someone who could not abide us, or himself for that matter.

Anger is often a part of grieving and you have to lean into it and go through it to heal it.

I've got to tell you, nothing hurts more than this kind of BPD relationship push and pull. Ive been through various different relationship scenarios in my life, but never experienced anything so mind boggling and painful as relationship / breakup with a BPD sufferer. And he's not even diagnosed, but I just know that's what it is.

I completely empathise with your quest of love for her, I'm like that too with my ex or partner... .or whatever he is right now... ? He can come or go at any moment that a meltdown strikes. At least you might be free of this awful behaviour now.

The fact you are married and wanting to whole heartedly stick to your vows I can totally understand. I am so familiar with that feeling of wondering if the phone will ring. It's quietly nerve racking. You go to dinner with friends and nod and smile, all the while feeling this underlying pain.

I'm still yet to experience what it's like to free myself from this scenario and ongoing draining pain, but I hear it's truly possible, with time. Doesn't seem like it when you're going through it though. I nearly broke away, but fell back in... .kinda regret it, it's a total up hill battle... .

You sound like a great person, and sounds like you've tried all that you can. If you focus even just a bit of that love you want to give to her on yourself instead, and credit yourself for being so caring, and try to break away and really look after yourself for a while, I hope you will feel a bit better.

How can a loving and balanced person ever make sense of BPD or conquer their demons for them... ? You're facing the hardest part, but believe in yourself and push through. Even if something shifted and got better with her at all one day, it sounds like it won't happen by waiting in the wings. Sounds like you know this and are trying to accept it, I admire you for trying. Keep at it the best you can.

... .also, I feel for you in those parenting moments. It really hits home in those moments. Total hell.

I hope you can free yourself, even if just for a while. You never know what the future holds... .

No one understands this until they go through it, ie- what it's like to love someone deeply who has a mental illness / disorder. Good on you for sharing your story and remember you're not alone. So many on this site and elsewhere feeling the same kind of heart ache. Keep at it with no contact for a while and create a healing space for yourself within that if you can. Sounds like she'd only respond to total space, if anything at all... .

I feel selfish.

Six weeks of next to no contact broken only by a handful of very brief conversations there was simply no way to avoid, the second to last of which ended with her unable to continue the call because she had become so emotionally dysregulated.

Monday I had to call her because our insurance company was giving us a hard time about some of our benefits (hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills tend to get you on the radar, shockingly) and I needed some clarification about a specific service.  But when I called, my wife sounded lucid and as clear headed as she has since before she went out on disability.  It was like getting in a time machine.  She was pleasant.  She was kind.  She was even a little flirty.  We talked about all kinds of things and I looked down and it had been 45 minutes of the old days.  But it was one day, so, whatever, right?

I called the insurance company, called her treatment center, thought I had it all squared away, then had the insurance call me with even more questions yesterday afternoon, which necessitated yet another call.  Again, she was clear headed and rational and sweet.  And, since it had been a while since I had broached the subject, I (foolishly?) sensed the opportunity to take her pulse about coming home.

ICE: You sound great  Are you ready to get back to your life yet?
Wife: I feel better but my program is really hard. I need more time
I: We're not going anywhere
W: You should
I: Why?  You're my wife; why wouldn't I wait for you?
W: Because I'm not coming home.  You think we can reconcile but we clearly see the world very differently
I: I don't want to invalidate your reasons for leaving, but I have yet to hear you articulate what they were
W: That's because you never listen to me
I: I'm sorry I didn't listen to you closely.  I'm listening now
W: I'm not doing this again
I: So, I don't remember ever hearing your reasons or even getting a hint as to what they were, and you're not going to tell me because I didn't hear reasons I don't remember you ever telling me?
W:  This is how we see the world so differently.  Move on with your life; I'm sure there are lots of women out there to make you happy who you won't have to deal with them being sick like me
I:  Just so I've got this straight, you're walking out on your family, abandoning your children, failing to honor our marriage vows, and encouraging me to see other people because you're sick and I don't listen? There's no hope for reuniting our family?
W: My choice that's what I want [hangs up]

I feel selfish because on the one hand she sounds very matter of fact, no longer labile, no longer in tears or dissociating, and like a very normal, even keel person.  Her getting well was all I wanted.  Only her being well apparently means she's only hardened her resolve to move on with her life.  And, her external behaviors - she's moving to a new time zone when her program ends, she's cut her hair and gone back to her natural color, she's applying for jobs in a completely different industry, and she's completely excised our family from her IG, FB, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts - suggests that's exactly what she's going to do.

She's getting significantly better.  I just hoped getting better would spark an interest in her family. It didn't.  I'm happy all that therapy is finally working.  I'd already started to detach heavily and move on with my life, but I had held out a spark of hope she would have a realization that there are three people who love her to pieces who just want her to come home, and that's not going to ever happen.

Just to clarify, I know exactly why she left:  her life was a lie and everything was a facade, and being with me was reaction-formation to her youth as a wild child. 

What I have yet to hear is why we can't reconcile.  So, the above is a misstatement from our conversation; I have yet to hear why we can't reconcile, not why she left.  Sorry.

I know that sitting on this side of a computer screen and not living your struggle, it's fairly easy see things differently. I think that you missed a good opportunity here though.

What she told you is that you and her see the world differently. I can't see anything in the exchange as you posted it that shows that you actually listened to what she was telling you though. Was there something left out of the discuss as posted here?

It was a long conversation, so I omitted quite a bit, but "tell me why you think that," "how do we see the world differently," "what could I do to understand the way you see the world," and various pleas to have her help me understand her were ignored or the conversation shifted gears.  Also, the "go out with other women" quip was met with "is that what you really want" and met with total silence.  I take for granted all the missing gaps in these conversations because they generally go the same way: namely, me trying to understand her point of view and giving her the chance to articulate it.  Which hardly ever happens.

By way of example, the last time we had this conversation, I felt like she was on the precipice of explaining why we couldn't reconcile.  I looked down at my phone, mentally marked the time, and said to her, "tell me why we can't; I won't argue and I won't interrupt but I need to hear in your voice why you believe our marriage and our family isn't worth saving."  I'm not exaggerating when I say that over four minutes of silence passed, which was interrupted only by another phone call that she heard the clicks for and asked if I needed to take, to which I replied no, which resulted in her responding "take the call I don't want to talk about this."

I've been waiting for months to hear any sort of explanation as to why we can't reconcile.  I've given her all the opportunities in the world.  She can't because the reason appears to be she just doesn't want to.  

I appreciate that there's probably a lot of glossing over and omissions in these stories, but have I articulated that I am trying to hear her or does it sound like I'm missing the point or not understanding your question, because any and all constructive criticism is welcome.

Thank you very much for the clarification. That really helps me understand the dynamic better.

None of us really have any way of know what is truly going on, but most often, feelings = facts to a pwBPD. So, if it is just her feelings that causing her to tell you that she doesn't believe that there is a chance at reconciliation, that becomes a fact to her.

When you combine that with pwBPD tend to avoid their feelings (raging, projection, etc. are often the result), it may be really hard for her to articulate what is going on. I would hope that after therapy that she'd be better able to handle things like that, but maybe she just isn't ready to handle this one quite yet.

Maybe you've already covered this elsewhere and I missed it, but what do you think would happen if you stopped pushing for an answer?

I had stopped.  The last time we had the conversation was maybe the middle of June?  I don't know it's a little foggy but it had been a while.  Only with her being so regulated I figured I'd take a stab.

Another part of the conversation I omitted was expressing my concern that there might come a day when she is really, truly well (I very candidly acknowledge that it's much easier to stay emotionally regulated when you've only got to worry about therapy and not your husband and children and job, which I'm almost certain would be a recipe for failure to launch out of the program), but that she would find herself in a room that no longer had a door.  She had no response to this, only the silent acknowledgement that it was a possibility.

And maybe that's it:  maybe she's willing to gamble on a future in which there is no door to walk through versus being conditioned all these years that her husband loves her and will stand with her through anything and that even if there isn't a door he will make one.

Conversations like these are invaluable in making connections.

She also may not know what she's willing to gamble on.

So, where are you at today and what is your plan for you and the kids?

It's an excellent point.  I really felt for months like "if you don't like how she feels today wait till tomorrow." 


The attorneys are involved now and we've put a lot of protections in place to ensure everything is handled on the legal front.  Honestly, I can't afford to do anything but work and be a dad right now, and those are my only two priorities in life.