BPDFamily.com

Hi everyone.  This is my first post ever about my husband.  He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder about 2007 and borderline in 2011. 
It started out with us meeting at work in 1992 and marrying in 1994.  Everything was wonderful between us.  Then we worked opposite shifts.  He would change his appearance and fixate on another woman and would deny it.

We worked at the same place so that made it that much more humiliating.  Somehow he would convince me it was in my head.  So charming was he that even my parents and friends didn't believe me.  They all convinced me I was the problem, not him.  This started my journey of going to my doctor over and over for help with a mental illness I had been convinced into believing I had.  Surprisingly, for years I was told I don't have a mental illness, just under a lot of stress at times.

I'll try to simplify things.

1) 1998 pregnant, his female co-workers workers would say " gee *** she's not THAT big, they would all laugh at me (including my husband) some would even place hands in my abdomen.
2) calls to and from another woman he worked with
3) same woman telling me how unappreciative and such I am towards my husband
4) same woman coming to my hospital room to tell me how poorly I "did" during labor.  What the heck?
5)1999 different town and job, new woman... sigh
6) calls to our home, private conversations, you get the idea.  Leaving home for Wal-Mart for hours and bringing nothing home.
7) same woman teasing me that they screw in his office.  We all worked at the same place.  Fun... .
8) different woman telling me she visits my husband in his office, just wanted me to know that.  She would tell me whenever she saw me about different men she picked up for sex such as a man and his father...   gross.
9) husband denied everything, all in my head, maybe I had done something to these women to make them hate me, after all, "I love you, I would never cheat on you, even your own family knows you have issues, you really need help ". Tears from his eyes.
10) more doctors visits and yet no psych meds for me.  Duh.
11) same issues, same women, new women etc til 2002.
12) 2002 big fight, he tells me I am crazy etc... and he's tired if being asked repeatedly if he's cheating si he may as well do it and he has someone picked out already.
13) extra large panties in my house, car and truck.
14) he insists on moving into town
15) 2003 hidden email, texting, more panties found.
16)2004 I start getting emails telling me how much I am hated, quit your job , my car keys are stolen at work, sister of his co-worker tells me her sister has been trying to screw my husband for years.
17)we work same shift now, same place.  Treats me like I din exist, buys extra food etc.  for a co-worker.  Won't tell me who.
18) harassment from his co-worker s telling me how awful I am to him, etc. 
18) I change shift because of the humiliation.
19) verbal abuse has gotten horrible.  I am now a fat, lazy, horrible mother and I should kill myself.
20) texts, emails pornographic of 240 pond young unbathed, unshaven, etc... skank are being sent to our kids.  He denies he knows her.
21) I weigh 124 pounds yet he tells me I'm fat.
22) of course I am crazy, all in my head, kids are liars and so am I.
23) red thong panties found under my bed are stretched to over 3 feet wide.  I found them while trying to find "that putrid odor".
24) I'm still crazy, all in my head.  Even though I have found posts if hum naked in alt. Porn site.  And her.  Each with their own page, and they work together.  Nice.  She's obese, looks like a man. My kids ask why are there pics of a "tranny" and why are they getting E-mail s from her, us Dad gay?  On and on.
Phew!; That's a lot of venting for now.  Will continue later.  Give everyone who us interested in reading my post time to ponder.  And yes, it gets worse... .

Hi akanobody,

and *welcome*


Some people with BPD (pwBPD) are so charming that they are compared to the Greek mythological "sirens."  Sirens sang a song that would cause sailors to willingly shipwreck themselves in order to continue hearing the siren's song.

They can make great salesmen or promoters, but watch out if you end up in a relationship with one.


They can charm you to the point that you don't know what is real anymore.


And they can charm other people into believing just about anything else.

Usually they do so by offering something you desperately want and then demand that you subscribe to their distortions/delusions in order to get it.

This other woman was probably encouraged to believe that you were unappreciated towards your husband and that you are a bad mother -- I can only imagine that he was offering something that she desperately wanted, and he would give it (or the illusion of it) to her so long as she believed... .


I can't tell you why your husband chooses to cheat on you.  But my understanding of this disorder is that pwBPD are dominated by the fear of abandonment.  To the point that they will imagine abandonment even where there is not. Intimacy and familiarity seems to be a trigger for this disordered fear of abandonment.

So, in a way, maybe the closer he feels towards you, the more your husband may be experiencing his disordered fear of abandonment; that is, the more he loves you, the more he becomes convinced that you are going to abandon him. And the best way for pwBPD to avoid this imagined abandonment, is to be the one who abandons first, often by cheating (emotionally or officially).

So every time he feels too close to you to the point that his disordered feelings overwhelms him, maybe he chooses to abandon you first, by finding and charming a willing and available woman.


And after his disordered feeling abate, he doesn't understand why he felt/acted the way he did in the first place. Or he perhaps even blots it out of his mind; avoids facing it.  And he comes back to you and he *recycles* you.

Sadly, there is nothing you can do to resolve his disordered feelings. He needs to accept that he has a problem and he needs to choose to do something about it.  His behavior of cheating may be his chosen method of avoiding/dealing with his disordered feelings.


You husband may be using other people not only to avoid abandonment (by abandoning you) but also in order to reinforce his own delusions, the biggest delusion being that he doesn't have a serious problem. In his mind, if *you* have the problem, then he doesn't have the problem.

And if he can charm and convince other people into subscribing to his distorted perspective, that only serves to help him to continue avoiding what he's been avoiding the whole time he's been with you (and possibly for most of his life).



It's a distorted way of thinking. But it is common for pwBPD.  Look up "dialectical behavioral therapy" and that will give you an idea of the kind of distorted thinking pwBPD have to deal with.

"I am rubber, you are glue. What bounces off me, sticks on you."

You are in the right place.

Best wishes,

Schwing

If your children are or were under 18, #20 is a crime, if it was pornography as defined by law.