BPDFamily.com

Hi all,

I have been trying to follow the “stop caretaking” and “stop walking on eggshells” for 4 years now, with varying results. I have noted that some caretaking is essential, if you want the bpd relationship to succeed, and this is why pwbpd traditionally have many short-lived relationships, unlike those lucky enough to find a caretaker, the classic bpd fam member.

It felt like a regression today and I wanted to get people’s thoughts. My marriage has been strained over the past few weeks, but is generally stable. My bpd wife has been extremely dysregulated this week though, culminating in a very bad morning today (my birthday). The latest source of chaos was needing to go to work on my birthday, this simple act of providing for the family being taken as my choosing to spend my birthday with people other than her.

At work everyone wished me Happy Birthday and they had also all signed a card and sang and got me a cake and flowers. On the way home, bpdw was on the phone of course. I dropped the call by putting my phone in airplane mode, a trick one of my students taught me. I stopped the car, placed the cake and flowers on a public bench and the card in the bin. Drove home and had a lovely evening where my wife had gone out today and bought me lots of lovely gifts she/we can’t afford for my birthday.

Did I do wrong? I feel bad to abandon/dispose of these work gifts, though cheap they were thoughtful. Hopefully someone else chose to enjoy my cake and flowers. I know we are supposed to “stop caretaking”, let our pwbpd’s experience the real world and deal with the fact that other people like me and got to give me the card, cake, and flowers before she did. I know she wouldn’t have handled seeing those things. For reference she has previously insisted that Christmas cards and gifts from my students go in the bin, purely due to jealousy. I just wanted a peaceful evening after all the drama…

You did what you thought was right at the time to avoid any possible meltdown by your partner - and that's what we all try to do. Though in hindsight this might be taken as enabling her, rather than caretaking and setting boundaries. You did what she wanted at the end of the day and that's all she's interested in.

Maybe next time keep the presents from work so you maintain your boundary but make a big fuss over her presents, making sure she knows her presents are much more appreciated might work, letting you avoid walking on eggshells? I appreciate that it's impossible to second-guess a BPD's actions and the mere fact that others give you presents is triggering her jealousy.. been there, done that and it totally ruins what should be a happy day all round.

best wishes

Just a thought on this assumption. If a BPD-caretaker marriage is such a good thing to maintain- then- why are the people posting here unhappy in this situation? If it were necessary to be a caretaker to keep the marriage together- and the wish is to keep it together, and this is what both people want, then why would anyone ask for advice to make things different, especially if the advice leads to concerns about threatening the relationship.

It's been a while since I read that book but I don't recall it saying "don't take this advice, you need to be a caretaker if you want the marriage to succeed. Not caretaking is the reason for unstable BPD marriages so beware of this advice".

There's another side to caretaking that isn't so caring. It's managing a partner's emotions as a way of managing ones own. It's actually more self serving than to be doing caring things for the other person. I think this is why you discarded the gifts, to spare yourself your wife's reaction. I understand this- I saw my father do this many times. We did it ourselves on visits as it wasn't worth having a scene on a short visit. There were some times I chose to placate my BPD mother's feelings because, I just didn't want to deal with the reaction at the time. That wasn't all "caretaking".

The reason for the book suggestion to stop caretaking isn't to break up a marriage. It's because enabling, caretaking, someone's emotions doesn't allow for them to have the opportunity to learn to manage their own emotions better, if it were possible. They, then, remain at this level of ability.

This is your relationship to choose about what to do. What I have seen is the consequences of decades of emotional caretaking. While you said "lucky enough to find a caretaker spouse" may apply to my BPD mother, the other side of this is that she remained at the child level of emotional regulation.  Yes, this kept the marriage together, but it also maintained the dysfunctional dynamics.

You have so far been able to regain many of your boundaries- like needing your job, playing your piano, picking your clothes, by not caretaking your wife's feelings and letting her deal with them. The work gifts were not a battle to bother with. There were two sides to this. One is "she couldn't handle seeing them" and the other "you couldn't handle her reaction if she did".

I don't know the road not taken. Would my mother have gained better skills or not? One doesn't know if one isn't willing to allow the pwBPD to have the uncomfortable feelings of seeing a gift from a co-worker. The book doesn't recommend going all cold turkey at once but taking this one step at a time. Everyone chooses their battles. But if you can let go of this assumption that caretaking is necessary to keep your marriage and instead see caretaking as keeping your wife from learning her own emotional regulation skills, it may not look like it's trying to break your marriage up.