BPDFamily.com

I've been married to my partner for several years. Over the years things have changed between us and life stress has mounted. As stress has increased and time has gone on, cracks in the mask my partner was wearing has shown more and more over time. I've seen pieces here and there of something I knew was off but it was absent in our courting period and only begun to creep in after the honeymoon wore off. I chalked it up to a number of things, stress, life circumstances, a lot of life changes but over time it happened more and more frequently then I noticed a pattern emerge little by little. It became very cyclical but I had no idea why, she tried to blame it on seasonal changes, an ex relationship or two, a myriad of things but I still couldn't put the pieces together because it didn't make any sense to me . Soon years had gone by and I managed to put more pieces together about why the arguments happened and what pattern they seemed to have. Eventually I suspected a personality disorder but wasn't sure what the specific issue was. The arguments remained just as cyclical and predictable throughout this.

Stress continued to increase as life circumstances changed and money became tighter than it had. We're not poor off but her lavish whims aren't affordable any longer at this point. She always promised to budget or reign in the spending but it never happened. Eventually, I found out there a number of hidden loans, secret credit cards and debts with stores I never knew about nor was told. I confronted her about this only to be met with a response that it wasn't my business. She began to project her emotions onto me, telling me I was feeling things I wasn't and things continued to devolve as both stress increased and as the mask wore away more. She began to rage scream at me in the middle of a normal conversation without provocation and it confused and scared me immensely. It wasn't normal yelling and it'd be a nonstop train of just rage screaming at me whether I responded or not, agreed or not for hours or even days. It would keep going steadily or in bursts during these time periods completely unprovoked. Later I'd find that she would be stressed and projecting her bad day onto me or assume some very strange interpretation of something benign I've said. I could say I don't particularly care for peaches and it could set off rage screaming with her thinking I've put her down because she likes peaches or she's not as good because she likes peaches or any number of strange projections. Eventually I came across articles about BPD and was shocked to see that it ticked all the boxes. Over the course of more than a year I began to mass consume every article and book I could find to try and sort out the issues in our relationship and how to better navigate it and understand the issues that cropped up in myself as a result as well as how to navigate my partner.

I've learned to better navigate quite a few things though I'm not perfect and strange things occur that external to her, makes no sense to me or anyone else around her. Everyone else is just as confused as I am and she acts like everyone around her is the problem as is the world at large and she refuse to accept that she's acting inappropriately in any format. She justifies everything she does when splitting no matter how absurd or extreme. Myself and everyone else is dragged into the carnage that occurs and left feeling poorly about themselves and the situation.

If I set appropriate boundaries, she will try to force a situation to skirt the boundary or accuse me of being insensitive or unloving because of the boundary. It's become a bit of a mess and I'm trying my best to navigate it all.

The most recent event involved us just casually having a conversation about her work issues that she brought up to get a resolution to them, only for her to start rage screaming in the middle of the conversation. She started looking at her phone briefly while I was talking then just started rage screaming incoherently in what can only be described as a verbal diarrhea of nonsense where she started accusing me of being angry for no reason despite my relaxed and calm demeanor (I was not even remotely angry.)and she kept repeating this citing her behaviors but projecting them onto me. I realized she seem to be overtaxed and was started to experience issue and tried to address her concerns only for her to devolve into bringing up every grievance she's ever had with me while accusing me of belittling her job and a melange of insecurities and projections both. I disengaged from it and excused myself to another room only for her to find an excuse to open and slam the door because the pet needed in the room (This was not remotely true and said pet was just trying to get away from the yelling and was trying to run in the opposite direction of the room I was in.)after that disturbance she began yelling through the walls and vents, insulting me for being selfish etc and devolving into a series of curses directed at me. I ignored it all and waited it out. It seemed to calm down so eventually I tried to text her to resolve the issues only for her to run me in weird paranoid circles trying to get a gotcha that doesn't exist which turned into me being stubborn and immovable allegedly. In all reality, I didn't have any desire to argue and was just trying to address how she felt and try to get things back to normal. Talking tomorrow instead of tonight was taken as a "threat" as was walking through the hallway and trying to cook dinner as I hadn't eaten all day because I was quite busy and this started as soon as she got home. I can't access the kitchen while she's in the living room and agitated or else line of sight will cause her to start spewing obscenities. I barely said anything throughout all of this but was accused of not caring anymore as well as never shutting up. The messed up thing is she will talk for hours straight without pause whether I am in the room or not and whether I respond to it or not, especially during harsher episodes. It makes no sense to me that I'm the one not shutting up when I had said only a few sentences during a several hour episode where she rage screamed the entire time.

I find it very difficult to navigate and feel a bit lost... Our relationship can be great for several months without issue or she can pull this multiple days a week. Sometimes I can see warning signs of an impending issue and I try to preempt the issue and alleviate stressors to try to avoid an episode which may or may not work but more often it's seemingly random and explosive and under higher periods of stress it can be quite frequent and more extreme. We can be out of town and she will "panic" and devolve into an episode because we took a trip even though she had complained daily for months that we needed a trip. She's gotten us thrown out of hotels because of her behavior to the point where I don't like taking trips anymore because if she doesn't cancel last minute or part way there, then there's a high risk of a hotel incident or if I'm lucky it's just a load of complaints about the trip to say she never wants to do it again. A few days go by and she complain that the city we live in is the problem but nowhere else is suitable and she amps herself up about needing to go on another trip. This goes this way for years now. There's the constant dopamine chasing. If not overspending, it's needing a trip, if not a trip then she's looking for someone to inflate her ego, if not that then there have been a couple incident where she claims she didn't know someone had feelings for her when everyone else and myself knew better and warned her only for her to end up in an embarrassing social situation where they think she's interested which she blames on everyone around her. She's never crossed the line but has hovered near it letting people pay too much attention to her to inflate her sense of self despite the fact that she's not encouraging it or not interested.

Sometimes I'm not sure how to handle it. When it's good it's great, when it's bad, it's the worst. We are very much interested in all the same things and independently so before we met and we get along great until... an episode comes up then every minor issue that ever occurred is relationship endingif she works herself up enough even though she's stated the opposite the entire period preceding it. For weeks or months she can't get enough time with me then she'll have an episode and decide that she made the biggest mistake of her life marrying me only to eventually after days calm down enough to restabilize and goes back to not getting enough time with me. At work she'll text me as much as she works to the point of interrupting my work day constantly only to complain that I'm the one texting her too much or that I somehow require that much conversation when I have repeatedly explained than when I'm at work, I need to focus on work and I expect that she needs to do the same, however she ignores anything I say in this vein only to tell me she needs phone calls and text daily during work and slacks off at work to do so.

It can be quite frustrating as I can support her immensely, encourage her, meet her needs, do everything she needs and then it's not enough or she completely changes the parameters of what she needs. She is never satisfied in the long term and frequently minimizes my work and what I do to take care of our house only to inflate herself beyond what she actually does and has explained to me that she should be a princess in a tower and everyone should recognize her station. This is utter nonsense as she doesn't do her work duties as asked reliably and then outside work, doesn't have any ambition let alone do anything where everyone should recognize how important she is. It's all very strange to me.

I've suggested counseling thinking it might help to address my issues and help her see things a bit more clearly but she refuses and makes excuses to how useless therapy and psychology is even weaponizing some poor experiences I've had when I was younger with ill equipped counselors despite the fact that I had a great relationship with a psychiatrist who helped me immensely with my anxiety issues over the course of a decade. She makes excuses for refusing any sort of treatment or counseling citing everything from getting labelled with anything to being forced to take medication etc beyond trying to weaponize experiences I've had.

She doesn't seem to believe in mental health despite the fact that she acknowledges she has serious trauma issues and depression issues. She is not diagnosed with anything because she has never gone to any form of mental health visit of any type. She does not see any value in mental health care or treatment.

She also doesn't seem to believe in my serious health issues  or mental health issues (Anxiety disorders) and has repeatedly claimed that because I have diagnosed conditions I have an advantage in life and in general credibility despite this being woefully untrue. I do not receive disability and I work. I get zero benefits from being disabled financially or socially. I might need a bit of help understanding this particular issue. It makes no sense to me.

Recently enough she had to get a job for the first time in decades and one of the few times in her entire life and since then everything has intensified greatly. If she has a day off, then the night before the day off she'll find something to split over so now twice a week most weeks like clockwork we will likely have her have an episode and have it devolve from normal conversation to rage screaming then everything she dislikes about her job, having to work at all, people taking her seriously, how I should just magically make more than I do to cover her share and finally how the relationship is crap because she's effectively not just getting what she wants. This passes and then she'll go back to texting me all day and complaining that we don't have enough time together despite half a day together after work daily and having the same days off 2 days a week.

I'm explaining as much as I can and I hope someone can relate and perhaps offer any advice on how to address any number of these issues.