BPDFamily.com

Hello, this is my first post here and I am sort of at my wits end in my relationship right now. I (27m)have been with my partner (27f)for 9 years and we have been married for 2. As is typical in many bpd relationships we have had many high highs and low lows. She is my absolute best friend and has been my only romantic partner in life. We got together fresh out of high school and have experienced many great times together. This issues come in the lows of our relationship. My partner has been in and out of therapy for the past several years and often calls it pointless or stigmatizing. I haven’t experienced verbal and physical abuse from her in times of distress with often the root cause of the argument being something mundane as she didn’t like my tone and I got defensive or that I ask her to please stop yelling or cursing at me when she’s upset. I haven’t been great to her the entire relationship either and at several points in the past I haven’t also lost my temper and pushed or yelled at her but not nearly to the frequency to which I have experienced from her.

My breaking point came about a month ago when she insisted we both stop seeing our therapists because she thought they were bigoted towards her and that they were trying to get us to break up. My counselor was supportive of my decision to stay in the relationship but emphasized that physical and verbal abuse is something that shouldn’t be experienced in a healthy relationship at all much less on a monthly basis. After dropping out things were okay for a while up until one morning she woke up and immediately began complaining about how I wasn’t good enough for her as a partner. She began throwing things and punching me. I got angry and yelled a little and left the house. My partner doesn’t have much of a support system so she called my own family in distress. I feel embarrassed. My whole family is aware of the abuse happening in our relationship and I feel that they don’t feel very comfortable with us being in this relationship. A few days after this I told her I wasn’t sure if it would be good for us the be together. She begged for me to not leave and asked what she could do for me to reconsider. She also told me she would most likely kill herself if we were not together.

I felt very bad for her and still have a lot of love and compassion for my partner so I accepted her back. I insisted she read a dbt workbook, look at finding a full time job or to make better use of her free time (she works 15 hours a week), and that she sees a therapist. She has been working on all of these things and has found a therapist that specializes in dbt and sexual difficulties (the main hot button topic of our conflict). In this time things have been better but she has still hit me from a small argument. I playfully patted her stomach while talking with her one morning and she slapped me across the face.

I feel so conflicted. I love this person very dearly but it is very hard to see a life with her that is stable in the future. I want kids but I don’t feel comfortable having children in an environment like this. I feel like I want to give her more time to change but it’s been years now and we have been dealing with the same issues we have been for what seems like forever. My family feels awkward with her and she feels awkward with them. I feel scared leaving because I don’t feel like I am very lovable to most people. I am also worried she will take her own life as she has said as much and that she would blame me if she did. I guess I try to not think about all this too much and take life one day at a time but it feels foolish and like I’m blindly walking to the edge of a cliff. She is constantly talking about wanting kids and I don’t feel comfortable being permanently tied to someone who I don’t feel like I can fully trust right now. It feels like everyone in my life who knows about this is telling me I should leave but it feels so hard. I want this relationship to work so badly. She insists that a lot of the issues in our relationship are because of my own mental issues and I don’t know what to do about that. She hated my last therapist because my therapist insisted we couldn’t work through any of my personal issues until my relationship was in a better place to do so.

What should I do?

Welcome!  You will find excellent peer support here as well as a wealth of time-tested approaches, explanations and strategies.  We've "been there, experienced that".


Angry and yelling, not good reactions yet understandable if you didn't know how to address the conflict coming out of nowhere.  Leaving the house, a very good boundary and immediate solution to lower the conflict and give your spouse time to reset a bit.

|---> People with BPD traits (pwBPD) resist Boundaries (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=329744.0), they typically despise others telling them what to do.  Therefore, boundaries are for us and depend upon us.  In its most basic form, an effective Boundary for us is, "If you do or don't do ___ then in response I will or won't do ___."

In this case, a good boundary is to state I will leave when I feel uncomfortable, abused or threatened.  However, that is not a long term solution.  The issues - her perceptions and her overreactions to them - will still be there.


On the one hand, you stood your ground that there was too much conflict.  Then she begged you to stay.  This is a well-known disordered dance, repeated push apart then pull back.  This is dysfunctional since it is an unhealthy back and forth with little getting resolved.

On the other hand, she responded to you pondering - she might see it as threatening - whether it was best to separate with her own threat to suicide.  Yes, not comparable but in a pwBPD's minds, perceptions and moods mean more than facts and reality.


While I am a strong proponent of marriage and family, the reality is that your spouse is, just like when she is with you, unlikely to be a consistent example of good mothering.  There will be some good times yet many bad times, quite inconsistent.  The extreme behaviors will not be a good example of parenting.  So until you are quite satisfied that these behavioral issues have been resolved it is a wise course to avoid having children.

I and many others here have been in your shoes facing this dilemma.  As for me, I was so clueless that I imagined that having a child would make my spouse happier with me and with life in general and stop being so dysfunctional.  It was the reverse, life became worse with a child.

For years I'd known she came from a dysfunctional, even abusive, home.  Her stepfather abused her and her sister while her mother appeased him and chose to be blind to his behaviors.  I thought I'd saved her.  However, in time small issues became major ones in her mind.  She caused conflict with her coworkers, then our mutual friends.  That's when we had a child, my hope for a positive solution.  Instead, she drew away from me and acted as though I was as bad as her stepfather.  It was only years later I came to conclude she had changed her perceptions of me when I had become a father.

But once we had a child together, our lives were forever connected.  Though I still had to separate and divorce, ending the adult relationship was vastly more complicated with the custody and parenting aspects.  Our child is now grown but his mother still has issues to this day.

That's why I recommend you find a solution to your current relationship issues before venturing into long term parenting life.