BPDFamily.com

Ok, so I have written on here before, I must thank the person who has helped me understand this more.

My wife has BPD.  Confirmed by all three parents.  Problem is, her Grandparents refuses and believes the issue is their daughter, my wife mother.  They believe their granddaughter to be ok, just suffered at the hands of an abusive and terrible mother.  Plus they are fully engulfed in their Born Again Faith. 

So, I have learned a great deal.  Main thing, I had to get myself off the fence, SHOULD I STAY, or SHOULD I GO.

For now, I have to stay, it is what best for the situation, mainly my son. 

Now whenever I try to talk about something serious, I am shut down, ignored or basically her teapot begins to boil.  I learned, now to walk away, shut up and do not interact.  This life sucks and anyone without kids, in this spot, should walk, that is the Gods honest truth.  Why put up with the type of relationship when one can find even a B relationship.

Any how, I am growing weary of the lack of communication, rude behavior and the total appearance and lack of love, respect, honesty to me. 

So basically, how can I help her realize, there is a problem, that she needs to talk to someone and seek help.  She is 39 and has had a long and hard life due to abuse she has suffered as a child.  But she also does not realize, she has taken on many of the same characteristics she so despises that her own mother possesses.  I have not told her to get help, I have not told her she has mental health issue.  She knows that I know now.

For example, we need to find a bigger place to move into in August.  She says this morning, we are moving to a place, with or without you!  Who says ___ like that to their spouse.

So how do you get one to seek help.  She MUST know something is off.  Her whole life is wrapped up around her 80s something grandparents.  No friends, cause who would put up with this. 

How can I get her to realize, she needs help.

She projects everything on me.  I found her phone on the table, saw a message she had wrote, read it, she basically painted me as a horrible husband.  I know it is projection.  But still it hurts.

I have to make a choice and I know it sucks, cause I am in ___ either way. 

pwBPD say all manner of things like, "I'm moving with or without you.".  Also, angry people without it do, too, but have a harder time hiding it from themselves, and might apologize later.  A good response might be, "have fun paying the rent/mortgage working only weekends.  As the primary breadwinner and responsible parent, WE might be the ones moving without YOU."  Maybe not :P  Anyway, BPD is not the only reason people say stuff like that - lots of couples are high conflict without a PD present.  BPD just makes it a certainty that at some point, something will be tossed at you.  And if you are tired, stressed, and getting yelled at like this a lot, it's really hard to shrug off and put it on the disease and not the person with it.   

She may know something is off, but really, she finds it easier to blame YOU for it being off than to at this point admit she is the cause of any part of it.  She is going to take time to move past this, if she even can. 

You might try reading SET tools - Support - Empathy - Truth.  It's not easy, but you support her, you empathize with her, and you try to communicate the truth with her, in that order. 

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=143695.0

^This is a link to it - it is not a guarantee that it will sink in, and some people say that you will need to repeat yourself to get it past their anti-shame guards.  I know for H is often have to repeat myself a lot in the same conversation, trying to remain calm and even the whole time, just for him to accept 50% of what I am saying if it clashes with his emotional interpretations. 

You may try getting her to open up about how she felt when she was neglected and left to eat nonsense as a child, to help her see that she should not repeat that pattern with her own child.  This would be a time to empathize with her, maybe.  Maybe don't connect all the dots at first, just get her talking and thinking about it. 

And, you CAN'T make her realize she needs help.  And help for BPD in therapy is hit or miss, because a lot of psychs don't like to mess with it since you can't just prescribe a serotonin uptake inhibitor or mood elevator.  It's a long committment. 

She is living in the same fantasy world as her grandparents, so it's comfortable for her.  Think about hobbits, and how they like to hear thing they already know and agree with (read the Fellowship of the Ring if you've not :) ).  They are uncomfortable with Bilbo and to an extent Frodo because they buck the norm, and they don't like being taken out of their comfort zones (which for hobbits is quite large).   

Gah - this is part of what we are Child Free by Choice - H dithered too long about getting married and I was not going to be a mother before that, so age is a factor, but also, with his outbursts and inability to always handle stress factors in an adult way, and my fears of repeating my parents' mistakes or making all new ones swinging to far too smothering instead of neglecting, I was worried I'd hurt any kids we had and so have chosen to not have any. 

Look, set yourself mini evaluation deadlines.  Like, at the end of each week or month, that's when you will make your decision about staying.  Take it off the table day to day - wondering every single day is part of what is making you feel so crazy.  I know this helped me - I went month to month at our worst time, then set it to 6 month intervals.  So, you're staying this week.  Let's see how you feel next Friday.