BPDFamily.com

I am listening to the Stop Walking on Eggshells book, and have not yet finished it. I have definitely not set boundaries the way that I should have up to this point. My husband has generally always been a bit more passive aggressive about his manipulations - making me feel badly about making him feel badly. I generally just back off at that point.

The big ongoing issue for me is that because my family hurt my husband (emotionally) shortly after our marriage, things escalated and we ended up cutting them off. I should not have gone along with it, though obviously things aren't as straight forward as that as I'm simplifying the story to an extreme. Nonetheless, I very strongly wish to make things right with my family and this really scares my husband. I have been taking tiny baby steps toward fixing my family relationships, but it's been years and email is still the only form of communication we have (at my husband's request). My family doesn't know my husband has BPD. His family doesn't even know. So it has been a very difficult situation to navigate.

I guess I'm just asking for any advice on how to proceed with communicating to my husband that this is very important to me. I no longer wish to compromise how I feel I should be behaving toward my family, even though I obviously love my husband and don't wish to hurt him. I have tried telling him this, and he always asks me to give him more time.

We've been married seven years, stopped talking to my family within the first year, and have now been emailing for almost two. I want to be able to meet my nieces and nephews, and see my grandparents again before time takes them. Six years is a very long time and I don't feel that waiting longer is the right thing to do. But I don't know how to communicate that to my husband without it sounding as though I'm giving him an ultimatum, or threatening him. I have absolutely no desire for divorce. My husband is amazing in so many other ways. But this problem needs to be corrected.

Just like my husband has mostly his own relationship with his BPD mother, I would think that perhaps you have to have only your own relationship with your family or origin.

I cannot stress enough how much you're going to need a therapist experienced in BPD to help you along with this. You're going to need the support. It may take a while to find the right therapist though.

You'll need to be careful though since I think seeing your family of origin may trigger feelings of perceived (imagined) abandonment in your BPD partner. You'll absolutely need super strong and strict boundaries in place as to what happens if he tries to interfere in any way with your family of origin. Your partner may (likely) try to make you the bad guy for trying to see your family. Be prepared to have to move against him in many ways and for many behaviors. well, but be sure to have a solid plan in place first. Do you have anyone who knows about BPD in your

You might be able to figure out how to bring your husband along for outings with your family of origin. Who could be a strong ally? The only way we've even had a lunch outing with my BPD MIL is to have my husband AND his sister AND his dad all on the same page about BPD MILs issues and we did it in public.

My FIL just knows that he can only control his own actions and can't force my BPD MIL to do anything really. He will go alone to family functions if he has to if she backs out of it. He will also pay for things that she promised to pay for if she goes back on her offer. Pretty much anything she could do, he lets her do, but he just does his own thing instead.

I hope that's even a tiny bit helpful. This is going to be a long process for you. ::hugs::