BPDFamily.com

Good evening, I have been dealing with my wife who is living with BPD.  First of all, before I say anything further, she already is receiving counseling and in progress seeking DBT therapy.  We have been married since early 2016.   I tried hard to nourish our marriage in healthy even I made mistakes.  When I make mistakes, she always jumps from  0 to 10 in the mood of being suddenly angry than to be slow to be angry.  She attacks me by bringing out what I did to her in the past, even I was very remorseful and I cried and apologized to her for not doing right. 

A good instance of our wedding day, she expects me to give her word of complementary by telling her she is beautiful and amazing even as being groom, I looked at her with full of awestruck facial expression.  She wanted me to tell her she is beautiful.  She keep replaying on day of our wedding where she wanted to express her the word of complementary.  It hurts her so much and also she felt I did not value her opinion and her ideas.  She keep telling me I am being so defensive all the time.  It hurts her so much.  So I took step to make changes, things are changing slowly but if I made mistake anytime she would impulsively and attacks me in very cruelty way.  I just began to learn to not to take her word personally.  After her BPD moment disappears, she keeps coming to me and tell me she is apologizing for being nasty to me.   

She just recently expressed to me, if not for my error way of living she will not be in her BPD moment.  I told her I do not deserve to be treated in very cruelty.   I was a man of many pains, I am recovered alcoholic addict and been clean for 4 years and almost 8 months, even I lost everything including my first marriage.  Now I just entered into second marriage little I did realize my wife was living with BPD even since.   

She keeps saying I need to take full responsibility for her BPD action, then later she comes to me and apologizing and said all she wanted me to be happy and be free.   I told her what she said at BPD moment is thing I will not take it seriously because it have been said before in past.  All I am saying, I am extremely exhausted of her clicking rewind button to remind me of my error way of living.  It is over, and it is in the past, I told her I am not there anymore.    I told her she need to validate my feeling and thought, but I realized if she is in her BPD moment, it is worthless and pointless to discuss because it is like fire fighting the fire.  So I prefer to talk to her when she is in her calmer mood.  So how idea how to dialogue with her and remind her to let the past be left in the past.

She is wonderful wife, but when it comes to BPD, she is a COMPLETELY different person where there is no grace or compassion involved.  She just went into her impulsive mode.

Hi silent,

Welcome to the boards.  I"m sorry to hear what you are going through right now. It's great to hear that your wife is going to DBT therapy. Many pwBPD never get that far. Sadly, the mood swings are a part of BPD. Those of us in relationships with them have to figure out how to respond to those mood swings. We have a lot of workshops on the right side of the page that can help you begin to learn more about BPD, your role in the relationship, and new communication skills that can help talk to your pwBPD better.