BPDFamily.com

I'm new here and I've just realized my wife, together for 7 yrs, exhibits signs of BPD.  She hasn't been diagnosed and doubt she will ever consider seeking help or even counseling for our marriage, but I feel I have to do my part to save our marriage.  We are a blended family.  Her 4 boys and my 2.  Her 15 year old is still in the house and I see my 16 and 12 year olds every other weekend, schedules permitting.  They are getting their own lives so I encourage that and don't force the visitation.  It has actually brought us closer.  As a result, our time together is limited so I try not to cancel those times when I do see them. 
Our arguments usually start when I am accused of disrespecting her or not tending to her emotional needs.  I regularly get accused of not putting her first over all else.   I do my best to juggle work schedule, sometimes irregular and every other weekend, and my visitation.  But we have always had regular Wednesday and Friday date nights and annual trips for just us.  During these arguments, I am always told I'm at fault, name calling, and degradation.  In fact, all my faults are brought up, for the last 7 years.   I am by no means perfect.  I make mistakes.  I sometimes don't think about the little things that would make an impression-flowers for no reason, weekend getaway unplanned, etc.   But sometimes I do.  When she gets mad about something, her anger meter pegs instantly.  Then there is no talking to her.  She shuts down. 
Our latest argument has been going on for a month.  It was my visitation weekend and she wanted to take some time to go out for a bit.  I said I was waiting on a call back from my son to see what his plans were going to be.  Well, I was accused of putting her second fiddle to my kids and a threw in a few insults about my kids.  She said that from now on she was going to make her own plans and if wanted to do anything, I would have to get with her a week in advance.  She then said that she was indifferent to our marriage and had no faith that her feelings would change.  She also said that I was the one that had to fix this and there would be no effort on her part. 
On a regular basis I feel like I can't express my own feelings because she will get angry, she has to control everything, she routinely degrades my friends/coworkers, she gets mad if I want to go out with a buddy, play golf, etc, I have to make decisions about things based on how she would want it, and no matter what, she is never wrong.   
I try and talk to her about things when we get into an argument but it falls on deaf ears.  My opinions or feelings don't matter because it's what I've done that has made her angry. 
My position at this point is I'm going to see a counselor and start my healing but I'm not sure our marriage can be saved.  Right now I'm the only one trying and I don't think that is right. 

Hi hogwild,

I'm sorry to hear about the difficulties you are going through. Your story sounds like many of ours. Our pwBPD are so fearful of being rejected that the smallest thing is seen as not caring for them, when that is furthest from the truth. But, for pwBPD feelings=facts.

Even if your spouse never goes to counseling, it's important that you take care of yourself. Hopefully you will learn ways that you can say what you need to say without fear of her response. Counseling helped me immensely in this area.

We have a lot of workshops that can help you begin to navigate your relationship with your pwBPD. One that might help is on "don't be invalidating". Us nons frequently use language that our pwBPD sees as being invalidating. Changing our language can sometimes change the way they respond to us. Here's a link to that workshop:

https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating