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I've been married for 5 years, but due to long distance problems, we only just started to live together 6 months ago when we had our son. The last 6 months have got progressively worse and I now feel like there is no way I can stay with my wife and son.

But then for a minute she's the warm lovely person that I love and admire, which is just enough to turn me again. Don't get me wrong, she was always and is still the love of my life.

But each day she gets meaner and meaner and the verbal beatings, and threats and hysteria get more intense and more irrational. Everything that I do is wrong. To begin with it was about me controlling her life - she had a very controlling father who was physically violent with her mother.

So over time, I have conceded more and more, so now I do very little, but even then whenever I try to even help I do things incorrectly, or not as they should be done - or rather not as how she would do it. However, if I didn't do anything, I would get shouted at for not doing something.

We have different native languages, so when she doesn't understand me, she gets angry, when I don't understand her she gets angry. The abuse is pretty terrible. If only she could hear herself when she speaks to me.

I find myself getting more and more resentful each day. I question my competence in everything now. (I run a successful consulting business, I have (or did have) amazing caring and loving friends, but over time I feel my confidence being eroded to nothing.

We like different foods, I was raised on Asian food and she is disgusted by it. so I do not eat what I like and I do not eat enough because I am restricted from being in the kitchen. My family say I have lost weight

I feel I need to stay for my son, but I know that if I stay I will be a hollow shell of a man within a year with no personality left. She'll probably leave that man anyway. I can leave and leave my son to her and visit when I can. Maybe I will retain my sanity that way.

I am currently feeling so lost. I don't even know what she's going through, if she knows how she's treating me and the rest of her family. Maybe she's going through even more pain and confusion. I just don't know what to do next.

Keeping my mouth shut and hiding away does not solve the problem, because when I do say something or do show up, the verbal abuse is even more intense.

Any help, advice, thoughts... anything?

notyetbroken, I just read through your first post here (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=319018.0) and now this post. I am so sorry. This is such a difficult time for you. I have been in your shoes.

You say you had your son 6 months ago, which would mean your son was born roughly the same time my daughter was born 4 years earlier. It was right at about the 6 month mark that I made my first post on a BPD forum. I was feeling so desperate. Everything was my fault. My wife was getting more and more angry every day. I remember one night, I was told I was so stupid I couldn't even read a Dr Seuss book properly. What an insult! I did every single night feeding, way more than my fair share of diaper duty, and I still held down my job as the sole breadwinner - I was holding back so much anger and resentment it was incredible. But did I express it? Absolutely not. Was I honest about how I felt? Nope. I knew that I had to pull my act together if I was going to be the best father possible, but I had no idea how to do that.

I also struggled with the thought of leaving my daughter and my wife, because, well, my wife was REALLY convincing when she told me they'd be better off without me. Was she right?

I set out to answer that question, and I spoke to 4 different therapists all in the span of about 2 weeks. Every single one of them helped me realize what I knew in my heart, and what I knew to be the most important thing for me. I wanted to be a father. I had wanted that for years. And if I wanted something for myself, I needed to focus on finding help for myself, and being the best *I* could be. I was completely focused on helping my wife - fixing her anger, fixing her threats, fixing her BPD. None of it was in my control. The only thing I could control, the only thing I could help fix, was myself.

Now, 4 years later I'm still struggling with the same questions, so keep that in mind. This is a really long process if you chose to stay, for yourself, for your son, for whatever reason. You'll take 2 steps forward and 5 steps back. It might help to ground yourself right now by taking a look at What Does It Take To Be In a Relationship (https://bpdfamily.com/content/what-does-it-take-be-relationship) - the demands on a partner of someone with BPD are huge. The demands of being a father are also huge. You've got both. Think about what all this means for you and your son. I can tell you that for me, it's been worth it to stay and work on MYSELF. I am a much better father now than I would have been had I not come here and looked deep at where my role fit in.

I know this is a lot to take in right now, but I hope it helps get you started. You brought up other questions besides the feeling of there being no way to stay. You asked questions about how to deal with conflict, whether or not keeping your mouth shut or showing up helps. These are all good questions, and we have lots of helpful guidance here on getting you some answers to these questions - we'll get to that. But to me, all the other questions are secondary to the question of, are you willing and able to try really hard to improve things?

What do you think?

Hi notyetbroken, DaddyBear left you such a nice reply, I'm not sure I have much to add, but wanted to at least try to give a little more emphasis to a couple of things you mentioned.

I can relate to having a partner who has a different native language and two different cultural backgrounds actually! We normally communicate in one of my native languages, but languages are a double-edged sword for us. It creates a lot of interesting things, but it can also lead to a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. It just does... .and ouch! I'm with ya on that point especially! I often never feel understood, must repeat myself often, have a lot of extra explaining to do... .it goes on and on and takes an incredible amount of patience. I must be so careful in how I phrase things. I ask a question that I expect will get a certain response, but I must still ask anyway, and then he will give me the opposite response I was expecting and then I have to inquire again because, yes, it turns out he understood the opposite of what I was saying. Across languages too he is not so polite and this has been a big issue for us. Me feeling like I am being spoken to in an impolite way and him mostly being unwilling to make any adjustments and offer up excuses for not making an effort to be polite. It really made me want to pull my hair out... .until I finally felt defeated... .and then, he finally began to make some effort, I finally got through to him, only to see him take it all away... .whew!

Um, I am sorry to hear this has affected you around food. I can relate on this point as well - though the details are different. I would say, that this is something to keep working on if you are up for it. I mean, for the love of humanity, giving up what you like to eat? So sad. Can you get Asian food when you go out? My partner does not like Asian food very much either so I tend to eat it alone when I get a chance. It's better than losing a whole cuisine! Do you have workaround on this issue? Are you not "allowed" to cook at home? If so, could you carve out more space for yourself in the kitchen somehow?

wishing you peace, pearlsw.

@daddybear77, @pearlsw - thank you for all your words, I can't tell you how they help, just knowing that it's not me, that there is a problem, that others have the same problem.

I sat with my son this morning trying to figure out our future, I don't want to leave him, I don't want to leave my wife. Is it better for him if I stay, how will our life be? @daddybear77, I have a feeling that this more than a long process - feels like a lifestyle that I need to adopt and get used to, to learn to adapt myself to, to learn to create a way of being an effective father and to manage to hold down my job.

I have always had a lot of amazing friends, I think somehow I am going to need to work out how to make those friendships work differently, as I am not 'allowed' to see so many people anymore. I am allowed to have friends, but she doesn't understand (with the resulting explosions) that I see a person and share things with them if they are not my family or closest friends and she makes very compelling (logically) and emotional (illogically) arguments. So I have let relationships dwindle over the years.

Work is a different matter, I work at lot from home and many times calls with colleagues or people whom I am working with begin with some social chat and right now everybody wants to know about the baby. She thinks this is all unprofessional and I should not discuss anything personal with work friends. I am now figuring out that I need to carve out time and place for work and to keep it all separated so I can have whatever conversations I want to have. Sorry, it's difficult to explain exactly, but I think it's now a question of creating partitions in time and space to protect the things that make me me. 

I need to stay. I also need to leave. And I think I can do both at once. Be 100% present for my baby. for my self and for my wife. But at different times. No more multi-tasking. Maybe this is just me grabbing for a solution but as you say I'm the only thing that I can fix.

At this point, I don't expect her to change, I don't know how we can create an environment where she is triggered less. I just want the baby to have a good childhood.

@pearlsw, food is probably the least of my worries, learning her language is probably something I need to do, we are planning on moving from my country to hers this year, so  language needs to happen. Yet food and language are just other triggers for her and I am sure there will be more to come.

Again, thank you both for the guiding lights... .

While trying to get my head around all of this, I am trying to work out the pain my wife must have been going through all her life - I found this post on Quora https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-difficult-aspect-of-having-BPD/answer/Lucie-Schmidt?srid=zNK which was very helpful.

BTW - is there somewhere on the site dedicated to understanding how BPD sufferers feel, what they go through and what they need?

It's also interesting reading the Quora posts by those who acknowledge their BPD

Hello,
We don't have to be fossilized by negative comments. When my partner doesn't accept my initiatives, nor gives me the option to do anything,  and criticizes me, I do feel there's no trust in my capacities. The mere idea that he needs to control the situation would make me feel ineficiant. Nevertheless, this is all about feelings quickly pervading our mind.  We also know, in other circumstances, we can rely on ourselves.  Our feelings, where ever they come from, don't determinate who or what we are.  When it rains, it doesn't mean I am the cloud... .
The language and culture are also an issue in my couple.  Of course, in reality, it doesn't reduce our skills for communating if we set ourselves in the mode to improve each other's comprehension.  On the countrary. In this particular situation, it is also a good opportunity to learn and to value what our partner brings in our life, even if it doesn't work both ways.
So I try to remember - when ever my partner controls me in a way or another - what he expresses doesn't make me Less or More. It is an exhausting exercise. I wish it could become a reflexe, because I am not used to exert myself to do so with other people. I have to reverse the steam. Hopefully then, I can react without resentment, without feeling sorry for myself, and remaining calm and kind. The last time, I firmly said "no", and concluded with a smile. When matters are important, we can talk later. Still often, it sounds like everything is going to collapse. But I try; I express my wills.
Go on, try and enjoy your little boy!
 

@Margot AZ, thank you - more valuable insights for me. The control issue is a huge thing, my wife had a very very controlling father - and she began telling me that I was also controlling her, this has progressed to pretty much everything I do, whether it's tidy up after her or do something my way that is not her way. So I've just stopped doing things... .the more she says I control, the more I stop doing anything - not sure where this one is going to end either.

My wife is from South America, while she speaks fluent English she has used the language barrier as an excuse time and time again for the things she says to me.  It’s a built in crutch.

That your feels like she is being controlled (not that this is justified) is interesting to me since my wife has my replacement moving into our house a month after I left and I can already tell this guy is going to be a control freak.  Definite narcissism and PTSD from serving in Afghanistan. I gave my wife a ton of latitude over 10 years to build a career, go to school and have a very close relationship with her mother that would have annoyed a lot of men.  The replacement has an instable marital history, not sure how this relationship has any chance at working long term. I think they are both playing each other and don’t know it.