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I ordered the book, "Stop Walking On Eggshells," in 2015, and skimmed it.  Many of the issues resonated with me but I had other matters in my life with work and family.

I am depressed now.  I don't feel like doing much.  Even the rages and anger of my uBPD/uNPD H don't get a rise out of me.  My main feeling is one of not caring and feeling numb.

My marriage has lasted more than 20 years. For the beginning, there were rages and eventually the frequent divorce threats.  There was name-calling, with H calling me b----- and c--- preceded by a number of profane and unflattering adjectives.  There were broken objects and holes punched in the wall.  

A year or two into the marriage, I happened on a book titled, "Verbal Abuse," by Patricia Evans, and it was a shock to see myself in those pages.  Like the proverbial boiled frog, I stayed in the marriage and here I am, two decades later.  I have been in therapy since 2014.  My therapist, without being able to make a sure diagnosis of H, said he is very likely BPD.

Shorty after the marriage, H showed poor parenting skills with his children.  They were all spoiled, indulged brats.  H was the typical Disney Dad in letting his children get anything they wanted thanks to the guilt he felt over his divorce from his X W; he had married his childhood sweetheart in his early 20s and then 10 years later, while he was overseas in the military, found a lover and divorced him.  As a BPD, already wary and insecure, H was surely shaken profoundly by the mother of his children going off with another man.  His children make him into a doormat, demanding expensive items, and eventually demanding their father divorce me.  (He didn't, clearly.)  I suspect one of his children is BPD (suicide attempt, promiscuous), one might be BPD (workplace bullying, bullying of siblings), and has substance abuse issues and in and out of rehab.

I married H without any knowledge of BPD.  I have now been able to look at his FOO and see just how messed up it is, especially FIL, who is most likely NPD; MIL I believe to be the enabler.   Both are elderly now and have nothing to show for a life of work, and frequently ask H for money in the thousands of dollars.

Here I am, three years after buying, "Eggshells," and now ready for its message.  I am getting tired of the rages and thin skin of H and the splitting.  This week H got together with an old friend, both of them retired military, and went on a bender and drank for several hours at a garden party.  H was laughing and happy with the man (a big brother figure to H), and then privately H made a divorce threat to me over serving food to guests.  The next day, H had no recollection of the threat nor the character assassination he made of me.

As the book suggests, I am reading the book from start to finish and working on boundaries.  When H splits, I can now see it for what it is.  in the past, the divorce threats and name-calling would reduce me to tears.  I have complex PTSD because of years of this type of treatment.  I am slowly recovering my self-esteem that was eroded in 20 years of marriage.  

I am wondering if any members here read, "Eggshells," and what the main lessons they learned might be.  

I read Eggshells a few years into my marriage with my second husband. I saw some glimmers of behavior, but because he is on the "mild" end of the spectrum, he didn't seem as bad as some of the examples in the book.

However, that book made sense of both my first husband's extreme acting out as well as what was going on with my mother, which had led me to study psychology, then graduate with a degree, and attend grad school for a while. I don't think I was that interested in a career in mental health, I was trying to unravel my crazy childhood.

It wasn't until I landed here that I discovered there can be quite a continuum of behavior that fits the BPD criteria. And most of my issues with my husband, I now realize, resulted from my own BPD fatigue--after a lifetime of dealing with pwBPD, I was totally fed up with them, even when it wasn't all that bad.

Now I know what really bad BPD behavior is from my experience in my first marriage, my mother was moderate and my current husband is mild. That was a distinction that I just didn't pick up from my first reading of the Eggshells book.

I'm sorry that you're so drained, AskingWhy, and I certainly understand how that is. When there's little or no deposits in the "relationship bank," it's possible to become seriously overdrawn.     

Thank you, Cat.  The last 20+ years have been a slow awakening to what BPD is in my experience.

That said, I am still depressed. I hardly feel like any housework or making meals.  I want to sleep but can't, and then H rages at me with name-calling and I get depressed further still.  When H is angry with me, he will go off to the workplace of one of his daughters (the one I suspect of BPD), a restaurant, and have her wait on his table.  She can only make small talk to him, but he will stay for at least an hour and watch her work from afar.   All said, his adult children treat him poorly, only calling him or visiting him when they need money.  Then they take his money and disappear from his life until the next life crisis hits them.  And H feels horrible about the way they treat him, but he says nothing. 

H defines himself by his friends and children, true to the BPD having really no sense of identity.  Of course, when it comes to me, he has no hesitation of belittle me, break things and make threats.  This was discussed in, "Eggshells," in the more functional BPD who has a successful job and "appears" normal to everyone but his immediate family.  

As with you, BPD was a part of my childhood, which is why I probably ended up with a BPD H.  I never learned what normal behavior is.

I also see PDs in my H's children.  All of them have some criteria fitting into some form of PD.  I know that the X W of H is most likely in NPD spectrum. She married her childhood sweetheart to escape her parents and rural existance to live life large in the big city.  After 10 years of marriage and several children, she resumed a love affair with yet another childhood sweetheart and left H.  All of the children were not even of kindergarten age.  She married her lover after he divorced his wife of more than 10 years.  (Yes, X W was well aware her husband was married.)  

I am appalled at my H's FOO.  It's a mess.  I can easily see how H (as the son out of favor) was made into the mess he is.

After many years of self-scrutiny, I now have better grasp of people. Being raised by a BPD parent ill-equipped me to see people with objectivity.  Too bad I did not know this 20 years ago, or I would have never married H.  

Hi AskingWhy,

Sorry you are feeling so low!

What is your current strategy for dealing with the rages? Or are you so out of energy you can't think straight and are just surviving?

with compassion, pearl.

Hello AskingWhy   

It can be draining, yes. I get the same. Some days all I can think of is to curl up with a good book and disappear for a while. A little of that has helped me feel a bit better, along with other self-care activities. Not that it replaces what a good relationship should be.

I don't know your story... Inclined to ask, do you have the chance to make space  a bit for yourself?