Title: Working to reconcile after my filing for divorce Post by: lonely38 on April 08, 2019, 10:13:50 PM I have not posted for several months now, but thought of this site with what is going on. My husband and I are working to reconcile after my filing for divorce and him moving out for a short time at the end of 2018. It seems pretty apparent to me, that my husband has at the very least, BPD tendencies, whether or not it is full blown BPD. With him having retired at the end of 2018 at a young age, I am watching him trying to figure out how to deal with himself and with life.
It has seemed he wants to reconcile and we have done fairly well for a couple of months. However, our 3 children and their 2 spouses seem to have some pretty significant hurt, and, out of that hurt, have done some pretty damaging things including blatant lying and then not being willing to apologize, accusing my husband of being too rough with a grandson and, hearing that our daughter in law shared this past week that we are divorcing (we are reconciling), and our oldest daughter coming over yesterday to share with us her angst, including the last 12 years of what she was unhappy about. This is difficult to process, but, if I stand back from it all, it seems our 3 children and their spouses are all disappointed with me. I have been the one steady person in the family and perhaps they have relied on that. Because I cracked under pressure this past year, they are all seemingly focused on pointing the finger and reminding me of how I messed things up. My therapist feels I lost it late this last year after witnessing my husband experience some great unhappiness in his life and then projecting onto me all of his unhappiness with emotional and verbal abuse. My goal now is to not let myself go there again as far as taking on my husband's stuff. This gets tough as he is pretty good at reminding me of how much I messed up his life, etc., etc. With regard to this past year, my husband seems to have forgotten the stress and pressure he inflicted. Instead he wants to remind me of how I lost it mentally and did the crazy behavior stuff including removing weapons from the home, calling the police and filing for divorce. My husband is focused on what I shared. His behavior this past year included some betrayal stuff which majorly triggers me based on our history including reaching out to an old girlfriend, going to a massage joint (parlor looking place) for an ankle massage after he has frequented these types of places in the past for more than an ankle massage, looking at porn, etc. Anyway, my goal in all of this at this time in life is to remain married, somehow regroup with our kids, and especially keep the connections with our precious grandchildren. After looking at the big picture, the idea of moving forward with divorce does not seem like a way to life out the rest of my life. I am reminding myself of ways to cope with a person who is unpredictable, who struggles with a personality disorder and emotion dysregulation without getting sucked in myself. I have been removing myself physically and emotionally, (when I cannot remove myself physically) when he is angry and abusive with words. We are seeing the marriage therapist this week and I will be bringing this all up with him. Any other thoughts and ideas are appreciated. I am doing better at giving myself space when needed and finding other places in life to sustain me when needed or when it is not safe to be with my husband. |