BPDFamily.com

Hello all,

I don't know where to even begin. I've been married for 19 years, and we have 3 kids. About a year ago, during therapy, I realized that my wife has been emotionally abusive. I've struggled for months with that realization, and often question if I am the abuser. I feel lost and confused. My wife continues to insist I am abusive. And while I am not always proud of my responses, I am doing all that I can to try to save the marriage. I have been struggling with suicidal ideation, and feel like everything is hopeless. I don't know how to leave, but I know its time.

Hi there. Welcome to the group. I'm sorry for what brings you here, but I'm glad you found us.

Are you still continuing with therapy? Have you mentioned your feelings of suicidal ideation to your therapist?

How do you respond when your wife accuses you of being the abuser? Hat are some of the behaviors you see from her that are emotionally abusive?

I'm going to move your post to the Bettering a Relationship board. Here, you will find members who are working on tools to improve communication and reduce conflict. You will benefit from those whether you remain in the relationship or decide to leave.

Hey Shooter,

I was right there with you two months ago. I've been working weekly with the therapist to sort it all out.

It was really helpful for me to document troubling text exchanges with my exGF and send them to the therapist. It allowed me to show the therapist the dynamic when we weren't in therapy. It also gave me the opportunity to analyze where the BPD traits were in our communications and how I could better manage my reactivity. 

In one stressful situation with our baby, you could see where she literally shifted blame from herself to me, after her acknowledgement of guilt became too painful. It was entirely not my fault in this situation. The nasty direction her head went was very abnormal.  She proceeded to throw multiple temper tantrums, where her communications were clearly unfounded and out of line.

This all helped me to prove to myself that while I certainly was part of the issue, it wasn't really my fault. It's helped me with the guilt, etc.

 I have a history a depression. I'd been off of Zoloft since several years before I started dating exGFwBPD. I put myself back on it about a month ago and am glad I did. You might find that medication will help you see things more clearly,as well. Taking anti-depressants really is nothing to be ashamed of, but it can seem like the worst thing in the world when you're in the throws of major depression. If you are seriously considering suicide, I recommend getting yourself on an anti-depressant. It will make you less reactive to the nastiness that gets tossed your way. It will help you see her actions more clearly for what they are.

That's my two suggestions. I feel a lot better personally after undertaking them. At the end of the day, what is most important is your own health and well being. You can't be a good parent to your three children, if you're head is not in the right place. Your children deserve a stable father.

Thank you for the advice. I am actually on two antidepressants (Wellbutrin and Trintellix). And to be completely honest, I can't say I noticed a difference.

With my wife, no matter what it is my fault. Our second child was a difficult baby, she suffered from reflux and would cry almost all the time. My wife told me it was my fault for getting her pregnant, and that I was a terrible father for not being able to calm her. She is a stay at home mom, yet after working all day I generally have to get groceries, cook dinner, clean the house, bath the younger child, and get kids in bed. When I bring up that I'm tired and need help with the chores, she challenges how much I really do, tells me she never wanted to be a stay at home mom and I am forcing her to stay home with the kids (not true as I have asked her to look for a job) she calls me a chauvinist who expects her to be my maid, and that I should have known when we married that she wasn't a cleaner so its all on me. Her belief is that all the troubles in our marriage stem from my looking at porn, which I have not done in 17 years, but that is still her go too defense. She cannot trust me because I am a sexual deviant who is constantly looking to have an affair. She stated once that "everybody thinks you are this respectable nice guy, but I know the real you that nobody sees, the monster that only cares about himself and could never be faithful to another human."

I try to set boundaries, try to state facts only, but nothing seems to work.

Yeah, my ex threw pretty much the same exact sentence at me about a month ago. It hurts, to have someone you care about and knows you well say something like that. If you are at all self-reflective, it probably makes you question your own self-worth. 

I haven't used either of the two anti-depressants you listed, so I can't really offer any advice for you on that since I'm not a medical professional or know your personal history. You might want to talk to your doctor about changing to an SSRI instead of Trintellix if it isn't working for you.  I can say that exercise and a low dose of sertraline are all I need to kill my major depression. Eventually, I hope to be able to just get back to regular strenuous exercise 3-4 days a week and drop the pills entirely, like I had done before I let my ex ruin my life.

It sounds like you are really trying to juggle a lot of responsibility at the same time. 

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I really was being abusive. The truth is, there were a few things that I was doing that could be defined as emotional abuse, like screaming and silent treatment, when I just couldn't deal anymore. However, I found a way of coming to terms with who was the more emotionally abusive.

I made a spreadsheet out of all the examples listed in this link
https://www.healthline.com/health/signs-of-mental-abuse (https://www.healthline.com/health/signs-of-mental-abuse)

I made a row for each example. Then I created a column for my ex and a column for me. I marked a 1 or a 0 in each row representing the partner that exhibited the abusive trait. I tried to answer each row as honestly as possible and thought about specific examples where I was guilty and specific examples where the ex was guilty. Then I ran an auto sum on the two columns. In my case, I could tally 12 examples of emotional abuse and she tallied 23. In her tally she was also a 1 for most of the rows where I could think of an example for myself.

Perhaps this is not the most scientific study. I would actually really like for her to do the test, as well, so we can discuss the results in a constructive manner in a therapy session. Sadly, I know that would never really happen. Even if she hadn't stopped going to couples therapy, she would manage to distort the test into something mean that I was doing to her.

I'd post the spreadsheet I created as a link here, but then everyone would know who I was from my account names.

This is very familiar to me. I'm currently living with uBPDgf who is pregnant. She has a S13 and I have no other children.

"You did this to me (pregnancy)" - we made the decision together and had been trying for several months

"You knew I wasn't a cleaner and stayed with me" - this is sort of true but she has gotten objectively much worse over the past few years, to the point of making huge messes seemingly just for fun. She recently got mad at the cat and sprayed a fire extinguisher all over the bedroom trying to spray the cat, and just left the mess there. I haven't cleaned it up yet. And we live in a very nice, upscale place - it's not like we live in a dump. I've noticed that she destroys places she lives, and then moves on - a metaphor for BPD? She breaks doors, puts holes in the wall, spray paints the carpet accidentally while doing "art" and then declares the house uninhabitable and says we need to move. This has happened three times at least.

"You always look at porn" - with this one, she had been ranting for a week about how I never put my phone down and spend time with her. So of course, I started putting my phone down when she was in the room, and she started saying it's "suspicious" how quickly I put my phone down and I must be looking at porn or texting someone else. To the point where I'm thinking about how many seconds to wait before putting my phone down, to not trigger the "suspicious" rant, and also not trigger the "you never put your phone down" rant - walking on eggshells for sure... Of course, she is free to use her phone whenever, always scrolling.

She was on an SSRI before pregnancy, and has stopped on her own without consulting her doctor, because she decided it's harmful during pregnancy (meanwhile she drinks and smokes weed). I have recently tapered off my low dose of meds and stopped drinking, working out more, feeling good in general. And she now tells me "you need to start your meds again, I can't deal with you".

Like I said, it's all very familiar - hang in there

Wow, we had some major irrational fights once she got pregnant. Things calmed down for me after the baby was born for a few months. However, once she went back to work the stress of being a mom, and working a demanding job, really made things unbearable for me.

Hopefully, with validation and not JADEing you will be able to fare and cope better than I did. I ended up becoming completely depressed, and actually escalated the issues. A lot of my relationship's failure sits firmly on my shoulders and I need to accept that.