BPDFamily.com

Spouse undiagnosed.
Spouse is emotionally, mentally, psychologically abusive.
I am burning out.
Started couples therapy, am being held responsible for spouse’s behavior, am being asked to validate spouse’s projections and delusions.  Feeling defeated and despairing.

Can you tell us more about this? Not all therapists are good therapists, and not all are trained to deal with disorders like BPD.

What are some of your spouse's behaviors?

She exhibits these traits:

• Fear of abandonment
• A continual internal dialog of negative self talk
• Driven by feelings of guilt and shame - this is always blamed on others ('he makes me feel guilty', 'she flattens me', 'you make me the bad guy', etc)
• People in her life are either on pedestals/her only hope and salvation -or- villains/the source of her problems
• She does not understand boundaries and either willingly defies them or goes super far the other direction because she fears them
• She cannot internally regulate emotions / is dependent on others to talk her down/up
• Hypersensitive
• Extreme reactions
• Easily offended
• Suicidal ideations
• Paranoid thinking: they are judging me, he doesn't like me, you are mad at me, they were acting suspicious, you think I'm stupid, you think you're superior
• She literally hears things that I and others have never said - not only when recalling past conversations, but in real time - inserting false things into the very last statement made to her seconds ago, believing to the death it was said
• She accuses people of doing things that they never did
• Driven by fear
• She stays upset about things for weeks, months, years
• Projection, projection, projection
• Passive Aggressive
• Triangulation
• Black and white thinking / it has to be this or that, no other possible explanation
• Denies her feelings - 'I'm fine, you have the problem'
• I have to talk in an even, monotone voice because she interprets mere inflection as yelling at her
• She is undone if we hold different values/opinions on things
• Everything in the world revolves around her/is seen as a commentary on her
• This includes even my emotions: You are happy? Well just leave me here in sadness then. You are sad? You'll never be as sad as I am.  You have a hurt? Saying that just invalidated all of my hurts.
• Every choice before me is the wrong thing and whatever I pick proves I am uncaring, uncompassionate, mean, offensive
• She asserts what people are thinking, feeling, what their motives are
• Jealous of people spending time with others
• When I express a frustration or hurt, she refuses to acknowledge it, attacks me, and flips it around to her being the victim so I'm left saying sorry, sorry, sorry
• I am expected to read her mind
• I am expected to rescue her from even small tasks
• She spends 85% of her time lying on the bed in her room with the door closed, hairdryer blasting to drown out sounds from the rest of the house
• She invents narratives to support her feelings rather than base her feelings on things people have actually said and done
 

Wow.  I live with all of this alone.  Running through this on repeat inside so I don’t mess up or miss something.  Carrying it all day after day, year after year.  Or talking about it with my own therapist an item at a time.  I've never seen it all in one list like this.  It feels overwhelming.  I feel sick to my stomach.  I have chest pains after looking at it.


She actually has had people test her for BPD 3 times, but they have always decided she doesn't have it.  I think it's because she's missing some of the giant things everyone sees as defining characteristics of BPD.  She does not have destructive impulsive tendencies (although she has had severe compulsions, but that's different).  She has had no actual suicide attempts, although she does have regular, repeated suicidal ideations.  And while she is easily offended and angry, you really couldn't characterize them as ‘rages’.  The episodes of anger/offense/victimization are constant, intense, and long lasting.  But they are not loud or violent or public. I think instead in raging outward, she rages inward.  Which doesn’t mean it stays there - it just comes out as projection and manipulation rather than an explosion.

That is a long list.  :hug: I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed when you look at everything at once. You have a therapist and you have us, and believe me, we understand how people with BPD can put on a good face while we see their worst behaviors at home.

I'm curious what led to the testing for BPD? Did she suspect it? Who did the testing?

Not everyone is trained to identify or deal with it, and she definitely exhibits BPD behaviors that are really challenging. Don't put too much stock in the diagnosis or lack thereof.

I see almost all of these behaviors in my BPD MIL. I've never dealt with a person with BPD before and didn't know what it was. I considered myself fairly healthy and stable after years of therapy and processing my own family dysfunction, and 5 years of knowing her left me feeling completely upside down. It was so, so unsettling.

Do you find your therapist helpful as you walk through this list one by one? What guidance have they given you so far?


This stuck out to me. Don't apologize if you didn't do anything wrong. We call it 'validating the invalid' here, and it is important to changing the dynamic.

By a huge miracle, my wife decided to try therapy a while back, despite railing against it for years.  She now really trusts her therapist and a lot of good work HAS been done.  She also has a psychiatrist who works with the therapist and they have been very insistent that she needs meds for anxiety and depression - fortunately she listens to them, and this has also made a HUGE difference.  Both of them saw the need to check fo BPD, but afterward both reassured her they didn’t think she had it.  I don’t know who did the third assessment that my wife referred to.

My wife is extremely averse to anything even resembling a label, and I do wonder if her therapist actually knows it’s BPD and is interacting with her as if it is, just without the label.  She’s the one that introduced Fear of Abandonment into the conversation - something I never would have recognized as such, but now can see everywhere.

But because her therapist only has my wife’s stories to go on, there are also all of these projections and reversals and things that I and others have never said / done thrown into their sessions.  So she has also been counseled / affirmed in very unhelpful ways.  For the most part my feeling has been: absolutely throw me under the bus if it means she can get the help and healing she needs. But both her therapist and mine have recognized the need for couples counseling, the need for a professional to hear from both of us.

We started couple’s therapy recently, and I have just not felt safe at all.  So far he has taken the route of unquestioningly validating her claims, letting her know she is heard and believed, and has every right to feel the way she does.  This might be fine if he did the same for both of us, but so far he has only told me things that I could be doing or not doing to keep my wife from her extreme responses.  My wife has also picked up on this and sees it as him confirming she is ‘right’ and I am ‘wrong’.  He has correctly recognized that she comes from a traumatic invalidating childhood whereas I have an amazing supportive nurturing history.  So I don’t know if he feels that she needs more encouragement and I am safer to put on the back burner?  I am hoping he has a long term game plan, but am fearful we are actually in early stages of the wrong road.

I don’t feel like I can bring up mental health or BPD in the couples therapy, because she doesn’t recognize it, and will see it as a victimization.  I keep hoping he will pick up on it himself without my spelling it out, but I’m losing that hope.  And I do NOT know how or if I even should try.  I feel like *he* should be told, but my wife absolutely should *not* know about the things on the list compiled earlier.  I’m already attacked with ‘you don’t care about me’ ‘you blame me’ ‘ you’re mad at me’ ‘you think you are better than me’.  She would never think “oh my gosh, I’ve hurt you in all these ways?”  She would instead think “what an oppressive uncaring husband to paint such a terrible picture of me.”  After he so strongly validates her, how can I ever bring up “there are things she says that did not happen.”  I understand that people see things from different points of view, but these are exact opposites, there is something very wrong going on.

That's pretty great that she's so open to therapy!

My H and I were in marriage counseling after major issues with my MIL. We each went for individual sessions. In mine, the counselor told me that she believed my MIL had BPD. She advised against telling my H, because she believed it would be ineffective and he would just dismiss it. I knew for two years before I ever told him. When I did, sure enough, he dismissed it.

I know now that the value was never in the label, but in identifying and addressing the behavior. Your wife's counselor likely knows that.

As a word of caution, sort of on the flip side, not many counselors specialize in treating BPD patients. Some I've talked to won't event accept BPD patients. Does your wife's counselor have a bio online that you can review? Sometimes they list their specialties.


Our couples therapist had a very different approach than individual counselors. I have higher validation needs and I found couples therapy nerve wracking. The counselor's priority is the wellness and success of the relationship, not validating one view over the other. Is it possible the therapist can see what's happening and recognizes you're the the one who is most likely to have the emotional capacity to make the changes? Whether it's tactical or they don't have much experience with BPD and can't recognize the signs, it's important for you to feel ok in the sessions.

Individual sessions helped me tremendously. I was able to get reassurance that the therapist saw what was happening and that her validation was tactical. Can you suggest it to your therapist electronically, so it's not coming from you? Otherwise it might seem to your wife that you're trying to throw her under the bus.

The other option might be to get your marriage counselor to talk to your individual counselors to get their insight and history.

I absolutely hope this is what is happening.  I am trying to trust that this is the case.  If so, I just feel like I need some kind of wink from him.
 I do not think there is any chance of individual meetings with him in the days ahead.  My wife is extremely fearful of people ‘manipulating others to be against her’.  Her own distrust would be through the roof if behind the scenes conversations were in place.  And in fact, I would have doubts about him believing information  I could only say in private anyway.  I think  that would look pretty suspicious.
So I decided to wait and see where things are headed, and to join up here in order to express my concerns and get out of my head.

We'll support in any way we can.

Think you could connect your marriage counselor and your individual counselors?

Also, you said the therapist is making suggestions for what you could be doing or changing. I'm curious - what suggestions are they making?

He has said things like “you haven’t validated her hurts. That’s why there are problems.”

Then later, “I guess you HAVE validated her hurts, but you want her to understand your intentions also, and that’s getting in the way of her feeling validated. It should just be validation: period.  That’s why there are problems.”

Then later yet, “We’ll you DID validate period. But you haven’t communicated that you understand how *deep* her hurts are. That’s why there are problems.”

I always seem to be the source of the problems.  When what actually happened is this:

• She told me how an incident years earlier had been hurtful for her.
• I validated. Told her how it made sense, how deeply sorry I was that she was hurt, how sorry I was for my role in it.  Period.
• She said she didn’t  believe I really cared. (now that’s actual invalidation)
• She asked repeatedly why the hurtful thing had happened.
• I answered, not because I wanted my motives to be known, but only because she kept asking.  I answered honestly, recounting  the conversation leading up to the hurtful incident.
• She blurted out “ Those are lies!” (invalidation #2).
• So I moved from the facts which she was denying to my own heart at the time. I told her I didn’t even want to be there for the hurtful event, but had tried to defer to her out of respect for her expressed wishes at the time, and I still carry my own deep hurts from it.  But those things in no way undo her serious hurts from the experience for which I am so sorry.  Both can be true.
• She said “That can’t be true. Now I see your plan, how you are going to spin this around and refuse to take blame.” (Invalidation #3)
• The following day at therapy she presented this conflict from the night before as: “He told me ‘you’ve got it wrong’.”  Which I never did - she was the one who repeatedly told me that.  The ONLY way I now knew our stories must differ is because she’d called me a liar and schemer.
• Without hearing a single word from me, the therapist said to her “You’ve been told you have to change your story. You’ve been told you are wrong.  All the work you are doing in the relationship is being discounted.  Your hurt is being minimized.  Your hurt should be accepted and should not be denied.”
• Absolutely everything had been flipped.  Everything she had felt/done the night before, she had projected onto me.
• Then he had me turn to her and repeat after him that right now the relationship was not a safe place for her.
• I really felt betrayed, but realized that I had not shared a single word about the exchange, so how could he know.
• The following week I was invited to share my version of the conflict.  I told the above.
• But instead of telling me any of the same things he’d told her after her spin, he said “Her story IS true. That should be accepted.  And she has a hard time hearing you because you haven’t communicated how deep her hurts are.”
• Later my wife told me, “See, he heard from both of us, and he said *I* am hurt and *my* story is true.”
• I’ve since heard more of her story, I’m shocked and disturbed by it, and it is indeed full of things that absolutely did not happen and things that are reversed.  But I don’t believe she’s intentionally lying, I think she sincerely believes it.
• Both her brother and her niece have the same issue, remembering bizarrely flipped accounts, or things that never happened at all - she can see it in them, finds it infuriating, but cannot recognize it when she does it.
• And now moving forward, it seems I will be asked by the therapist to affirm her narrative — and at the same time be expected to take responsibility for her not accepting mine.

I think you are most definitely being abused and now experiencing secondary abuse from this therapist. Your therapist may not be doing this intentionally since he can not see the abuse for what it is yet.

You can thank yourself for getting you this far and keeping as much of yourself together as you have. But, you most definitely need to get your own therapist for individual therapy. It is not recommended to have therapy with an abuser, as you can see why.
But, I just want you to hear that it is wrong(that's why it feels so wrong), it is hurtful and you didn't do anything wrong.
I hear you and see you!
The hope is you can start your own healing and that your therapist can help you "help her" if that is what you want. You can't help someone who is drowning before you help yourself from drowning.

I am so sorry you are going through this. Sounds like your wife has turned the therapist into her ally and made you the "bad guy", validating the invalid. How frustrating!

My BPDbf is also an expert at rewriting history and convincing others of it. It used to spin me into knots. I was a walking pretzel! I was constantly seeking validation from my own friends, to assure myself I wasn't crazy, or that my memory wasn't imagined.

It sounds like you have a much better grip on reality than I did, but it can be hard to stay grounded without support, and some extra inner work. I found support helpful, but not enough. I needed a new approach. I would vent to friends for hours after an incident and think of all the ways he was a jerk or wrong or how I could've handled it better, but the truth is, we only have seconds to react when things go south. Best to equip ourselves with some handy tools so our reactions come naturally, and effective! The goal is to cool a situation, lower the temperature. We all lose our ability to think clearly in an agitated state. For pwBPD, it's a whole other level of instability.

We first have to understand the emotional turmoil they are experiencing to stop taking the accusations personally. Without my own layer of emotion getting in the way, I can stay calm and validate better, thus ending the conflict sooner.

I learned to neither "buy" his reality, nor "sell" him mine - or anyone else for that matter, like a biased therapist. I learned to accept their version as their reality--however bizarre or inaccurate-- and validate whatever pain was expressed, without trying to defend myself from whatever the accusation of the day was. "I can see why that would upset you" went a long way. He often took it as an apology or admittance of my wrongdoing, but whatever. I knew it was his mental circus, not mine, and I didn't care what he thought. I liked the result: things calmed down! Good enough.  *) hope this helps..

That’s a good phrase.  I’ll have to add it to my list of acceptable replies.

The real difficulty comes when I am point blank asked, “So then why did you do it?”  I will continue to find ways to dodge responding to questions like that.

The other hard thing is when I am talking about something and have no idea yet that it doesn’t match a narrative in her head.  There is no way to avoid that situation other than: In general talk as little as possible to her. Stick to surface topics and don’t ever share my heart, experiences, or hurt.  Because I never know what’s not going to match. 

It’s a very lonely existence.  It’s hard to let go of the desire to be known by your parter.

I'm not the greatest fan of the therapist either, but of course, they're not magicians. I've seen several, some I've liked more than others. In the end the real work needs to be done by the two of you.


It's not a fair question to ask because she doesn't want to know the answer. She's pushing you to invalidate her. I agree that dodging the question is the best approach, OR offering as little information as possible and turn it back to her, or maybe even responding with another question. Maybe, "At the moment, I'd like to focus on understanding how you feel."

There is a time for truth, because if all you do is validate validate validate, you'll end up validating the invalid. That's not a good extreme either. This article has a lot of helpful info that applies to what you're going through, check it out:
https://www.bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating



It's completely legitimate to feel this way. Some of what you're feeling is grief. You're experiencing the loss of a relationship as you wanted it, as you expected it. As the grief subsides, acceptance will set in and you may find ways to navigate this relationship in a way that is potentially satisfying. Give it a little time.

Wow, wow, wow. 
So many great insights here. 
Thank you.

I hear ya. Couples therapy is not recommended for BPD.

My personal therapist has been a huge help.  We’re coming up on 2 years of meeting.  One of the most important things that has ever happened to me was hearing a particular response he gave about five months into our visits.  It was long before I stumbled onto what a match bpd was, and at that point my own focus was still on taking responsibility for / carrying all the weight of my wife’s responses and emotions and perceptions and behaviors - I was looking to my therapist to help me figure out how to do it better and tell me what ways I was doing it wrong.  He tends to respond to where I’m at rather than address things I can’t see yet.  But anyway, after months of me sharing all these incidents and conversations and my various responses and how they go south and how I keep trying this and then trying that… finally I point blank asked him, “Can you see where I’m off? what is my flaw, why am I failing, what am I doing wrong?”  I was WANTING him to help me take responsibility.  But his answer was, “I think your wife has SEVERE mental health issues. And out of sincere love for her, you are killing yourself trying to take care of her. But this isn’t a normal relationship.”   I was not expecting that, I was not looking for that, and it actually was not what I wanted to hear.  But it was an important step toward me learning to take responsibility for ONLY those things I have control over: my own motives and intentions and words and attitudes and emotions — and to start letting go of things I have NO control over: her perceptions and interpretations and responses and attitudes and emotions.

I think that’s why the feedback from this new couples counselor has shaken me so deeply, sent me into a bit of crisis mode.  To be told multiple times now ‘’she is responding the way she is because you haven’t *this* or you are wanting *that*’ — it feels like huge steps backwards, it feels like all the growth I’ve made in un-meshing myself is being undone.  I was slowly learning to breathe and live, and I feel like my air supply has been cut off. I’ve been spun around the other direction, pointing back to where I’ve been coming away from, and it’s dark and scary there.

This is a huge step. For me, if it was my fault, I could change it, and that meant I was still in control. It was scary to let go of the desire to control.


First, counselors don't always get it right. There are bad counselors out there, and pwBPD have fooled counselors before. The counselor's opinion doesn't need to change what you know to be true. It's very important that you sustain a solid sense of self.

It is possible that the counselor knows exactly what's going on. After only two sessions, my counselor was able to identify that my MIL likely has BPD.  The counselor may know that you're the one best equipped to make the changes. I mean think about it - if the counselor validated your perspective, it would make your wife feel attacked. She'd lose trust in the counselor and quit going. The goal of personal counseling is to validate perspective. The goal of marriage counseling is to offer tools that will sustain the relationship.  

Are they saying, or are you hearing, that you're the problem? Sometimes we assign meaning to what we hear because of our past and old ways of thinking.  

Is there anything useful in what they're saying? What, specifically, are they saying? Going back to the idea that you have the most power to effect change in the relationship, maybe they're offering you some good ideas that you can build on.

I used to swing dance and go to competitions. Beginners would often pull too hard, sometimes injuring advanced dancers. A student brought this up in class. The teacher acknowledged that it could be dangerous, then asked, "But who makes the adjustment? The one who CAN."

Your wife won't accept full responsibility for her part. That does NOT mean carrying her weight. It does mean taking emotional leadership, setting healthy boundaries, learning new tools, saying no, following through, building our own sense of self, etc. All the work we do feels unfair at the beginning. The good news is that the changes we make can improve the relationship enough that it becomes enjoyable again. There's reward in that part.

This is all really, really good.  Thank you SO much.


Here’s the thing, he definitely is VERY deliberate in his word choice.  He will always phrase things in passive constructions. For instance, when validating her untrue statements, he will say “You have been told…” or “Such and such happened to you…”   He is very careful never to actually say “Your husband told you…” or “He did such and such…”  This has always stood out to me.  Until now I have found it super frustrating, because it feels like he is just saying it without saying it — I want to  blurt out, “We all know who you are talking about. Just say out loud that you think I did these things.”  It feels like the indirect manipulative way my bpd wife speaks - talking sideways, dropping hints, clearly accusing without doing it outright.  But after reading your thoughts here, maybe he is doing something different, even though it feels the same.  Instead of accusing me but just not directly, maybe he is actually trying to make her feel heard while deliberately trying NOT to buy into the accusations at all.  I wish I knew if that’s the case.  I will try to listen through that lens.  Of course there can be no way to clarify it in front of her, because if that IS the intent, its effectiveness would be destroyed with a reveal.

Regardless of what he is trying to do, the reality is that so far I have felt  like I’m being held responsible.  And my wife, who sees the world in terms of sides and blame, DEFINITELY believes the therapist is saying that he sides with her.  She has outright said afterward “See, *he* said this happened to me.”


One funny bit from *our* 2nd counseling session...  Just in passing as the therapist was listing his hopes for us - even though we had only shared a minimal amount of information at that point - he actually said to me, “and for you, we’re going to see if we can get things so you can stop walking on eggshells all the time.”  My eyes about bugged out of my head.  My heart leapt and I thought, Does he already know? This early, and can he already tell?   That’s got to be a fairly common phrase, but he could have said anything… tiptoeing, navigating a mine field, tightrope walking.  But to use the title of a BPD book?  I have never felt so hopeful.  I wished there was some little insider’s signal I could have given to see if we were on the same page.  Ever since then, I’ve been looking for other hints that he is interacting with her as such, but alas, what I’ve felt is he has validated her narrative instead of her feelings which doesn’t seem like what you’d do if you knew someone was speaking from a bpd outlook.  And I don’t feel like he has counseled me at all the way you would if you knew someone was on the receiving end of bpd behavior, hence me looking for support here.

And THANK YOU for the support and  encouragement.  It’s brought me back from a very despairing place.

Can't help but chime in with pursuingJoy about the 3-party dynamic in counseling.

We've been through that scenario twice, and yes, the kickoff each time is pretty harrowing.

First time was when DH's ex was unilaterally cutting down his time with the kids. DH and I were in marriage counseling, and our MC had also seen DH and ex back in the day, and ex's current husband. It's a small community. And we knew what MC thought about ex and ex's husband, and we knew MC wanted good for us and the kids and the whole situation. He offered to do mediation between the 4 of us to try to work out parenting time.

So it was pretty brutal to sit in that first session and basically feel like he was "taking sides" with DH's ex! It felt like a betrayal, and it hurt, and that was with knowing that he was in our corner, and knew all the history. We ended up talking with him after those sessions quite a bit. (and we have keep seeing him for many years).

Basically he was building that sense of "buy-in" or "skin in the game" from ex & ex's husband. pwBPD are low-trust and can be suspicious, and coupled with a sensitive shame trigger, that means that if MC had called her out on her antics right away, she would've walked away from the table and we wouldn't have made any progress. (We still didn't, but for other reasons... like BPD).

So he had to spend a long time creating a space where she would buy in to the process and actually participate. If she felt "ganged up on" or "unheard" or "exposed" then she would create a justification for leaving. If the goal was in fact to work together and get something on paper, she had to have skin in the game.

Takeaway #1: even when the counselor is someone you've worked with for years, that you completely trust, and that knows the whole backstory, you still can have a gut-punch experience in that 3-party dynamic where the pwBPD is there and the professional is in the "trust-building" stage. That can happen and it doesn't have to mean that the counselor is siding with the pwBPD.

Second time was after that mediation failed and things went to "official" mediation and there was a court date. Counseling for the kids finally got agreed on, and DH's ex got to pick the counselor. We were pretty skeptical at first, that Mom had picked a "pushover" who would just lap up her version of things. DH stuck it out though, and while it took multiple months to a year, the counselor -- who knew NONE of us at the start -- finally got it and knew where the issues were coming from.

Here's the biggest takeaway from that second time:

The counselor may prescribe "homework" to participants -- for us, it was "I want you to try this instead of that with the kids, and report back to me how you're doing". Each adult (all 4 of us) got the HW. Later on, the counselor told us that while Mom struggled with an inability to parent well (i.e. would kind of attempt the HW but complain/stress about not being able to), it was Stepdad who was actively resistant to doing the HW. He would not cooperate (note, he has NPD traits). Counselor commented that the kids would continue to have major anxiety until he got with the program, but he would not do what someone else told him to do.

This is going to be the biggest "tell" in your situation -- can you "suck it up" and "do the homework" to the best of your ability? Can you be realistic about taking responsibility if the HW doesn't work out, or if you didn't do it? Can you refrain from blame, a victim mentality, statements of "I couldn't help it... what could I do... external causes stopped me from being amazing at doing the HW..."?

This is a huge, huge thing. Professionals WILL see who can follow through on "assignments" and who JADES about not doing it. If you can get to a point in sessions where your counselor is like "OK AaZz, what I want you to do for the next week is X, Y, and Z, and keep a log, and let me know how it went", and you do your very best to do it, and report back "Hey, I was able to do X and Y for about 5 days out of 7, and I noticed I didn't do Z because I chose to let my feelings of fear drive my actions... I think if I were to go back and do it over, I'd really try to manage my emotions about Z"... that is going to be huge, huge, huge.

Because your W will struggle with any kind of assignment like that, and it WILL show.


Again, it's pretty brutal starting out in a joint counseling session with a pwBPD, because it will look and feel like the counselor is bending over backward to accommodate the pwBPD. That could actually be a sign that the C knows that the other person is a pwBPD. The question is -- and there is no right or wrong answer -- do you feel like you're in a position to hang in there, to tough it out until your sessions get to the point of "the counselor is assigning some homework". My hope is that when you get there, it'll become really, really clear what the dynamics are. Because you'll be able to follow through, and she won't.

And I also think, if you can tough it out until then, the counselor's response to how you and your W tackle your HW will be telling for YOU, to see "OK, is this counselor really seeing how things are? Or do they make excuses for my W's inability to follow through?"

Lots of food for thought...

kells76

Second all of what kells said. Great example and insight.


Exactly. Be strategic.

One of the most surprising lessons I learned in marriage counseling was that what I thought was intimacy and closeness was sometimes codependence and poor boundaries.

Many think of boundaries as something that keep others out, but my favorite definition is that they keep me in my yard. Oversharing, JADEing, trying to control or change others, expecting others to fix us, and rescuing are all examples of poor boundaries, stepping outside your zone into someone else's.

Allowing the process to play out, following the counselor's instructions and releasing the desire to control may be ways to practice healthy boundaries.


I can understand why you feel this way but feelings aren't facts. Even if your wife and counselor believe you're responsible, you only become responsible when you accept the burden they're trying to make you carry. The choice is yours.


I meeeaaan if this isn't a *wink wink* I don't know what is. lol


He's not counseling you. He's counseling the relationship you have with your wife. It's a tricky spot for him to be in, and he might not always get it right. Def talk to your individual counselor about all of this, they may have some professional insight.

You've got this.  |iiii

I think you are spot on.  In fact my wife WAS ready to walk.  She had told me prior to a meeting that she was done, planning to quit, only going to the session because it was already on the calendar, but this would be her last one.  The counselor never heard any of this.  But that was the meeting in which he went overboard on validating everything she said, even validating things she’d never said but he guessed she could be feeling, and never asked to hear from me other than to tell me to validate a feeling she must be having.  I wonder if something about her demeanor or words had tipped him off that this was a necessary step that day.  Yes, it left me feeling run over, feeling like delusions were being cemented.  I thought it was a sign we were headed terribly down the wrong trail, but maybe he just knew this is a crucial step on the right path.


Actually, I do now.  I do now, all thanks to you guys and this thread.  You don’t know how valuable this has been for me.  Granted, this counseling still could be taking us down a really wrong road - that’s possible.  But it’s not the only scenario.  You’ve given me hope that another explanation could be that the therapist has a very good idea of what’s going on.  I’m hopeful.  The sirens in my head are calming down.

   SO good. 
   All so, so good. 
   Thank you. 
   This space has been invaluable.
 
 

You're spot on. It could be either way. Time will tell, so if you check in with yourself, and if you feel like "yeah, I think I have the strength to hang in there a little longer, see how things go", then it's OK to wait and see. You don't have to make any commitments to "definitely stick with it" or "definitely leave" right now. Take it one session at a time, see what you can handle with this new perspective. I bet that over time, it'll become much more clear to you whether you all are "going down the wrong road" or "going somewhere healthy". No rush, as long as you feel safe and like "OK, I can do this".

Hang in there!

Great observation. I love that you're catching all of these layers. Either crazy timing or another clue that the counselor knows what's going on.



Well said, kells. It will take trusting the counselor to a degree, but more importantly, trust yourself. Trust who you are, what you know. Trust that you have a good heart, and that you'll know your limit when and if it comes.

And you know we're here anytime you have a question or need a boost. No one is meant to go it alone. Can't tell you how many times folks here have picked me up.

When's your next session? How are things at home between sessions?

Next session this afternoon.

The state of life here is consistently random.  Sometimes great, sometimes fraught.  I never know what I’m going to find when I come home.  It’s a very Jekyll/Hyde way of life.  I’m constantly taking the temperature, looking for signs to determine where we are at on any given day so I can proceed accordingly.  Rarely is the state of things tied to anything going on in reality.

However, all of that being said, I can guarantee today’s session will be a doozy.  Last night I came back from an errand and my wife said ‘we need to talk.’  She had been reading my emails, and found one I’d written to a highschool buddy about a month ago, around the same time I joined up here. This was the point when I was the most freaked out about where couples counseling seemed to be going. I didn’t meet with my own therapist for another week.  I knew I had to keep my internal distress under wraps / off of her, and to do so I had to get out of my head and get help.  I don’t have that many people in life to talk to about all of this, and I don’t want to reach out to people who the two of us are mutually connected to.  It’s the same reason I sought this group out.  I though: my wife has no connection to my highschool friend, if I talked to him I could avoid the danger of my wife fearing someone in her life being turned against her.   FORTUNATELY in the email I did not go into a lot of detail at all, but I did write: “I’m trying to trust the counseling process, but I’m really struggling. There are things being presented by my wife that I 100% know are not true based on facts, even if I can twist my mind and concede to a measure of ‘it happened’ based on feelings or perception. But it’s being outright validated, I’m being asked to validate it, and I don’t know how to handle that.”   Yeaaaaaaah.  Her reading that did not go over well.  She says that I think she’s a liar (I don’t - I think she completely believes these things).  She says that I think she’s stupid (I don’t - I think there are good explanations like psychological defense mechanisms).  She says what is the point of couples counseling at all if this is how I feel, she’s saying she’s going to quit again.  Throughout the whole fit, I avoided any and all JADEing.  I didn’t take any of the bait of correcting false assertions or explaining my feelings..  I tried to keep things from escalating by solely validating her feelings, by saying sorry for how what I had written had  hurt her, saying that it makes sense that reading something like that would be troubling.

So we’ll see how couples therapy goes today!  Oh boy!

From what I have read and experienced, Borderline Personality Disorder is one of the most difficult things to diagnose as an outside observer.

This indicates the subgroup "Quiet Borderline" to me...

If you're lucky, she'll flip out on a therapist in couples therapy and get a diagnosis. That's what ended up happening in my case.

Thought I’d share how the most recent couples counseling went:
• Right off the bat she told the counselor she had read my emails and was upset by what I had said.
• His sole focus with her was "how did that make you feel."
• She responded with:  Deep anger.  Hurt.  Like I had devalued her perspective.  That what I had done was so wrong.  That she was trying to trust the counseling process, and here was evidence that I was questioning it.  I was “spreading it around” that she is a liar.  Anger.  Hurt.  Anger.
• When he turned to me, his question was not asking how I felt about her reading through my mail, or even about my feelings conveyed in the email, but rather "How do you feel about what your wife just shared.
• I take this as additional confirmation (like folks here have been suggesting) in these early days of couples counseling, that establishing a bridge to my wife is his primary priority.
• So first I answered honestly: I am feeling all sorts of things.
• Then I answered honestly AND accordingly: I feel very sad that she is so hurt.  I myself hurt knowing that her heart is in pain.  I don't ever want her to feel devalued, and I am so sad that she's in that place.  And I'm sad knowing that my words in the email to my friend played a role in all that.  I do feel a sense of responsibility, and that hurts.
• He asked if the responsibility felt like guilt.
• I said no, it feels more like blame than guilt.  (What I did NOT say was guilt would indicate I had somehow done something wrong, which I don’t think I had.)
• The whole time I was thinking: keep this wife-focused, keep this wife-focused, don't overshare, don't explain, don't share any other “you” feelings.
• Then he said something along the lines of: I bet you didn't want to hurt your wife or devalue her and you wish you had a place to share those feelings. But you are trying to keep things off her and carry it all yourself.  At which point I started BAWLING and went into overdrive trying to pull it together.
• I thought: this HAS to be confirmation.  He's gotta know what’s going on.  I feel known.
• He then asked me "Do you think you can turn to your wife and tell her that?"
• I had a thousand thoughts fill my head in a split second: I can't tell her that... I get ROASTED any time things even lean that direction... That's not what we're doing here... I can't even talk at all right now... It's enough for me to hear YOU say it... I'm understood and I don't want to loose that... I can't say anything...
• So what I said while choking back tears was "I can't go there."
• He then asked if I could at least express the hope that *someday* we'll get to that place?
• I started crying all over again.  Thinking: Don't make me go there... Don't make me hope... The only way I'm surviving is through the acceptance that ‘this is what it is,’ to learn the dynamics, to learn the tools I need... Don't give me hope that it could look different - I'll mess things up if I loose that focus.
• So I said "Right now I can't even go *there*
• At that point he turned back to my wife, shifted topics, and never addressed me again.
• For the remainder of the session huge regrets started growing in me: “I’ve blown it. I had a chance to talk, with his approval, with his guidance, and I missed it. I've collected myself now. I could talk now.”  But he never swung back to it and was pressing into some other pretty touchy topics with my wife.
• I realized the ONLY thing of content I'd actually shared was a validation that my email to my friend was a hurtful thing to my wife.  Maybe I'm not known?  Maybe the only thing I've inadvertently confirmed is that "I did something very wrong; yep I'm the problem even though I didn’t try to be."
• So I felt terrible through the rest of the session.
• Until the very end when he said something that I'm choosing to listen to through the lens of hope.  He closed by saying, "I think your husband's silence today means he knows your feelings are important, and he doesn't want to unintentionally distract from that.  He knows things he's said in the past have caused harm, and he doesn't want to do it again.  I'm going to try to help him learn how not to do that."
• On the one hand, that kind of sounds like: he’s the problem, he’s responsible for your emotional state.  On the other hand, if someone was onboard knowing there's a personality disorder in play, it sounds no different than all the talk here about gaining tools to navigate (emotionally abusive?) bpd relationships.
• Whatever the case, I did leave feeling hopeful.  And also wondering if my silence communicated FAAAR more clearly than any words even could have.
• My wife on the other hand has a completely different take.  Immediately afterward she said “What you did was a ‘cop out’.”  And every day since then has been full of anger and accusations and assertions: That not explaining why I had done something so wrong, something so offensive, is a sign of me being an abuser.  She had shared in counseling, but I had refused to talk and that's me trying to control her.  That I don't treat her as an equal.  What the counselor said about me caring about her sounds ridiculous.  Do I even love her?  She can't go on like this.  Years of me treating her like a child, like an inferior.  Spreading it around that she's a liar.  Crushing her.  Manipulating her.  That I don’t know all she has had to endure.  I don't know how bad it is right now.  It's clear to "us" (her and the others she's telling) that I'm trying to control her by not talking, etc, etc.
• So it's rough.  I'm trying not to jade in response.  I’m still not good at it.  I realize I accidentally jade when trying to communicate why I'm not jade-ing : "You are trying to control me by not talking" "No, I'm sincerely just trying to move forward wisely" "Oh, so you are wise - that means you think I'm stupid then."
• Yes, I do have a lot to learn.

oh my goodness AaZz - so sorry an innocent effort to seek healthy support from a person who didn't have a vested interest turned out this way. I can imagine how it made her feel, and how it made you feel.


Well done. Wow.

So your wife got upset that you didn't talk more during the session. Considering her past habit is to goad you into invalidating her with JADEing, I think her being upset is actually a sign you're on the right path. You tried something different, and it actually worked. Nothing magical, but it moved things into a different position and deescalated the situation as much as possible. Shifting the dynamic upsets people. Things feel 'off' and it makes them anxious. It's to be expected from her. As the pattern is repeated and becomes more familiar, she'll calm down too.

I'm far, FAR more interested in the fact that YOU left the session feeling some measure of peace. Again, a great sign that this is headed in a healthier direction. Talk to me about that, what were you feeling?

Yes, we all have a lot to learn here. I think you are doing the best you can with the understanding that you have available.

Your therapy sessions do sound similar to the ones I was in, before I made the mistake of saying, "I'm getting to the point where I don't want to get back together." This was while I was getting berated for things that had happened years before. Instead of asking why I felt that way, she just decided the relationship was over and said something like, "I can move on like that." and snapped her fingers.

I think in the same session, I said you are the root cause of our problems. The therapist replied, "No, your reactions to her are the cause of the problems." He was still trying to teach me how to manage her dysregulation.  Unfortunately, it turned into a back and forth text exchange about who was gaslighting who after the session. Fortunately for me, she had already screamed at the therapist in a previous session for treating me wrong. She subsequently gave the therapist a bad review on Google. So the therapist pretty much agreed with my assessment of her, after that.

Refresh my memory, why is it impossible to schedule a one on one session with the counselor? I think you deserve to provide your perspective in a safe place with the therapist and explain what your objectives are for the therapy sessions moving forward.

I spend so much time lonely.  Unheard.  Unknown.  Misrepresented.  Told what I am thinking and feeling.  Told I've done and said things I never have.  Horrible things at that.  It's isolating.  It's such a tiny experience.  But I felt hope that one more person out there might know me -- someone 'official', someone 'professional', not even a random listening ear.  To think this counseling experience might have a second person onboard who gets what life with a bpd wife is like - AND could also speak into hers! - it felt like my world just doubled.


The problem is that we did it already.  Somewhere around week 3, my wife and I both had our own one-on-one sessions.  I know she presented some of her wounds - a mix of things I legitimately have done that have caused hurt - which I have owned and apologized for 1000 times over - but also presented things that are distortions she holds as well as things that never happened.  For my session, I was so flustered, I really shared almost nothing.  Ahead of time I kept thinking: I have days worth of information to give, there's no way to fit it into a single session! I don't even know which of it is the most important, which of it is relevant!  I didn't want to straight up say "borderline" because I thought (probably stupidly) that it would be discounted if it came from me.  I was trying to figure out how to give meaningful information so he could make his own conclusions, but I failed in coming up with a way how.  My own therapist suggested that instead of trying to encapsulate a whole two-decade history, I instead just tell him how I am feeling now, at this moment.  So I tried that, basically telling him that I work so hard to communicate her worth and value, and she perceives it as the complete opposite.  That she hears things people haven't said.  That she reads offense and cruelty into normal human interactions.
In response, he shared a TON of info he had already gathered in our first few meetings - and it seemed he was trying to reassure me.  He said that he could tell she has a negative dialog running through her head all day.  That she has defense mechanisms of blaming others.  He perceived her critical childhood.  He said gently that I was enabling - that I work so hard to take her discomfort away she has never learned to deal with her brokenness.  That I needed to speak without censoring myself and trust that he would help her through her distress.
All of that I was totally on board with!  I didn't think I needed to share any more.  But then when I started put into practice what he'd told me, speaking honestly, saying things I normally would have censored -- I ended up feeling completely betrayed.  She presented those conversations flipped, he validated her narrative without any input from me, and later when I did finally give input, her earlier narrative was validated a second time while I was held responsible for her not believing mine.
I thought - what the heck is going on - THIS is not what we talked about.  So in my distress I wrote him and told him how I was feeling, that I was doing what he'd said and it seemed I was being thrown under the bus, and asked if I misunderstood what was going on.  He replied back that part of his goal was for both of us to speak and have both of our experiences understood an accepted by the other person even if we didn't see things the same way.  This puts me in a bind, because some of her new accusations - things she's apparently held for a long time, but I'm just now hearing - are horrendous, and cannot fall into an 'agree to disagree' camp.  And he's straight up asking me to accept them.
The other complicating factor is that the day I wrote him, my wife asked me if I was communicating with him behind her back.  (A very 'can you call it paranoia if it happened' situation)  I answered honestly and she responded, rightly so, that it was a betrayal of trust, that we should not be saying things to him in private that the other person was not privy to.  In hindsight I should have totally asked first about contacting him with clarifying questions and concerns.  Then it could have gotten an okay -- or we could have talked decided not to.  But I blew it.  And I promised she would never have to worry about me talking to him one on one in the future, she could set that concern aside.
But man, if I could have a one-on-one session do-over, I would go about it completely different.  I know exactly what I'd say now.

O.K., so unfortunately, from what I've learned and experienced, he's right. You do have to straight up accept them... Trying to convince her of your point of view will most likely be too much for her to handle. Instead, what you will receive is blame shifting to a spectacular degree. You will need to accept that her unreality is her reality. Trying to convince her otherwise will be futile. You'll probably get more satisfaction from banging your head against a wall. At least in this case, eventually the wall will knock you unconscious. Well maybe she will too if she's physically abusive at all, like my ex was starting to be.


Do you think after the breakdown in the session the other night, you can ask her if it's O.K. to work with him privately so you can "practice" communicating better? Maybe you can play it off like, "this is really stressful for me, and I want to work with him alone." Just a thought.

That is stressful.

And there are ways to work with it.

I wonder if what he's asking you to do when he asks you to accept them (and feel free to jump in with exact wording of what he's asking)...

is to accept that that is what she is feeling.

It is really, really subtle.

It's not asking you to accept that it really happened.

It's not asking you to accept it, in the sense of agreeing with it.

It is perhaps more likely that he is asking: "Can you accept that that is how she sees things?"

And THAT gives you something to work with.

From there, you could, in honesty and with integrity, say something like:

"That would feel devastating to anyone if that happened"

"I would also be hurt if that had happened to me"

"Nobody wants to feel like they were betrayed"

"I cannot imagine the pain you are in as you have this experience right here" (or something more skillful)

...

The subtlety is related to how "it is real that we are feeling this way" but "feeling this way doesn't make it real".

The first one -- "it is real that we are feeling this way" -- is the validation target. The second one -- "feeling this way makes it real" -- is invalid.

So finding ways to "accept that she feels that way" is valid. "Agreeing with why she feels that way" is invalid. You didn't do that stuff.

Seeing how someone else would feel bad/angry/hurt/betrayed if they truly believed X had happened is the start of empathy which can dial down the temperature.

I'd steer away from "If X had really happened, I'd feel anguish too".

I think there is a skillful middle ground between "drinking the Kool-aid" and escalating with JADE. Find what's valid and true -- yes, she really does feel that way. Don't validate the invalid -- it is untethered to reality that she feels that way, and agreeing "yes, you feel that way because I was a criminally abusive monster" isn't helping anyone. Slow down, listen for some feelings, maybe try some moves of "it just makes sense to feel anger" or "I'd feel bitter if I'd been hurt".

I'd be curious how your T would respond if you found some validation targets with your W. I suspect she is not going to be able to genuinely do that with you (at least, not right now. One can hope and pray for her to turn to the better in the future).

His exact phrasing:  “Your wife WAS subjected to X and you need to accept that.”  (his deliberate emphasis on the ‘was’)

There was no mistaking that he was not referring to feelings or points of view.

However, I also do think it is very worthy to note he did not say “*You* subjected your wife to X and you need to accept that.  He seems deliberate about never phrasing things this way.

This could be his way of saying, “For her, it happened. It IS her reality.”  It also sounds a whole lot like “And you did it, even if you didn’t mean to.”

Regardless of the intentions of his wording, what my wife *hears* is that the therapist believes this is capital T Truth because: “He says you did it.”  And she is insistent that I say specifically “I did it. I own it.” and mean it.  And she’s made it explicit that anything less is invalidation.  In fact anything less is gaslighting and abuse.  So there is no wiggle room for me to say any other construction of phrase.

The odd thing is that for months (years?) she has insisted ”there are things you deny” in reference to this.  But these are things we’ve never talked about before, some things she's never even told me before - I've never had a CHANCE to deny. When she would say this, I would always dodge asking her what she was referring to, because I didn’t want there to BE something for me to deny.  So It really appears that SOME voice has been denying this narrative.  I really wonder if it is a voice inside her that knows it's not true and she has been projecting that voice onto me.  Until a couple weeks ago I've never had to deny any of this, but now that I hear the stories, I’m horrified, and  I DO agree with what might be this second voice inside her that knows it’s not true.

There are a million other things I construct acceptable phrasing for.  I do it multiple times every day.  I figured out how to do it on my own, loong before I knew that it was even a thing, before I stumbled across the right books and videos and podcasts explaining what I had learned to do the hard way.

This one however crosses a line.  And I do NOT feel safe.  If she can construct and believe this - and therapists validate it, and I am expected to accept and communicate to her that it happened - I will NEVER feel safe in the relationship.  And now I know she has already relayed this narrative to no less than six people in our network.  And no one will be telling her, hey this is just one perspective, better not be spreading that. In fact it seems they’ve encouraged her to tell other people.  

Again, I know where this comes from.  My heart breaks for her.  She’s sick and she can’t help it.  She truly, truly believes this.  This is her reality and that breaks my heart.  I literally weep when I think about how for her this a part of her ‘history.’  I even feel like if the therapist could tell me “I know it’s not true, but she *needs* you to play along” that I could do it. I could live the lie.  Or even adopt it as my own reality.  But is that going to help her in the long run?  What if it happens again?  She’s already claiming it happened in two different episodes - the story keeps changing.  And what about my kids?  What if something happened to me, if someday I’m gone, and she needs a new target for her projections?  It’s all so messy.

Yes.

I know you may interpret it that way, but it may not be what he's saying. Even if it's what he's saying, it is your choice to accept responsibility or not. Counselors don't know everything and they don't always get it right. Only take what is yours to carry.

Your wife expects invalidation, to the point that she fights you for it. form flier compares it to a dance - this is the dance your wife is accustomed to. You're changing normal protocol and that makes her anxious. She is fighting to go back to the normal protocol until a new one is introduced and becomes familiar.

I love it. I think this is just fantastic.


Can you share specifically what this is about? It's true that some accusations need to be handled with more care than others.

Here goes.  

Potential trigger warning…

She claims I sexually abused her, dozens of instances over a period of time, that I forced her to have sex when she didn’t want to.

I know this cannot be a matter of interpretation.  Since 2013 to the present day - which includes the time frame she’s referencing - I have lived by a commitment never to initiate.  

Since week one of marriage (2 decades ago) I had figured out that all the signs of repressed memory sexual childhood trauma were there.  I’ve tried to carry the weight of that in different ways in different seasons - tried to be mindful of how that could impact her and worked to keep the weight of that off her and onto me.

Explaining all the complicating factors would be a giant post (one I actually wrote and then deleted).  I am happy to provide.  But for now, for the sake of brevity, with much left out:

In one season of life, my wife was insistent that I have sex with her.  ALL throughout this time I was highly concerned.  I sensed she did not want to be there, but she insisted.  If I expressed concern I was attacked with “you don’t like me, you don’t want to be with me.”  If I said it didn’t seem like she wanted to be there she would say “You want me to engage with more enthusiasm. You are rejecting who I am.”  One time she was even crying and my attempts to stop were met with frantic abandonment accusations.  It was crazy. I was so confused.  Because I was convinced she didn’t want to be there, very early on I internally vowed never to initiate so I couldn’t be blamed for making her do something she didn’t want to do. I knew nothing I about BPD back then, so I was so confused.  All I knew was * I * didn’t want to be there, but I could never say that because she ferociously impugned my love and care and concern for her.  I began to dread these encounters, I felt gross and disgusting - her accusations became self fulfilling prophesies..  

This was a season and I eventually managed to end it. Within the last couple of years she has gotten her own therapist, and they are indeed unpacking all sorts of repressed childhood abuse.  I’m so glad she is finally getting this help she needs.  

But in discussions about sex, she is also painting that other time period years ago through a dissociated victim lens. She is telling her own therapist, plus our couples therapist, plus multiple friends that I forced her to have sex with her, that I sexually abused her.  I know there are SO many complicating factors.  And I’m learning how a bpd mind works.  So I can make myself see how she looks back at this through a certain filter, or how it could feel like this was the case.  But I feel like there is no way can I get on board with the words “forced” or ‘sexually abused.”  That’s not an ‘agree to disagree’ area.  If we were to say she experienced “sexual trauma” during that time - I could agree absolutely.  That was MY great concern at the time - one that kept being denied!  I was convinced that harm was being done, but I was attacked for trying to talk about it.  I was the one who put a stop to it when I became convinced I couldn’t trust what she was saying.

Again, my heart breaks for her.  It always has.  I’ve spent my life trying my best to surrender myself to her needs and perspectives.  That’s what I did back then.  When I accepted her words that “You saying no communicates that I am not good enough for you” I let go of my perspective of what was going on and surrendered to her accounting.  And now THAT is the very period of time we are talking about, but the story is flipped.  All of her insistence and pressuring is being denied.  And I’m being asked to do the SAME thing again: to accept her new words.  To now say that during that time “She was sexually abused, she was forced.”  This feels is like it perpetuates the cycle, not breaks it.

Thanks for sharing, AaZz, and for the trigger warning. I survived sexual abuse as well and it's taken a lot of work to heal. You've been through a lot as well, my friend. My heart goes out to you both.


Sexual abuse is about power. This almost sounds like she's trying to flip the script - she wants to be the one to gain power over her abuser and this is how she's trying to achieve that. In the same way she's pushing you to invalidate her, she put you in the position to become the abuser. She is hurting. I really feel for her, and I know you do too.


Can't speak for the friends but is it possible that her therapist and your couple's therapist have an inkling about what's really going on? It isn't rare for sexual abuse to lead to this type of behavior later in life.


It would perpetuate the cycle so change the rules and play the game in a way that's true to your values. What to say and what to accept is your choice and yours alone. Think about what you're validating. Don't validate the invalid. Don't accept what is not yours to carry.

I'd document as much as possible, somewhere she won't find your notes. Tell a trusted friend what's been going on. Think about ways to protect yourself. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Again, potential triggers…

Maybe this is too far down the post at this point for anyone to see and I need to start a new post.  Because, given the topic at hand, I do not know how to navigate this.  ***Is there anyone else who has been in the same spot?  How does one handle it***

I know how to validate, I do it all day long, week after week, year upon year.  But this seems different - is it?  Is it not?

My wife’s niece recently had an episode that seemed to come from nowhere, claiming that when she was a child her dad would take off and abandon the family for days, weeks.  Her mom, dad, brother were like, “what the heck? We know he didn’t. We all lived here together, we know that didn’t happen.”  But they knew she believed it so they didn’t argue, let it slide, her dad took the hit, they tried to understand where she was currently at and what she currently needed.  However, if the claim had been sexual abuse, that would have required a far different response. It would HAVE to. You can’t agree to disagree on something like that.

My wife’s brother sent his mom emails and texts untethered from reality about her having a relationship with her neighbor, about this neighbor threatening him, about his parents saying all manner of terrible things about him.  In curse-filled rants he told her he’d never step into her house again and he was cutting everybody off.  Now, a couple years later he is telling everyone that his MOM forbid him to step foot in the house (even though she has the emails) and that the whole family cut HIM off.  My wife was so upset by this, wondering how he could lie like that, and I had to keep telling her “I don’t think he’s lying, I think he honestly believes everything he says.”  So the family doesn’t argue with him and just tries to tell him they love him now.  They let it slide.  However if the claim had been about sexual abuse, you can’t treat that the same way, can you?

I’m even trying to think of my own scenario —  when I told our couples therapist that I felt betrayed, like he was throwing me under the bus, he responded with, “I apologize for the hurt and betrayal that this has caused for you, and that you are experiencing the feeling of being thrown under the bus.”  I feel like he was responding honestly, and also trying to model what validation looks like.  But if I were to say that he had sexually abused me in our first few sessions, that would have been a faaaar different claim, required a far different response, and I imagine there would have been all sorts of other people brought in and protocols put in place.

On the other hand, I also feel like given the topic, benefit of the doubt gets thrown out the window - and probably rightly so?  One conversation with a confidant went like this:
“She says I don’t care about her.”
“You know your heart; she’s dealing with hurts that keep her from seeing it.”
“She claims I said such and such”
“You know the truth, you know what you actually said, she’s got things going on inside that are mixing everything up.”
“She says I forced her to have sex.”
“Oh, well, you probably did.”

This is so serious, you don’t mess around.  And I get that.  If it came from anyone else, if it was about another person, I know MY response.  If my daughter said her husband abused her, I wouldn’t try to figure out if it’s true.  I’d say, “Leave.”  If my wife said a boss abused her, I’d say leave, “Leave.”  If my wife says I abused her, my knee-jerk reaction,  I think LEAVING should take place.  Not because I don’t love and care for her - I just know that’s the correct response.

But she’s not going to leave.  And she doesn’t want me to leave - what drives all this in the first place is abandonment issues, you don’t care about me claims, I can’t care for myself and no one else does either.  Leaving would confirm all this in her mind.  He never cared about me.  At this point, it isn’t about should I stay or leave.  I’m planning to stay.  I’m not abandoning her.  I love her deeply, and even knowing the depth of her pain causes love to grow, not lessen.  But how do you live with someone who reads ill intent into everything?  How do you live with someone when the ill intent in their mind has crossed THIS line.

Has anyone here navigated THIS kind of scenario?

My hope was couples counseling was going to help with the misperceptions going on in life.  But we are now dealing with claims that have come up during counseling that I have never heard before.  What was frustration has turned to shock and horror.  When I tried to share this I was told by the counselor  “She WAS sexually abused - you need to accept that.”  I don’t know that couples counseling will help.  Has anyone here navigated a similar situation?

I'm not sure it's so different. The allegations are such that you want to take reasonable measures to protect yourself. Have you researched marital rape laws in your state? Would it even come to that? What's the worst case scenario if you follow the counselor's guidance in validating her?

It's really interesting that your wife's family has had so many parallel stories, where they completely fabricate information. I also find it ironic that she can see her brother's lies, but not her own.


Friends often don't understand BPD.


I know others here have dealt with similar accusations - there are several threads, I'll try to find them for you. Let's try to get you connected to them, maybe start a new post or comment on their threads.

Do you think she is staying because on some level, she knows what she's saying isn't true?

What part of this is about you? What do you fear, and how do you face it?

Hi,
first I must say that your list at the beggining sound almost totally like my wife. We did not get to counseling, either together or individually, because my wife comes from an old school medic family (her father is a retired oncologyst) and “we do not believe in psychotheraphy). Btw his sister commited suicide recently….
I have “diagnosed” her as having a highly-functioning BPD. We are together for 14 years. She has a son from her first marriage, so for a long time I thought that her behaviour is in fact “testing” me because as a mother she would not be with someone that will just go away one day.
Off course, her strange behaviour never stopped, even after we got our son and I displayed total loyalty no matter what.
Our case is perhaps a bit peculiar because I was in a dark ace when we met, thinking I will never have a family of my own, and also got diabetes T1 at 35. She really helped me a lot and gave my life a new meaning, and our son is the greatest miracle. There is really nothing I wouldnt do for him.
So, to the point.
When I realised that my wife has mental issues, I started looking at everything in a different way. SHE needs my help. She can mever have a normal relationship. But she CAN have a life. She just needs a partner that understands her condition and can tolerate it.
So when se goes “off” (I learned the signs), I switch “on” and start treating her like someone that needs help, so my needs and feelings are not important (currently). Whatever she says, I don’t take in personally. It’s just words. I know that she will not remember it. The most important thing is not to bite the bait and get into and argument. Just acknowledge that she is right and that everything is as she says it is. So there is never a “fight”. It is just her dashing out at me and being a bitch for couple of hours. Then it is over and all is good.
I even taught our son about it, in carefully picked way, and so far it works fine.
Off course if someone else would see it he would probably think we are all crazy :)

You have no idea.  At times it would be comical if it weren’t so confounding.  There have been instances when she has been sharing something her brother said / did, talking about how clearly wrong it is.  And then literally in the very next conversation, less than a minute later, she has said / done the EXACT same thing.  I have to make sure I don’t stand there with my mouth open.  I have no idea how she can’t see the parallels.

Of course I know never to reference any of this.  She would say (has) that I am using information about her family against her.  How dare I compare her to someone with clear problems, etc etc.  It’s all evidence of how I’m out to demean her, oppress her, try to spin things, etc.  Any mere sniff of a comparison to her brother is seen through a victimization lens.

I have no idea what she thinks at any given time.  It seems to keep changing.  Her view of the past seems to be influenced by who she’s been talking to, what she’s been reading, how she currently feels about herself and life. There’s a darkness which I recognize when it comes that informs me of a one hundred percent chance that she’s been reading something triggering / perception-shaping that day.  Of course, sprinkled over the decades, she will from time to time  have little moments of clarity - an “oh my gosh, I can see you, I can see what I’ve been doing to you” moment.  But these are super sort lived and very rare.

I would love to connect with anyone that can give some clarity.  I can try poking around the archives too, try searching words or phrases that might yield results.

That’s a great question.  I spend so much time shelving myself, rolling over, accommodating, setting feelings aside — I don’t know how to think about me, my feelings, my fears.

I know for me primarily this is about her - how can I help her, how do I make sure she doesn’t experience this again, if I accept/validate/own/adopt her narrative  does that make it more likely that something similar will play out again in the future (you did it before, you just did it again).

I do think by default my mind races to focus on her in order to protect myself from facing my own hurts and wounds.  And actually, maybe it’s good that the accusations have finally reached this level.  I have no choice.  I *HAVE* to think about how a false claim this large would/will impact me.  Just rolling with false assertions can’t be an option any longer.  There are potential legal, relational, societal consequences at stake for the first time.

Maybe that’s the whole crisis - I don’t know how to think about me.

On a practical level, I know I will never feel safe with her again in the sexual realm.  Never, ever.  No way.  If this is her perception, one that she hangs onto, one that others validate, one I’m expected to accept — I will NEVER feel safe.  Even if things seemed fine, HOW COULD THIS BE SPUN someday down the road?  And I’ve seen how quickly other people affirm it.  My brain will never move past that.  So yeah, that’s a feeling.

AaZz, tricky spot you're in. It almost sounds like you need a combo lawyer-therapist-coach. Someone to bridge that gap between working on the relationship, and understanding where your red line is.


Many lawyers will do an initial consultation (often 30 minutes, sometimes more -- I think ours was almost an hour?) for free or very low charge, with no requirement to retain services. If you're having questions/rumination/anxiety about "what if she does it, what if she takes these accusations public", it might help to talk to a legal professional to understand your options and some potential scenarios.

If any kind of "unwinding the relationship" or separation becomes a possibility, as I'm wondering from reading this:


then hearing from a lawyer ahead of time about fielding false accusations could help you sleep a little better -- you know some likely outcomes, you know some tools to use and tactics, you know what to say and what not to say. Perhaps in a consultation, you could let the L know "hey, I am doing counseling with my W, will any legal issues come up in separation if I say stuff like 'how you feel makes sense' or 'I see how real it is to you that this happened' etc?"

Basically, while the worlds of counseling and law are often far apart, if you get some legal info, you can start making informed decisions about what you want to say, what you want to affirm, how to protect yourself, how to validate what's valid and not validate what's invalid.

These consultations would be confidential, and not something, unfortunately, to share with your W.

Good to hear from you again.

kells76

In my experience this is one of the most unsettling, insidious things about pwBPD. The thing is, they can be convincing. It's not like they admit that they're insecure, in fact they often come across as very confident and assured, until they change their mind with equal assurance and you're left spinning, thinking you're the one in the wrong, or the one with the problem. I was shocked at how easily someone else's BPD devastated stability and confidence I'd worked hard to achieve.

 

Super insightful that you recognize part of the crisis is that you don't know how to think about you, and that you're racing to focus on her to avoid addressing your own hurts. Anyone here will tell you that regaining your foothold one of the most important things you can do. You have some healing to do and you're responsible for that.

It's not always a bad thing to have your back against a wall - sometimes it puts you in a position to make a big, make-or-break decision. The important thing to remember is that you have multiple options to choose from. Each option has accountability/responsibility attached to it. It's a matter of choosing the option that is best for you.

kells's suggestion about the lawyer is a solid option - I think it's important that you go  into this with eyes wide open, knowing the impact and potential ramifications. It could dispel fears - maybe it's not as bad as you think.

As far as the social impact, sure, some people will believe her. BPD's are good at convincing others, until they're not. My reputation has been run through the mud (I do mean RAKED, dragged, pretty viciously), twice. I survived both times. People saw through the lies. It can be nerve wracking but it wouldn't ruin you. Don't let fear control the decisions you make.


I'd have a hard time getting past this to build intimacy again. She's broken trust, and it's not easy to repair.

I know there are counselors that specialize in sexual dysfunction. I wonder if she'd be open to that? Perhaps you could pose it as wanting to repair/improve your sex life.

I found just a few threads featuring wild accusations of rape or physical abuse. If you click on their profiles, you can see all of their other posts too.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=220652.0

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=209359.0

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=284708.0