BPDFamily.com

I had trouble thinking how to organize this most coherently (coherent thoughts? what’re those?), so with advance apologies if I go on too long, I’m going to tell the story chronologically as I now understand it. I know what I’m about to describe is nothing compared with what some people on this site have gone through, are going through. We’re all lucky to have this place. Thank you for reading.

My uBPDw and I met five years ago. It was your classic whirlwind romance. I told her I loved her by the second month; we decided to move in together by the fifth month; we eloped the following year; we had a kid the year after that. The isolation of new love led into the isolation of having a newborn, which led into the isolation of the pandemic. When I look back to the beginning, certainly by the 1-year mark, the red flags are scattered around like little crime-scene markers. There were just so, so, so many situations that didn’t have to be stressful but were, or that probably would have been stressful for any couple but went completely nuclear for us. I did not have enough real relationship experience, and was not talking regularly enough with other people who loved me, to know what was normal. So for a long time I was confused, self-blaming, frustrated, angry, self-blaming again. I tried very hard to live with her in Borderland. 

The fights were awful and all the time, about everything. I went through bouts of JADE-ing, before I knew that’s what it’s called, but in the end I always rolled over and accepted her claim that I was the problem. I asked and asked to go to marriage counseling, but she always said: Not until you take care of your own issues. (I did try a few different T’s over the years and have been with one I like for about 10 months. I don’t regret listening to that suggestion at all!) I wince thinking of all the times I didn’t bring up something that mattered to me—about my family, with whom she has endless problems, or about D3, or about how we’d live. And I wince at all the apologies I gave insincerely, because I wanted to keep the peace rather than because I’d done anything that any reasonable person would consider wrong. In that sense, my inability to stand up to uBPDw has definitely done damage.

Our latest crisis, which began a few months ago, has been very different from the many conflicts before. In that time I have learned what PDs are, found this site, read up on better communication techniques, and started telling other people in my life what I’ve been dealing with. I have had a number of epiphanies. Or I should say: The extremity of uBPDw’s reactions when I assert reasonable boundaries for the first time ever in our relationship has made clear to me a number of things that I was in denial about.

The fight simmered up from nothing but reached a point where she was emailing me threats about custody of D3, suggesting she’d make (false) accusations against me of abuse, relating experiences to me that were based in either lies or hallucinations, and exhibiting extreme and disturbing emotions—shaking her finger in my face in a rage and then, moments later, sobbing while reading D3 a children’s book; stopping the car and telling me, in front of D3, to apologize for some perceived slight or get out; crying and wailing, begging on her knees, pounding on the door to get me to sleep in our bed, be close to her, “act like a husband,” “be her person,” when all I want is a peaceful night alone on the couch. And the conversations. The circular, circular, circular conversations. Hours and hours talking about nothing, yet somehow always about her.

Finally, when I said for the first time ever that maybe we should think about separating—that maybe what she’d been threatening all these years did make sense—she agreed to marriage counseling. We did five sessions over two weeks. The MC was very focused on saving the marriage, and her style (EFT-based, which I have no problem with per se) had us spending most of the time listening to uBPDw talk about her emotions, i.e., giving the MC her litany of all the ways in which I wasn’t a good partner. I didn’t think it made sense to pay for something I was already getting for free. And none of what we did in MC was helping create a better environment for us or D3. So that’s on hiatus.

Earlier today, after all kinds of needless chaos, I said as directly as I ever have: “I consider this behavior [like the specific example we’d just talked about] abusive and I will not tolerate it in my life anymore. It is at the root of what makes our marriage unhappy.” I (I have never mentioned BPD to her, and I have tried pretty hard to avoid stigmatizing/pathologizing language, not always successfully.) Then suddenly she changed her tune: Yes, you're right, I can’t believe how I’ve wronged you, I’ve actually been thinking about this and working on this for weeks… which turned out to mean learning some breathing exercises and trying to be less defensive. And honestly, that’s great. As is the fact that she’s back in weekly talk therapy after a long time off. But it was all so pitch-perfect and so immediate that I can’t really believe it. Stuff like this evaporates.

I’m now in what feels like a squishy place. We’re sleeping in the same bed but have agreed to basically be colleagues for a couple of weeks—focus on being civil around the house, having fun with D3, not putting ourselves in stressful situations, attempting to have occasional real conversations about the marriage. (We have made many agreements like this and they have never lasted more than a few days, so we’ll see.) At the same time I’m having a lot of trouble seeing myself happy with uBPDw, and what I’ve read on this site and in other places doesn’t give me a ton of hope that she will become more pleasant to be married to.

I have a great support system, including T, some family, and what seems like a good lawyer with expertise in high-conflict types. I’m quickly making myself aware of what I can expect if/when I decide to tell uBPDw I want out. (It isn’t pretty, but none of this is.) I am completely confident that I can live a happy life and be a good dad to D3 without being married to uBPDw if I so choose. When I think of living in my own little house with a room where D3 gets to spend 50% of her time in a tranquil, uncluttered place with healthy emotional boundaries, a part of me feels very happy. 

But I’m really having trouble with the FOG. I’m really having trouble not listening to the part of myself that jumps to solve uBPDw’s problems, console her, fix the chaos, clean the mess, roll back my boundaries, let her inside. I’m worried that if I don’t exhaust every avenue before I give up, I’ll torture myself later. But I’m also worried that if I exhaust every avenue, I’ll wake up in 10 years in an even worse place. I grieve a marriage I probably can’t have, but then I think, maybe I could have it if everyone worked hard enough for long enough. And then I think: But meanwhile D3 is growing up. She has one childhood. I have one chance to be there for it. I can’t be distracted by uBPDw’s chaos and constant needs.

D3 has definitely been confused and a little anxious during this time, but it’s hard to tell what’s going on inside her head—what she picks up on, what she understands of it, what’s just normal developmental stuff and what’s not. I trust in her resilience, though I’m obviously very concerned.

I guess I’m looking for clarity and courage and not currently finding it within. Anyone know the remedy?

Hello Flackjacket,

 I am sorry for what you are going through. I strongly encourage you to read my posts since last September because I’m basically a year ahead of you. My situation is almost identical to yours except I am no longer with my BPDw.

   Sorry to report to you that you are probably right. The peace does not last very wrong. Now if you are in a good place at this very moment, it’s ok to give it your best and try all the techniques you know. If anything that will help you with the “guilt” later. If somehow your BPDw is different then maybe things will work. Despite the likelihood that the disorder wins at the end.

 I put massive efforts into appeasing my ex but they are like a black hole, there was nothing I could of done. The last months and what followed were the worst mental and emotional anguish I have encountered.

 Things look different now, I have my s4 50%+ of the time, my life is better, glad I’m not with her anymore. The way she ended things was even worse, I could of saved myself a lot of pain if I ended things earlier.

 
 

Thanks, I’ve already read a lot of them over the past few weeks, it turns out! I see the similarities, which is hard, but I see the differences, and those are hard in another way—e.g., if my uBPDw hasn’t engaged in X behavior, I can tell myself her case is milder and maybe see some hope.


This is the thing I think I struggle with most—guilt about “giving up” on my marriage vows before we even reach the five-year mark, guilt about “turning my back” on someone because they have a PD they didn’t ask for and may not be able to control, guilt about being the one who made the decision to take away D3’s chance at a nuclear family forever. It’s hard to feel OK defending your own interests when they seem in opposition to the interests of the people you care about (and, tbh, have constructed your own identity through to a certain extent). I have always had trouble making these types of decisions in life, being brave, so this feels like a moment of not just potentially ending my marriage but also claiming a new adult identity for myself: Flakjacket 2.0.

But won’t there always be a voice in my head that will say: “She could have gotten better”? “If you’d given her a chance, given her six months or a year or a lifetime like you promised in your vows, she could have gotten better.” What do I say in reply to that voice? Does it ever go away?

I can tell you one thing: I had no idea of what I was really committing to when I said “I do.”

 It’s up to you to decide if the risk vs reward is worth it to you. If the case is truly milder then good at least you can possibly manage. Guilt should not be the main motivation to stay though.
 
 In my experience, the disorder wins at the end unfortunately.