BPDFamily.com

Hi All,

Today is my wife’s and my 21st wedding anniversary. As some of you may remember, she asked for a trial in-home separation about 2-3 weeks ago, after splitting me HARD last year. During this respite, I’ve started to get better and better as time has gone on - I even met somebody who I hit it off with online - and have been putting the pieces of my fractured self back together again. Feels, well… good.

So she sends me this text today:

I am not handling today well.
Sorry.

It feels awful to have this day be so weird. I am guilt ridden even though you probably don’t think I am.

I really don’t know how to be today. I am sitting at Breyzfelder. No idea if I should come home, not come home. Talk to you, not talk. Hug you, not hug. Honor the years, not honor them. No idea.

After talking to her therapist, she took two Seroquel and is asleep upstairs (it’s 3:30 in the afternoon). Thoughts on what she’s trying to do here? Pity party? Have me beg and plead with her to come back? Something else? I’ve kept my responses short and to the point, not really engaging any of it. I’d love to know how the experts here view what she’s doing with this exchange.

Uncle

Good question -- probably depends on what you can do and say while maintaining your integrity, while thinking about where you want the relationship to go.

Do you still have an investment in bettering the relationship between you and your W?

Or are you more at the point of -- having the separation (possibly moving towards divorce) be as good as it can be (i.e., using tools and skills to "better the separation")?

One approach if you're tilting towards bettering the marriage could be to validate what's valid in her message, without rescuing -- something like "Hey, thanks so much for sharing that with me, it makes a lot of sense. I support you recognizing today however feels best to you". The valid part is that she shared some feelings, whatever the feelings were. You aren't stepping in to rescue her by telling her what to do.

Seems like two Seroquel at 3:30 means she'll be asleep for a while?

Yeah, I think a lot depends on if you would like to put in more effort in your marriage, or if you are more looking to manage the separation.

For me, I see a couple of positives.

1) She was open with her feelings and emotions.  It would be a good time to actually have a real conversation.
2) She shared that she wasn't okay.  Maybe she expects you to swoop in and rescue her?  Or maybe she expects that you don't care and you wouldn't care either way.  Again though, a good time to have a real conversation if that's the direction you want this to head.
3) She seems open to advice at the moment.  Is that usually the case? 

How you proceed is completely up to you.  But if you want to have a conversation, today's a good day to try.  If it blows up, then just step away or put up other boundaries.

Also good questions (thank you for them, Kells). Somewhere in the middle, I suppose. I’m always open to bettering the relationship but she’s so hot/cold, it feels like a minefield I’ve become familiar with over these 20+ years and any progress made today might be lost tomorrow, leaving me feeling like a dope for having hope. For example, before bed last night she says, “You want a hug?” This question feels loaded, as it implies I’m the one who asked for a separation and withholding affection.


I did say something to this affect but it led nowhere really. I also picked up Chinese food (her favorite) but she just sat depressed at dinner.

I very much appreciate your perspective, Pook. I tried to open the door to a gentle conversation but she went right back to her deluded, disconnected state and it led nowhere. Her therapist has convinced her (or she has altered the message from her therapist to fit her own narrative, more than likely) that I’m an entitled man who has provided no respect or affection for the last 20+ years so any advice ends up being “mansplaining.” She, as I think most pwBPD probably are, is gullible and easily manipulated so I feel as if the advice she’s getting from outside sources is leaving me without hands essentially. I’d like to think she’ll eventually come around but the splitting plus menopause plus child going off to college has created a tough scene to navigate.

Never heard anyone describe pwbpd as gullible and easily manipulated. However, thinking back into that time, I do kind of see it. I had to diffuse a number of ridiculous claims other people made to her which she took as fact. As long as she was in a regulated state I could logic it away. I don’t think I found her to be easy to manipulate. Perhaps you again mean other people, not the favorite person. She generally went along with what other people told her to do. I got the most resistance. Even though it seems like I cared about her well-being the most.

My wife w/ BPD is a kind, gentle woman who deeply loves everyone in her life.  She's also clinically depressed because she doesn't like saying no to anyone and is always on the run to "save someone".  That's been a huge trait in my BPD daughter's life as well. 

My wife is the "unconventional" BPD type where the emotions were more directed inward than outwards, so the disorder didn't really show until she painted someone black.  Then it was scorched Earth towards that person and there was no turning back.  If you ask my wife for anything, no matter how ridiculous, she'd likely drop everything and pitch in.  That's being manipulated in order to make others accept her, like her.

My kid is conventional BPD and everything is outward, explosive when things don't go her way.  Maybe part of that is age (she's 24), maybe not.  But she's always hung out with the worst possible friends and they continually brought her down, made her unstable by their own drama.  Like my wife, she was always running to "save someone", even though those people refused to save themselves.  She's very easily manipulated by the wrong types of people.

The disorder has very little in common between my wife and kid EXCEPT that they're always off to save the next person in need of saving.  And that's the manipulation part, the need to be loved and accepted no matter what.  Their priorities are all out of whack and we pay the price for that.

My wife with probable BPD matches that description as well. So very kind and gentle, wishes to protect cute things like babies and puppies, and for those that might menace those, she declares they deserve the most excruciating tortures.

For many years, she had an online "home", with a group of people with very fringe interests (straight S&M sub), which life choices and counsel she saw as gospel before ditching it all and switching to a radically opposite fringe (feminist Lesbian).

She's highly functional, to the point that she repeatedly stressed and emphasized over the years that she saw herself as very easily influenced...

In parallel she found a legitimately validating cause (natural fertility management), which creeped into her life more and more (training herself, training to become a trainer, training to become a trainer's trainer, volunteering to set up new branches and using her skills to translate, edit and recompose the training material in our local language, then another language, and probably a third language by now, all while being by day a stay-at-home Mom of 4 young children, at night teaching language classes, and training in other fields and pursuing numerous hobbies).