BPDFamily.com

We've been together for over 20 years. Two children, youngest aged 7.

Ever since we've been together my recollection of our argument style is that she will get extremely angry about something that makes no sense to me. The big ones aren't that frequent, maybe once a year, but with smaller complaints along the way. I would JADE every time, which of course didn't help, until a few hours/days/occasionally weeks later I can't take the ongoing distance/hostility any more and would apologise for my role in the conflict. Generally speaking, I would have pointed out her contributions along the way but that be met with complete denial and refusal to engage (eg "you're just trying to think up something that you can pin on me so that you can say it's all my fault"). Of course her recollection is very different. She says that she always wants to debate rationally, and that if I have any reason to disagree with her I should just debate it. I would say I have tried that, and it doesn't work because when she gets angry she becomes completely certain of her opinion. Her take is that when she's sufficiently certain of something I've done wrong, that's when she gets angry. In most cases it's hard to really unpick these things objectively, so I generally didn't try, and just accepted that going along with it is the price of staying together.

For the last year, and especially the last 6 months, the frequency of these fights has picked up a lot. About 2 years ago she broke up with my mother, for reasons that I mostly understand (although I think she's misinterpreting and exaggerating some of her complaints). She says my mother is a narcissist, and she may well be right. But recently she has started calling me a narcissist too, and says that I don't love her and she thinks I never have. I think her evidence is that I tend to do less of the small physical touches, brief hugs, nice words etc than she does. On her good days, she's the sweetest person you can imagine, and treats me far more nicely than I ever treat her. But when something goes wrong, she can call me awful names, declare that our relationship is over because she'll never be able to trust me ever again, yell, swear, etc. So in her memory, she's the loving one who has kept our relationship together, whereas my memory fixates more on the bad days (a bad habit, I know, but it is what sticks in my head).

I think it's because she read that narcissists are incapable of love, and she doesn't feel sufficiently loved by me, therefore I must be a narcissist. I think her uBPD tendencies, eg an impossible to fill emptiness, are an equally plausible (OK fine, more plausible, from my PoV) explanation for her feeling unloved, but I do acknowledge that I didn't express my love in the ways that she probably needed me to. I was in the process of trying to adjust to her style when all hell broke loose.

She was bugging me one morning about an accusation that honestly to this day still makes no sense to me. I did get a bit frustrated and raise my voice, which she called me out on, and I apologised immediately. But the next 30 minutes of ranting was really hard for me to take. I started recording the argument, as we have previously said that we should record our arguments, and (I regret to say) didn't actually tell her I was recording. The phone was on the table in full view, but I didn't point it out. I had no intention of it being some one-sided thing, but I know that she sees it as a way to catch her out since I know to be careful in what I say/how I say it. I offered to delete it but she said no, better that everyone knows what I did. I didn't listen to it for several weeks, and almost became convinced that maybe it wasn't as bad as I remembered, until I eventually went back and realised that it was way worse than I remembered. I am confident that, if she had known about the recording, I wouldn't have a recording of her ranting like that, so although that wasn't my intention (and the cost has been high) there was some small upside to the recording.

Two days later she declared that our relationship is over as she can never trust me again but that we should stay together for the kids. I said if it's like this then no, we should separate. That exchange was also recorded, with both of knowing about the recording at the time. On subsequent occasions this conversation has been retold by her as "I said we should stay and work on our relationship but you just wanted to head for the door". She refuses to listen to the recording of what actually happened, saying that all the recordings are too traumatic for her now.

So for the past 3 months we've been very distant, but still living together. We each have our own therapists, and are in couples therapy, but I think we each blame each other. I feel that her constant moral judgement/scorn over innocent mistakes (or not even mistakes, just different approaches) are the real problem, together with her unwillingness to compromise during these arguments. She says she wishes I'd been more honest for all these years (I do too, but I try to explain what made that so hard). More concretely, she blames me for repeatedly "stabbing her in the back" these past few months. I think her main backstabbing complaints are:
1. Recording. Fair enough as a complaint (not sure about backstabbing) but I did apologise immediately and offer to delete.
2. Writing to a psychologist that she accuses me of NPD, when she only called me a narcissist. In her mind, that distinction is me demonising her, and brought her to tears.
3. Telling my mother about our troubles. She had asked me not to, and I held off for a long time as I didn't want to talk to someone who is likely to be biased against her, but it came out eventually. I don't accept that I have any obligation not to tell my mum, nor to tell her what we talked about (she said she was particularly hurt because I didn't tell her the details of the conversation; not that she tells me what she talks to her friends about).
4. Explicitly raising the possibility of separation. She's clearly very anxious about this, but in my mind declaring that the relationship is over is the big step, and after that separation is just the logical completion. She has subsequently walked back on declaring it over, and says I'm just fixating on things she said during the argument, but it has been said repeatedly to the point that I feel I had to take it seriously.
5. She says I've been showing constant hostility and anger towards her. I accept that I've not been my old self, but I am reasonably sure that the hostility is far more from her to me (a friend saw us together and was shocked).

I really struggle to see any of these as a backstabbing (although I do understand her upset over the recording; that said, she could have just taken me up on deleting it). And that's without even getting into her behavior during these months.

I don't think there's much chance of her accepting that she has been verbally abusive to me at times, and that the emotional side of things is more of a mixed bag than she makes out (ie she's not always been the sweet person she thinks of herself as). I understand that things are particularly bad at the moment because she's freaking out about an potentially impending separation, and if that were off the table she might calm down. But I don't feel I can take it off the table until some kind of trusting, loving relationship is restored, or at least major steps towards that. When I talk about the endpoint that we're aiming for, she says I'm just demanding that she goes back to how she was before (not what I'm hoping for! but anyway...), ie in her mind that I'm asking for her to be in full "put me on a pedestal" mode all the time, and that this is greedy. I just want to know that we're aiming for an actual loving relationship, where we're each happy to be with the other, rather than the "coparenting under the same roof" relationship that she has often proposed.

Ultimately, I think we've each come to see each other much more negatively than previously. I already had something of this feeling, but have now surfaced it far more explicitly especially after reading about BPD. She previously idolised me most of the time, only devaluing me occasionally, but now I think she has moved me permanently to the devalued pile (well, for 3 months, with no obvious signs of change).

I just don't know how long to wait to hope that things improve. I think that if I actually move out, it will be hard to recover as it will be such a blow for her, both because she really doesn't want to live without me (I think she values my practical and childcare contributions) and also because it will be seen as a rejection. But these last few months have been really hard for me, and I don't think I can take much more. I find my impression of her shifting rapidly, that I no longer think back to all the positive interactions quite as easily, and start to imagine how much easier life might be on my own. I feel like all the signs are telling me to leave, but it's really hard to take a step that will quite possibly be one-way, and will hit the kids hard.

I have read the thread about the effect on children of staying vs divorce, and I know that the overwhelming opinion is that staying for the kids is almost never a good idea. But she's not anything like what most of the others on here describe. Prior to these last 3 months she was only occasionally abusive to me, almost never to the kids (harsher and more devaluing than I would be, but not abusive), and we don't argue in front of the kids. They know we're unhappy together but I don't think it's having a huge effect on them yet.

I want to give the couple therapist a bit more time, but my feeling is that if we haven't made progress in the next few months I will leave.  But I don't really know what progress might look like. I think she wants me to accept that she has been too nice to me for all these years and that the problems are just because I've been spoiled by that. I really struggle to discuss our issues because it quickly descends into what feels like a witch hunt into my crimes against her, so I don't know what I can actually do to make her trust me, without going back down the old road of just apologising for everything she wants me to.

I know we all need to make our own decisions, but any thoughts/similar experiences/etc would be very welcome. Thanks!

Usually when the Blaming, Blame Shifting and whatnot ramps up there's triggers that can be identified.  Could this have started about the time you started couples therapy?  This is different than individual counseling in that now the therapist is getting not just her perceptions but also the other side too.  Is she being called out on some of her claims and grudges?

She's Blaming you for just about everything she sees wrong, you're her Whipping Boy, so to speak.  She gets herself upset, you get punished.  William Eddy wrote a book, "It's All Your Fault!"  He's also the author of our most essential BPD divorce handbook, "Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=47078.0)"

Likely if you separate and end up divorcing, she will mount an even more extreme distortion campaign - against you - to TRY to make you look worse than her as a spouse and especially as a parent.

So do NOT delete your recordings.  You already know that deleting anything will not suddenly make her a calm person henceforth.  Your clips are a part of documentation you may need in the future, proof that she's not a poor helpless victim as she would claim but instead an aggressive and angry accuser demanding her way.

Under no circumstances should you delete anything...period! One of the more common things I have said here on the boards through the years is "Live Your Truth!" Why you may ask...well someone disordered can essentially put you through the meat grinder and have your head spinning and making you believe what is fake to be taken as truth. In essence, never lose sight of what you know to be true. Focus on that key aspect...What YOU KNOW to be true, not what you feel to be true. The reason that is so important is that being jerked around can make you think what you feel is fact. This happens because of your closeness to the disordered party and that is where the real difference lies...they go by what they the feel is fact, but you go by what you know as fact. Do not let that line get blurred.

Cheers and Best Wishes!

-SC-

In a BPD relationship you kind of have to take your ideas about marriage down to the studs and reframe what the relationship is and how you'll exist in it.

Sometimes you will be in partner mode. Sometimes you will be in parent mode.

You have to have an internal boundary that you can control to put a stop to the verbal abuse. There's no point in discussing it.

30 minutes of ranting is not acceptable.

It sounds like she has moments where she is regulated and can be reasonable. What if you were to discuss with her your boundary? I will give myself a time out when I feel myself getting flooded. Tell her what you will do, how long you will be gone, whether you'll text her or not, or whatever type of reassurance she might need.

If she can hear you on that and start to learn your boundary, one that you have reason to have and some control over, you are in a hopeful percentage.

Start with one thing that matters to you. Frame it about how you feel and what you are going to do. She will try to shift the conversation to how she feels, what she needs, how you did this to her 4 years every Tuesday for 16 weeks plus 10 unicorns and 29 purple elephants. Go back to the one thing: I will do x so that I can y.

Thoughts?

Expect that when you address one issue, another will pop up elsewhere.  It's like that clown and his long balloon, while forming it into a poodle, he will squeeze one section and the air pops up somewhere else.

If she is not addressing her issues with the therapists as you progressively set your newfound boundaries, she will not improve overall.

Boundaries (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=61684.0) article in Tools & Skills Workshops board.
Setting Boundaries and Setting Limits (https://bpdfamily.com/content/setting-boundaries)

Whether she will abide by reasonable boundaries can indicate whether there might be hope for the relationship.  Sure, she will "fall off the wagon" sometimes, relapses happen, but does she get right back on the program?

This was 100% the experience with my xBPD. On the rare occasions over the years when I managed to "fix" something, another problem just popped up to replace it within a few months. Eventually I realized she was just an emotional black hole with chaos at the centre and gave up trying to help her and began to work on myself again. It was setting those boundaries for myself that eventually led to our divorce.


It's natural for people to want to get back to the happy, earlier state of their relationship, but I think that's ultimately the wrong way of looking at it. I like Esther Perel's re-evaluation of relationships after affairs -- the relationship you had with the other person is over because of the affair. Do you want to build a new type of relationship with this person? I think it's a good question to ask of pretty much any significant relationship problem -- replace "affair" with "BPD" and ask yourself the same question.

Thanks everyone for your replies. At this point I agree, I have no interest in deleting the recording.
Right now we're pretty calm but distant. She's doing her best not to shout (but still sometimes blaming in a less overt way).
Sometimes, when she recognizes something good about me, she wants to have a bit of a hug but always on her terms. She says she hates all forms of conditioning/training but I do end up feeling like she's training me (even if she's not doing it deliberate), and I actually find myself withdrawing from these small moments of intimacy, because of how they always seem to be on her terms.

So right now, I feel like we're stumbling along, not in anything that looks like a crisis, but each feeling distant from the other. She's upset with me for this list of my supposed crimes, which I don't accept, and I'm upset with her for essentially breaking up our relationship over what seems like nonsense to me.

And, in answer to the triggers: the couple therapy was in response to the breakdown not the other way around. She seems to have become more and more dissatisfied over time but without any actual claim that I had changed. One theory that I wonder about is whether I became the whipping boy once she no longer had my mother to be the focus of her discontent. I think she's dissatisfied with various aspects of her life, and maybe she uses an external target to help her deflect this from herself. But I don't really have any evidence for this.

Just today we were at a school event, and seeing the other happy couples was really hard for me. Of course I don't know what goes on at home, but I see them joking about their husbands behaviour that's 10x worse than most of what she complains about and I just find myself thinking "why am I held to this standard? Why is the standard so much tougher on me than on her, or anyone else?". I find myself mentally checking out, and expecting to separate, as I don't know how long she'll take to recover, nor whether any such recovery will be long lasting. I don't want to be permanently in the doghouse, nor permanently in a distant relationship.

I think this is right. I'm OK with different, but not with distant. She says that my asking whether she still actually wants me, in a deeper sense than just wanting me to be under the same roof, is selfish and greedy. That it will take time for her to recover from my backstabbing. But we're 4 months in with not much sign of change, nor of either of us accepting the other person's interpretation. I don't want to wait years and find that it was all in vain.

I think if she accepted that she has these tendencies, and after the blowups there was some balance to our understanding of what went wrong, I could handle a new relationship. But if every one of these gets recorded on a charge sheet against me for all time, as further justification for a hair trigger, then I don't want to be part of it.

Here's the thing- you and I can debate literally any of the tough topics in the world right now (politics, religion, war in Israel, border crossings, COVID, etc) and there's a decent chance we wouldn't agree on everything.  Could we still build a relationship though?

Of course we could, as long as the thing we disagreed on isn't the basis of our relationship.

Right now, the basis of your marriage is arguing over who said or did what in the past.  Why does that remotely matter though?  Why are you wasting energy trying to say "I'm right" or "You're wrong" with the person you love?  What could you possibly gain from that other than a divorce?

It's like that old movie WarGames about nuclear war- the only way to win is not to play.

Look, I was married to a BPD wife for 25 years...and we had a BPD daughter.  I completely get it.  Just last week, my ex brought up something that happened 24 years ago, and her "recollection" was that it was 100% my fault and she was the victim.  That's not what happened at all, and we are divorced now.  So what's the point in fighting over that?  I simply told her that we both shared blame and I'm truly sorry for what happened. 

And she was silent- what could she say?  That thing hurt her enough to carry it for 24 years, so I apologized for my part.  In other words, I validated the valid, while lightly pointing out the invalid.  Just one quick, simple sentence filled with remorse and empathy.  I wasn't going to play the game, so I let her "win".

I didn't get an apology for her part in the argument 24 years ago, but I didn't need that either.  The simple truth is that I let that go 24 years ago like a typical spouse who's not mentally ill.  I did my part for her, to let her heal and let go, and our conversations the next several days were very different.  She wasn't on edge as much and she showed me more empathy for some things I'm dealing with.  So in a way, I "won" as well by choosing not to play the blame game.

You don't have to accept your wife's interpretation to fix things.  Instead, you need to stop playing the game entirely and get back to simply loving her.  That allows her to re-center and get back to loving you as well.  You're the "mentally stable" one here though and that means you have to take the lead.

In principle I agree, and I was doing essentially that for many years (without really knowing what was going on). The problem is that now so many of my one-sided apologies are being used against me as evidence that I'm the deficient one who needs to change in order to fix things. And if I don't, it proves that I've not learned my lesson (her words) and therefore I'm the reason why we can't be close. So I'm really struggling with how to handle the blame in a way that a) defuses the situation and yet b) doesn't sow the seeds of the next conflict.

I have proposed an amnesty, in which all grudges before today are forgiven and forgotten, but she was quite astonished that I would think that we could go back to a romantic relationship so quickly.

Perhaps another perspective and communication change is needed.  Ponder the concept of "sins of omission vs commission".  Maybe there's not much difference, but in my book there is.  Mine were the "acting-in" sort trying to avoid conflict.  My ex's were the "acting-out" sort, which to me felt worse.

With that in mind, I felt I'd do better (or less worse) by apologizing, not for the incident, but for her feeling bad.  Did it work?  Not much in the long run, the marriage still failed, but It helped me to pull back from apologizing for anything and everything to get past the incident.

Yes I really did try to see whether "apologizing for anything and everything" would work.  It didn't.  If anything it got worse.  It got to the point that even when I apologized, she demanded I reword it to include what she wanted in it.  A few times I purposely left out pieces of the reworded apologies and she kept on demanding I restate it over and over several times.  She didn't even realize that I did it purposely, not due to poor memory of her long list.  After several months I finally declared I'd apologize only for what I perceived appropriate.

Also, if I didn't phrase it that way - her feelings - I'd be like the guy in court who couldn't claim innocence after taking a plea deal which admits guilt.  A court is unlikely to rule me guilty of hurting feelings, but might if I had confessed to doing something bad.

Ah, if only I could do the same as you describe. Unfortunately I've been accused too often of delivering a fauxpology, with particular scorn for anything she perceives as "I'm sorry you feel that way". I do think there's a difference between "I'm sorry you feel that way" vs "I'm sorry for hurting your feelings [even though I don't think there's anything wrong with what I actually did]", but I think that difference is too subtle for her. Or maybe she just really wants a guilt-laden apology (she has said this at times).

I think maybe this comes down to the perceived moral dimension to these (claimed) transgressions. There are mistakes like bumping into someone by accident, and then there's punching someone in the face. In both cases we may apologise, but in the first there's hopefully no moral condemnation by the victim nor is there much of a feeling of guilt by the bumper. If both parties accept that the case in question is more like a bump than a punch, maybe it's feasible to give a "sorry for my role in your feelings being hurt" kind of apology. But if she sees it as a moral failing ("how could you be so inconsiderate?!?" etc) then, in my experience, nothing short of "I'm so sorry, I know I'm not considerate enough, I'll work harder to do better, please give me another chance" will do.

Think of it this way.  Your wife doesn't want an apology. 

For instance, I can say "I'm sorry for that lousy thing that happened to you last weekend."

I have no idea what you did last weekend, but I'm sure one lousy thing happened.  So in a way, sure, I'm validating your feelings over something I don't know anything about...which probably feels really hollow to you.  How can Pook apologize for something he had nothing to do with and doesn't even know about?

That's how your wife feels because she doesn't want some random "sorry" thrown her way.  It's just words and it's meaningless.

What she actually wants...but what she never says...is for you to understand how she feels.

And you may think, who the heck knows how she feels.  She screams and then cries and then picks a fight and then wants to go to Dairy Queen like nothing ever happened.

I get that because I've been there.  We all have.  It's maddening and makes no sense at all.

However, you know what it feels like to be angry...or sad...or depressed...or frustrated.  If you saw that in a kid, or your mom, or really anyone, what could you say or do to help them process through those feelings?  You'd talk it out, you'd comfort them, you'd help them calm down in the moment and get a grip on what's happening.

That's what your wife wants you to do...even though she'll never actually say that in a million years.  What she wants is for you to be loving and kind and tell her that everything will be okay.

Then why the screaming and all the drama, you ask?  Well, that's the mental illness part of this...it doesn't make sense.  It's overflowing, out of control emotions that can't see left from right, and it causes pure panic in every possible direction.  Your job is to talk her past that, let her know you're not going anywhere, and just love her until the moment passes.

Maybe you'd say, "But you don't get it...it's ALWAYS LIKE THIS!!!"  I do get it though.  Once you start to connect and she can calm down, then it's not these crazy blowouts anymore.  All she's looking for is love and support...even though she says a billion other things. 

What she really means to say (but never says) is that she's insecure and has no idea what to do about it, or how to handle it, because you'd never understand.  And maybe you can't.  But you can understand sad or mad or other emotions...and you know how to comfort and soothe them.  That's where you start and it makes all the difference in the world.

Thanks  Pook. I think this makes sense, but I still struggle with it when the complaint from her is "it's all your fault!!!". The explicit message at these times is that she doesn't want nice words, she doesn't want a hug, she just wants a clear apology for what she thinks I've done wrong, in a way that acknowledges that it's actually my fault. I know this may not be what she actually needs, but if everything other than that is rejected it seems hard to get through with the validation approach.

My response would be (as calmly and as gently as I could say it): I understand you think it's all my fault.  I want to help, so please talk this out with me.  What could I have done differently to avoid this?

Her: Bla bla bla, and yappity yap!  You always do this, you never care.

Me (still talking very slowly and calmly):  I'm sorry this keeps happening between us and it's frustrating for me as well.  It hurts me to see you this upset and I'd love to find a way we can work past this together.

Her: Bla bla yappity yap (although with much less hysteria than before.  She's being validated so she's starting to calm down and her logical mind is starting to engage).  Why would you do that when you know it really bothers me?

The pattern here is that when she's disordered and unstable, the ONLY goal is to calm her down (or cheer her up if she's depressed).  You do that by validating her feelings and focusing on yourself.  Notice that first line was all about me- what could I do, etc.  That didn't work and she lashed out again, so I keep it about me while validating her feelings, her frustration.  And I'll keep doing that....focusing on her while making me statements...until she asks a question I can actually answer with reason and logic.

What you're doing unknowingly when she says, "It's all your fault" is making her feel less secure and more defensive, which in turn makes things even worse.  Again, the ONLY GOAL is to get her to calm down and talk to you like a person.  Nothing anyone says matters until you get to that point.  It's like arguing with a baby...or a crocodile...the words are useless.  It's the emotions being conveyed while speaking those words that actually matters.

I know that this is tough and it doesn't make any sense at all...at least at first.  Welcome to the club, we've all been there and most of us are still there the majority of the time.  This is something learned through practice and patience.

William Eddy (lawyer, mediator, author, lecturer, etc) has written several books on dealing with High Conflict Persons (HCPs) and one of them is - can you guess? - It's All Your Fault! (http://www.Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder)

Borderline traits - they vary in impact depending on the person - are especially Blaming, Blame Shifting, Denying and Accusing.  Dealing with them is difficult and requires skills, insight and educated support such as is found here in peer support and with therapists.

Attempts at validation can have unpredictable results with a BPD partner because you are trying to validate someone who has projected parts of themselves onto you that they cannot accept.   So even if what you say is genuine, it may not be received that way.   This is different from normal relationships.