BPDFamily.com

My wife and I have been married for almost 19 years.  It has been a crazy roller coaster for most of that time. We are now on our 4th round of marriage therapy.  The first two times were really unhelpful.  I am a quiet analytical person and my wife always controlled the sessions (and complained afterward that I wouldn't say anything) so the therapist just focused on what my wife was saying was the problem without really focusing on me at all.  This fourth time has been much better.  Our therapist told us that he wanted to meet with each of us individually and as a couple.  This allowed me the opportunity to express myself without my wife talking over me and without the fear of her punishing me later for what I said during therapy (a common occurrence).  I feel like we were making some progress with this setup.  I remember one session where my wife was aggressively complaining that I don't say much when she is telling me how she feels and all the things I need to change so she can feel happy.  Our therapist told her "If you confronted me aggressively like you are right now I don't think I would want to talk to you either."  She didn't understand what he was getting at and started complaining again that you can't fix the problems if you aren't willing to talk about them.  It took almost half an hour of the therapist explaining that how you act, your tone of voice, and your body language will affect the response you get before she started to understand.  This was the first time that I understood that she honestly didn't understand the cause and affect of her actions.

The most recent round of problems that really has me worried happened in April of this year.  Her niece in Mexico ran away from home (after she and her boyfriend stole several TVs and cash from her own mother and grandmother).  This brought up memories of a time her Father had punished her with a belt and she ran away from home for a day (this is the one and only time that her Father ever physically punished her that I know of.  He was a loving and caring man and apologized profusely when she came back home, but she has never really forgiven him).  These memories caused her to have a panic attack and she asked if she could go to therapy instead of me that day (I just happened to have a session scheduled for that day).  She told me later that she was having a crisis and really didn't remember what she talked about, but she said that during the session she felt herself being attracted to the therapist and that he was getting turned on (later she changed that to just the therapist getting turned on) and at one point licked his lips provocatively.  She said that she reached out to our therapist on the patient portal the next day and told him that she wanted to meet with him again soon to talk to him about something important.  She didn't spell it out in the message, but she told me she wanted to confront him about what had happened.  The scheduling assistant reached out to her, but he didn't respond directly via the patient portal.  There weren't any time slots sooner so she had to wait several day until her scheduled appointment.  During that session she confronted him about licking his lips in a provocative way and he denied that it happened.  He told her that he often licks his lips because they get dry.  He also told her that he cares about her a lot, but has no romantic feelings for her.  She was not happy with this response.

Our therapist works at a non-profit clinic and according to him there was an audit.  We had been seeing him as a couple or individually as many as three times a week.  He was told by the higher ups that he needed to free up more appointments for people on the waiting list so about half of our April appointments got cancelled without any explanation given at the time.  I asked him about it later, which is why I know what happened.  His wife was also 9 months pregnant and when he took paternity leave that cancelled the other half of our April appointments.  This just happened to occur right after my wife confronted him so she interpreted it as "I confronted my therapist and he knows he did something wrong so he cancelled all my appointments in retaliation."

On April 18th my wife experienced another crisis/panic attack.  From what she has told me (I was at work at the time) she was upset with how our therapist had licked his lips and then denied it and on top of that cancelled all of our appointments.  She called the clinic to try and talk to our therapist and was told that he didn't have any appointments available.  This basically pushed her over the edge and she tracked down his personal cell number on the internet and called him.  She confronted him again about licking his lips and him cancelling all her appointments in retaliation.  He again denied that he licked his lips provocatively and told her that he didn't cancel any appointments our of fear or in retaliation.  She told him that it was his fault that she was having a panic attack and that if she had a gun she would shoot herself right now because of him (she says that she never said anything about a gun, just that she had suicidal thoughts, although her exact words to him have changed each time she has told me what happened during that phone call.  He told me in an individual session that she told him that she had a gun and was going to "blow her brains out").  I came home that day to three police officers in front of my home.  They apparently had just knocked on the door and asked my children where their Mother was.

I asked the officers what was going on and they explained that my wife had called our therapist and expressed a desire to kill herself and he had reached out to them.  My children told them that my wife was working with her sister so I gave them the address and phone number of my sister-in-law's business.  They left to go find her.  I didn't go with them because just last night we had an argument with her telling me all the ways I'm a terrible husband, Father, brother, and son and to be honest I didn't know if seeing me would help or make it worse.  I did call her and she didn't answer.  Later she would tell me that I am a horrible husband because I didn't go running to her once I heard that she was having suicidal thoughts.  This isn't the first time she has told me that she was feeling suicidal.  It has happened quite frequently throughout our marriage and I know each time needs to be taken seriously, but it is taking an emotional toll on me and if I allow myself to get worked up every time it happens I don't know if I will be able to function emotionally.

The officers made contact with her and she told them that she was only having suicidal thoughts and that she had no intention of actually hurting herself.

About a week after the phone call I had an individual session and our therapist told me that because of what my wife had expressed in the phone call and other behaviors he had observed from her he had diagnosed her with BPD.  After doing research to learn what BPD is, I could see that some of the nine traits were definitely stronger than the others, but it wasn't a stretch to say that she exhibited at least 5 of the 9 traits.

She has had multiple individual sessions with him in the last few months and all of them centered around his denial and how "he caused her to call him."  During these sessions the therapist told me that he wanted to discuss BPD with her, but that she always came to therapy with an agenda and he couldn't talk about it with her.  I will fault the therapist a little here.  My wife is not easy to talk to about anything that will be disagreeable to her, but as a professional I think he should have been more forceful in his attempts to bring up the diagnosis.  At some point he entered the diagnosis into the clinic's computer system and the system sent out an auto-generated email (I can only assume that it is auto-generated because he says he didn't send the email) informing my wife that she had been diagnosed with BPD as "discussed" with her therapist despite there having been no discussion.  She took this as another retaliatory attack by the therapist because in several of her sessions she had told him that she was going to file a complaint because he made a provocative gesture.  She has not filed a complaint and even said that she would never do that, but she goes back and forth on whether she will or won't file one.  I will fault the therapist again on this.  He should know how their system works and BPD is not a diagnosis one should receive via an email.

She is very upset with the diagnosis and sees it as retaliatory or a way for him to "cover his butt" in case she files a complaint.  The worst part is that the system apparently sends a new email after every session informing her of her diagnosis.  She just informed me that she doesn't want to go to therapy anymore because it is making her feel worse.  I am worried that if she doesn't get the mental health help she needs that she will continue to blame me and everyone else for her actions and never make and progress.  She has also told me that she is certain that she doesn't have BPD.

Sorry for the very long post.  I think I needed to get it off my chest outside of therapy and to talk to other people who are going through similar struggles and to get advice on how to get her to go back to therapy and to see that the diagnosis isn't just retaliatory, but an actual valid diagnosis.