BPDFamily.com

Something I'm really struggling with and wondering how those in the same situation cope with this:

I think about the caring, beautiful, gentle man I fell in love with years ago, and then become overwhelmed with grief at the fact that that is not really the person I married. I'm sure this all sounds familiar to you all: He/she was sweet and wonderful in the beginning. Sure, there were flaws, but nothing you couldn't live with. We all have flaws. But now you look at him and he's not that person you fell in love with. His need for acceptance and love was so strong that he lied about the core of who he was in order to get you to love him. You think about that person and die a little inside knowing that that is not really who he is. You feel duped - like a fool - it was all an act.

I expressed this to my therapist and she said "He IS that person you fell in love with, but he's ALSO this person." I'm not sure about that. Maybe that person just never existed and now I'm stuck grieving a ghost. I think about that man I fell in love with years ago, and I fall apart at the thought of knowing he's gone. I tell him this sometimes and his response is that he IS still that man, but he "changed" bc of ME, and if only I would give him another chance, I'd get him back. But dozens of chances later, the lies, the hurt, the threats continue.

How do you all deal with the grief that your partner is not who you thought they were. For me, most days, it is too much to bear.  :'(

I'm right with you, OnceHadbananas2.   

I've felt anger, grief, resentment, fury, irritation and now, most of the time, I feel rather detached. This certainly isn't what I signed up for when I accepted his marriage proposal.

But there are some positives that I remind myself about: companionship, financial security. Unfortunately, that's all I can think of at the moment.

It truly is disappointing having to come to terms with the fact that we were duped. I guess being duped is better than being a person with BPD. Not much consolation, I know.

I deal with this anger/sadness/frustration many times daily. I don't know how to live with it. For us it basically became because of his disorder which he won't admit he has we were put in a dangerous situation that I saved us from, but it's all my fault because it landed him in legal trouble. He won't forgive that I tattled.

And I look and look and wonder where the sweet man who loved me so concretely for years disappeared to. As far as I can see hes gone. Just gone. I miss him.

But I still pick up the pieces of this fall out.

At first, I felt like it was an awful, dirty trick too.  

Before we were married, my h showed his best side just like most other people do at the beginning of relationships and while dating.  He had a lot of positive traits, and I chose to focus on them.  There was no opportunity at all to see many of the negative behaviors, but I can't feign innocence to everything.  There were some yellow flags that bothered me; however, I ignored some of them and wasn't perceptive enough to realize that the others hinted at behaviors that would come to disrupt my life.  

After being married and living under the same roof... .well, the truth comes out.  It's pretty hard to hide it.  

I'm sure most of my grief was coated in anger and despair.  I tried, but didn't know what to do, couldn't find the right kind of help, and was the perfect example of how to make things worse.  So in some ways, I did play a part.

On the other hand, multiple times I've suffered the consequences of his behavior in situations that had nothing to do with me.  

When I found this site, these were the most helpful for me at the start:

1. Learn everything I can about my h's BPD behavior  

2. Learn how to respond so that I'm not making things worse.

In the process of this, I moved from grief to learning to accept that it is what it is.  I focused on learning how to protect myself from BPD.  The lessons can help you to do that ... .maybe even get your mojo back.  

Putting aside BPD for a moment, people change in marriage when a happy marriage turns sour.  Bitterness, anger, and distrust change our behavior to our spouse.  My guess is that you are no longer the person he married either.  It isn't that the old person doesn't exist, it is you are seeing a different side of the person reacting to different stimuli.  Deal with the issues, and I have to believe that you can see again the person that you fell in love with. 

I think that grieving is part of the process, and one just has to get through it.

I also think that many marriages go through the stage of losing that honeymoon feeling. Writers like Harville Hendrix have written about this as a stage in marriage.

Marriages with pw BPD will have the usual issues that married couples have, but I think that how these issues are managed are different when there is dysfunction. We can learn to take care of our end of that.

I'm also different from when I first got married- we do learn and grow in marriage.

Grief is tough, but I think it is a normal process. I don't think it ends, but I do think it gets better over time. When my dad died, I was a mess, a real mess of grief for months. Now, this still happens periodically. I miss him and sometimes I still cry- but not as often and for not as long. I know that when I came to terms with the issues in my marriage, I spent time in shock and grief, but then, as Phoebe said, it progressed to acceptance and taking charge of my end of the situation. This doesn't mean I don't get sad sometimes, but it isn't like the initial grief.

Learning the lessons is taking action and that can help with grief. Personal counseling can be of support too. Reach out for that if you need it.