I am stunned to learn how many ppl are out there haveing arguments on whether or not the other made a sound or had a facial expresion the other didn't like. I have had so many incidents like this I strive to keep my face neutral and not make any odd sounds...yet if they are dys-regulated they will often accuse me of 'acting off' even if they cannot explain exactly how. Then its off to the races again. If you insist there is nothing wrong you will be shouted at. If you try and come up with some issues that may be troubling you you may be instantly dismised because they're the one with the real troubles, you don't have anything worth worrying about.

I’m in a similar boat, although my son is out of state and we haven’t actually seen him in almost two years (we were going to visit in the summer but had to cancel due to a severe split and he didn’t want us to come).  This past weekend was pretty bad, some first-time accusations that I’m not sure we can get past without some type of acknowledgement and apology (usually he moves on as if nothing happened/he didn’t say cruel things).  I strongly feel that there is a correlation with him binge-smoking weed along with some separate problem that occurs (that most people can move on from) and his raging splits that usually involve threats of self-harm.   He of course does not see this.    I, like you, feel like no one else can understand what we go through, at least in my circle.  So I silently suffer.  I actually dread when someone asks how I am.  “Do you really want to know?” .  I’m sorry you are going through this, I truly know how tough and painful this is to live with.

It is good you are in therapy. Our family of origin does influence who we are with as a partner. I have had to work on my own freeze and fawn, co-dependent tendencies.

Attempting to change BPD mother's spending was impossible. I tried, her family members tried. It did feel like dealing with an addict who couldn't manage being cut of from her supply. But she also didn't seem to have a real concept of money- because her needs, and many wants, had been provided for, regardless of what she spent. When my father was working, if she spent money, there was more.

Eventually though- after retirement, the inflow of money changes and people need to learn how to manage that. The reality is that- if your wife continues her spending after retirement, the result could be dire. BPD mother had a monthly sum of money and in addition, she spent all her savings, and then, the house- without us knowing it. I don't know if she ever intended to tell us. But speaking to her, she seemed to not understand the consequences of what she did.

Her funds were so low, that she was in danger of the house being repossessed by the bank. And she was elderly, and needed assisted living help. What I had assumed was that- by the time she needed this, we could sell the house and use that money to pay for help for her. But now, unknown to us, she'd leveraged the house too.

Seeing my concern over this, she cornered me, insinuating I was after the house as an inheritance. My reply to her was "I don't care if the bank takes the house then, I care if the bank takes the house now, while you are in it". She acted shocked, she had no idea the bank could do that.

The only thing that stopped her spending was low funds in her account. I even consulted an attorney to see if I could intervene, but as long as she was legally competent, we could not. We'd not have let her go without essentials,  but we had to have a boundary, and BPD mother would challenge boundaries.

She'd call me with requests for things she didn't need. Items it would be draconian to refuse her. She'd call and say she was cold and needed a blanket or a sweater. But she had several blankets and sweaters. Truly, I'd have loved to give her a blanket, or a sweater, if I thought she'd actually like it, but I had seen this dynamic enough to know that this wasn't about a blanket. She didn't want a blanket. This was a manipulation.

With money though- there is a boundary. If all the money is spent, there's none left. If you leverage the house, the bank can take it. While your concern for your wife is how she could manage, at some point, there is a limit. Consider is it better for her to learn it now, while the two of you are working and independent?

Sorry for the long delay. We did go down the appeasement route and in September we were allowed to visit. We did not stay in their house but rented an AirBnB nearby for a few days, but we got to meet our new granddaughter as well was our grandson for the first time in 9 months. Our son looked terrible - he has been diagnosed with burn-out due to working long hours as well as most of the parenting responsibilities. This week was our other son's birthday so his brother drove across from Switzerland to go to the birthday party in England. He hadn't told his wife he was going to a party, so when she found out she had a massive meltdown and demanded he drive home immediately. We tried to persuade him to stay, even just an extra day, but he said he can't. If he ever stands up to her she makes his life hell, and he does not think it is worth it if the time he gets to spend with his children is ruined by her being angry. He says he wants us to visit again in a couple of months. They will be at her parents' house for Christmas so we won't get to see any of them then.

The only positive we take from this latest episode is that our son is starting to see that she is the problem, and is even talking about her behaviour as an illness. He said she did not actually want him to go home, she just did not want him to be with us and his brother.

In the USA family courts appear to have a policy that they disregard unsubstantiated allegations older than 6 months.  Essentially the undocumented "he said... she said..." is viewed as hearsay and then set aside.  Yes, they'll take a quick look but I recall when I was testifying about my ex's behavior the magistrate stopped me at the 6 month mark.  Of course, officials will pay closer attention when there is documentation or evidence of child abuse or child neglect.  But most courts get so many emotion-based allegations that they may quickly react just in case but then have a more skeptical stance when there isn't any substance behind the claims, as in smoke versus fire.

I explain it this way... picture a person calling emergency services saying, "My ex almost burned down my house last week!"  Imagine the responder replying, "It's not an emergency now, call back when you have an ongoing emergency."

Check your local state or country's laws, procedures and policies in case it is similar where you live.

For the benefit of others here, I previously mentioned some other ideas on your prior post.

After I ended it with my GF, who had BPD/C-PTSD/anxiety, depending on which therapist was consulted, I had to take a break. I generally think it's a bad idea to leap into another relationship anyway, but especially so after her.

Something someone with BPD, etc., seems to know on an instinctive level is how addicting their behavior is. That's part of the love bombing and incredible sex. Whether intended or not, it can hook us in, as we're flooded with feel good chemicals, not to mention the general boost to feelings and self esteem. I can't honestly say my relationship with her was more intense than some others in the past, but the intensity was different. When things were good, the constant attention and physicality were unmatched, at least in terms of their duration. Once that tap was cut off, the opposite was true.

Expecting that from someone healthy and balanced is too much. Yes, any romantic relationship can have those moments, but the frequency is different. And there's usually some kind of catalyst. With someone with BPD, etc., it's a part of the cycling. You don't really have to do anything but be in the right place at the right time. If you think a romantic partner is simply going to throw herself at you all the time in the same way, that's not realistic. If it happens, you're lucky, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way. I just mean enough beneficial things occur to make it happen. That usually requires some contribution to it.

So, to me, you have to wait until the chemicals are out of your body and mentally, you're in a space where you're not expecting to replicate them.
It's no different than if someone who is recovering drug or alcohol addict thinks a few days or weeks after recovery they can just rush off to the next big party. They need to wait to make sure they're grounded.

I completely understand people that age wanting to do their own thing on a holiday. I have no problem with that. Just wish she would respond to us in some way to let us know that she can’t come. I would be over the moon if she would have texted either my husband or me. I think it’s great that you got that. I’m working on controlling what I can control

Will be great to tell your new partner that you had a good time with your friends and she's happy for you - a massive difference without the BPD interrogation, accusations of cheating and total meltdown that you'd normally get. Nice to be able to do things for your partner without them looking for a bad motive.  I stopped telling my ex whenever I was out with friends as I knew it would trigger her. Actually, near the end, I stopped telling her anything.

We all come out of a BPD relationship carrying scars and trust is hard for us to start up again, but we can do it; remember we weren't the ill ones.

.. just remember to never forget her birthday, anniversary of the day you both met and stuff like that.. even the most wonderful partner will get the hump .

Absolutely and it's not that far away when our retirement will be around the corner!

Speaking of parents not wanting to distress their children - my mother... I've been seeing scary parallels between my wife and mother (sense of entitlement, inability to handle stress to name a few). My mother has put awful burdens on a couple of my siblings...

Through therapy and now doing some work on CPTSD I realized how much my mother (and father) created some early and developmental childhood trauma. The environment developed in me the type of trauma response (fawning) ripe for someone with BPD and/or NPD such as my wife. I have very little memory of my childhood before I was 13. Even my teen years are pretty spotty. I've talked a lot with my sister who has pretty clear memories of our childhood house. She described the house and my mom as expecting a lot of perfection. She was upset if we didn't behave as expected, especially in public. My sister had a lot of memories of my mom being upset with my dad because she had a certain sense of entitlement, wanting finer things then my dad (a carpenter who worked out of town on construction projects a lot) could provide. Like I said I don't have a ton of memories but I do know the belt was a frequent punishment we would get if my mom was upset. We'd get it when dad got home. I have memories of being slapped because I wasn't ready for church on time. We grew up in a mormon household. No offense to mormons, many of my extended family are still active and they're fantastic, but for me I believe it absolutely had an impact / contribution to creating conditions leading to CPTSD. Being instilled with conditional worthiness lead to chronic shame, it was a culture of obedience where I learned autonomy is a sin, learned emotional suppression, fear based indoctrination, and other areas that were not healthy in hindsight. I stopped going to the church in my early teens. My parents were pretty absent (i.e. neglectful) and dealing with their own issues and eventually their divorce also in my early teens. I always felt like I raised myself and was parentified very early on. I was using alcohol at 13, experimenting with drugs at 14. I was very very lucky to have a couple of friends that eventually steered me right. I'm trying to process a lot of unprocessed grief and anger for the neglect. I don't get it and it pisses me off. I have a son and daughter, I would have known if they were drinking or doing drugs as teenagers. I was involved. I don't know how it's not possible, which makes me realize how much neglect was occurring. I used to be proud of the fact that I got my first real job when I was 14. Looking back it was seriously messed up. I was working as a line cook in a family restaurant. I would work till close which was sometimes midnight or 1am. The staff would pay for drinks that would be set aside for after the restaurant and bar closed and I was drinking right along with them then would take a taxi home at 2am. I was smoking pot, hash, started smoking cigarettes when I was 14. Looking back I'm like WTF? I didn't have parents... there was not one conversation with me ever about what to do after graduating high school. Except I didn't graduate. I was doing drugs, working jobs and dropped out stupidly at 17. I went back a couple years later to get my GED. On my own many years later I got my university education.

After my parents split my dad got full custody. Mom didn't want to have us kids, she was burnt out and went on to try to live her best life. She was partying I think, but we moved out of the country. My dad did do the best he could with 4 kids but there's still a lot of crap that shouldn't have happened. I bounced back and forth a few times between where my dad lived in California and my mom in western Canada. There was no stability. Like I said I had a couple of good friends that helped me get some sort of good path thank God. I had an interest in computers and a friend helped me get a job, a really good job with a technology company and that changed my trajectory.

Looking back it was very predictable for what would happen to me relationship wise. The first girl that was seriously interested in me in my early 20s I latched onto (my now wife). I had only had casual flings before that, no serious girlfriends. Ugh. I didn't know what I was getting into but saw a few red flags early on... one of the biggest I recall was my then girlfriend would not infrequently go out with her girlfriends to the bar, get drunk then come over to my place at 1am to wake me up and pick a fight with me. Just random fights then she wouldn't remember what she was mad about the next morning. The thing is I didn't know that was strange, I didn't know what a normal relationship looked like. I think I was so damaged that I wanted someone, anyone that showed love to me and I was going to to anything to make it last, put up with anything and divorce was never going to be an option because of how messed up my parents were with it.

Talk about crazy... Shortly after I got married, my mother and father rekindled their romantic relationship after both being re-married to others and divorced. My parents re-married after being apart for about 10 years. My dad wasn't happy long term however and was actually planning to leave my mom but he got really sick, and not sure if it was good or bad but at least she was there to help out the last few years of his life.

My dad passed away when my mom was 62, this was about 11 years ago. She declared she was retiring and decided to retire and start taking her social security early (which meant less per month). There was nothing wrong with her and she didn't have a large retirement account or anything. She could have worked and we all were like WTF mom, you should be working while you're still healthy, etc. We were all worried about her financial well being, I don't know everything but I know my dad didn't have much to leave her. Funny parallel here is the irony of how much my wife would bitch to me about my mom and the burden she was putting on her kids to take care of her by quitting work at 62. Meanwhile my wife at this time was in her early 40s, well educated and was refusing to do any work other then 5-10 hours of private consulting and would complain when I asked her to pay her own $300 HRT monthly payment, the only bill she was helping with. And still today dealing with my wife's sense of entitlement and putting an extreme financial burden on her family, namely me. This is just one of the many things my wife has complained to me about re: my mother where I see the exact same quality/trait/behavior in my wife. A little scary...

When my dad passed, my sister offered my mom to come live with her and her family. But things went south quick... My brother and I have had a very low bar of expectation with my mom. We knew not to expect much. We knew there was likely to be a complaint if there was an activity done with mom. Things are just very difficult for her, she often complains and it's made us not want to include her in a lot of things in the past. When living with my sister my mom despite not working was often not up to going out to the grandkids events, she would snap at them frequently when they came into her room. According to my sis she had a very bad attitude. After a few years my sister felt like she had to ask my mom to leave. Their relationship was soured to the point where my sister didn't talk to my mom for years. They talk now only after my mom got cancer but their relationship was never the same.

After my sisters place, my brother offered to take her in. Fortunately he works in medical and is the 'well off' sibling. He built a mother-in-law detached suite where my mom has lived for 8 years. He was able to do it financially and the separation of her own fully self contained 'apartment' I think made it manageable for them.

So yeah... I worry about this kind of thing happening with my wife. I'm trying to take care of my end of things long term but have no idea what my wife is going to do if our marriage doesn't work out. I really don't think she can control her spending. All she seems to care about is today. She's not able to delay gratification.

SoVeryConfused,
I am so sorry you're going through this. You have been working so hard. And when we do we can naturally hope to see a reward for our efforts.  I understand that it does happen that episodes can intensify though. Praying things will lessen in intensity very soon for all your benefit. When my son was alone out of state and was so triggered, it killed me to tell him I had to end phone calls when he called my office screaming at me... There were many extreme episodes. Some level of calm or more honestly less intense communication did follow. I'm glad you shared because you definitely aren't alone here.