If divorce is a possibility, I’d say, your mom should keep the car title and let you borrow the car if possible. Then it’s her asset, not a marital one to be divided. My sister did something similar during the pendency of her divorce—she took ownership of my mom’s car afterwards.

Since you don't know what the future holds - but it might include divorce - think ahead.  When it comes time to register the car and change insurance, register it in your name only.  He may try to convince you joint ownership is better but then in a divorce he might try to wrangle to get the car, or half of its equity value.  Best to keep your home and car from mother in your name only, it reduces future potential issues.

PwBPD traits have had many years, likely decades, to hone their manipulation skills.  Don't make it easy because you cave in and allow joint accounts or joint ownership.

This is much more than anybody should have to handle. If the only way you can engage with life is to write about your despair, then please do that.  We are always here. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Those steps will become bigger with time.

It sounds like you are taking huge steps -- disengaging from arguments and from absorbing her emotional distress, and knowing that the positive -- like the negative -- will be transitory. Progress is never entirely linear, but it is nonetheless progress. I hope you can take some comfort in seeking how far you've come and the new tools you've acquired.  These steps also bring the promise of more to come on your part. 

Yes, you are absolutely right, there needs to be consistent behavioural actions to show it's not just words, ideas and hopes. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to see that coming my way.

I also think that if he really wanted this relationship to work he would still want it to work even if we aren't living together. He has said to me 'If we separate, I'm pretty much done'. But again, just words, I will have to see how the it plays out.

Thank you for replying.

Hi there,

I might be a little unusual here, but I tend to look a lot more at actions than words and moods.  If your husband wanted for things to get better between you, then my opinion is that he would do exactly that.  He'd start by being nicer.  He'd make some apologies.  He'd come to you with a list of therapists that he researched, and he'd offer to make an appointment at a mutually convenient time.  He'd say something like, he's going to do what it takes to make the relationship work, because he loves you and he believes you two have a future together, and it's worth fighting for, in the sense of doing some work and making some positive changes.  And he would follow through with his plans.  First off, he'd start working on repairing the financial betrayal, to show you he's serious.

Also, I don't love the set-up you describe, which sounds to me like your husband is merely agreeing to "go along with" therapy, as in, he doesn't really believe he needs it, except to get concessions out of you.  I get the sense that he thinks that YOU are the one who needs to do all the changing.  While you might need to make some changes and concessions, a relationship takes two people to work.  It's not fair to live in an all-take-and-no-give situation.

I guess my point is, for a reconciliation to work, your husband needs to take some actual actions--hard ones, and on a consistent basis.  For whatever reason, I'm dreaming up an analogy based on dieting.  An overweight adult might declare:  I'm going on a diet!  He might get motivated by the prospect of losing some weight and feeling better, and that's fantastic.  He might get enthusiastic about going on a diet together with a partner, because it would feel like a team effort.  But while temporary motivation and declarations can signal a good start, that's not enough, not by a long shot.  To lose weight (and keep it off), he'd typically need a major lifestyle change.  Maybe that would include some trips to a doctor and taking medications at first.  Yet he probably needs to relearn how to eat, while letting go of poor dietary habits--junk food, bingeing on sweets, sugary drinks, emotional eating.  With strong motivation, good training, and maybe some medications to get a kick start, he might be able to lose a few pounds.  But the only way to reach his goal weight, and keep the weight off, is to change his lifestyle, permanently.  That typically takes months and months, lots of practice, some setbacks, a ton of effort, but most of all, consistent effort and ACTION.  He has to really want to change and be willing to do the work to achieve it.  Nobody else can do it for him, no matter how much they'd like to.  It's all up to him, if he puts in the work to change.  The rewards are typically worth it, but only if he goes all in.  Otherwise, it's likely to become a yo-yo cycle.

Just my two cents.

Thank you both. I needed to read this today and I'm so sorry you've both been through it. Anyway, the sudden turn around has done another turn. I said something that I thought was pretty safe ie. not triggering, which triggered him, he told me to be more sensitive to him,  and he's taken himself off to a hotel for the night! Which of course is not very sensitive to me.

The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

I do feel for him that this is coming from a very wounded place in him but I'm losing empathy as I realise just how reluctant / unwilling he is to address it all.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and taking time to reply. I was beginning to think that yes, this could be his turning point - recognising what he's doing to me and us (and done in previous relationships) and maybe he will admit he and we need help.

Then I got home today and told him that my mum has offered me to have her car on a permanent loan basis because she can no longer drive it. This is great for me because we currently share a car and half the time I have no transport if he's working. Anyway 5 mins later he says 'do you think that you could be a bit more sensitive about how you share things with me?' Apparently I had sounded way too excited and it was insensitive. He has now gone and booked himself into a hotel overnight!

I could literally say 'the sky looks very blue today' and he would hear it as some kind of personal attack. Yet, he's constantly being insensitive and just blatantly disrespectful. It's infuriating!

Maybe I'm wrong but this doesn't sound like a man who is remorseful and desperate to work on his marriage!

 

I'll tell you my thoughts, and provide my experience of going through this very thing below:

Thoughts: Well, as they say, talk is cheap.  If you had everything you wanted from a relationship: compliant partner, security, leeway to do what you wanted at their expense, etc. and the other person deigned to complain, what would you do?  Assume that you're like your partner.  First you'd do the easiest thing: use the same verbal and emotional threats that always worked before.  Then, escalate... show them how bad it can get if they don't go back to being a doormat.  Then if that doesn't work, okay, make some minor verbal concessions,  reassure them, etc.  That doesn't work, maybe promise therapy.  Whatever to get them to back down, and then slowly start to work on convincing them how wrong they were to put you through this, how much you love them, how they should never stand up for themselves like that again because it's so unfair, it stresses you out, they should actually get therapy to learn to deal with their emotions, etc. etc. UGH!

Experience: I went through this twice...

first when I nearly got divorced about a year before it finally ended.  we agreed divorce was on the table and both saw attorneys.  She freaked out, called all my family members, begged me to reconsider, apologized for her behavior, and promised she was going to start therapy and "work on" herself.

I gave in because I considered the cost &  effort of divorce & decided I didn't want to go through it then.  although I really didn't believe she would actually change, I hoped at least we'd get some improvement.

That lasted about a week, before she started "re-writing history," telling me I was "too emotional," pinning all the responsibility for our near-divorce on ME, not on her threats and demands (she had been refusing to allow my family for a visit, and told me, well, screamed at me really, that if I wasn't going to accept that, I should divorce her!  She LITERALLY was the source of the divorce threat!).

Things went back to "normal" later that month... i.e. a big fight over nothing every other week, along with a week or so of silent treatment before we quietly made up.  This pattern continued for another year, during which time we had our third and final abortive attempt at marital counseling.  This attempt ended when she got angry with the therapist's questions toward her, screamed at the therapist and refused to go to more counseling.  

Second time I went through the manipulative attempts to keep our marriage intact was when our divorce started.  I ended our marriage a few months later, after another pointless blow-up fight.  This time, she attempted to do the same thing, only less nicely than before: she played hard ball longer, acting like I should be the one to come crawling back.  When I moved out and filed for divorce, she realized it was really happening, she started acting sad and remorseful (though not accepting responsibility for it).  The next stage was her begging me to come back and call it off, promising to work on herself, and saying that if we went to counseling again, she promised not to say anything or yell at the therapist, as though that was the whole problem...  

I ignored all this.  She was awful and contentious throughout the divorce process, but did very little about it.  Once she started getting bills for her attorney's fees, she dialed down the fighting a lot; making baseless accusations is easy and cheap normally, but in court you have to back it up with evidence, & paying your attorney to collect and formally categorize that evidence gets really expensive.  If the pwBPD doesn't have a spare $100,000 to throw around, they get quiet (at least in court proceedings) really quickly.

I wish I was a cup-half-full person but the deep mental health issues of BPD traits makes that difficult since so many don't follow through with meaningful therapy.

Couples counseling would only partially address the relationship issues.  He can't do all his personal therapy with you.  That is his own responsibility.  Think of couples counseling as the relationship aspect only.


If he does, then Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is the best approach.  It is not a total cure and may require years or life-long efforts.  But he can't do it reluctantly or half-heartedly.  If he is not fully determined to work on himself, then...

It's hard to estimate whether he will follow through and actually improve enough enable the relationship to prosper.  I would expect those with minor marital issues due to BPD never seek us out here, so perhaps that's why quite a number here decide to divorce, not a representative sample.