Emotional and physical abuse is very confusing for men. Usually for men, the emotional abuse is what hurts the most and does the most long term damage. Men also are frequently discriminated against when they reach out for help from an abusive relationship because the prevailing prejudice tends to be that men are stronger physically and mentally than women, so the abuse a woman inflicts on a man really doesn't matter. Indeed it does.

In around 50 percent of heterosexual relationships the physical abuse is mutual.

As a man, it is important that you understand how the laws in many jurisdictions mandate that the man be arrested if the police are called for a domestic violence complaint unless the woman has a lethal weapon like a gun or a knife. The man is considered to be a lethal weapon by himself because of his superior physical strength.

Do not overestimate your ability to refrain from hitting back. There are countless men who have domestic violence convictions because after many years of emotional and/or physical abuse, one day it becomes too much and the man hits the woman on one occasion.

Thank you! I'll add this to my reading task-list.

These have all been such beautiful replies and I'm incredibly grateful.

In-between my post and now, things devolved into a very poor state. Partially due to my inability to set effective boundaries (and my heart wanting to constantly de-escalate and repair) a compounding text with my wife devolved as my validations were met with hostility (my CBT therapist and myself have worked hard on helping me understand validation... acknowledging that throbbing thumb is real even tho the accusations attached to it are factually questionable). I set a boundary (first time!) that I would not communicate anymore unless she communicated with respect towards me. This spiraled quickly. Then I got a call and was told to leave the home. I told her I would not engage with this conversation.

She then texted me saying if i didn't leave the home immediately she would be physically violent with me when she got home. I left, not responding to her texts. They kept flooding in. Then I called her and said "I will not text you, but I will speak with you."

That was a misstep. I removed my own boundary. She hurled insults at me and I took the bait. I said things I've been wanting to say. "God forbid someone doesn't actually want to leave you," "you are the biggest victim I know" and "you are emotionally and physically abusive." On the other line, she was screaming and hyperventilating from her car.

It felt good. Then it didn't. Same way that when she hits me, I don't feel the desire to hit her back because I know how much pain it would cause and the idea of her in pain is tragic.

Love is a co-dependency. For sure. And I'm absolutely at a loss with where to go. We have two kids, teenagers, one of whom left the home last year after a fight with her while I was travelling. Moved states to his dad's. It tore her apart. In that time, she burnt the world around her down until it was just myself and one of her sisters left. Slowly, we worked to get our son home. And then we did, and started to rebuild.

We started this year with our third couples therapist and were about to move to a DBT-based couples therapist as ours goes on maternity leave.

I look at every action and reflect. I also am beginning to refuse to accept victim's shame. "You got hit because you wouldn't get out of my face" when I'm five feet away, a foot shorter and have my hands up in a "hey, I don't want to fight" position. "You got yourself hit and you deserved it."

I'm deeply reflective and take all criticism to heart. It's a bad thing, often - I'm not good at discerning what is and isn't true, and so often confuse factual truth with validity/invalidity.

Woof.

Didn't intend to spill out. Trying to focus on work. I've packed my bags and am leaving my home for two weeks. We just moved in. I thought maybe the stability would help us.

But I hadn't moved my books yet, and that became a one-sided argument about how easily I could just leave and abandon her. Trying to dissuade that feeling... we literally just bought a home? What do you mean? Funny to think how a tiny change in words or actions leads to a 10 day mental storm.

None of it ever seems to make sense. That's the hardest part.

Sorry... first time really opening up in solitude while in a group on this.

Lots of reading and reflecting to do. My reminder:

I am not the things she says I am.
I am not the person she accuses me of being.
I am worthy of being loved and respected, and treated with care and empathy.

Hello, bluebird314.  Sending empathy and support.  What you wrote prompted me to recommend a book that is helping me a lot: Margalis Fjelstad, Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist.  (Stop caretaking doesn't mean leave, although it can.  That's up to each person.  In addition to the great insight it gives into caretaking (vs. caring), it also provides some things to think about in staying/leaving decisions.

Hello and welcome to the family!  I'm glad you're off the Reddit boards because those are toxic for everyone involved.  Hate brings more hate, and who's right or wrong when everyone is there to complain and talk junk about other people?  That's the world we live in these days but it certainly is not for me.

I'm glad you posted in the "conflicted" section because you certainly do have options.  Your spouse is sick and communication is difficult.  The relationship is also unfair to you at times (maybe, a lot of the time).  But as communication improves, so does the relationship and the explosive moments.

I will never tell someone to leave or stay, unless someone is in obvious physical danger.  Then they run!  But otherwise, the place you're in is the time to put in the work to see if this is a "solvable" problem.

What's that look like?  I have multiple BPDs in my life- an ex wife and a daughter.  We were married for 23 years and I had all the moments everyone here describes.  But at the same time, I also realized why those patterns repeated and it had nothing to do with who was right or wrong, or even love.  It was all about disordered thinking when my BPD had unstable emotions.

Stay with me for a moment.  Have you ever whacked your finger with a hammer?  Or slammed your hand in a car door?  In that exact moment, how did you react?  Did you logically say, "This hurts like mad, but it will be okay in a few minutes...."  Or did you say a curse word, kick something, and lash out in pain?

Mentally, that's what your spouse is going through whenever she's disordered.  Her feelings bring her to that place of explosive rage or endless despair.  Just like when you whacked your thumb and wanted someone to understand your erratic behavior in the moment, your spouse's disordered thinking in the moment expects you to realize she's in crisis and treat it like a life or death scenario.

That's not what she says, mind you...that's what she feels.  Please catch this because I've said it a few times.  Disordered thinking comes from out of control emotions.  You fix one and the other fixes itself.

The conflict part comes from her being in crisis, doing her best to hide it from the world, and you thinking that this is just an ordinary conversation where things are normal.  So she asks you where the ice cream in the freezer went, you say the kids ate it yesterday, and she has a full blown mentdown because she's been wanting that all day and it proves that you've never loved her and that you lied to her about something in 2003 which proves everything she's ever thought!

Disordered thinking comes from unstable emotions.

What you should do (what we all try to do) is ignore the words and focus on the emotions.  Is she sad, depressed, furious?  What would a regular human do when they see someone anrgy?  They'd calm them down.  If they're sad, cheer them up.  It's learning to do this in the moment that makes all the difference in the world and changes the fundamentals of these relationships.

Now, it's one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do and nothing about this is intuitive...but it's the blueprint.  Soothe the emotions, the disordered thinking goes away.

Others will say your spouse is nuts, she needs meds and therapy, she needs to do better.  Sure, all that is true.  But you can't control any of that.  It's up to her.  So you focus on what you can control and that's what I just walked you through.  I hope that helps!

Hi and welcome - nice to see you posting

Yes, 'normality' is the last thing we get in a BPD relationship - the best we can hope for is periods of 'near normality'as we walk in a massive minefield carefully minding our step.

It's good to see that people can make a life out of it though, especially if the one with BPD recognises they have a problem and commits to therapy. Every case is different and everyone's limit is different and sadly, sometimes there simply is no other option than to end it, for the sake of sanity and health.

Ironically, we stay in the relationship because it isn't normal; we're meeting someone who, at the start, seems so utterly perfect for us that we can never envisage anything going wrong. It's a big emotional high and it takes a strong hold of us. Of course, once the idealisation phase wears off and the BPD kicks in, we're already hooked on the line and are now in the 'push/pull' cycle which takes over.

My own relationship lasted 4 years but was getting worse, she never accepted she had problems and the whole world was against her so ultimately there could only be one ending, as I wasn't prepared to accept such a life of ever-increasing conflict.

Feel free to post further - we're all in this together

Welcome to BPD Family, a peer support group of people who have "been there, experienced that".  We're not here with legal advice, that is provided by lawyers, solicitors and other professionals.  But our peer support includes collective wisdom based on many years of hard-won experience.

Please browse our various boards, each one focused on a variety of things we have to deal with.  For example, our Tools and Skills workshops board has a variety of topics that are necessary to know but not very intuitive.  Examples are identifying practical boundaries and using communication skills such as SET, DEARMAN, etc (and why logical JADE so often fails).

You mentioned your marriage is approaching a decade.  If you're in the USA, one positive - in the midst of a world of hurt - is that both spouses of a 10+ year marriage can benefit from the higher of either spouse's income history once they reach retirement age.

You haven't mentioned whether you have children together, so I'll add this just in case... There are many reasons to ponder whether to divorce.  One that is not so intuitive is how the children would be impacted.  A common perception is that the marriage must be held together at all costs for the sake of the children.  Yet the opposite might be true... If a person decides the marriage has failed due to serious mental health and behavioral dysfunction, the children are impacted...

This is great.  (Love FEAR.)  Thank you.

Hello, forum.

I've been wrestling through my marriage for years (and the entire relationship itself) for just shy of a decade. As I dive deeper into an understanding of what BPD is, how it manifests, how DBT works to create a pathway forward... I realize how thankful I am to have had the opportunity to read and learn from everyone else. I've been fortunate to have a good emotional support group that knows my silence means I'll reach out at some point. I have a good therapist who shifted her focus from me wanting to exit my marriage to figuring out the reason I stay, and what "love" means in context. I wish I had started this journey (pwBPD courses, reading, direct mindfulness) so long ago. I've read from so many of you the reasons you stayed. It feels so good to feel less alone.

I begin my first group coursework this Friday. As the male partner in my relationship, I've felt very confused by the emotional and physical abuse. Am I not supposed to be able to take this? Am I not supposed to just ride the storm? I realize that a partnership with a person with BPD isn't limited by gender or sexuality norms; it's complicated. No single thing is the root cause. I've practiced validation to the point that I've invalidated my own emotional existence. I've allowed boundaries to be confused with demands, living my life trying to rebuild an eggshell puzzle every day. I am so, so exhausted.

Reddit's pwBDP thread is a toxic environment. No shame to the people who found their exits, I just find more "aren't they crazy" and "so glad I left" empathizing than a real, honest look at why we stay in the first place. I recognize that leaving - if that's my path - is at constant war with staying.

So I'm posting here in anonymity because it feels good to finally admit... yeah, this isn't normal. Sure, I have things to work on and habits to change and pieces of me that can always improve... but this isn't normal. I am not in a "normal" relationship (let's define normal as non-abusive and moderately irrational at its worst, barring a few outliers). And this is hard. And my soul hurts. And my feelings hurt; they're in there, somewhere.

Thanks in advance for existing. And thank you retroactively for having provided so many opportunities for me to read, reflect, think and compare stories. This is hard.

That summaries me sometimes, especially when it's due to bad development.  For example, I'm using a government site to make an appointment that my wife and her son has to attend at the same time.  If I try to schedule them one at a time, I get a different error message saying I have to schedule them together.  But when I do that, I get an error message saying to schedule them one at a time.

I don't get mad because there's an error, I get mad because someone really dumb made a lot of money designing a system that is literally impossible for people to use.

That's what you're describing, but I'm guessing the person you're talking about reacts differently than I do.  I'll eventually walk away and cool off, and I'll try my best not to get into a discussion for a minute or two because I know my attitude isn't correct at that moment.  I clearly know what I'm frustrated at (the software) and who I'm frustrated at (the guy who made the software), and I can usually check my temper before anyone else sees it. 

But I'm not perfect and if my wife comes at me sideways over something at that exact moment, I'll likely say something that I instantly regret.  Then I'll apologize and talk out how some software developer I've never met is the one truly at fault!  =)