Look at your situation through a long range lens.

How many MC's have the two of you gone to?
Has there been any positive change from it- in terms of your marriage, or how you communicate, or your wife getting any insight from them.

Or, have you two been going in circles:

• You get a new MC, there's hope.
  Wife agrees to go because new MC is a new person and doesn't know her well.
  MC takes some time to get to know the two of you and assess the situation.
  MC realizes there are some major issues going on, sees something is going on with your wife.
  MC begins to mention her concerns to your wife.
  Wife gets triggered, MC is painted black, wife doesn't go.
  You then look for a new MC, the cycle repeats.

Asking because it seems you go to MC hoping the MC will have some way to influence your wife to look at her BPD. Yet for your wife, the sessions become about her unhappiness and become circular arguments. Is going to an MC all that effective? Is it worth the time and money spent on it?

Hello and welcome to the family!  You're among friends here and I'm looking forward to hearing your story.  How long have you been married?  Does your 35 year old son still live at home?

Hi!
This is my first post...Just today, out of exhausted desperation, frustration, hopelessness, etc, etc, I found my copy of "Stop walking on Eggshells" and saw there were Support groups online.  I started reading a post from another Mom with a similar situation as me and I teared up.

I'm too tired to write much tonight, but will definitely be back to explain my situation and hopefully garner some wisdom and advice.

Thanks!

Superdaddy-

I am a scientist through education, but my career heavily involves the legal profession, sociology, and history, and that requires considerable thought about why people do the things they do.

I think about BPD the same way in that at some basic level it boils down to brain chemistry and neuro pathways.  It’s not about learned behavior but rather a maladaptive response to a genetic or environmental factor sometime in childhood.  In the case of my W, she does have many addicts in her family, and her mom had BPD.  Being that her parents were divorced and she lived with her mother, she grew up in a world that viewed everything in extremes where survival depended on picking up her moms behavior cues and reacting in calculated ways. Being that mom’s affection was on/off for no apparent reason, she probably adapted strategies for getting that affection that were transactional - something must be done in order to get affection.  This may have worked for getting rewards from a caregiver, but doesn’t work very well in adulthood.  The addiction, whether it be drugs, shopping, sex, etc is an attempt to get that reward in a counterproductive maladaptive way. 

From what I have observed in W, and from what I know about W’s past, this theme repeats many times.  Even today she tells MC, “i don’t know what you want me to do”.  Or ro me she said, “I don’t know how to truly feel close to someone unless I have sex with them.”  Happiness does not exist for her on its own. 

Her life is “what do I have do to make you love me?”
For emotionally healthy people, we do things that we enjoy, and people love us for that. 

That’s why my W doesn’t have hobbies.  Hobbies do not bring her happiness on their own because they are not transactional. 
 

maxsterling ,

In my view, the crisis of someone with BPD can be compared to a crisis of other types of self-destructive compulsions. Once they start, they tend to keep up, engaging in more and more compulsions. For instance, some huge guys like to intimidate people, so they mix alcohol with some drug in the nightclub to get high and then get someone smaller to beat, or they just scare everyone around them.

In the case of BPD, she was high on opioids when you got close, so you became a target of her opioid compulsions because you were a familiar source (conflict with an intimate partner is a source).

It's not just that they have low opioids. They are also addicted to their opioids (to behaviors and thoughts that get them to release opioids).

In my wife's maternal family, 3 parents have problems with alcohol (her mother, her uncle, and her grandpa). This is caused by an opioid addiction problem. However, it seems like my wife has the depression, which would come from a low opioid baseline tone. I think that's because of her upbringing, and it's what made her develop BPD. So I have empathy for her when she is sad but quiet. But I stepped away when she was dysphoric and aggressive, because in my understanding this is an opioid compulsion behavior.

Though now that we are living apart, our interactions have become healthier each day. That's because I'm no longer an opioid source for her. More recently, she began her opioid blocker medication, which might be helping as well. Time will tell.

Wendy - that is still MC conclusion.   It seems to me the goal at this point is to get W to be receptive to that conclusion. 

Over the past few weeks it like It went from “this couple has a lot to work on”
To “we have to solve individual issues first before we can constructively work on marriage issues”
To “there are major issues  happening here and those may be a barrier to addressing individual traumas.”

This has been the same course that we have been in with previous MCs.  When things get to the point of W being belligerent with MC or “i want to die” conversations begin, the focus completely shifts to W’s mental health.

Not sure how this is viewed from T’s end, but it feels like once a certain line is crossed T has to open a new instruction manual.  Same happens with my individual Ts.  Once they know W is diagnosed BPD - every issue I have is reframed in that shadow.  In other words:

Me:  “I am having trouble concentrating at work”
T:  “you are on emotional overload dealing with BPDw.  No wonder your work is suffering.”

MC has not specifically mentioned BPD, but W has easily checked every box in the DSM the past few months, so if she is a competent T she knows what she is dealing with.

What is the goal of MC? I thought the MC had decided it wasn’t going to be effective as there was too much individual trauma to deal with.

Your wife is “trapped” but not by you. Unfortunately it’s her mental illness that has impaired her. Based on my own experience -I don’t think your wife can manage on her own and this sadly causes her to feel shame, so she blames you rather than to acknowledge that. That would be embarrassing and hurtful for her.

Possibly.

I also called 911 for BPD mother when I thought it was needed. This is the natural consequence of this kind of threat- whether they really mean it or not. It’s up to professionals to decide that.

When this happens, W immediately turns to anger towards me rather than depression about herself, and the "I want to die" talk ends almost immediately.  Seems messed up, but if she is talking about suicide, I can get her to stop by redirecting it as anger towards me.  I'm guessing it is anger because I called her bluff?

MC was challenging today.  Normally, I do not bring up things from the past and try to focus on recent events and challenges because bringing up the big picture is a guarantee the session goes nowhere and that immediate concerns are not addressed.  Last week, my T encouraged me to talk more about past incidents and how they relate to current incidents. I was much more forthcoming today than I usually am when it comes to the relationship as a whole.  

W did not bring up details of the fallout from the relationship with the other woman.  I brought up that this was a difficult week and why, and W became somewhat belligerent towards me and towards MC to the point MC had to tell her to stop putting words in her mouth and remind her that my point of view is also valid.  Of course, W accused MC of taking "my side", and for awhile got pretty ugly between W and MC.  I give credit to MC for getting W to calm down somewhat by being very honest and fair.  The one thing MC reiterated is that hearing someone make statements about not wanting to live can be scary and traumatic and that I cannot be expected to handle things calmly or rationally because I am not a trained therapist.  W's claim is that I have been with her over 10 years, and that I should know who she is by now and know how to remain calm, and me taking her suicide talk seriously means I don't listen or understand her.  

The main thing to come out of this session was that MC can clearly see the difficulty and complexity of the R/S.  I get the sense MC has personally been in a similar r/s, but I am not sure.  When W aired her grievances, MC was quick to illustrate that all of those grievances had nothing to do with me.  

In other words (paraphrasing):

W:  "I'm trapped because H owns the house and won't move and won't let me date women and if the R/S ends I have nowhere to go and if I leave the state H won't let me take the kids."
MC:  "Have you considered looking for a job, a safe house, or a friend to stay with?"
W:  "I have few friends and the ones I have I don't want to stay with and I am not going to go to a shelter because I have H to take care of me and that's what I want - for H to do a better job of listening to me and taking care of me."

I get the feeling MC was saying what she did to illustrate a point that if W really thinks I am so evil she has options of taking care of herself.  In the end, W calmed down somewhat and the session felt more productive than most.