Advice on anger management and a bit of my story

[lisichka]

hi everyone,

i have been married to my husband for 8 years, and he's always had a very difficult personality and we've been close to splitting more than once.

only recently he has decided to get a proper assessment from a psychologist. he's currently going through screenings, and he has scored very high for BPD as well as DID (dissociative identity disease). Finally, after so many years, a lot of his behaviours have started to make more sense to me.

The reason i am writing is that for so long i have been creating problems for him because i suck at anger management. I know i have been pushing him away because of it. He's a well educated and intelligent man, and whenever he pulls some incredibly crazy behaviour, is out of his mind and being dangerous to himself, i lose it and i get angry. I can't help it. Part of me could never accept that such an intelligent person can, at the same time, be totally nuts.

One of the biggest of our problems is the way he deals with other women. He's had a very promiscuous life up until he was 30 when we got together (fitting the BPD stereotype), and has been in abusive relationships and situations (where he was the victim). He has a very skewed view of sexuality and little sense of self dignity. Now after so many years of being together, for the first time, he expresses the need to find "easy girls" to be with and get attention from, as opposed to me, who gets angry at him and criticizes him or offends his person. Things that he has done lately along these lines that have driven me insane, was wanting to have sex for money with random women who would hit on him, justifying it with this logic: "in the past i've done it so much for free (meaning casual sex) that i don't get why i can't do it for money now". How do i not get angry with such things that i have to hear from a husband? He's currently away for work and caught swine flu while away. Last night he txted his work buddy telling him to provide him "bed warmer girls" cause he was feeling lonely. His buddy warned me, and i confronted husband over the phone. Not only did he not remember sending the txt, but he was eventually accusing me of always being so angry at him, and i was trying to defend myself.

The pattern is: he says or does something stupid, i get pissed, he accuses me of being mean to him, he says or does something stupid back in return.

I am sorry for writing so much, i am a bit at a loss and i do not want to lose him. If u could share any sort of advice with me i would be very grateful.

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[DreamFlyer99]

Hi! Just me again.

I can totally see why those things would upset you! I think once we're aware of our reactions not being so off the mark (most of us want our husbands to be faithful to us, I imagine) the next step is learning some communication skills to help you reSPOND (with thought) rather than reACT. Since the pwBPD comes from a place of low self esteem and not a clear sense of self, they do lots of things to temporarily feed that self esteem. Lots of those things are "shooting themselves in the foot" if you know what I mean--they just end up making life harder for themselves and for the people in their lives, like their wife for instance.

At least you realize that the person you need to work on is YOU, that's further than I was not so long ago!

Have you had a chance to read through some of the tools for communication? One of the first things I did was to read through all the links on the right hand sidebar of this staying board. They helped a lot! Once you've gotten the big picture you can pick a communication tool to work on specifically.

Video-Tools to Reduce Conflict with a person suffering from BPD

I even posted a specific situation, how I handled it badly and asked for help on how to use a communication tool to handle it better. I got a lot of help that way.

[lisichka]

Super thank you, again ;-)

It's still unbelievable to me that i read things that i've been thinking about him for so many years. About how he sabotages himself and his life and makes things harder for everyone! It doesn't seem true that other people go through it and that it's something standard.

Because he so easily gets defensive and acts like i am completely nuts for thinking the way i do about him, i have for so many years thought myself crazy. And yes i do understand that i need to work on myself and need the help of a therapist. I will have to revolutionize the way i act and react.

Like i said, the reason why i do get angry is that in other contexts he's a very rational and intelligent person. For example he's a wonderful father, if not the best father i've ever known.

If he can be so flawless with his kids, why can't he be the same with himself or with me? Instead he does such crazy absurd things that you do not think it the same person. Well, he does have DID... .

Reaing your link ;-)

[DreamFlyer99]

You said,

Because he so easily gets defensive and acts like i am completely nuts for thinking the way i do about him, i have for so many years thought myself crazy.

Yes yes and YES! I know that exact feeling! It does help to start seeing how those very things play out in so many other cases.

and

If he can be so flawless with his kids, why can't he be the same with himself or with me?

Yup, my H has given marriage advice to other men at work, and when I heard what he said to them it must have shown all over my face that I was thinking ''WHY can't you do that in OUR marriage?" I have no poker face.