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OutOfEgypt
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« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2014, 08:45:21 AM » |
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Hi Fanie,
I'll share a little about my story, in the hope that it helps you.
Ten years ago, while I was going to see a counselor for my "OCD" (obsessing, ruminating about things, anxiety, etc.), he told me something. Actually, he told me two things. One was relating to my OCD, and the other was relating to my wife. He heard how wonderful she thought I was at first, how enamored with me she was, how highly sexualized everything was, and then he heard about her affairs, the self-absorption, and how she was never happy with me and wanted to leave, then would decide to stay if it looked I was finally going to be "better". He looked at me in the eye and he said to me, "You've gotta leave her." I was shocked and scared. I said, "Why?" He replied, "She's going to keep doing this to you [and to your kids]. She's Borderline. She's pathological."
I was not in a place where I was able to hear him. I "loved" her SOO much. I had no idea what Borderline was. I had to look up what "Pathological" meant -meaning that she had a psychological pathology... . her behavior was going to go down the same path toward me (and any other guy she is ever with) over and over and over, and there's really nothing I can do about it. She's broken. She can't help herself, and really... . she doesn't want to. She doesn't really want to look in the mirror. She's too busy being absorbed into herself.
I had one more child since then, about 8 years ago, but I tell you... . I wish I had listened to this man. I stuck in there... . believing the same lies and remaining foolishly naive and optimistic. I believed that 1) If I could just get past my current issues, I could finally be "enough" for her and she would finally be happy and stop doing ALL of the bad things she did to me and to our family (in other words, everything was really somehow my fault and if I could just go back to being the man she thought I was in the beginning, everything would be ok), and 2) eventually, if I hung in there, there was going to be a time where everything settled and became good, just around the bend in the future somewhere. Those were both lies. Total lies. And they kept things getting worse over the 8-10 years after. Affairs, lying... . going out on bing party nights with friends... . cheating, blaming me, telling me she's "punishing me" for how I "disappointed her", being absorbed into countless things to the exclusion of the entire family, and then acting like I and we are crazy for not noticing how much involvement she had here or there. Neglecting our kids while she talked all the time to some new guy.
And dumping everything on me... . not just the blame but all of the responsibilities. I became the cook, the cleaner, the food shopper, the errand boy, the homework person with the kids, the babysitter, the one who took the kids everywhere, the parent at school, the parent who interfaces with other parents of their friends, etc. And I did (and still do, to some degree) all of this while working a full-time job (I work at home). I was also her caretaker -bringing her things in bed, coming to have sex with her when she needed, even if in the middle of the night on a work night. I resented it on one level, but I just wanted to make her happy and loved to do things for her toward that end.
Ironically, I saw that same counselor back around 2009. I brought my son to him. My son was around 16 and was going through some awful things, had some problems with violence and acting out, was in trouble with the law, etc. He met with him, and then he wanted to see me privately after talking to our son. He told me the same thing, pretty much, he told me back in 2004. He told me I have to fall on the sword for my kids and leave their mom. Usually counselors are not so blunt -they usually try to help you come to your own decision. But I'd become friends with him socially over the years, so he just laid it out for me. He told me that our son's mom was killing him -all of the pain and anger in this boy was largely related to his mom and how she had treated him and all of us.
All of the neglect, all of the verbal abuse and blame, and then all of the running off with friends while we all sit at home -this woman dominated our entire home with her crazy, controlling, and self-esteem-destroying behavior... . and all from her "throne" in her bedroom, where she would sleep wheneve she wanted, get us to bring her meals, and chat on the phone or on Facebook whenever she wanted. So, although she had come back on the heels of a previous affair a year earlier, I realized I needed to do something. I felt momentarily inspired and determined. I wrote her a long letter explaining myself and telling her that she needed to "get out" of my house and not come back until something changes.
I called her on the phone and began to read it to her. She cut me off midway through and told me that I needed to "shut up." I "didn't understand" and needed to "shut up" and give her space and time and stop "forcing" her to work through her issues. So basically, she told me I was going about it the wrong way, I was being mean and selfish, and that if I just continued being her slave she would eventually come around. That was a huge LIE -the lie I kept believing. So, I did. I backed off. I gave her "space" and even took my laptop to work at her mom's during the day. It was summer, so my kids were at home. The teenage son would just get into screaming matches with his mom, so he would just leave all day. That left my 10 and 3 year old girls. I would get home from working at my mother-in-law's and find my 10 year old girl crying and exhausted... . because she was put in the position of having to be a parent ALL DAY while her mommy slept or talked on the phone in her room with the door shut and locked. It was awful.
Meanwhile two other affairs were already brewing. One with my best friend on the internet and another with some guy on the other side of the country, who she pretended was "gay" and flew out to visit her (and screw her brains out) while I took the kids back to where I'm from to visit my parents.
I eventually caught her in her affair. I filed for divorce and got her kicked out of the home. That is when she had this really lucid "I'm sorry" moment. I bawled. She bawled. She confessed to other things, like her phone sex affair with my best friend (whom I no longer speak to). And then, with deep sincerity and a heartfelt plea, she asked me to "Wait" for her. She was terrified that I was actually the love of her life and she was so confused that she couldn't see it. Besides, I "finally knew how to F**K right" so she "had to keep me around." So basically, over the following nine months I got to endure my wife running around like a teenager... . partying, screwing this guy every chance she got, and then eventually her attempting to committ suicide when her family found out the guy was not "gay" and realized what she was doing and kicked her out of her sisters house.
But guess what? I took her back. Yup, she came back. And do you know what she told me? With a laugh, while walking through Walmart one day, hand-in-hand, she said to me, "You know... I never wanted to leave you. I just wanted to f**k him. That's pretty bad, huh?" She giggled about it, and I thought to myself, "Yes, that is REALLY bad. Why can't she seem to see that?"
At this time I was getting therapy for myself. Over the course of the following years, I started to find myself. However, living with her made it SO much harder because on one hand, I worked with my therapist to find myself, and on the other hand, being with her constantly pressured me to live in this naive, doting, indulging, people-pleasing haze because I couldn't let her go, in spite of all the pain she caused me and my children. It wasn't an "couldn't" though -that is only a lie to tell ourselves. It was a "wouldn't". I wouldn't face the pain of letting her go. I preferred obsessing about what would happen and IF things would get better and if me getting therapy would fix things and fix our relationship. NOPE.
I finally got fed up and we divorced. A few months later, she tried to come back and actually went to therapy for herself for a few months. But it went the same way. She took control of the relationship again (and I was so enamored that I let her), and she soon was doing the same kinds of things, including going out all night "talking" with the guy she had the affair with before, coming home at 6am bringing donuts. She even did things with our son's 18 year old friend -right in front of him! Of course, by then he was so numb he didn't even say anything about it. Things like that are almost nothing to him.
The sad thing with all of this? I'm leaving a TON out of the story in order to keep it brief.
I know you say you love her. And I'm sure you do. But it is not necessarily love that keeps you stuck. It is likely (because it was for me) a refusal to live in reality. I preferred to live in the fantasy where things might get better, the fantasy of still having her (even though I never actually had her at all), because it was better than facing the pain of the truth and letting her go... . for my sake, for our kids sake, and even for her sake.
You mentioned praying, so maybe you read the Bible and are familiar with the famound "love" section in 1 Corinthians 13. Here's a part we often leave out of our thinking, focusing more on the other aspects that seem so nice and indulgent:
"[love] does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth."
From my own experience of working through things, I can see how true this is. Love, mature love, sees the truth for what it is -not in a blind, indulgent way, but in righteousness. You live, right now, in a world of numb indulgence, and you tell yourself it is because you love her. You do love her, but if you stood with love in the truth you would see how this is killing all of you, yourself included. If she is BPD and does not undergo serious, committed, long-term treatment (years), she will not change, my friend, and she will not ever be able to really receive your love and respond mutually with care and respect. She can't.
I eventually broke free from her, and now she is living like a teenager again. My girls see her every other week, and they complain that when they are there she is hardly with them. She goes out and parties (probably screwing her new 25 year old boyfriend), and then she is so tired that she sleeps all day. They are both angry with her, my eldest especially because she is "parentified" into making meals for her sister, bringing her mommy food, and babysitting and taking the kids (her younger cousins too) to the park. I tell my daughter that I understand, that I've been there, and that she doesn't have to live with that. She doesn't have to endure that crap. My youngest daughter loves her mommy, but she always hopes it is me who picks her up from school (the teacher tells me). When I pick them up from her mom's house for my week to have them, she doesn't even say goodbye to her mom.
I hope this story helps you wake up and see the truth, my friend... . the truth I would not hear so many years ago.
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